{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_35612/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_35612","id":"gutenberg_35612","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35612","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321","Didactic poetry -- History and criticism","Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832","Lucretius Carus, Titus","Philosophy in literature"],"text":"</pre>\n\n\n\nTHREE PHILOSOPHICAL POETS\n\nLUCRETIUS, DANTE, AND GOETHE\n\nBY\n\nGEORGE SANTAYANA\n\n\nPROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY\n\n\nHARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE\n\nVOLUME I\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE\n\nHARVARD UNIVERSITY\n\n1910\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThe present volume is composed, with a few additions, of six lectures\nread at Columbia University in February, 1910, and repeated in April of\nthe same year, at the University of Wisconsin. These lectures, in turn,\nwere based on a regular course which I had been giving for some time at\nHarvard College. Though produced under such learned auspices, my book\ncan make no great claims to learning. It contains the impressions of an\namateur, the appreciations of an ordinary reader, concerning three great\nwriters, two of whom at least might furnish matter enough for the\nstudies of a lifetime, and actually have academies, libraries, and\nuniversity chairs especially consecrated to their memory. I am no\nspecialist in the study of Lucretius; I am not a Dante scholar nor a\nGoethe scholar. I can report no facts and propose no hypotheses about\nthese men which are not at hand in their familiar works, or in\nwell-known commentaries upon them. My excuse for writing about them,\nnotwithstanding, is merely the human excuse which every new poet has for\nwriting about the spring. They have attracted me; they have moved me to\nreflection; they have revealed to me certain aspects of nature and of\nphilosophy which I am prompted by mere sincerity to express, if anybody\nseems interested or willing to listen. What I can offer the benevolent\nreader, therefore, is no learned investigation. It is only a piece of\nliterary criticism, together with a first broad lesson in the history of\nphilosophy--and, perhaps, in philosophy itself.\n\n                                                     G.S.\n\n\n_Harvard College_\n\n_June, 1910_\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nI\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n_Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe sum up the chief phases of European\nphilosophy,--naturalism, supernaturalism, and romanticism--Ideal\nrelation between philosophy and poetry._\n\nII\n\nLUCRETIUS\n\n_Development of Greek cosmology--Democritus--Epicurean moral\nsentiment--Changes inspired by it in the system of\nDemocritus--Accidental alliance of materialism with\nhedonism--Imaginative value of naturalism: The Lucretian Venus, or the\npropitious movement in nature--The Lucretian Mars, or the destructive\nmovement--Preponderant melancholy, and the reason for it--Materiality\nof the soul--The fear of death and the fear of life--Lucretius a true\npoet of nature--Comparison with Shelley and Wordsworth--Things he might\nhave added consistently: Indefeasible worth of his insight and\nsentiment._\n\nIII\n\nDANTE\n\n_Character of Platonism--Its cosmology a parable--Combination of this\nwith Hebraic philosophy of history--Theory of the Papacy and the Empire\nadopted by Dante--His judgement on Florence--Dante as a lyric\npoet--Beatrice the woman, the symbol, and the reality--Love, magic, and\nsymbolism constitutive principles of Dante\u2019s universe--Idea of the\nDivine Comedy--The scheme of virtues and vices--Retributive theory of\nrewards and punishments--Esoteric view of this, which makes even\npunishment intrinsic to the sins--Examples--Dantesque cosmography--The\ngenius of the poet--His universal scope--His triumphant execution of the\nComedy--His defects, in spite of which he remains the type of a supreme\npoet._\n\nIV\n\nGOETHE\u2019S FAUST _Page_\n\n_The romantic spirit--The ideals of the Renaissance--Expression of both\nin the legendary Faust--Marlowe\u2019s version--Tendency to vindicate\nFaust--Contrast with Calderon\u2019s \u201cWonder-working Magician\u201d--The original\nFaust of Goethe,--universal ambition and eternal dissatisfaction\n--Modifications--The series of experiments in living--The story of\nGretchen fitted in--Goethe\u2019s naturalistic theory of life and\nrejuvenation: Helen--The classic manner and the judgement on\nclassicism--Faust\u2019s last ambition--The conflict over his soul and his\nascent to heaven symbolical--Moral of the whole._\n\nV\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n_Comparison of the three poets--Their relative rank--Ideal of a\nphilosophic or comprehensive poet--Untried possibilities of art._\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nThe sole advantage in possessing great works of literature lies in what\nthey can help us to become. In themselves, as feats performed by their\nauthors, they would have forfeited none of their truth or greatness if\nthey had perished before our day. We can neither take away nor add to\ntheir past value or inherent dignity. It is only they, in so far as they\nare appropriate food and not poison for us, that can add to the present\nvalue and dignity of our minds. Foreign classics have to be retranslated\nand reinterpreted for each generation, to render their old naturalness\nin a natural way, and keep their perennial humanity living and capable\nof assimilation. Even native classics have to be reapprehended by every\nreader. It is this continual digestion of the substance supplied by the\npast that alone renders the insights of the past still potent in the\npresent and for the future. Living criticism, genuine appreciation, is\nthe interest we draw from year to year on the unrecoverable capital of\nhuman genius.\n\nRegarded from this point of view, as substances to be digested, the\npoetic remains of Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe (though it is his _Faust_\nonly that I shall speak of) afford rather a varied feast. In their\ndoctrine and genius they may seem to be too much opposed to be at all\nconvergent or combinable in their wisdom. Some, who know and care for\none, perhaps, of these poets, may be disposed to doubt whether they have\nanything vital to learn from the other two. Yet it is as a pupil--I hope\na discriminating pupil--of each in turn that I mean to speak; and I\nventure to maintain that in what makes them great they are compatible;\nthat without any vagueness or doubleness in one\u2019s criterion of taste one\nmay admire enthusiastically the poetry of each in turn; and that one may\naccept the essential philosophy, the positive intuition, of each,\nwithout lack of definition or system in one\u2019s own thinking.\n\nIndeed, the diversity of these three poets passes, if I may use the\nHegelian dialect, into a unity of a higher kind. Each is typical of an\nage. Taken together they sum up all European philosophy. Lucretius\nadopts the most radical and the most correct of those cosmological\nsystems which the genius of early Greece had devised. He sees the world\nto be one great edifice, one great machine, all its parts reacting upon\none another, and growing out of one another in obedience to a general\npervasive process or life. His poem describes the nature, that is, the\nbirth and composition, of all things. It shows how they are compounded\nout of elements, and how these elements, which he thinks are atoms in\nperpetual motion, are being constantly redistributed, so that old\nthings perish and new things arise. Into this view of the world he fits\na view of human life as it ought to be led under such conditions. His\nmaterialism is completed by an aspiration towards freedom and quietness\nof spirit. Allowed to look once upon the wonderful spectacle, which is\nto repeat itself in the world for ever, we should look and admire, for\nto-morrow we die; we should eat, drink, and be merry, but moderately and\nwith much art, lest we die miserably, and die to-day.\n\nThis is one complete system of philosophy,--materialism in natural\nscience, humanism in ethics. Such was the gist of all Greek philosophy\nbefore Socrates, of that philosophy which was truly Hellenic and\ncorresponded with the movement which produced Greek manners, Greek\ngovernment, and Greek art--a movement towards simplicity, autonomy, and\nreasonableness in everything, from dress to religion. Such is the gist\nalso of what may be called the philosophy of the Renaissance, the\nreassertion of science and liberty in the modern world, by Bacon, by\nSpinoza, by the whole contemporary school that looks to science for its\nview of the facts, and to the happiness of men on earth for its ideal.\nThis system is called naturalism; and of this Lucretius is the\nunrivalled poet.\n\nSkip a thousand years and more, and a contrasting spectacle is before\nus. All minds, all institutions, are dominated by a religion that\nrepresents the soul as a pilgrim upon earth; the world is fallen and\nsubject to the devil; pain and poverty are considered normal, happiness\nimpossible here and to be hoped for only in a future life, provided the\nsnares and pleasures of the present life have not entrapped us. Meantime\na sort of Jacob\u2019s ladder stretches from the stone on which the wayfarer\nlays his head into the heaven he hopes for; and the angels he sees\nascending and descending upon it are beautiful stories, wonderful\ntheories, and comforting rites. Through these he partakes, even on\nearth, of what will be his heavenly existence. He partly understands his\ndestiny; his own history and that of the world are transfigured before\nhim and, without ceasing to be sad, become beautiful. The raptures of a\nperfect conformity with the will of God, and of union with Him, overtake\nhim in his prayers. This is supernaturalism, a system represented in\nChristendom chiefly by the Catholic Church, but adopted also by the\nlater pagans, and widespread in Asia from remote antiquity down to the\npresent time. Little as the momentary temper of Europe and America may\nnow incline to such a view, it is always possible for the individual, or\nfor the race, to return to it. Its sources are in the solitude of the\nspirit and in the disparity, or the opposition, between what the spirit\nfeels it is fitted to do, and what, in this world, it is condemned to\nwaste itself upon. The unmatched poet of this supernaturalism is Dante.\n\nSkip again some five hundred years, and there is another change of\nscene. The Teutonic races that had previously conquered Europe have\nbegun to dominate and understand themselves. They have become\nProtestants, or protesters against the Roman world. An infinite fountain\nof life seems to be unlocked within their bosom. They turn successively\nto the Bible, to learning, to patriotism, to industry, for new objects\nto love and fresh worlds to conquer; but they have too much vitality, or\ntoo little maturity, to rest in any of these things. A demon drives them\non; and this demon, divine and immortal in its apparent waywardness, is\ntheir inmost self. It is their insatiable will, their radical courage.\nNay, though this be a hard saying to the uninitiated, their will is the\ncreator of all those objects by which it is sometimes amused, and\nsometimes baffled, but never tamed. Their will summons all opportunities\nand dangers out of nothing to feed its appetite for action; and in that\nideal function lies their sole reality. Once attained, things are\ntranscended. Like the episodes of a spent dream, they are to be smiled\nat and forgotten; the spirit that feigned and discarded them remains\nalways strong and undefiled; it aches for new conquests over new\nfictions. This is romanticism. It is an attitude often found in English\npoetry, and characteristic of German philosophy. It was adopted by\nEmerson and ought to be sympathetic to Americans; for it expresses the\nself-trust of world-building youth, and mystical faith in will and\naction. The greatest monument to this romanticism is Goethe\u2019s _Faust._\n\nCan it be an accident that the most adequate and probably the most\nlasting exposition of these three schools of philosophy should have been\nmade by poets? Are poets, at heart, in search of a philosophy? Or is\nphilosophy, in the end, nothing but poetry? Let us consider the\nsituation.\n\nIf we think of philosophy as an investigation into truth, or as\nreasoning upon truths supposed to be discovered, there is nothing in\nphilosophy akin to poetry. There is nothing poetic about the works of\nEpicurus, or St. Thomas Aquinas, or Kant; they are leafless forests. In\nLucretius and in Dante themselves we find passages where nothing is\npoetical except the metre, or some incidental ornament. In such passages\nthe form of poetry is thrown over the substance of prose, as Lucretius\nhimself confesses where he says: \u201cAs when physicians would contrive to\nadminister loathsome wormwood to little boys they first moisten the rim\nof the cup round about with sweet and golden honey, that the children\u2019s,\nunsuspecting youth may be beguiled--to the lips, but no further--while\nthey drink down the bitter potion, by deception not betrayed, but\nrather by that stratagem made whole and restored;... so I have willed to\nset forth our doctrine before thee in sweet-sounding Pierian song, and\nto smear it, as it were, with the Muses\u2019 honey.\u201d[1]\n\nBut poetry cannot be spread upon things like butter; it must play upon\nthem like light, and be the medium through which we see them. Lucretius\ndoes himself an injustice. If his philosophy had been wormwood to him,\nhe could not have said, as he does just before this passage: \u201cLike a\nsharp blow of the thyrsus, a great hope of praise vibrates through my\nheart and fills my breast with tender love of the Muses, whereby now,\ninstinct with flowering fancy, I traverse pathless haunts of the\nPierides, by no man\u2019s foot trodden before. It is joy to reach undefiled\nfountains and quaff; it is joy to gather fresh flowers and weave a\nmatchless crown for my head of those bays with which never yet the Muses\nveiled the brow of any man; first, in that I teach sublime truths and\ncome to free the soul from the strangling knots of superstition; then,\nin that on so dark a theme I pour forth so clear a song, suffusing all\nwith poetic beauty,... if haply by such means I might keep thy mind\nintent upon my verses, until thine eye fathoms the whole structure of\nnature, and the fixed form that makes it beautiful.\u201d[2]\n\nHere, I think, we have the solution to our doubt. The reasonings and\ninvestigations of philosophy are arduous, and if poetry is to be linked\nwith them, it can be artificially only, and with a bad grace. But the\nvision of philosophy is sublime. The order it reveals in the world is\nsomething beautiful, tragic, sympathetic to the mind, and just what\nevery poet, on a small or on a large scale, is always trying to catch.\n\nIn philosophy itself investigation and reasoning are only preparatory\nand servile parts, means to an end. They terminate in insight, or what\nin the noblest sense of the word may be called _theory, \u03b8\u03b5\u03c9\u03c1\u03af\u03b1_,--a\nsteady contemplation of all things in their order and worth. Such\ncontemplation is imaginative. No one can reach it who has not enlarged\nhis mind and tamed his heart. A philosopher who attains it is, for the\nmoment, a poet; and a poet who turns his practised and passionate\nimagination on the order of all things, or on anything in the light of\nthe whole, is for that moment a philosopher.\n\nNevertheless, even if we grant that the philosopher, in his best\nmoments, is a poet, we may suspect that the poet has his worst moments\nwhen he tries to be a philosopher, or rather, when he succeeds in being\none. Philosophy is something reasoned and heavy; poetry something\nwinged, flashing, inspired. Take almost any longish poem, and the parts\nof it are better than the whole. A poet is able to put together a few\nwords, a cadence or two, a single interesting image. He renders in that\nway some moment of comparatively high tension, of comparatively keen\nsentiment. But at the next moment the tension is relaxed, the sentiment\nhas faded, and what succeeds is usually incongruous with what went\nbefore, or at least inferior. The thought drifts away from what it had\nstarted to be. It is lost in the sands of versification. As man is now\nconstituted, to be brief is almost a condition of being inspired.\n\nShall we say, then,--and I now broach an idea by which I set some\nstore,--that poetry is essentially short-winded, that what is poetic is\nnecessarily intermittent in the writings of poets, that only the\nfleeting moment, the mood, the episode, can be rapturously felt, or\nrapturously rendered, while life as a whole, history, character, and\ndestiny are objects unfit for imagination to dwell on, and repellent to\npoetic art? I cannot think so. If it be a fact, as it often is, that we\nfind little things pleasing and great things arid and formless, and if\nwe are better poets in a line than in an epic, that is simply due to\nlack of faculty on our part, lack of imagination and memory, and above\nall to lack of discipline.\n\nThis might be shown, I think, by psychological analysis, if we cared to\nrely on something so abstract and so debatable. For in what does the\nshort-winded poet himself excel the common unimaginative person who\ntalks or who stares? Is it that he thinks even less? Rather, I suppose,\nin that he feels more; in that his moment of intuition, though fleeting,\nhas a vision, a scope, a symbolic something about it that renders it\ndeep and expressive. Intensity, even momentary intensity, if it can be\nexpressed at all, comports fullness and suggestion compressed into that\nintense moment. Yes, everything that comes to us at all must come to us\nat some time or other. It is always the fleeting moment in which we\nlive. To this fleeting moment the philosopher, as well as the poet, is\nactually confined. Each must enrich it with his endless vistas, vistas\nnecessarily focused, if they are to be disclosed at all, in the eye of\nthe observer, here and now. What makes the difference between a moment\nof poetic insight and a vulgar moment is that the passions of the poetic\nmoment have more perspective. Even the short-winded poet selects his\nwords so that they have a magic momentum in them which carries us, we\nknow not how, to mountain-tops of intuition. Is not the poetic quality\nof phrases and images due to their concentrating and liberating the\nconfused promptings left in us by a long experience? When we feel the\npoetic thrill, is it not that we find sweep in the concise and depth in\nthe clear, as we might find all the lights of the sea in the water of a\njewel? And what is a philosophic thought but such an epitome?\n\nIf a short passage is poetical because it is pregnant with suggestion of\na few things, which stretches our attention and makes us rapt and\nserious, how much more poetical ought a vision to be which was pregnant\nwith all we care for? Focus a little experience, give some scope and\ndepth to your feeling, and it grows imaginative; give it more scope and\nmore depth, focus all experience within it, make it a philosopher\u2019s\nvision of the world, and it will grow imaginative in a superlative\ndegree, and be supremely poetical. The difficulty, after having the\nexperience to symbolize, lies only in having enough imagination to hold\nand suspend it in a thought; and further to give this thought such\nverbal expression that others maybe able to decipher it, and to be\nstirred by it as by a wind of suggestion sweeping the whole forest of\ntheir memories.\n\nPoetry, then, is not poetical for being short-winded or incidental, but,\non the contrary, for being comprehensive and having range. If too much\nmatter renders it heavy, that is the fault of the poet\u2019s weak intellect,\nnot of the outstretched world. A quicker eye, a more synthetic\nimagination, might grasp a larger subject with the same ease. The\npicture that would render this larger subject would not be flatter and\nfeebler for its extent, but, on the contrary, deeper and stronger, since\nit would possess as much unity as the little one with greater volume. As\nin a supreme dramatic crisis all our life seems to be focused in the\npresent, and used in colouring our consciousness and shaping our\ndecisions, so for each philosophic poet the whole world of man is\ngathered together; and he is never so much a poet as when, in a single\ncry, he summons all that has affinity to him in the universe, and\nsalutes his ultimate destiny. It is the acme of life to understand life.\nThe height of poetry is to speak the language of the gods.\n\nBut enough of psychological analysis and of reasoning in the void.\nThree historical illustrations will prove my point more clearly and more\nconclusively.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] Lucretius, I. 936-47:\n\n       Veluti pueris absinthia tetra medentes\n     Cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circura\n     Contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore,\n     Ut puerorum aetas improvida ludificetur\n     Labrorum tenus, interea perpotet amarum\n     Absinthi laticem, deceptaque non capiatur,\n     Sed potius tali pacto recreata valescat:\n     Sic ego nunc ... volui tibi suaviloquenti\n     Carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostram,\n     Et quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle.\n\n\n[2] Lucretius, i. 922-34, 948-50:\n\n                                              Acri\n     Percussit thyrso laudis spes magna meum cor\n     Et simul incussit suavem mi in pectus amorem\n     Musarum, quo nunc instinctus mente vigenti\n     Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante\n     Trita solo: iuvat integros accedere fontes,\n     Atque haurire; iuvatque novos decerpere flores,\n     Insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam,\n     Unde prius nulli velarint tempora musae.\n     Primum, quod magnis doceo de rebus, et artis\n     Religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo:\n     Deinde, quod obscura de re tam lucida pango\n     Carmina, musaeo contingens cuncta lepore....\n     Si tibi forte animum tali ratione tenere\n     Versibus in nostris possem, dum perspicis omnem\n     Naturam rerum, qua constet compta figura.\n\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nLUCRETIUS\n\n\n\nThere is perhaps no important poem the antecedents of which can be\ntraced so exhaustively as can those of the work of Lucretius, _De Rerum\nNatura_. These antecedents, however, do not lie in the poet himself. If\nthey did, we should not be able to trace them, since we know nothing, or\nnext to nothing, about Lucretius the man. In a chronicon, compiled by\nSt. Jerome largely out of Suetonius, in which miscellaneous events are\nnoted which occurred in each successive year, we read for the year 94\nB.C.: \u201cTitus Lucretius, poet, is born. After a love-philtre had turned\nhim mad, and he had written, in the intervals of his insanity, several\nbooks which Cicero revised, he killed himself by his own hand in the\nforty-fourth year of his age.\u201d\n\nThe love-philtre in this report sounds apocryphal; and the story of the\nmadness and suicide attributes too edifying an end to an atheist and\nEpicurean not to be suspected. If anything lends colour to the story it\nis a certain consonance which we may feel between its tragic incidents\nand the genius of the poet as revealed in his work, where we find a\nstrange scorn of love, a strange vehemence, and a high melancholy. It is\nby no means incredible that the author of such a poem should have been\nat some time the slave of a pathological passion, that his vehemence\nand inspiration should have passed into mania, and that he should have\ntaken his own life. But the untrustworthy authority of St. Jerome cannot\nassure us whether what he repeats is a tradition founded on fact or an\ningenious fiction.\n\nOur ignorance of the life of Lucretius is not, I think, much to be\nregretted. His work preserves that part of him which he himself would\nhave wished to preserve. Perfect conviction ignores itself, proclaiming\nthe public truth. To reach this no doubt requires a peculiar genius\nwhich is called intelligence; for intelligence is quickness in seeing\nthings as they are. But where intelligence is attained, the rest of a\nman, like the scaffolding to a finished building, becomes irrelevant. We\ndo not wish it to intercept our view of the solid structure, which alone\nwas intended by the artist--if he was building for others, and was not a\ncoxcomb. It is his intellectual vision that the naturalist in particular\nwishes to hand down to posterity, not the shabby incidents that preceded\nthat vision in his own person. These incidents, even if they were by\nchance interesting, could not be repeated in us; but the vision into\nwhich the thinker poured his faculties, and to which he devoted his\nvigils, is communicable to us also, and may become a part of ourselves.\n\nSince Lucretius is thus identical for us with his poem, and is lost in\nhis philosophy, the antecedents of Lucretius are simply the stages by\nwhich his conception of nature first shaped itself in the human mind. To\nretrace these stages is easy; some of them are only too familiar; yet\nthe very triteness of the subject may blind us to the grandeur and\naudacity of the intellectual feat involved. A naturalistic conception of\nthings is a great work of imagination,--greater, I think, than any\ndramatic or moral mythology: it is a conception fit to inspire great\npoetry, and in the end, perhaps, it will prove the only conception able\nto inspire it.\n\nWe are told of the old Xenophanes that he looked up into the round\nheaven and cried, \u201cThe All is One.\u201d What is logically a truism may often\nbe, imaginatively, a great discovery, because no one before may have\nthought of the obvious analogy which the truism registers. So, in this\ncase, the unity of all things is logically an evident, if barren, truth;\nfor the most disparate and unrelated worlds would still be a multitude,\nand so an aggregate, and so, in some sense, a unity. Yet it was a great\nimaginative feat to cast the eye deliberately round the entire horizon,\nand to draw mentally the sum of all reality, discovering that reality\nmakes such a sum, and may be called one; as any stone or animal, though\ncomposed of many parts, is yet called one in common parlance. It was\ndoubtless some prehistoric man of genius, long before Xenophanes, who\nfirst applied in this way to all things together that notion of unity\nand wholeness which everybody had gained by observation of things\nsingly, and who first ventured to speak of \u201cthe world.\u201d To do so is to\nset the problem for all natural philosophy, and in a certain measure to\nanticipate the solution of that problem; for it is to ask how things\nhang together, and to assume that they do hang together in one way or\nanother.\n\nTo cry \u201cThe All is One,\u201d and to perceive that all things are in one\nlandscape and form a system by their juxtaposition, is the rude\nbeginning of wisdom in natural philosophy. But it is easy to go farther,\nand to see that things form a unity in a far deeper and more mysterious\nway. One of the first things, for instance, that impresses the poet, the\nman of feeling and reflection, is that these objects that people the\nworld all pass away, and that the place there-of knows them no more.\nYet, when they vanish, nothingness does not succeed; other things arise\nin their stead. Nature remains always young and whole in spite of death\nat work everywhere; and what takes the place of what continually\ndisappears is often remarkably like it in character. Universal\ninstability is not incompatible with a great monotony in things; so that\nwhile Heraclitus lamented that everything was in flux, Ecclesiastes, who\nwas also entirely convinced of that truth, could lament that there was\nnothing new under the sun.\n\nThis double experience of mutation and recurrence, an experience at once\nsentimental and scientific, soon brought with it a very great thought,\nperhaps the greatest thought that mankind has ever hit upon, and which\nwas the chief inspiration of Lucretius. It is that all we observe about\nus, and ourselves also, may be so many passing forms of a permanent\nsubstance. This substance, while remaining the same in quantity and in\ninward quality, is constantly redistributed; in its redistribution it\nforms those aggregates which we call things, and which we find\nconstantly disappearing and reappearing. All things are dust, and to\ndust they return; a dust, however, eternally fertile, and destined to\nfall perpetually into new, and doubtless beautiful, forms. This notion\nof substance lends a much greater unity to the outspread world; it\npersuades us that all things pass into one another, and have a common\nground from which they spring successively, and to which they return.\n\nThe spectacle of inexorable change, the triumph of time, or whatever we\nmay call it, has always been a favourite theme for lyric and tragic\npoetry, and for religious meditation. To perceive universal mutation, to\nfeel the vanity of life, has always been the beginning of seriousness.\nIt is the condition for any beautiful, measured, or tender philosophy.\nPrior to that, everything is barbarous, both in morals and in poetry;\nfor until then mankind has not learned to renounce anything, has not\noutgrown the instinctive egotism and optimism of the young animal, and\nhas not removed the centre of its being, or of its faith, from the will\nto the imagination.\n\nTo discover substance, then, is a great step in the life of reason, even\nif substance be conceived quite negatively as a term that serves merely\nto mark, by contrast, the unsubstantiality, the vanity, of all\nparticular moments and things. That is the way in which Indian poetry\nand philosophy conceived substance. But the step taken by Greek physics,\nand by the poetry of Lucretius, passes beyond. Lucretius and the Greeks,\nin observing universal mutation and the vanity of life, conceived behind\nappearance a great intelligible process, an evolution in nature. The\nreality became interesting, as well as the illusion. Physics became\nscientific, which had previously been merely spectacular.\n\nHere was a much richer theme for the poet and philosopher, who was\nlaunched upon the discovery of the ground and secret causes of this gay\nor melancholy flux. The understanding that enabled him to discover these\ncauses did for the European what no Indian mystic, what no despiser of\nunderstanding anywhere, suffers himself to do; namely, to dominate,\nforetell, and transform this changing show with a virile, practical\nintelligence. The man who discovers the secret springs of appearances\nopens to contemplation a second positive world, the workshop and busy\ndepths of nature, where a prodigious mechanism is continually supporting\nour life, and making ready for it from afar by the most exquisite\nadjustments. The march of this mechanism, while it produces life and\noften fosters it, yet as often makes it difficult and condemns it to\nextinction. This truth, which the conception of natural substance first\nmakes intelligible, justifies the elegies which the poets of illusion\nand disillusion have always written upon human things. It is a truth\nwith a melancholy side; but being a truth, it satisfies and exalts the\nrational mind, that craves truth as truth, whether it be sad or\ncomforting, and wishes to pursue a possible, not an impossible,\nhappiness.\n\nSo far, Greek science had made out that the world was one, that there\nwas a substance, that this was a physical substance, distributed and\nmoving in space. It was matter. The question remained, What is the\nprecise nature of matter, and how does it produce the appearances we\nobserve? The only answer that concerns us here is that given by\nLucretius; an answer he accepted from Epicurus, his master in\neverything, who in turn had accepted it from Democritus. Now Democritus\nhad made a notable advance over the systems that selected one obvious\nsubstance, like water, or collected all the obvious substances, as\nAnaxagoras had done, and tried to make the world out of them.\nDemocritus thought that the substance of everything ought not to have\nany of the qualities present in some things and absent in others; it\nought to have only the qualities present in all things. It should be\n_merely_ matter. Materiality, according to him, consisted of extension,\nfigure, and solidity; in the thinnest ether, if we looked sharp enough,\nwe should find nothing but particles possessing these properties. All\nother qualities of things were apparent only, and imputed to them by a\nconvention of the mind. The mind was a born mythologist, and projected\nits feelings into their causes. Light, colour, taste, warmth, beauty,\nexcellence, were such imputed and conventional qualities; only space and\nmatter were real. But empty space was no less real than matter.\nConsequently, although the atoms of matter never changed their form,\nreal changes could take place in nature, because their position might\nchange in a real space.\n\nUnlike the useless substance of the Indians, the substance of Democritus\ncould offer a calculable ground for the flux of appearances; for this\nsubstance was distributed unequally in the void, and was constantly\nmoving. Every appearance, however fleeting, corresponded to a precise\nconfiguration of substance; it arose with that configuration and\nperished with it. This substance, accordingly, was physical, not\nmetaphysical. It was no dialectical term, but a scientific anticipation,\na prophecy as to what an observer who should be properly equipped would\ndiscover in the interior of bodies. Materialism is not a system of\nmetaphysics; it is a speculation in chemistry and physiology, to the\neffect that, if analysis could go deep enough, it would find that all\nsubstance was homogeneous, and that all motion was regular.\n\nThough matter was homogeneous, the forms of the ultimate particles,\naccording to Democritus, were various; and sundry combinations of them\nconstituted the sundry objects in nature. Motion was not, as the vulgar\n(and Aristotle) supposed, unnatural, and produced magically by some\nmoral cause; it had been eternal and was native to the atoms. On\nstriking, they rebounded; and the mechanical currents or vortices which\nthese contacts occasioned formed a multitude of stellar systems, called\nworlds, with which infinite space was studded.\n\nMechanism as to motion, atomism as to structure, materialism as to\nsubstance, that is the whole system of Democritus. It is as wonderful in\nits insight, in its sense for the ideal demands of method and\nunderstanding, as it is strange and audacious in its simplicity. Only\nthe most convinced rationalist, the boldest prophet, could embrace it\ndogmatically; yet time has largely given it the proof. If Democritus\ncould look down upon the present state of science, he would laugh, as he\nwas in the habit of doing, partly at the confirmation we can furnish to\nportions of his philosophy, and partly at our stupidity that cannot\nguess the rest.\n\nThere are two maxims in Lucretius that suffice, even to this day, to\ndistinguish a thinker who is a naturalist from one who is not.\n\u201cNothing,\u201d he says, \u201carises in the body in order that we may use it, but\nwhat arises brings forth its use.\u201d[1] This is that discarding of final\ncauses on which all progress in science depends. The other maxim runs:\n\u201cOne thing will grow plain when compared with another: and blind night\nshall not obliterate the path for thee, before thou hast thoroughly\nscanned the ultimate things of nature; so much will things throw light\non things.\u201d[2] Nature is her own standard; and if she seems to us\nunnatural, there is no hope for our minds.\n\nThe ethics of Democritus, in so far as we may judge from scanty\nevidence, were merely descriptive or satirical. He was an aristocratic\nobserver, a scorner of fools. Nature was laughing at us all; the wise\nman considered his fate and, by knowing it, raised himself in a measure\nabove it. All living things pursued the greatest happiness they could\nsee their way to; but they were marvellously short-sighted; and the\nbusiness of the philosopher was to foresee and pursue the greatest\nhappiness that was really possible. This, in so rough a world, was to be\nfound chiefly in abstention and retrenchment. If you asked for little,\nit was more probable that the event would not disappoint you. It was\nimportant not to be a fool, but it was very hard.\n\nThe system of Democritus was adopted by Epicurus, but not because\nEpicurus had any keenness of scientific vision. On the contrary,\nEpicurus, the Herbert Spencer of antiquity, was in his natural\nphilosophy an encyclopaedia of second-hand knowledge. Prolix and minute,\nvague and inconsistent, he gathered his scientific miscellany with an\neye fixed not on nature, but on the exigencies of an inward faith,--a\nfaith accepted on moral grounds, deemed necessary to salvation, and\ndefended at all costs, with any available weapon. It is instructive that\nmaterialism should have been adopted at that juncture on the same\nirrelevant moral grounds on which it has usually been rejected.\n\nEpicurus, strange as it may sound to those who have heard, with horror\nor envy, of wallowing in his sty, Epicurus was a saint. The ways of the\nworld filled him with dismay. The Athens of his time, which some of us\nwould give our eyes to see, retained all its splendour amid its\npolitical decay; but nothing there interested or pleased Epicurus.\nTheatres, porches, gymnasiums, and above all the agora, reeked, to his\nsense, with vanity and folly. Retired in his private garden, with a few\nfriends and disciples, he sought the ways of peace; he lived\nabstemiously; he spoke gently; he gave alms to the poor; he preached\nagainst wealth, against ambition, against passion. He defended free-will\nbecause he wished to exercise it in withdrawing from the world, and in\nnot swimming with the current. He denied the supernatural, since belief\nin it would have a disquieting influence on the mind, and render too\nmany things compulsory and momentous. There was no future life: the art\nof living wisely must not be distorted by such wild imaginings.\n\nAll things happened in due course of nature; the gods were too remote\nand too happy, secluded like good Epicureans, to meddle with earthly\nthings. Nothing ruffled what Wordsworth calls their \u201cvoluptuous\nunconcern.\u201d Nevertheless, it was pleasant to frequent their temples.\nThere, as in the spaces where they dwelt between the worlds, the gods\nwere silent and beautiful, and wore the human form. Their statues, when\nan unhappy man gazed at them, reminded him of happiness; he was\nrefreshed and weaned for a moment from the senseless tumult of human\naffairs. From those groves and hallowed sanctuaries the philosopher\nreturned to his garden strengthened in his wisdom, happier in his\nisolation, more friendly and more indifferent to all the world. Thus the\nlife of Epicurus, as St. Jerome bears witness, was \u201cfull of herbs,\nfruits, and abstinences.\u201d There was a hush in it, as of bereavement. His\nwas a philosophy of the decadence, a philosophy of negation, and of\nflight from the world.\n\nAlthough science for its own sake could not interest so monkish a\nnature, yet science might be useful in buttressing the faith, or in\nremoving objections to it. Epicurus therefore departed from the reserve\nof Socrates, and looked for a natural philosophy that might support his\nethics. Of all the systems extant--and they were legion--he found that\nof Democritus the most helpful and edifying. Better than any other it\nwould persuade men to renounce the madness that must be renounced and to\nenjoy the pleasures that may be enjoyed. But, since it was adopted on\nthese external and pragmatic grounds, the system of Democritus did not\nneed to be adopted entire. In fact, one change at least was imperative.\nThe motion of the atoms must not be wholly regular and mechanical.\nChance must be admitted, that Fate might be removed. Fate was a\nterrifying notion. It was spoken of by the people with superstitious\nunction. Chance was something humbler, more congenial to the man in the\nstreet. If only the atoms were allowed to deflect a little now and then\nfrom their courses, the future might remain unpredictable, and free-will\nmight be saved. Therefore, Epicurus decreed that the atoms deflected,\nand fantastic arguments were added to show that this intrusion of chance\nwould aid in the organization of nature; for the declension of the\natoms, as it is called, would explain how the original parallel downpour\nof them might have yielded to vortices, and so to organized bodies. Let\nus pass on.\n\nMaterialism, like any system of natural philosophy, carries with it no\ncommandments and no advice. It merely describes the world, including the\naspirations and consciences of mortals, and refers all to a material\nground. The materialist, being a man, will not fail to have preferences,\nand even a conscience, of his own; but his precepts and policy will\nexpress, not the logical implications of his science, but his human\ninstincts, as inheritance and experience may have shaped them. Any\nsystem of ethics might accordingly coexist with materialism; for if\nmaterialism declares certain things (like immortality) to be impossible,\nit cannot declare them to be undesirable. Nevertheless, it is not likely\nthat a man so constituted as to embrace materialism will be so\nconstituted as to pursue things which he considers unattainable. There\nis therefore a psychological, though no logical, bond between\nmaterialism and a homely morality.\n\nThe materialist is primarily an observer; and he will probably be such\nin ethics also; that is, he will have no ethics, except the emotion\nproduced upon him by the march of the world. If he is an _esprit fort_\nand really disinterested, he will love life; as we all love perfect\nvitality, or what strikes us as such, in gulls and porpoises. This, I\nthink, is the ethical sentiment psychologically consonant with a\nvigorous materialism: sympathy with the movement of things, interest in\nthe rising wave, delight at the foam it bursts into, before it sinks\nagain. Nature does not distinguish the better from the worse, but the\nlover of nature does. He calls better what, being analogous to his own\nlife, enhances his vitality and probably possesses some vitality of its\nown. This is the ethical feeling of Spinoza, the greatest of modern\nnaturalists in philosophy; and we shall see how Lucretius, in spite of\nhis fidelity to the ascetic Epicurus, is carried by his poetic ecstasy\nin the same direction.\n\nBut mark the crux of this union: the materialist will love the life of\nnature when he loves his own life; but if he should hate his own life,\nhow should the life of nature please him? Now Epicurus, for the most\npart, hated life. His moral system, called hedonism, recommends that\nsort of pleasure which has no excitement and no risk about it. This\nideal is modest, and even chaste, but it is not vital. Epicurus was\nremarkable for his mercy, his friendliness, his utter horror of war, of\nsacrifice, of suffering. These are not sentiments that a genuine\nnaturalist would be apt to share. Pity and repentance, Spinoza said,\nwere vain and evil; what increased a man\u2019s power and his joy increased\nhis goodness also. The naturalist will believe in a certain hardness, as\nNietzsche did; he will incline to a certain scorn, as the laughter of\nDemocritus was scornful. He will not count too scrupulously the cost of\nwhat he achieves; he will be an imperialist, rapt in the joy of\nachieving something. In a word, the moral hue of materialism in a\nformative age, or in an aggressive mind, would be aristocratic and\nimaginative; but in a decadent age, or in a soul that is renouncing\neverything, it would be, as in Epicurus, humanitarian and timidly\nsensual.\n\nWe have now before us the antecedents and components of Lucretius\u2019 poem\non nature. There remains the genius of the poet himself. The greatest\nthing about this genius is its power of losing itself in its object, its\nimpersonality. We seem to be reading not the poetry of a poet about\nthings, but the poetry of things themselves. That things have their\npoetry, not because of what we make them symbols of, but because of\ntheir own movement and life, is what Lucretius proves once for all to\nmankind.\n\nOf course, the poetry we see in nature is due to the emotion the\nspectacle produces in us; the life of nature might be as romantic and\nsublime as it chose, it would be dust and ashes to us if there were\nnothing sublime and romantic in ourselves to be stirred by it to\nsympathy. But our emotion may be ingenuous; it may be concerned with\nwhat nature really is and does, has been and will do for ever. It need\nnot arise from a selfish preoccupation with what these immense realities\ninvolve for our own persons or may be used to suggest to our\nself-indulgent fancy. No, the poetry of nature may be discerned merely\nby the power of intuition which it awakens and the understanding which\nit employs. These faculties, more, I should say, than our moodiness or\nstuffy dreams, draw taut the strings of the soul, and bring out her full\nvitality and music. Naturalism is a philosophy of observation, and of an\nimagination that extends the observable; all the sights and sounds of\nnature enter into it, and lend it their directness, pungency, and\ncoercive stress. At the same time, naturalism is an intellectual\nphilosophy; it divines substance behind appearance, continuity behind\nchange, law behind fortune. It therefore attaches all those sights and\nsounds to a hidden background that connects and explains them. So\nunderstood, nature has depth as well as surface, force and necessity as\nwell as sensuous variety. Before the sublimity of this insight, all\nforms of the pathetic fallacy seem cheap and artificial. Mythology, that\nto a childish mind is the only possible poetry, sounds like bad rhetoric\nin comparison. The naturalistic poet abandons fairy land, because he has\ndiscovered nature, history, the actual passions of man. His imagination\nhas reached maturity; its pleasure is to dominate, not to play.\n\nPoetic dominion over things as they are is seen best in Shakespeare for\nthe ways of men, and in Lucretius for the ways of nature. Unapproachably\nvivid, relentless, direct in detail, he is unflinchingly grand and\nserious in his grouping of the facts. It is the truth that absorbs him\nand carries him along. He wishes us to be convinced and sobered by the\nfact, by the overwhelming evidence of thing after thing, raining down\nupon us, all bearing witness with one voice to the nature of the world.\n\nSuppose, however,--and it is a tenable supposition,--that Lucretius is\nquite wrong in his science, and that there is no space, no substance,\nand no nature. His poem would then lose its pertinence to our lives and\npersonal convictions; it would not lose its imaginative grandeur. We\ncould still conceive a world composed as he describes. Fancy what\nemotions those who lived in such a world would have felt on the day when\na Democritus or a Lucretius revealed to them their actual situation. How\ngreat the blindness or the madness dissipated, and how wonderful the\nvision gained! How clear the future, how intelligible the past, how\nmarvellous the swarming atoms, in their unintentional, perpetual\nfertility! What the sky is to our eyes on a starry night, that every\nnook and cranny of nature would resemble, with here and there the\ntentative smile of life playing about those constellations. Surely that\nuniverse, for those who lived in it, would have had its poetry. It would\nhave been the poetry of naturalism. Lucretius, thinking he lived in such\na world, heard the music of it, and wrote it down.\n\nAnd yet, when he set himself to make his poem out of the system of\nEpicurus, the greatness of that task seems to have overwhelmed him. He\nwas to unfold for the first time, in sonorous but unwieldy Latin, the\nbirth and nature of all things, as Greek subtlety had discerned them. He\nwas to dispel superstition, to refute antagonists, to lay the sure\nfoundations of science and of wisdom, to summon mankind compellingly\nfrom its cruel passions and follies to a life of simplicity and peace.\nHe was himself combative and distracted enough--as it is often our\ntroubles, more than our attainments, that determine our ideals. Yet in\nheralding the advent of human happiness, and in painting that of the\ngods, he was to attain his own, soaring upon the strong wings of his\nhexameters into an ecstasy of contemplation and enthusiasm. When it is\nso great an emotion to read these verses, what must it have been to\ncompose them? Yet could he succeed? Could such great things fall to his\nlot? Yes, they might, if only the creative forces of nature, always\ninfinite and always at hand, could pass into his brain and into his\nspirit; if only the seeds of corruption and madness, which were always\ncoursing through the air, could be blown back for a moment; and if the\ndin of civil conflicts could be suspended while he thought and wrote. To\na fortunate conjunction of atoms, a child owes his first being. To a\npropitious season and atmosphere, a poet owes his inspiration and his\nsuccess. Conscious that his undertaking hangs upon these chance\nconjunctions, Lucretius begins by invoking the powers he is about to\ndescribe, that they may give him breath and genius enough to describe\nthem. And at once these powers send him a happy inspiration, perhaps a\nhappy reminiscence of Empedocles. There are two great perspectives which\nthe moralist may distinguish in the universal drift of atoms,\u2014a creative\nmovement, producing what the moralist values, and a destructive\nmovement, abolishing the same. Lucretius knows very well that this\ndistinction is moral only, or as people now say, subjective. No one else\nhas pointed out so often and so clearly as he that nothing arises in\nthis world not helped to life by the death of some other thing;[3] so\nthat the destructive movement creates and the creative movement\ndestroys. Yet from the point of view of any particular life or interest,\nthe distinction between a creative force and a destructive force is real\nand all-important. To make it is not to deny the mechanical structure of\nnature, but only to show how this mechanical structure is fruitful\nmorally, how the outlying parts of it are friendly or hostile to me or\nto you, its local and living products.\n\nThis double colouring of things is supremely interesting to the\nphilosopher; so much so that before his physical science has reached the\nmechanical stage, he will doubtless regard the double aspect which\nthings present to him as a dual principle in these things themselves. So\nEmpedocles had spoken of Love and Strife as two forces which\nrespectively gathered and disrupted the elements, so as to carry on\nbetween them the Penelope\u2019s labour of the world, the one perpetually\nweaving fresh forms of life, and the other perpetually undoing them.[4]\n\nIt needed but a slight concession to traditional rhetoric in order to\nexchange these names, Love and Strife, which designated divine powers\nin Empedocles, into the names of Venus and Mars, which designated the\nsame influences in Roman mythology. The Mars and Venus of Lucretius are\nnot moral forces, incompatible with the mechanism of atoms; they are\nthis mechanism itself, in so far as it now produces and now destroys\nlife, or any precious enterprise, like this of Lucretius in composing\nhis saving poem. Mars and Venus, linked in each other\u2019s arms, rule the\nuniverse together; nothing arises save by the death of some other thing.\nYet when what arises is happier in itself, or more congenial to us, than\nwhat is destroyed, the poet says that Venus prevails, that she woos her\ncaptive lover to suspend his unprofitable raging. At such times it is\nspring on earth; the storms recede (I paraphrase the opening\npassage),[5] the fields are covered with flowers, the sunshine floods\nthe serene sky, and all the tribes of animals feel the mighty impulse of\nVenus in their hearts.\n\nThe corn ripens in the plains, and even the sea bears in safety the\nfleets that traverse it.\n\nNot least, however, of these works of Venus is the Roman people. Never\nwas the formative power of nature better illustrated than in the\nvitality of this race, which conquered so many other races, or than in\nits assimilative power, which civilized and pacified them. Legend had\nmade Venus the mother of Aeneas, and Aeneas the progenitor of the\nRomans. Lucretius seizes on this happy accident and identifies the Venus\nof fable with the true Venus, the propitious power in all nature, of\nwhich Rome was indeed a crowning work. But the poet\u2019s work, also, if it\nis to be accomplished worthily, must look to the same propitious\nmovement for its happy issue and for its power to persuade. Venus must\nbe the patron of his art and philosophy. She must keep Memmius from the\nwars, that he may read, and be weaned from frivolous ambitions; and she\nmust stop the tumult of constant sedition, that Lucretius may lend his\nundivided mind to the precepts of Epicurus, and his whole heart to a\nsublime friendship, which prompts him to devote to intense study all the\nwatches of the starry night, plotting the course of each invisible atom,\nand mounting almost to the seat of the gods.[6]\n\nThis impersonation in the figure of Venus of whatever makes for life\nwould not be legitimate--it would really contradict a mechanical view of\nnature--if it were not balanced by a figure representing the opposite\ntendency, the no less universal tendency towards death.\n\nThe Mars of the opening passage, subdued for a moment by the\nblandishments of love, is raging in all the rest of the poem in his\nirrepressible fury. These are the two sides of every transmutation, that\nin creating, one thing destroys another; and this transmutation being\nperpetual,--nothing being durable except the void, the atoms, and their\nmotion,--it follows that the tendency towards death is, for any\nparticular thing, the final and victorious tendency. The names of Venus\nand Mars, not being essential to the poet\u2019s thought, are allowed to drop\nout, and the actual processes they stand for are described nakedly; yet,\nif the poem had ever been finished, and Lucretius had wished to make the\nend chime with the beginning, and represent, as it were, one great\ncycle of the world, it is conceivable that he might have placed at the\nclose a mythical passage to match that at the beginning; and we might\nhave seen Mars aroused from his luxurious lethargy, reasserting his\nimmortal nature, and rushing, firebrand in hand, from the palace of love\nto spread destruction throughout the universe, till all things should\nburn fiercely, and be consumed together. Yet not quite all; for the\ngoddess herself would remain, more divine and desirable than ever in her\naverted beauty. Instinctively into her bosom the God of War would sink\nagain, when weary and drunk with slaughter; and a new world would arise\nfrom the scattered atoms of the old.\n\nThese endless revolutions, taken in themselves, exactly balance; and I\nam not sure that, impartially considered, it is any sadder that new\nworlds should arise than that this world should always continue.\nBesides, nature cannot take from us more than she has given, and it\nwould be captious and thankless in us to think of her as destructive\nonly, or destructive essentially, after the unspeculative fashion of\nmodern pessimists. She destroys to create, and creates to destroy, her\ninterest (if we may express it so) being not in particular things, nor\nin their continuance, but solely in the movement that underlies them, in\nthe flux of substance beneath. Life, however, belongs to form, and not\nto matter; or in the language of Lucretius, life is an _eventum_, a\nredundant ideal product or incidental aspect, involved in the\nequilibration of matter; as the throw of sixes is an _eventum,_ a\nredundant ideal product or incidental aspect, occasionally involved in\nshaking a dice-box. Yet, as this throw makes the acme and best possible\nissue of a game of dice, so life is the acme and best possible issue of\nthe dance of atoms; and it is from the point of view of this _eventum_\nthat the whole process is viewed by us, and is judged. Not until that\nhappy chance has taken place, do we exist morally, or can we reflect or\njudge at all. The philosopher is at the top of the wave, he is the foam\nin the rolling tempest; and as the wave must have risen before he bursts\ninto being, all that he lives to witness is the fall of the wave. The\ndecadence of all he lives by is the only prospect before him; his whole\nphilosophy must be a prophecy of death. Of the life that may come after,\nwhen the atoms come together again, he can imagine nothing; the life he\nknows and shares, all that is life to him, is waning and almost spent.\n\nTherefore Lucretius, who is nothing if not honest, is possessed by a\nprofound melancholy. Vigorous and throbbing as are his pictures of\nspring, of love, of ambition, of budding culture, of intellectual\nvictory, they pale before the vivid strokes with which he paints the\napproach of death--fatigue of the will, lassitude in pleasure,\ncorruption and disintegration in society, the soil exhausted, the wild\nanimals tamed or exterminated, poverty, pestilence, and famine at hand;\nand for the individual, almost at once, the final dissipation of the\natoms of his soul, escaping from a relaxed body, to mingle and lose\nthemselves in the universal flow. Nothing comes out of nothing, nothing\nfalls back into nothing, if we consider substance; but everything comes\nfrom nothing and falls back into nothing if we consider things--the\nobjects of love and of experience. Time can make no impression on the\nvoid or on the atoms; nay, time is itself an _eventum_ created by the\nmotion of atoms in the void; but the triumph of time is absolute over\npersons, and nations, and worlds.[7]\n\nIn treating of the soul and of immortality Lucretius is an imperfect\npsychologist and an arbitrary moralist. His zeal to prove that the soul\nis mortal is inspired by the wish to dispel all fear of future\npunishments, and so to liberate the mind for the calm and tepid\nenjoyment of this world. There is something to be gained in this\ndirection, undoubtedly, especially if tales about divine vengeance to\ncome are used to sanction irrational practices, and to prevent poor\npeople from improving their lot. At the same time, it is hardly fair to\nassume that hell is the only prospect which immortality could possibly\nopen to any of us; and it is also unfair not to observe that the\npunishments which religious fables threaten the dead with are, for the\nmost part, symbols for the actual degradation which evil-doing brings\nupon the living; so that the fear of hell is not more deterrent or\nrepressive than experience of life would be if it were clearly brought\nbefore the mind.\n\nThere is another element in this polemic against immortality which,\nwhile highly interesting and characteristic of a decadent age, betrays a\nvery one-sided and, at bottom, untenable ideal. This element is the fear\nof life. Epicurus had been a pure and tender moralist, but\npusillanimous. He was so afraid of hurting and of being hurt, so afraid\nof running risks or tempting fortune, that he wished to prove that human\nlife was a brief business, not subject to any great transformations, nor\ncapable of any great achievements. He taught accordingly that the atoms\nhad produced already all the animals they could produce, for though\ninfinite in number the atoms were of few kinds. Consequently the\npossible sorts of being were finite and soon exhausted; this world,\nthough on the eve of destruction, was of recent date. The worlds around\nit, or to be produced in future, could not afford anything essentially\ndifferent. All the suns were much alike, and there was nothing new under\nthem. We need not, then, fear the world; it is an explored and domestic\nscene,--a home, a little garden, six feet of earth for a man to stretch\nin. If people rage and make a great noise, it is not because there is\nmuch to win, or much to fear, but because people are mad. Let me not be\nmad, thought Epicurus; let me be reasonable, cultivating sentiments\nappropriate to a mortal who inhabits a world morally comfortable and\nsmall, and physically poor in its infinite monotony. The well-known\nlines of Fitzgerald echo this sentiment perfectly:\n\n     _A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,_\n     _A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou_\n         _Beside me singing in the Wilderness--_\n     _Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!_\n\nBut what if the shadow of incalculable possibilities should fall across\nthis sunny retreat? What if after death we should awake in a world to\nwhich the atomic philosophy might not in the least apply? Observe that\nthis suggestion is not in the least opposed to any of the arguments by\nwhich science might prove the atomic theory to be correct. All that\nEpicurus taught about the universe now before us might be perfectly true\nof it; but what if to-morrow a new universe should have taken its\nplace? The suggestion is doubtless gratuitous, and no busy man will be\nmuch troubled by it; yet when the heart is empty it fills itself with\nsuch attenuated dreams. The muffled pleasures of the wise man, as\nEpicurus conceived him, were really a provocation to supernaturalism.\nThey left a great void; and before long supernaturalism--we shall see it\nin Dante--actually rushed in to quicken the pulses of life with fresh\nhopes and illusions, or at least (what may seem better than nothing)\nwith terrors and fanatical zeal. With such tendencies already afoot as\nthe myths and dogmas of Plato had betrayed, it was imperative for\nEpicurus to banish anxiously all thought of what might follow death. To\nthis end are all his arguments about the material nature of the soul and\nher incapacity to survive the body.\n\nTo say that the soul is material has a strange and barbarous sound to\nmodern ears. We live after Descartes, who taught the world that the\nessence of the soul was consciousness; and to call consciousness\nmaterial would be to talk of the blackness of white. But ancient usage\ngave the word soul a rather different meaning. The essence of the soul\nwas not so much to be conscious as to govern the formation of the body,\nto warm, move, and guide it. And if we think of the soul exclusively in\nthis light, it will not seem a paradox, it may even seem a truism, to\nsay that the soul must be material. For how are we to conceive that\npreexisting consciousness should govern the formation of the body, move,\nwarm, or guide it? A spirit capable of such a miracle would in any case\nnot be human, but altogether divine. The soul that Lucretius calls\nmaterial should not, then, be identified with consciousness, but with\nthe ground of consciousness, which is at the same time the cause of life\nin the body. This he conceives to be a swarm of very small and volatile\natoms, a sort of ether, resident in all living seeds, breathed in\nabundantly during life and breathed out at death.\n\nEven if this theory were accepted, however, it would not prove the point\nwhich Lucretius has chiefly at heart, namely, that an after-life is\nimpossible. The atoms of the soul are indestructible, like all atoms;\nand if consciousness were attached to the fortunes of a small group of\nthem, or of one only (as Leibniz afterwards taught), consciousness would\ncontinue to exist after these atoms had escaped from the body and were\nshooting through new fields of space. Indeed, they might be the more\naroused by that adventure, as a bee might find the sky or the garden\nmore exciting than the hive. All that Lucretius urges about the\ndivisibility of the soul, its diffused bodily seat, and the perils it\nwould meet outside fails to remove the ominous possibility that troubles\nhim.\n\nTo convince us that we perish at death he has to rely on vulgar\nexperience and inherent probability: what changes is not indestructible;\nwhat begins, ends; mental growth, health, sanity, accompany the fortunes\nof the body as a whole (not demonstrably those of the soul-atoms); the\npassions are relevant to bodily life and to an earthly situation; we\nshould not be ourselves under a different mask or in a new setting; we\nremember no previous existence if we had one, and so, in a future\nexistence, we should not remember this. These reflections are\nimpressive, and they are enforced by Lucretius with his usual vividness\nand smack of reality. Nothing is proved scientifically by such a\ndeliverance, yet it is good philosophy and good poetry; it brings much\nexperience together and passes a lofty judgment upon it. The artist has\nhis eye on the model; he is painting death to the life.\n\nIf these considerations succeed in banishing the dread of an after-life,\nthere remains the distress which many feel at the idea of extinction;\nand if we have ceased to fear death, like Hamlet, for the dreams that\nmay come after it, we may still fear death instinctively, like a stuck\npig. Against this instinctive horror of dying Lucretius has many brave\narguments. Fools, he says to us, why do you fear what never can touch\nyou? While you still live, death is absent; and when you are dead, you\nare so dead that you cannot know you are dead, nor regret it. You will\nbe as much at ease as before you were born. Or is what troubles you the\nchildish fear of being cold in the earth, or feeling its weight stifling\nyou? But you will not be there; the atoms of your soul--themselves\nunconscious--will be dancing in some sunbeam far away, and you yourself\nwill be nowhere; you will absolutely not exist. Death is by definition a\nstate that excludes experience. If you fear it, you fear a word.\n\nTo all this, perhaps, Memmius, or some other recalcitrant reader, might\nretort that what he shrank from was not the metaphysical state of being\ndead, but the very real agony of dying. Dying is something ghastly, as\nbeing born is something ridiculous; and, even if no pain were involved\nin quitting or entering this world, we might still say what Dante\u2019s\nFrancesca says of it: _Il modo ancor m\u2019offende_,--\u201cI shudder at the way\nof it.\u201d Lucretius, for his part, makes no attempt to show that\neverything is as it should be; and if our way of coming into this life\nis ignoble, and our way of leaving it pitiful, that is no fault of his\nnor of his philosophy. If the fear of death were merely the fear of\ndying, it would be better dealt with by medicine than by argument. There\nis, or there might be, an art of dying well, of dying painlessly,\nwillingly, and in season,--as in those noble partings which Attic\ngravestones depict,--especially if we were allowed, as Lucretius would\nallow us, to choose our own time.\n\nBut the radical fear of death, I venture to think, is something quite\ndifferent. It is the love of life. Epicurus, who feared life, seems to\nhave missed here the primordial and colossal force he was fighting\nagainst. Had he perceived that force, he would have been obliged to meet\nit in a more radical way, by an enveloping movement, as it were, and an\nattack from the rear. The love of life is not something rational, or\nfounded on experience of life. It is something antecedent and\nspontaneous. It is that Venus Genetrix which covers the earth with its\nflora and fauna. It teaches every animal to seek its food and its mate,\nand to protect its offspring; as also to resist or fly from all injury\nto the body, and most of all from threatened death. It is the original\nimpulse by which good is discriminated from evil, and hope from fear.\n\nNothing could be more futile, therefore, than to marshal arguments\nagainst that fear of death which is merely another name for the energy\nof life, or the tendency to self-preservation. Arguments involve\npremises, and these premises, in the given case, express some particular\nform of the love of life; whence it is impossible to conclude that death\nis in no degree evil and not at all to be feared. For what is most\ndreaded is not the agony of dying, nor yet the strange impossibility\nthat when we do not exist we should suffer for not existing. What is\ndreaded is the defeat of a present will directed upon life and its\nvarious undertakings. Such a present will cannot be argued away, but it\nmay be weakened by contradictions arising within it, by the irony of\nexperience, or by ascetic discipline. To introduce ascetic discipline,\nto bring out the irony of experience, to expose the self-contradictions\nof the will, would be the true means of mitigating the love of life; and\nif the love of life were extinguished, the fear of death, like smoke\nrising from that fire, would have vanished also.\n\nIndeed, the force of the great passage against the fear of death, at the\nend of the third book of Lucretius, comes chiefly from the picture it\ndraws of the madness of life. His philosophy deprecates covetousness,\nambition, love, and religion; it takes a long step towards the surrender\nof life, by surrendering all in life that is ardent, on the ground that\nit is painful in the end and ignominious. To escape from it all is a\ngreat deliverance. And since genius must be ardent about something,\nLucretius pours out his enthusiasm on Epicurus, who brought this\ndeliverance and was the saviour of mankind. Yet this was only a\nbeginning of salvation, and the same principles carried further would\nhave delivered us from the Epicurean life and what it retained that was\nGreek and naturalistic: science, friendship, and the healthy pleasures\nof the body. Had it renounced these things also, Epicureanism would have\nbecome altogether ascetic, a thorough system of mortification, or the\npursuit of death. To those who sincerely pursue death, death is no evil,\nbut the highest good. No need in that case of elaborate arguments to\nprove that death should not be feared, because it is nothing; for in\nspite of being nothing--or rather because it is nothing--death can be\nloved by a fatigued and disillusioned spirit, just as in spite of being\nnothing--or rather because it is nothing--it must be hated and feared by\nevery vigorous animal.\n\nOne more point, and I have done with this subject. Ancient culture was\nrhetorical. It abounded in ideas that are verbally plausible, and pass\nmuster in a public speech, but that, if we stop to criticize them, prove\nat once to be inexcusably false. One of these rhetorical fallacies is\nthe maxim that men cannot live for what they cannot witness. What does\nit matter to you, we may say in debate, what happened before you were\nborn, or what may go on after you are buried? And the orator who puts\nsuch a challenge may carry the audience with him, and raise a laugh at\nthe expense of human sincerity. Yet the very men who applaud are proud\nof their ancestors, care for the future of their children, and are very\nmuch interested in securing legally the execution of their last will and\ntestament. What may go on after their death concerns them deeply, not\nbecause they expect to watch the event from hell or heaven, but because\nthey are interested ideally in what that event shall be, although they\nare never to witness it. Lucretius himself, in his sympathy with nature,\nin his zeal for human enlightenment, in his tears for Iphigenia, long\nsince dead, is not moved by the hope of observing, or the memory of\nhaving observed, what excites his emotion. He forgets himself. He sees\nthe whole universe spread out in its true movement and proportions; he\nsees mankind freed from the incubus of superstition, and from the havoc\nof passion. The vision kindles his enthusiasm, exalts his imagination,\nand swells his verse into unmistakable earnestness.\n\nIf we follow Lucretius, therefore, in narrowing the sum of our personal\nfortunes to one brief and partial glimpse of earth, we must not suppose\nthat we need narrow at all the sphere of our moral interests. On the\ncontrary, just in proportion as we despise superstitious terrors and\nsentimental hopes, and as our imagination becomes self-forgetful, we\nshall strengthen the direct and primitive concern which we feel in the\nworld and in what may go on there, before us, after us, or beyond our\nken. If, like Lucretius and every philosophical poet, we range over all\ntime and all existence, we shall forget our own persons, as he did, and\neven wish them to be forgotten, if only the things we care for may\nsubsist or arise. He who truly loves God, says Spinoza, cannot wish that\nGod should love him in return. One who lives the life of the universe\ncannot be much concerned for his own. After all, the life of the\nuniverse is but the locus and extension of ours. The atoms that have\nonce served to produce life remain fit to reproduce it; and although the\nbody they might animate later would be a new one, and would have a\nsomewhat different career, it would not, according to Lucretius, be of a\ntotally new species; perhaps not more unlike ourselves than we are\nunlike one another, or than each of us is unlike himself at the various\nstages of his life.\n\nThe soul of nature, in the elements of it, is then, according to\nLucretius, actually immortal; only the human individuality, the chance\ncomposition of those elements, is transitory; so that, if a man could\ncare for what happens to other men, for what befell him when young or\nwhat may overtake him when old, he might perfectly well care, on the\nsame imaginative principle, for what may go on in the world for ever.\nThe finitude and injustice of his personal life would be broken down;\nthe illusion of selfishness would be dissipated; and he might say to\nhimself, I have imagination, and nothing that is real is alien to me.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe word nature has many senses; but if we preserve the one which\netymology justifies, and which is the most philosophical as well, nature\nshould mean the principle of birth or genesis, the universal mother, the\ngreat cause, or system of causes, that brings phenomena to light. If we\ntake the word nature in this sense, it may be said that Lucretius, more\nthan any other man, is the poet of nature. Of course, being an ancient,\nhe is not particularly a poet of landscape. He runs deeper than that; he\nis a poet of the source of landscape, a poet of matter. A poet of\nlandscape might try to suggest, by well-chosen words, the sensations of\nlight, movement, and form which nature arouses in us; but in this\nattempt he would encounter the insuperable difficulty which Lessing long\nago pointed out, and warned poets of: I mean the unfitness of language\nto render what is spatial and material; its fitness to render only what,\nlike language itself, is bodiless and flowing,--action, feeling, and\nthought.\n\nIt is noticeable, accordingly, that poets who are fascinated by pure\nsense and seek to write poems about it are called not impressionists,\nbut symbolists; for in trying to render some absolute sensation they\nrender rather the field of association in which that sensation lies, or\nthe emotions and half-thoughts that shoot and play about it in their\nfancy. They become--against their will, perhaps--psychological poets,\nringers of mental chimes, and listeners for the chance overtones of\nconsciousness. Hence we call them symbolists, mixing perhaps some shade\nof disparagement in the term, as if they were symbolists of an empty,\nsuper-subtle, or fatuous sort. For they play with things luxuriously,\nmaking them symbols for their thoughts, instead of mending their\nthoughts intelligently, to render them symbols for things.\n\nA poet might be a symbolist in another sense,--if he broke up nature,\nthe object suggested by landscape to the mind, and reverted to the\nelements of landscape, not in order to associate these sensations lazily\ntogether, but in order to build out of them in fancy a different nature,\na better world, than that which they reveal to reason. The elements of\nlandscape, chosen, emphasized, and recombined for this purpose, would\nthen be symbols for the ideal world they were made to suggest, and for\nthe ideal life that might be led in that paradise. Shelley is a symbolic\nlandscape poet in this sense. To Shelley, as Francis Thompson has said,\nnature was a toy-shop; his fancy took the materials of the landscape and\nwove them into a gossamer world, a bright ethereal habitation for\nnew-born irresponsible spirits. Shelley was the musician of landscape;\nhe traced out its unrealized suggestions; transformed the things he saw\ninto the things he would fain have seen. In this idealization it was\nspirit that guided him, the bent of his wild and exquisite imagination,\nand he fancied sometimes that the grosser landscapes of earth were\nlikewise the work of some half-spiritual stress, of some restlessly\ndreaming power. In this sense, earthly landscape seemed to him the\nsymbol of the earth spirit, as the starlit crystal landscapes of his\nverse, with their pensive flowers, were symbols in which his own fevered\nspirit was expressed, images in which his passion rested.\n\nAnother sort of landscape poetry is to be found in Wordsworth, for whom\nthe title of poet of nature might perhaps be claimed. To him the\nlandscape is an influence. What he renders, beyond such pictorial\ntouches as language is capable of, is the moral inspiration which the\nscene brings to him. This moral inspiration is not drawn at all from the\nreal processes of nature which every landscape manifests in some aspect\nand for one moment. Such would have been the method of Lucretius; he\nwould have passed imaginatively from the landscape to the sources of the\nlandscape; he would have disclosed the poetry of matter, not of spirit.\nWordsworth, on the contrary, dwells on adventitious human matters. He is\nno poet of genesis, evolution, and natural force in its myriad\nmanifestations. Only a part of the cosmic process engages his interest,\nor touches his soul--the strengthening or chastening of human purposes\nby the influences of landscape. These influences are very real; for as\nfood or wine keeps the animal heart beating, or quickens it, so large\nspaces of calm sky, or mountains, or dells, or solitary stretches of\nwater, expand the breast, disperse the obsessions that cramp a man\u2019s\ndaily existence, and even if he be less contemplative and less virtuous\nthan Wordsworth, make him, for the moment, a friend to all things, and a\nfriend to himself.\n\nYet these influences are vague and for the most part fleeting.\nWordsworth would hardly have felt them so distinctly and so constantly\nhad he not found a further link to bind landscape to moral sentiment.\nSuch a link exists. The landscape is the scene of human life. Every\nspot, every season, is associated with the sort of existence which falls\nto men in that environment. Landscape for Wordsworth\u2019s age and in his\ncountry was seldom without figures. At least, some visible trace of man\nguided the poet and set the key for his moral meditation. Country life\nwas no less dear to Wordsworth than landscape was; it fitted into every\npicture; and while the march of things, as Lucretius conceived it, was\nnot present to Wordsworth\u2019s imagination, the revolutions of society--the\nFrench Revolution, for instance--were constantly in his thoughts. In so\nfar as he was a poet of human life, Wordsworth was truly a poet of\nnature. In so far, however, as he was a poet of landscape, he was still\nfundamentally a poet of human life, or merely of his personal\nexperience. When he talked of nature he was generally moralizing, and\naltogether subject to the pathetic fallacy; but when he talked of man,\nor of himself, he was unfolding a part of nature, the upright human\nheart, and studying it in its truth.\n\nLucretius, a poet of universal nature, studied everything in its truth.\nEven moral life, though he felt it much more narrowly and coldly than\nWordsworth did, was better understood and better sung by him for being\nseen in its natural setting. It is a fault of idealists to misrepresent\nidealism, because they do not view it as a part of the world. Idealism\n_is_ a part of the world, a small and dependent part of it. It is a\nsmall and dependent part even in the life of men. This fact is nothing\nagainst idealism taken as a moral energy, as a faculty of idealization\nand a habit of living in the familiar presence of an image of what\nwould, in everything, be best. But it is the ruin of idealism taken as a\nview of the central and universal power in the world. For this reason\nLucretius, who sees human life and human idealism in their natural\nsetting, has a saner and maturer view of both than has Wordsworth, for\nall his greater refinement. Nature, for the Latin poet, is really\nnature. He loves and fears her, as she deserves to be loved and feared\nby her creatures. Whether it be a wind blowing, a torrent rushing, a\nlamb bleating, the magic of love, genius achieving its purpose, or a\nwar, or a pestilence, Lucretius sees everything in its causes, and in\nits total career. One breath of lavish creation, one iron law of change,\nruns through the whole, making all things kin in their inmost elements\nand in their last end. Here is the touch of nature indeed, her largeness\nand eternity. Here is the true echo of the life of matter.\n\nAny comprehensive picture of nature and destiny, if the picture be\ncredited, must arouse emotion, and in a reflective and vivid mind must\ninspire poetry--for what is poetry but emotion, fixing and colouring the\nobjects from which it springs? The sublime poem of Lucretius, expounding\nthe least poetical of philosophies, proves this point beyond a doubt.\nYet Lucretius was far from exhausting the inspiration which a poet might\ndraw from materialism. In the philosophy of Epicurus, even, which had\nbut a sickly hold on materialism, there were two strains which Lucretius\ndid not take up, and which are naturally rich in poetry, the strain of\npiety and the strain of friendship. It is usual and, in one sense,\nlegitimate to speak of the Epicureans as atheists, since they denied\nprovidence and any government of God in the world. Yet they admitted the\nexistence of gods, living in the quiet spaces between those celestial\nwhirlpools which form the various worlds. To these gods they attributed\nthe human form, and the serene life to which Epicurus aspired. Epicurus\nhimself was so sincere in this belief, and so much affected by it, that\nhe used to frequent the temples, keep the feasts of the gods, and often\nspend hours before their images in contemplation and prayer.\n\nIn this, as in much else, Epicurus was carrying out to its logical\nconclusion the rational and reforming essence of Hellenism. In Greek\nreligion, as in all other religions, there was a background of vulgar\nsuperstition. Survivals and revivals of totem-worship, taboo, magic,\nritual barter, and objectified rhetoric are to be found in it to the\nvery end; yet if we consider in Greek religion its characteristic\ntendency, and what rendered it distinctively Greek, we see that it was\nits unprecedented ideality, disinterestedness, and aestheticism. To the\nGreek, in so far as he was a Greek, religion was an aspiration to grow\nlike the gods by invoking their companionship, rehearsing their story,\nfeeling vicariously the glow of their splendid prerogatives, and placing\nthem, in the form of beautiful and very human statues, constantly before\nhis eyes. This sympathetic interest in the immortals took the place, in\nthe typical Greek mind, of any vivid hope of human immortality; perhaps\nit made such a hope seem superfluous and inappropriate. Mortality\nbelonged to man, as immortality to the gods; and the one was the\ncomplement of the other. Imagine a poet who, to the freedom and\nsimplicity of Homer, should have added the more reverent idealism of a\nlater age; and what an inexhaustible fund of poetry might he not have\nfound in this conception of the immortals leading a human life, without\nits sordid contrarieties and limitations, eternally young, and frank,\nand different!\n\nHints of such poetry are to be found in Plato, myths that present the\nideal suggestions of human life in pictures. These he sometimes leaves\ngeneral and pale, calling them ideas; but at other times he embodies\nthem in deities, or in detailed imaginary constructions, like that of\nhis _Republic_. This Platonic habit of mind might have been carried\nfurther by some franker and less reactionary poet than Plato was, or\ntended to become, as the years turned his wine into vinegar. But the\nwhole world was then getting sour. Imagination flagged, or was diverted\nfrom the Greek into the Hebrew channel. Nevertheless, the hymns of\nmodern poets to the ancient gods, and the irrepressible echoes of\nclassic mythology in our literature, show how easy it would have been\nfor the later ancients themselves, had they chosen, to make immortal\npoetry out of their dying superstitions. The denials of Epicurus do not\nexclude this ideal use of religion; on the contrary, by excluding all\nthe other uses of it--the commercial, the mock-scientific, and the\nselfish--they leave the moral interpretative aspect of religion standing\nalone, ready to the poet\u2019s hand, if any poet could be found pure and\nfertile enough to catch and to render it. Rationalized paganism might\nhave had its Dante, a Dante who should have been the pupil not of Virgil\nand Aquinas, but of Homer and Plato. Lucretius was too literal,\npositivistic, and insistent for such a delicate task. He was a Roman.\nMoral mythology and ideal piety, though his philosophy had room for\nthem, formed no part of his poetry.\n\nWhat the other neglected theme, friendship, might have supplied, we may\nsee in the tone of another Epicurean, the poet Horace. Friendship was\nhighly honoured in all ancient states; and the Epicurean philosophy, in\nbanishing so many traditional forms of sentiment, could only intensify\nthe emphasis on friendship. It taught men that they were an accident in\nthe universe, comrades afloat on the same raft together with no fate not\ncommon to them all, and no possible helpers but one another. Lucretius\ndoes speak, in a passage to which I have already referred,[8] about the\nhope of sweet friendship that supports him in his labours; and\nelsewhere[9] he repeats the Epicurean idyl about picnicking together on\nthe green grass by a flowing brook; but the little word \u201ctogether\u201d is\nall he vouchsafes us to mark what must be the chief ingredient in such\nrural happiness.\n\nHorace, usually so much slighter than Lucretius, is less cursory here.\nNot only does he strike much oftener the note of friendship, but his\nwhole mind and temper breathe of friendliness and expected agreement.\nThere is, in the very charm and artifice of his lines, a sort of\nconfidential joy in tasting with the kindred few the sweet or pungent\nsavour of human things. To be brief and gently ironical is to assume\nmutual intelligence; and to assume mutual intelligence is to believe in\nfriendship. In Lucretius, on the other hand, zeal is mightier than\nsympathy, and scorn mightier than humour. Perhaps it would be asking too\nmuch of his uncompromising fervour that he should have unbent now and\nthen and shown us in some detail what those pleasures of life may be\nwhich are without care and fear. Yet, if it was impossible for him not\nto be always serious and austere, he might at least have noted the\nmelancholy of friendship--for friendship, where nature has made minds\nisolated and bodies mortal, is rich also in melancholy. This again we\nmay find in Horace, where once or twice he lets the \u201csomething bitter\u201d\nbubble up from the heart even of this flower, when he feels a vague need\nthat survives satiety, and yearns perversely for the impossible.[10]\nPoor Epicureans, when they could not learn, like their master, to be\nsaints!\n\nSo far the decadent materialism of Epicurus might have carried a poet;\nbut a materialist in our days might find many other poetic themes to\nweave into his system. To the picture which Lucretius sketches of\nprimitive civilization, we might add the whole history of mankind. To a\nconsistent and vigorous materialism all personal and national dramas,\nwith the beauties of all the arts, are no less natural and interesting\nthan are flowers or animal bodies. The moral pageantry of this world,\nsurveyed scientifically, is calculated wonderfully to strengthen and\nrefine the philosophy of abstention suggested to Epicurus by the flux of\nmaterial things and by the illusions of vulgar passion. Lucretius\nstudies superstition, but only as an enemy; and the naturalistic poet\nshould be the enemy of nothing. His animus blinds him to half the\nobject, to its more beautiful half, and makes us distrust his version of\nthe meaner half he is aware of. Seen in its totality, and surrounded by\nall the other products of human imagination, superstition is not only\nmoving in itself, a capital subject for tragedy and for comedy, but it\nreinforces the materialistic way of thinking, and shows that it may be\nextended to the most complex and emotional spheres of existence. At the\nsame time, a naturalism extended impartially over moral facts brings\nhome a lesson of tolerance, scepticism, and independence which, without\ncontradicting Epicurean principles, would very much enlarge and\ntransform Epicurean sentiment. History would have opened to the\nEpicurean poet a new dimension of nature and a more varied spectacle of\nfolly. His imagination would have been enriched and his maxims\nfortified.\n\nThe emotions which Lucretius associated with his atoms and void, with\nhis religious denials and his abstentions from action, are emotions\nnecessarily involved in life. They will exist in any case, though not\nnecessarily associated with the doctrines by which this poet sought to\nclarify them. They will remain standing, whatever mechanism we put in\nthe place of that which he believed in,--that is, if we are serious, and\nnot trying to escape from the facts rather than to explain them. If the\nideas embodied in a philosophy represent a comprehensive survey of the\nfacts, and a mature sentiment in the presence of them, any new ideas\nadopted instead will have to acquire the same values, and nothing will\nbe changed morally except the language or euphony of the mind.\n\nOf course one theory of the world must be true and the rest false, at\nleast if the categories of any theory are applicable to reality; but the\ntrue theory like the false resides in imagination, and the truth of it\nwhich the poet grasps is its truth to life. If there are no atoms, at\nleast there must be habits of nature, or laws of evolution, or\ndialectics of progress, or decrees of providence, or intrusions of\nchance; and before these equally external and groundless powers we must\nbow, as Lucretius bowed to his atoms. It will always be important and\ninevitable to recognize _something_ external, something that generates\nor surrounds us; and perhaps the only difference between materialism and\nother systems in this respect is that materialism has studied more\nscrupulously the detail and method of our dependence.\n\nSimilarly, even if Lucretius was wrong, and the soul is immortal, it is\nnevertheless steadily changing its interests and its possessions. Our\nlives are mortal if our soul is not; and the sentiment which reconciled\nLucretius to death is as much needed if we are to face many deaths, as\nif we are to face only one. The gradual losing of what we have been and\nare, Emerson says:\n\n     _This losing is true dying;_\n     _This is lordly maris down-lying,_\n     _This his slow but sure reclining,_\n     _Star by star his world resigning._\n\nThe maxim of Lucretius, that nothing arises save by the death of\nsomething else, meets us still in our crawling immortality. And his art\nof accepting and enjoying what the conditions of our being afford also\nhas a perennial application. Dante, the poet of faith, will tell us that\nwe must find our peace in the will that gives us our limited portion.\nGoethe, the poet of romantic experience, will tell us that we must\nrenounce, renounce perpetually. Thus wisdom clothes the same moral\ntruths in many cosmic parables. The doctrines of philosophers disagree\nwhere they are literal and arbitrary,--mere guesses about the unknown;\nbut they agree or complete one another where they are expressive or\nsymbolic, thoughts wrung by experience from the hearts of poets. Then\nall philosophies alike are ways of meeting and recording the same flux\nof images, the same vicissitudes of good and evil, which will visit all\ngenerations, while man is man.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] Lucretius, iv. 834, 835:\n\n     Nil ... natumst in corpore, ut uti\n     Possemus, sed quod natumst id procreat usum.\n\n\n[2] Ibid., I. 1115-18:\n\n         Alid ex alio clarescet, nec tibi caeca\n     Nox iter eripiet, quin ultima naturai\n     Pervideas: ita res accendent lumina rebus.\n\n\n[3] Lucretius, i. 264, 265:\n\n       Alid ex alio reficit natura, nec ullam\n     Rem gigni patitur, nisi morte adiuta aliena.\n\n\n[4] An excellent expression of this view is put by Plato into the mouth\nof the physician Eryximachus in the _Symposium_, pp. 186-88.\n\n\n[5] Lucretius, i. 1-13:\n\n     \u00c6neadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas,\n     Alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa\n     Quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis\n     Concelebras; per te quoniam genus omne animantum\n     Concipitur, visitque exortum lumina solis:\n     Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli,\n     Adventumque tuum: tibi suaves daedala tellus\n     Submittit flores; tibi rident aequora ponti,\n     Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum.\n     Nam simul ac species patefactast verna diei,\n     Et reserata viget genitabilis aura favoni;\n     A\u00ebriae primum volucres te, diva, tuumque\n     Significant initum, perculsae corda tua vi.\n\n\n[6] Lucretius, i. 24, 28-30, 41-43, 140-44:\n\n     Te sociam studeo scribendis versibus esse....\n     Quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva, leporem:\n     Effice, ut interea fera moenera militiai\n     Per maria ac terras omnes sopita quiescant....\n     Nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo\n     Possumus aequo animo, nec Memmi clara propago\n     Talibus in rebus communi desse saluti....\n     Sed tua me virtus tamen, et sperata voluptas\n     Suavis amicitiae, quemvis sufferre laborem\n     Suadet, et inducit noctes vigilare serenas,\n     Quaerentem, dictis quibus et quo carmine demum\n     Clara tuae possim praepandere lumina menti.\n\n\n[7] Lucretius, ii. 1139-41, 1148-49, 1164-74:\n\n     Omnia debet enim cibus integrare novando,\n     Et fulcire cibus, cibus omnia sustentare.\n     Nequidquam,...\n     Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi\n     Expugnata dabunt labem putrisque ruinas....\n     Iamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator\n     Crebrius incassum manuum cecidisse laborem:\n     Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert\n     Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis,...\n     Nec tenet, omnia paulatim tabescere et ire\n     Ad capulum, spatio aetatis defessa vetusto.\n\n\n[8] Cf. pages 41, 49.\n\n[9] Lucretius, ii. 29-33:\n\n         Inter se prostrati in gramine molli\n     Propter aquae rivum, sub ramis arboris altae,\n     Non magnis opibus iucunde corpora curant:\n     Praesertim cum tempestas arridet, et anni\n     Tempa conspergunt viridantis floribus herbas.\n\n\n[10] Horace, _Odes_, iv. 1:\n\n     Iam nec spes animi credula mutui...\n       Sed cur, heu! Ligurine, cur\n     Manat rara meas lacrima per genas?\n\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nDANTE\n\n\nIn the _Phaedo_ of Plato there is an incidental passage of supreme\ninterest to the historian. It foreshadows, and accurately defines, the\nwhole transition from antiquity to the middle age, from naturalism to\nsupernaturalism, from Lucretius to Dante. Socrates, in his prison, is\naddressing his disciples for the last time. The general subject is\nimmortality; but in a pause in the argument Socrates says: \u201cIn my youth\n... I heard some one reading, as he said, from a book of Anaxagoras,\nthat Reason was the disposer and cause of all, and I was delighted at\nthis notion, which appeared quite admirable, and I said to myself: \u2018If\nReason is the disposer, Reason will dispose all for the best, and put\neach particular in the best place;\u2019 and I argued that if any desired to\nfind out the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of\nanything, he must find out what ... was best for that thing.... And I\nrejoiced to think that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes\nof existence such as I desired, and I imagined that he would tell me\nfirst whether the earth is flat or round; and whichever was true, he\nwould proceed ... to show the nature of the best, and show that this was\nbest; and if he said that the earth was in the centre [of the universe],\nhe would further explain that this position was the best, and I should\nbe satisfied with the explanation given, and not want any other sort of\ncause.... For I could not imagine that when he spoke of Reason as the\ndisposer of things, he would give any other account of their being,\nexcept that this was best.... These hopes I would not have sold for a\nlarge sum of money, and I seized the books and read them as fast as I\ncould, in my eagerness to know the better and the worse.\n\n\u201cWhat expectations I had formed and how grievously was I disappointed!\nAs I proceeded, I found my philosopher altogether forsaking Reason or\nany other principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and\nwater, and other eccentricities.... Thus one man makes a vortex all\nround, and steadies the earth by the heaven; another gives the air as a\nsupport to the earth, which is a sort of broad trough. Any power which\nin arranging them as they are arranges them for the best never enters\ninto their minds; and instead of finding any superior strength in it,\nthey rather expect to discover another Atlas of the world who is\nstronger and more everlasting and more containing than the good; of the\nobligatory and containing power of the good they think nothing; and yet\nthis is the principle which I would fain learn if anyone would teach\nme.\u201d[1]\n\nHere we have the programme of a new philosophy. Things are to be\nunderstood by their uses or purposes, not by their elements or\nantecedents; as the fact that Socrates sits in his prison, when he might\nhave escaped to Euboea, is to be understood by his allegiance to his\nnotion of what is best, of his duty to himself and to his country, and\nnot by the composition of his bones and muscles. Such reasons as we give\nfor our actions, such grounds as might move the public assembly to\ndecree this or that, are to be given in explanation of the order of\nnature. The world is a work of reason. It must be interpreted, as we\ninterpret the actions of a man, by its motives. And these motives we\nmust guess, not by a fanciful dramatic mythology, such as the poets of\nold had invented, but by a conscientious study of the better and the\nworse in the conduct of our own lives. For instance, the highest\noccupation, according to Plato, is the study of philosophy; but this\nwould not be possible for man if he had to be continually feeding, like\na grazing animal, with its nose to the ground. Now, to obviate the\nnecessity of eating all the time, long intestines are useful; therefore\nthe cause of long intestines is the study of philosophy. Again, the\neyes, nose, and mouth are in the front of the head, because (says Plato)\nthe front is the nobler side,--as if the back would not have been the\nnobler side (and the front side) had the eyes, nose, and mouth been\nthere! This method is what Moli\u00e8re ridicules in _Le Malade Imaginaire_,\nwhen the chorus sings that opium puts people to sleep because it has a\ndormitive virtue, the nature of which is to make the senses slumber.\n\nAll this is ridiculous physics enough; but Plato knew--though he forgot\nsometimes--that his physics were playful. What it is important for us\nnow to remember is rather that, under this childish or metaphorical\nphysics, there is a serious morality. After all, the _use_ of opium is\nthat it is a narcotic; no matter why, physically, it is one. The _use_\nof the body _is_ the mind, whatever the origin of the body may be. And\nit seems to dignify and vindicate these uses to say that they are the\n\u201ccauses\u201d of the organs that make them possible. What is true of\nparticular organs or substances is true of the whole frame of nature.\nIts _use_ is to serve the good--to make life, happiness, and virtue\npossible. Therefore, speaking in parables, Plato says with his whole\nschool: Discover the right principle of action, and you will have\ndiscovered the ruling force in the universe. Evoke in your rapt\naspiration the essence of a supreme good, and you will have understood\nwhy the spheres revolve, why the earth is fertile, and why mankind\nsuffers and exists. Observation must yield to dialectic; political art\nmust yield to aspiration.\n\nIt took many hundred years for the revolution to work itself out; Plato\nhad a prophetic genius, and looked away from what he was (for he was a\nGreek) to what mankind was to become in the next cycle of civilization.\nIn Dante the revolution is complete, not merely intellectually (for it\nhad been completed intellectually long before, in the Neoplatonists and\nthe Fathers of the Church), but complete morally and poetically, in that\nall the habits of the mind and all the sanctions of public life had been\nassimilated to it. There had been time to reinterpret everything,\nobliterating the natural lines of cleavage in the world, and\nsubstituting moral lines of cleavage for them. Nature was a compound of\nideal purposes and inert matter. Life was a conflict between sin and\ngrace. The environment was a battle-ground between a host of angels and\na legion of demons. The better and the worse had actually become, as\nSocrates desired, the sole principles of understanding.\n\nHaving become Socratic, the thinking part of mankind devoted all its\nenergies henceforward to defining good and evil in all their grades, and\nin their ultimate essence; a task which Dante brings to a perfect\nconclusion. So earnestly and exclusively did they speculate about moral\ndistinctions that they saw them in almost visible shapes, as Plato had\nseen his ideas. They materialized the terms of their moral philosophy\ninto existing objects and powers. The highest good--in Plato still\nchiefly a political ideal, the aim of policy and art--became God, the\ncreator of the world. The various stages or elements of perfection\nbecame persons in the Godhead, or angelic intelligences, or aerial\ndemons, or lower types of the animal soul. Evil was identified with\nmatter. The various stages of imperfection were ascribed to the\ngrossness of various bodies, which weighted and smothered the spark of\ndivinity that animated them. This spark, however, might be released;\nthen it would fly up again to its parent fire and a soul would be saved.\n\nThis philosophy was not a serious description of nature or evolution;\nbut it was a serious judgement upon them. The good, the better, the\nbest, had been discerned; and a mythical bevy of powers, symbolizing\nthese degrees of excellence, had been first talked of and then believed\nin. Myth, when another man has invented it, can pass for history; and\nwhen this man is a Plato, and has lived long ago, it can pass for\nrevelation. In this way moral values came to be regarded as forces\nworking in nature. But if they worked in nature, which was a compound of\nevil matter and perfect form, they must exist outside: for the ideal of\nexcellence beckons from afar; it is what we pine for and are not. The\nforces that worked in nature were accordingly supernatural virtues,\ndominations, and powers; each natural thing had its supernatural\nincubus, a guardian angel, or a devil that possessed it. The\nsupernatural--that is, something moral or ideal regarded as a power and\nan existence--was all about us. Everything in the world was an effect of\nsomething beyond the world; everything in life was a step to something\nbeyond life.\n\nInto this system Christianity fitted easily. It enriched it by adding\nmiraculous history to symbolic cosmology. The Platonists had conceived a\ncosmos in which there were higher and lower beings, marshalled in\nconcentric circles, around this vile but pivotal lump of earth. The\nChristians supplied a dramatic action for which that stage seemed\nadmirably fitted, a story in which the whole human race, or the single\nsoul, passed successively through these higher and lower stages. There\nhad been a fall, and there might be a salvation. In a sense, even this\nconception of descent from the good, and ascent towards it again, was\nPlatonic. According to the Platonists, the good eternally shed its vital\ninfluence, like light, and received (though unawares and without\nincrease of excellence to itself) reflected rays that, in the form of\nlove and thought, reverted to it from the ends of the universe. But\naccording to the Platonist this radiation of life and focusing of\naspiration were both perpetual. The double movement was eternal. The\nhistory of the world was monotonous; or rather the world had no\nsignificant history, but only a movement like that of a fountain playing\nfor ever, or like the circulation of water that is always falling from\nthe clouds in rain and always rising again in vapour. This fall, or\nemanation of the world from the deity, was the origin of evil for the\nPlatonists; evil consisted merely infinitude, materiality, or otherness\nfrom God. If anything besides God was to exist, it had to be imperfect;\ninstability and conflict were essential to finitude and to existence.\nSalvation, on the other hand, was the return current of aspiration on\nthe part of the creature to revert to its source; an aspiration which\nwas expressed in various types of being, fixed in the eternal,--types\nwhich led up, like the steps of a temple, to the ineffable good at the\ntop.\n\nIn the Christian system this cosmic circulation became only a figure or\nsymbol expressing the true creation, the true fall, and the true\nsalvation; all three being really episodes in a historical drama,\noccurring only once. The material world was only a scene, a\nstage-setting, designed expressly to be appropriate for the play; and\nthis play was the history of mankind, especially of Israel and of the\nChurch. The persons and events of this history had a philosophic import;\neach played some part in a providential plan. Each illustrated creation,\nsin, and salvation in some degree, and on some particular level.\n\nThe Jews had never felt uncomfortable at being material; even in the\nother world they hoped to remain so, and their immortality was a\nresurrection of the flesh. It did not seem plausible to them that this\nexcellent frame of things should be nothing but a faint, troubled, and\nunintended echo of the good. On the contrary, they thought this world so\ngood, intrinsically, that they were sure God must have made it\nexpressly, and not by an unconscious effluence of his virtue, as the\nPlatonists had believed. Their wonder at the power and ingenuity of the\ndeity reached its maximum when they thought of him as the cunning\ncontriver of nature, and of themselves. Nevertheless the work seemed to\nshow some imperfections; indeed, its moral excellence was potential\nrather than actual, a suggestion of what might be, rather than an\naccomplished fact. And so, to explain the unexpected flaws in a creation\nwhich they thought essentially good, they put back at the beginning of\nthings an experience they had daily in the present, namely, that trouble\nsprings from bad conduct.\n\nThe Jews were intent watchers of fortune and of its vicissitudes. The\ncareers of men were their meditation by day and by night; and it takes\nlittle attention to perceive that frivolity, indifference, knavery, and\ndebauchery do not make for well-being in this world. And like other\nhard-pressed peoples, the ancient Jews had a pathetic admiration for\nsafety and plenty. How little they must have known these things, to\nthink of them so rapturously and so poetically! Not merely their\npersonal prudence, but their corporate and religious zeal made them\nabhor that bad conduct which defeated prosperity. It was not mere folly,\nbut wickedness and the abomination of desolation. With the lessons of\nconduct continually in mind, they framed the theory that all suffering,\nand even death, were the wages of sin. Finally they went so far as to\nattribute evil in all creation to the casual sin of a first man, and to\nthe taint of it transmitted to his descendants; thus passing over the\nsuffering and death of all creatures that are not human with an\nindifference that would have astonished the Hindoos.\n\nThe imperfection of things, in the Hebraic view, was due to accidents in\ntheir operation; not, as in the Platonic view, to their essential\nseparation from their source and their end. It is in harmony with this\nthat salvation too should come by virtue of some special act, like the\nincarnation or death of Christ. Just so, the Jews had conceived\nsalvation as a revival of their national existence and greatness, to be\nbrought about by the patience and fidelity of the elect, with tremendous\nmiracles supervening to reward these virtues.\n\nThus their conception of the fall and of the redemption was historical.\nAnd this was a great advantage to a man of imagination inheriting their\nsystem; for the personages and the miracles that figured in their\nsacred histories afforded a rich subject for fancy to work upon, and for\nthe arts to depict. The patriarchs from Adam down, the kings and\nprophets, the creation, Eden, the deluge, the deliverance out of Egypt,\nthe thunders and the law of Sinai, the temple, the exile--all this and\nmuch more that fills the Bible was a rich fund, a familiar tradition\nliving in the Church, on which Dante could draw, as he drew at the same\ntime from the parallel classic tradition which he also inherited. To\nlend all these Biblical persons and incidents a philosophical dignity he\nhad only to fit them, as the Fathers of the Church had done, into the\nNeoplatonic cosmology, or, as the doctors of his own time were doing,\ninto the Aristotelian ethics.\n\nSo interpreted, sacred history acquired for the philosopher a new\nimportance besides that which it had seemed to have to Israel in exile,\nor to the Christian soul conscious of sin. Every episode became the\nsymbol for some moral state or some moral principle. Every preacher in\nChristendom, as he repeated his homily on the gospel of the day, was\ninvited to rear a structure of spiritual interpretations upon the\nliteral sense of the narrative, which nevertheless he was always to hold\nand preserve as a foundation for the others.[2] In a world made by God\nfor the illustration of his glory, things and events, though real, must\nbe also symbolical; for there is intention and propriety behind them.\nThe creation, the deluge, the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection\nof Christ, the coming of the Holy Ghost with flames of fire and the gift\nof tongues, were all historical facts. The Church was heir to the chosen\npeople; it was an historic and political institution, with a destiny in\nthis world, in which all her children should share, and for which they\nshould fight. At the same time all those facts, were mysteries and\nsacraments for the private soul; they were channels for the same moral\ngraces that were embodied in the order of the heavenly spheres, and in\nthe types of moral life on earth. Thus the Hebrew tradition brought to\nDante\u2019s mind the consciousness of a providential history, a great\nearthly task,--to be transmitted from generation to generation,--and a\ngreat hope. The Greek tradition brought him natural and moral\nphilosophy. These contributions, joined together, had made Christian\ntheology.\n\nAlthough this theology was the guide to Dante\u2019s imagination, and his\ngeneral theme, yet it was not his only interest; or rather he put into\nthe framework of orthodox theology theories and visions of his own,\nfusing all into one moral unity and one poetical enthusiasm. The fusion\nwas perfect between the personal and the traditional elements. He threw\npolitics and love into the melting-pot, and they, too, lost their\nimpurities and were refined into a philosophic religion. Theology\nbecame, to his mind, the guardian of patriotism, and, in a strangely\nliteral sense, the angel of love.\n\nThe political theory of Dante is a sublime and largely original one. It\nsuffers only from its extreme ideality, which makes it inapplicable, and\nhas caused it to be studied less than it deserves.\n\nA man\u2019s country, in the modern sense, is something that arose yesterday,\nthat is constantly changing its limits and its ideals; it is something\nthat cannot last for ever. It is the product of geographical and\nhistorical accidents. The diversities between our different nations are\nirrational; each of them has the same right, or want of right, to its\npeculiarities. A man who is just and reasonable must nowadays, so far as\nhis imagination permits, share the patriotism of the rivals and enemies\nof his country,--a patriotism as inevitable and pathetic as his own.\nNationality being an irrational accident, like sex or complexion, a\nman\u2019s allegiance to his country must be conditional, at least if he is a\nphilosopher. His patriotism has to be subordinated to rational\nallegiance to such things as justice and humanity.\n\nVery different was the situation in Dante\u2019s case. For him the love of\ncountry could be something absolute, and at the same time something\nreasonable, deliberate, and moral. What he found claiming his allegiance\nwas a political body quite ideal, providential, and universal. This\npolitical body had two heads, like the heraldic eagle,--the pope and the\nemperor. Both were, by right, universal potentates; both should have\ntheir seat in Rome; and both should direct their government to the same\nend, although by different means and in different spheres. The pope\nshould watch over the faith and discipline of the Church. He should bear\nwitness, in all lands and ages, to the fact that life on earth was\nmerely a preliminary to existence in the other world, and should be a\npreparation for that. The emperor, on the other hand, should guard peace\nand justice everywhere, leaving to free cities or princes the regulation\nof local affairs. These two powers had been established by God through\nspecial miracles and commissions. An evident providential design,\nculminating in them, ran through all history.\n\nTo betray or resist these divine rights, or to confound them, was\naccordingly a sin of the first magnitude. The evils from which society\nsuffered were the consequence of such transgressions. The pope had\nacquired temporal power, which was alien to his purely spiritual office;\nbesides, he had become a tool of the French king, who was (what no king\nshould be) at war with the emperor, and rebellious against the supreme\nimperial authority; indeed, the pope had actually been seen to abandon\nRome for Avignon,--an act which was a sort of satanic sacrament, the\noutward sign of an inward disgrace. The emperor, in his turn, had\nforgotten that he was King of the Romans and Caesar, and was fond of\nloitering in his native Germany, among its forests and princelings, as\nif the whole world were not by right his country, and the object of his\nsolicitude.\n\nAnd here the larger, theoretical patriotism of Dante, as a Catholic and\na Roman, passed into his narrower and actual patriotism as a Florentine.\nHad Florence been true to its duties and worthy of its privileges, under\nthe double authority of the Church and the Empire? Florence was a Roman\ncolony. Had it maintained the purity of its Roman stock, and a Roman\nsimplicity and austerity in its laws? Alas, Etruscan immigrants had\ncontaminated its blood, and this taint was responsible, Dante thought,\nfor the prevalent corruption of manners. All that has made Florence\ngreat in the history of the world was then only just beginning,--its\nindustry, refinements, arts, and literature. But to Dante that budding\nage seemed one of decadence and moral ruin. He makes his ancestor, the\ncrusader Cacciaguida, praise the time when the narrow circuit of the\nwalls held only one-fifth of its later inhabitants. \u201cThen the city\nabided in peace, sober and chaste.\u201d[3] The women plied the distaff, or\nrocked the cradle, and prattled to their children of the heroic legends\nof Troy, Fiesole, and Rome. A woman could turn from her glass with her\nface unpainted; she wore no girdle far more deserving of admiration than\nher own person. The birth of a daughter did not frighten a good burgher;\nher dowry would not have to be excessive, nor her marriage premature. No\nhouses were empty, their masters being in exile; none were disgraced by\nunmentionable orgies.[4] This was not all; for if luxury was a great\ncurse to Florence, faction was a greater. Florence, an imperial city,\nfar from assisting in the restitution of the emperors to their universal\nrights, had fought against them traitorously, in alliance with the\nFrench invader and the usurping pontiff. It had thus undermined the only\npossible foundation of its own peace and dignity.\n\nThese were the theoretical sorrows that loomed behind the personal\nsorrows of Dante in his poverty and exile. They helped him to pour forth\nthe intense bitterness of his heart with the breath of prophetic\ninvective. They made his hatred of the actual popes and of the actual\nFlorence so much fervid zeal for what the popes and Florence ought to\nhave been. His political passions and political hopes were fused with a\nsublime political ideal; that fusion sublimated them, and made it\npossible for the expression of them to rise into poetry.\n\nHere is one iron string on which Dante played, and which gave a tragic\nstrength to his music. He recorded the villainies of priests, princes,\nand peoples. He upbraided them for their infidelity to the tasks\nassigned to them by God,--tasks which Dante conceived with a Biblical\ndefiniteness and simplicity. He lamented the consequences of this\niniquity, wasted provinces, corrupted cities, and the bodies of heroes\nrolling unburied down polluted streams. These vigorous details were\nexalted by the immense significance that Dante infused into them. His\never-present definite ideal quickened his eye for the ebb and flow of\nthings, rendered the experience of them singly more poignant, and the\nvision of them together more sustained and cumulative. Dante read\ncontemporary Italy as the Hebrew prophets read the signs of their times;\nand whatever allowance our critical judgement may make for generous\nillusions on the part of either, there can be no doubt that their\nwholeness of soul, and the prophetic absoluteness of their judgements,\nmade their hold on particular facts very strong, and their sense for\nimpending weal or woe quite over-powering.\n\nNor does it seem that at bottom Dante\u2019s political philosophy, any more\nthan that of the Hebrew prophets, missed the great causes and the great\naims of human progress. Behind mythical and narrow conceptions of\nhistory, he had a true sense for the moral principles that really\ncondition our well-being. A better science need subtract nothing from\nthe insight he had into the difference between political good and evil.\nWhat in his day seemed a dream--that mankind should be one great\ncommonwealth--is now obvious to the idealist, the socialist, the\nmerchant. Science and trade are giving, in a very different form, to be\nsure, a practical realization to that idea. And the other half of his\ntheory, that of the Catholic Church, is maintained literally by that\nchurch itself to this day; and the outsider might see in that ideal of a\nuniversal spiritual society a symbol or premonition of the right of the\nmind to freedom from legal compulsions, or of the common allegiance of\nhonest minds to science, and to their common spiritual heritage and\ndestiny.\n\nOn the other hand, the sting of Dante\u2019s private wrongs, like the\nenthusiasm of his private loves, lent a wonderful warmth and clearness\nto the great objects of his imagination. We are too often kept from\nfeeling great things greatly for want of power to assimilate them to the\nlittle things which we feel keenly and sincerely. Dante had, in this\nrespect, the art of a Platonic lover: he could enlarge the object of his\npassion, and keep the warmth and ardour of it undiminished. He had been\nbanished unjustly--_Florentinus exul immeritus_, he liked to call\nhimself. That injustice rankled, but it did not fester, in his heart;\nfor his indignation spread to all wrong, and thundered against Florence,\nEurope, and mankind, in that they were corrupt and perfidious. Dante had\nloved. The memory of that passion remained also, but it did not\ndegenerate into sentimentality; for his adoration passed to a larger\nobject and one less accidental. His love had been a spark of that \u201clove\nwhich moves the sun and the other stars.\u201d[5] He had known, in that\nrevelation, the secret of the universe. The spheres, the angels, the\nsciences, were henceforth full of sweetness, comfort, and light.\n\nOf this Platonic expansion of emotion, till it suffuses all that\ndeserves to kindle it, we have a wonderful version in Dante\u2019s _Vita\nNuova_. This book, on the surface, is an account of Dante\u2019s meeting, at\nthe age of nine, with Beatrice, a child even a little younger; of\nanother meeting with her at the age of eighteen; of an overwhelming\nmystic passion which the lover wished to keep secret, so much so that he\nfeigned another attachment as a blind; of a consequent estrangement; and\nof the death of Beatrice, whereupon the poet resolved not to speak\npublicly of her again, until he could praise her in such wise as no\nwoman had ever been praised before.\n\nThis story is interspersed with poems of the most exquisite delicacy,\nboth in sentiment and in versification. They are dreamlike, allegorical,\nmusical meditations, ambiguous in their veiled meanings, but absolutely\nclear and perfect in their artful structure, like a work of tracery and\nstained glass, geometrical, mystical, and tender. A singular limpidity\nof accent and image, a singular na\u00efvet\u00e9, is strangely combined in these\npieces with scholastic distinctions and a delight in hiding and hinting,\nas in a charade.\n\nThe learned will dispute for ever on the exact basis and meaning of\nthese confessions of Dante. The learned are perhaps not those best\nfitted to solve the problem. It is a matter for literary tact and\nsympathetic imagination. It must be left to the delicate intelligence\nof the reader, if he has it; and if he has not, Dante does not wish to\nopen his heart to him. His enigmatical manner is his protection against\nthe intrusion of uncongenial minds.\n\nWithout passing beyond the sphere of learned criticism, I think we may\nsay this: the various interpretations, in this matter, are not mutually\nexclusive. Symbolism and literalness, in Dante\u2019s time, and in his\npractice, are simultaneous. For instance, in any history of mediaeval\nphilosophy you may read that a great subject of dispute in those days\nwas the question whether universal terms or natures, such as man, or\nhumanity, existed before the particulars, in the particulars, or after\nthe particulars, by abstraction of what was common to them all. Now,\nthis matter was undoubtedly much disputed about; but there is one\ncomprehensive and orthodox solution, which represents the true mind of\nthe age, above the peculiar hobbies or heresies of individuals. This\nsolution is that universal terms or natures exist before the\nparticulars, _and_ in the particulars, _and_ after the particulars: for\nGod, before he made the world, knew how he intended to make it, and had\neternally in his mind the notions of a perfect man, horse, etc., after\nwhich the particulars were to be modelled, or to which, in case of\naccident, they were to be restored, either by the healing and\nrecuperative force of nature, or by the ministrations of grace. But\nuniversal terms or natures existed also _in_ the particulars, since the\nparticulars illustrated them, shared in them, and were what they were by\nvirtue of that participation. Nevertheless, the universals existed also\nafter the particulars: for the discursive mind of man, surveying the\nvariety of natural things, could not help noticing and abstracting the\ncommon types that often recur in them; and this _ex postfacto_ idea, in\nthe human mind, is a universal term also. To deny any of the three\ntheories, and not to see their consistency, is to miss the mediaeval\npoint of view, which, in every sense of the word, was Catholic.\n\nJust such a solution seems to me natural in the case of Beatrice. We\nhave it on independent documentary evidence that in Dante\u2019s time there\nactually lived in Florence a certain Bice Portinari; and there are many\nincidents in the _Vita Nuova_ and in the _Commedia_ which hardly admit\nof an allegorical interpretation; such as the death of Beatrice, and\nespecially that of her father, on which occasion Dante writes a\nsympathetic poem.[6] can see no reason why this lady, as easily as any\nother person, should not have called forth the dreamful passion of our\npoet. That he had loved some one is certain. Most people have; and why\nshould Dante, in particular, have found the language of love a natural\nveil for his philosophy, if the passion and the language of love had not\nbeen his mother-tongue? The language of love is no doubt usual in the\nallegories of mystics, and was current in the conventional poetry of\nDante\u2019s time; but mystics themselves are commonly crossed or potential\nlovers; and the troubadours harped on the string of love simply because\nit was the most responsive string in their own natures, and that which\ncould most easily be made to vibrate in their hearers. Dante was not\nless sensitive than the average man of his generation; and if he\nfollowed the fashion of minstrels and mystics, it was because he shared\ntheir disposition. The beautiful, the unapproachable, the divine, had\npassed before him in some visible form; it matters nothing whether this\nvision came once only, and in the shape of the actual Beatrice, or\ncontinuously, and in every shape through which a divine influence may\nseem to come to a poet. No one would deserve this name of poet--and who\ndeserves it more than Dante?--if real sights and sounds never impressed\nhim; and he would hardly deserve it either, if they impressed him only\nphysically, and for what they are in themselves. His sensibility creates\nhis ideal.\n\nIf to deny the existence of an historical Beatrice seems violent and\ngratuitous, it would be a much worse misunderstanding not to perceive\nthat Beatrice is _also_ a symbol. On one occasion, as we read in the\n_Vita Nuova_,[7] Dante found himself, in a church, in the presence of\nBeatrice. His eyes were inevitably fixed upon her; but as he wished to\nconceal his profound passion from the gossiping crowd, he chose another\nlady, who happened to stand in the direct line of vision between him and\nBeatrice, and pretended to be gazing at her, in reality looking beyond\nher to Beatrice. This intervening lady, _la donna gentile_, became the\nscreen to his true love.[8] But his attentions to her were so assiduous\nthat they were misinterpreted. Beatrice herself observed them, and\nthinking he was going too far and not with an honourable purpose, showed\nher displeasure by refusing to greet him as he passed. This sounds real\nand earthly enough: but what is our surprise when we read expressly, in\nthe _Convito_, that the _donna gentile,_ the screen to Dante\u2019s true\nlove, is philosophy.[9] If the _donna gentile_ is philosophy, the\n_donna gentilissima,_ Beatrice, must be something of the same sort, only\nnobler. She must be theology, and theology Beatrice undoubtedly is. Her\nvery name is played upon, if not selected, to mean that she is what\nrenders blessed, what shows the path of salvation.\n\nNow the scene in the church becomes an allegory throughout. The young\nDante, we are given to understand, was at heart a religious and devout\nsoul, looking for the highest wisdom. But intervening between his human\nreason and revealed truth (which he really was in love with, and wished\nto win and to understand) he found philosophy or, as we should say,\nscience. To science he gave his preliminary attention; so much so that\nthe mysteries of theology were momentarily obscured in his mind; and his\nfaith, to his great sorrow, refused to salute him as he passed. He had\nfallen into materialistic errors; he had interpreted the spots on the\nmoon as if they could be due to physical, not to Socratic, causes; and\nhis religious philosophy had lost its warmth, even if his religious\nfaith had not actually been endangered. It is certain, then, that\nBeatrice, besides being a woman, was also a symbol.\n\nBut this is not the end. If Beatrice is a symbol for theology, theology\nitself is not-final. It, too, is an avenue, an interpretation. The eyes\nof Beatrice reflect a supernal light. It is the ineffable vision of\nGod, the beatific vision, that alone can make us happy and be the reason\nand the end of our loves and our pilgrimages.\n\nA supreme ideal of peace and perfection which moves the lover, and which\nmoves the sky, is more easily named than understood. In the last canto\nof the _Paradiso_, where Dante is attempting to describe the beatific\nvision, he says many times over that our notion of this ideal must be\nvague and inadequate. The value of the notion to a poet or a philosopher\ndoes not lie in what it contains positively, but in the attitude which\nit causes him to assume towards real experience. Or perhaps it would be\nbetter to say that to have an ideal does not mean so much to have any\nimage in the fancy, any Utopia more or less articulate, but rather to\ntake a consistent moral attitude towards all the things of this world,\nto judge and coordinate our interests, to establish a hierarchy of goods\nand evils, and to value events and persons, not by a casual personal\nimpression or instinct, but according to their real nature and tendency.\nSo understood, an ultimate ideal is no mere vision of the philosophical\ndreamer, but a powerful and passionate force in the poet and the orator.\nIt is the voice of his love or hate, of his hope or sorrow, idealizing,\nchallenging, or condemning the world.\n\nIt is here that the feverish sensibility of the young Dante stood him in\ngood stead; it gave an unprecedented vigour and clearness to his moral\nvision; it made him the classic poet of hell and of heaven. At the same\ntime, it helped to make him an upright judge, a terrible accuser, of the\nearth. Everything and everybody in his day and generation became to him,\non account of his intense loyalty to his inward vision, an instance of\ndivine graciousness or of devilish perversity. Doubtless this keenness\nof soul was not wholly due to the gift of loving, or to the discipline\nof love; it was due in part also to pride, to resentment, to theoretical\nprejudices. But figures like that of Francesca di Rimini and Manfred,\nand the light and rapture vibrating through the whole _Paradiso,_ could\nhardly have been evoked by a merely irritated genius. The background and\nthe starting-point of everything in Dante is the _intelletto d\u2019amore_,\nthe genius of love.\n\nEverybody has heard that God is love and that love makes the world go\nround; and those who have traced this latter notion back to its source\nin Aristotle may have some notion of what it means. It means, as we saw\nin the beginning, that we should not try to explain motion and life by\ntheir natural antecedents, for these run back _in infinitum_. We should\nexplain motion and life rather by their purpose or end, by that\nunrealized ideal which moving and living things seem to aspire to, and\nmay be said to love. What justifies itself is not any fact or law; for\nwhy should these not have been different? What justifies itself is what\nis good, what is as it ought to be. But things in motion, Aristotle\nconceived, declare, as it were, that they are not satisfied, and ought\nto be in some different condition. They look to a fulfilment which is as\nyet ideal. This fulfilment, if it included motion and life, could\ninclude them inwardly only; it would consist in a sustained activity,\nnever lapsing nor suffering change. Such an activity is the unchanging\ngoal towards which life advances and by which its different stages are\nmeasured: But since the purpose of things, and not their natural\ncauses, is that which explains them, we may call this eventual activity\ntheir reason for being. It will be their unmoved mover.\n\nBut how, we may ask,--how can the unchanging, the ideal, the eventual,\ninitiate anything or determine the disposition and tendency of what\nactually lives and moves? The answer, or rather the impossibility of\ngiving an answer, may be expressed in a single word: magic. It is magic\nwhen a good or interesting result, because it would prove good or\ninteresting, is credited with marshalling the conditions and evoking the\nbeings that are to realize it. It is natural that I should be hungry,\nand natural that there should be things suitable for me to eat--for\notherwise I should not be hungry long; but if my hunger, in case it is\nsharp enough, should be able of itself to produce the food it calls\nfor, that would be magic. Nature would be evoked by the incantations of\nthe will.\n\nI do not forget that Aristotle, with Dante after him, asserts that the\ngoal of life is a separate being already existing, namely, the mind of\nGod, eternally realizing what the world aspires to. The influence of\nthis mind, however, upon the world is no less magical than would be that\nof a non-existent ideal. For its operation is admittedly not transitive\nor physical. It itself does not change in working. No virtue leaves it;\nit does not, according to Aristotle and Plotinus, even know that it\nworks. Indeed, it works only because other things are disposed to pursue\nit as their ideal; let things keep this disposition, and they will\npursue and frame their ideal no less if it nowhere has an actual\nexistence, than if by chance it exists elsewhere in its own person. It\nworks only in its capacity of ideal; therefore, even if it exists, it\nworks only by magic. The matter beneath feels the spell of its presence,\nand catches something of its image, as the waves of the sea might\nreceive and reflect tremblingly the light shed by the moon. The world\naccordingly is moved and vivified in every fibre by magic, by the magic\nof the goal to which it aspires.\n\nBut this magic, on earth, bore the name of love. The life of the world\nwas a love, produced by the magic attraction of a good it has never\npossessed and, so long as it remains a world, is incapable of\npossessing. Actual things were only suggestions of what the elements in\nthat ulterior existence ought to be: they were mere symbols. The acorn\nwas a mere prophecy--an existing symbol--for the ideal oak; because when\nthe acorn falls into good ground it will be corrupted, but the idea of\nthe oak will arise and be manifested in its place. The acorn was a sort\nof reliquary in which the miraculous power of the idea was somehow\nenshrined. In the vulgar attribution of causes we, like Anaxagoras,\nresemble a superstitious relic-worshipper who should forget that the\nintercession and merits of the saint really work the miracle, and should\nattribute it instead to the saint\u2019s bones and garments in their material\ncapacity. Similarly, we should attribute the power which things exerted\nover us, not to the rarer or denser substance, but to the eternal ideas\nthat they existed by expressing, and existed to express. Things merely\nlocalized--like the saint\u2019s relics--the influences which flowed to us\nfrom above. In the world of values they were mere symbols, accidental\nchannels for divine energy; and since divine energy, by its magic\nassimilation of matter, had created these things, in order to express\nitself, they were symbols altogether not merely in their use, but in\ntheir origin and nature.\n\nA mind persuaded that it lives among things that, like words, are\nessentially significant, and that what they signify is the magic\nattraction, called love, which draws all things after it, is a mind\npoetic in its intuition, even if its language be prose. The science and\nphilosophy of Dante did not have to be put into verse in order to become\npoetry: they were poetry fundamentally and in their essence. When Plato\nand Aristotle, following the momentous precept of Socrates, decreed that\nobservation of nature should stop and a moral interpretation of nature\nshould begin, they launched into the world a new mythology, to take the\nplace of the Homeric one which was losing its authority. The power the\npoets had lost of producing illusion was possessed by these philosophers\nin a high degree; and no one was ever more thoroughly under their spell\nthan Dante. He became to Platonism and Christianity what Homer had been\nto Paganism; and if Platonism and Christianity, like Paganism, should\never cease to be defended scientifically, Dante will keep the poetry and\nwisdom of them alive; and it is safe to say that later generations will\nenvy more than they will despise his philosophy. When the absurd\ncontroversies and factious passions that in some measure obscure the\nnature of this system have completely passed away, no one will think of\nreproaching Dante with his bad science, and bad history, and minute\ntheology. These will not seem blemishes in his poetry, but integral\nparts of it.\n\nA thousand years after Homer, Alexandrian critics were expounding his\ncharming myths as if they were a revealed treatise of physics and\nmorals. A thousand years after Dante we may hope that his conscientious\nvision of the universe, where all is love, magic, and symbolism, may\ncharm mankind exclusively as poetry. So conceived, the _Divine Comedy_\nmarks high noon in that long day-dream of which Plato\u2019s dialogues mark\nthe beginning: a pause of two thousand years in the work of political\nreason, during which the moral imagination spun out of itself an\nallegorical philosophy, as a boy, kept at home during a rainy day with\nbooks too hard and literal for his years, might spin his own romance out\nof his father\u2019s histories, and might define, with infantile precision,\nhis ideal lady-love, battles, and kingdoms. The middle age saw the good\nin a vision. It is for the new age to translate those delightful symbols\ninto the purposes of manhood.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn a letter which tradition assigns to Dante, addressed to his\nprotector, Cangrande della Scala, lord of Verona and Vicenza, are these\nwords about the _Divine Comedy_: \u201cThe subject of the whole work, taken\nmerely in its literal sense, is the state of souls after death,\nconsidered simply as a fact. But if the work is understood in its\nallegorical intention, the subject of it is man, according as, by his\ndeserts and demerits in the use of his free-will, he is justly open to\nrewards and punishments.\u201d This by no means exhausts, however, the\nsignifications which we may look for in a work of Dante\u2019s. How many\nthese may be is pointed out to us in the same letter, and illustrated by\nthe beginning of the one hundred and fourteenth Psalm: \u201cWhen Israel went\nout of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language;\nJudah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.\u201d Here, Dante tells us,\n\u201cif we look to the _letter_ only, what is conveyed to us is the\ndeliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt in the time of Moses;\nif we look to the _allegory_ of it, what is signified is our redemption\naccomplished through Christ; if we consider the _moral sense_, what is\nsignified is the conversion of the soul from her present grief and\nwretchedness to a state of grace; and if we consider the _anagogical\nsense_ [that is, the revelation contained concerning our highest\ndestiny], what is signified is the passing of the sanctified soul from\nthe bondage of earthly corruption to the freedom of everlasting glory.\u201d\n\nWhen people brooded so much over a simple text as to find all these\nmeanings in it, we may expect that their own works, when meant to be\nprofound, should have stage above stage of allegorical application. So\nin the first canto of the _Inferno_ we find a lion that keeps Dante from\napproaching a delectable mountain; and this lion, besides what he is in\nthe landscape of the poem, is a symbol for pride or power in general,\nfor the king of France in particular, and for whatever political\nambitions in Dante\u2019s personal life may have robbed him of happiness or\ndistracted him from faith and from piety. Thus, throughout the _Divine\nComedy_, meaning and meaning lurk beneath the luminous pictures; and the\npoem, besides being a description of the other world, and of the rewards\nand punishment meted out to souls, is a dramatic view of human passions\nin this life; a history of Italy and of the world; a theory of Church\nand State; the autobiography of an exile; and the confessions of a\nChristian, and of a lover, conscious of his sins and of the miracle of\ndivine grace that intervenes to save him.\n\nThe subject-matter of the _Divine Comedy_ is accordingly the moral\nuniverse in all its levels,--romantic, political, religious. To present\nthese moral facts in a graphic way, the poet performed a double work of\nimagination. First he chose some historical personage that might\nplausibly illustrate each condition of the soul. Then he pictured this\nperson in some characteristic and symbolic attitude of mind and of body,\nand in an appropriate, symbolic environment. To give material embodiment\nto moral ideas by such a method would nowadays be very artificial, and\nperhaps impossible; but in Dante\u2019s time everything was favourable to the\nattempt. We are accustomed to think of goods and evils as functions of\na natural life, sparks struck out in the chance shock of men with things\nor with one another. For Dante, it was a matter of course that moral\ndistinctions might be discerned, not merely as they arise incidentally\nin human experience, but also, and more genuinely, as they are displayed\nin the order of creation. The Creator himself was a poet producing\nallegories. The material world was a parable which he had built out in\nspace, and ordered to be enacted. History was a great charade. The\nsymbols of earthly poets are words or images; the symbols of the divine\npoet were natural things and the fortunes of men. They had been devised\nfor a purpose; and this purpose, as the Koran, too, declares, had been\nprecisely to show forth the great difference there is in God\u2019s sight\nbetween good and evil.\n\nIn Platonic cosmology, the concentric spheres were bodies formed and\nanimated by intelligences of various orders. The nobler an intelligence,\nthe more swift and outward, or higher, was the sphere it moved; whence\nthe identification of \u201chigher\u201d with better, which survives, absurdly, to\nthis day. And while Dante could not attribute literal truth to his\nfancies about hell, purgatory, and heaven, he believed that an actual\nheaven, purgatory, and hell had been fashioned by God on purpose to\nreceive souls of varying deserts and complexion; so that while the\npoet\u2019s imagination, unless it reechoed divine revelation, was only\nhuman and not prophetic, yet it was a genuine and plausible imagination,\nmoving on the lines of nature, and anticipating such things as\nexperience might very well realize. Dante\u2019s objectification of morality,\nhis art of giving visible forms and local habitations to ideal virtues\nand vices, was for him a thoroughly serious and philosophical exercise.\nGod had created nature and life on that very principle. The poet\u2019s\nmethod repeated the magic of Genesis. His symbolical imagination\nmirrored this symbolical world; it was a sincere anticipation of fact,\nno mere laboured and wilful allegory.\n\nThis situation has a curious consequence. Probably for the first and\nlast time in the history of the world a classification worked out by a\nsystematic moralist guided the vision of a great poet. Aristotle had\ndistinguished, named, and classified the various virtues, with their\nopposites. But observe: if the other world was made on purpose--as it\nwas--to express and render palpable those moral distinctions which were\neternal, and to express and render them palpable in great detail, with\nall their possible tints and varieties; and if Aristotle had correctly\nclassified moral qualities, as he had--then it follows that Aristotle\n(without knowing it) must have supplied the ground-plan, as it were, of\nhell and of heaven. Such was Dante\u2019s thought. With Aristotle\u2019s _Ethics_\nopen before him, with a supplementary hint, here and there, drawn from\nthe catechism, and with an ingrained preference (pious and almost\nphilosophic) for the number three and its multiples, he needed not to\nvoyage without a chart. The most visionary of subjects, life after\ndeath, could be treated with scientific soberness and deep sincerity.\nThis vision was to be no wanton dream. It was to be a sober meditation,\na philosophical prophecy, a probable drama,--the most poignant,\nterrible, and consoling of all possible truths.\n\nThe good--this was the fundamental thought of Aristotle and of all Greek\nethics,--the good is the end at which nature aims. The demands of life\ncannot be radically perverse, since they are the judges of every\nexcellence. No man, as Dante says, could hate his own soul; he could not\nat once be, and contradict, the voice of his instincts and emotions. Nor\ncould a man hate God; for if that man knew himself, he would see that\nGod was, by definition, his natural good, the ultimate goal of his\nactual aspirations.[10] Since it was impossible, according to his\ninsight, that our faculties should be intrinsically evil, all evil had\nto arise from the disorder into which these faculties fall, their too\ngreat weakness or strength in relation to one another. If the animal\npart of man was too strong for his reason, he fell into\nincontinence,--that is, into lust, gluttony, avarice, wrath, or pride.\nIncontinence came from an excessive or ill-timed pursuit of something\ngood, of a part of what nature aims at; for food, children, property,\nand character are natural goods. These sins are accordingly the most\nexcusable and the least odious. Dante puts those who have sinned through\nlove in the first circle of hell, nearest to the sunlight, or in the\ntopmost round of purgatory, nearest to the earthly paradise. Below the\nlovers, in each case, are the gluttons,--where a northern poet would\nhave been obliged to place his drunkards. Beneath these again are the\nmisers,--worse because less open to the excuse of a merely childish lack\nof self-control.\n\nThe disorder of the faculties may arise, however, in another way. The\ncombative or spirited element, rather than the senses, may get out of\nhand, and lead to crimes of violence. Violence, like incontinence, is\nspontaneous enough in its personal origin, and would not be odious if it\ndid not inflict, and intend to inflict, harm on others; so that besides\nincontinence, there is malice in it. Ill-will to others may arise from\npride, because one loves to be superior to them, or from envy, because\none abhors that they should seem superior to oneself; or through desire\nfor vengeance, because one smarts under some injury. Sins of these kinds\nare more serious than those of foolish incontinence; they complicate the\nmoral world more; they introduce endless opposition of interests, and\nperpetual, self-propagating crimes. They are hateful. Dante feels less\npity for those who suffer by them: he remembers the sufferings these\nmalefactors have themselves caused, and he feels a sort of joy in\njoining the divine justice, and would gladly lash them himself.\n\nWorse still than violence, however, is guile: the sin of those who in\nthe service of their intemperance or their malice have abused the gift\nof reason. _Corruptio optimi pessima_; and to turn reason, the faculty\nthat establishes order, into a means of organizing disorder, is a\nperversity truly satanic: it turns evil into an art. But even this\nperversity has stages; and Dante distinguishes ten sorts of dishonesty\nor simple fraud, as well as three sorts of treachery.\n\nBesides these positive transgressions there is a possibility of general\nmoral sluggishness and indifference. This Dante, with his fervid nature,\nparticularly hates. He puts the Laodiceans in the fringe of his hell;\nwithin the gate, that they may be without hope, but outside of limbo,\nthat they may have torments to endure, and be stung by wasps and\nhornets into a belated activity.[11]\n\nTo these vices, known to Aristotle, the Catholic moralist was obliged to\nadd two others: original sin, of which spontaneous disbelief is one\nconsequence, and heresy, or misbelief, after a revelation has been given\nand accepted. Original sin, and the paganism that goes with it, if they\nlead to nothing worse, are a mere privation of excellence and involve,\nin eternity merely a privation of joy: they are punished in limbo. There\nsighs are heard, but no lamentation, and the only sorrow is to live in\ndesire without hope. This fate is most appropriately imputed to the\nnoble and clear-sighted in the hereafter, since it is so often their\nexperience here. Dante was never juster than in this stroke.[12] Heresy,\non the other hand, is a kind of passion when honest, or a kind of fraud\nwhen politic; and it is punished as pride in fiery tombs,[13] or as\nfaction by perpetual gaping wounds and horrible mutilations.[14]\n\nSo far, with these slight additions, Dante is following Aristotle; but\nhere a great divergence sets in. If a pagan poet had conceived the idea\nof illustrating the catalogue of vices and virtues in poetic scenes, he\nwould have chosen suitable episodes in human life, and painted the\ntypical characters that figured in them in their earthly environment;\nfor pagan morality is a plant of earth. Not so with Dante. His poem\ndescribes this world merely in retrospect; the foreground is occupied by\nthe eternal consequences of what time had brought forth. These\nconsequences are new facts, not merely, as for the rationalist, the old\nfacts conceived in their truth; they often reverse, in their emotional\nquality, the events they represent. Such a reversal is made possible by\nthe theory that justice is partly retributive; that virtue is not its\nown sufficient reward, nor vice its own sufficient punishment. According\nto this theory, this life contains a part of our experience only, yet\ndetermines the rest. The other life is a second experience, yet it does\nnot contain any novel adventures. It is determined altogether by what we\nhave done on earth; as the tree falleth so it lieth, and souls after\ndeath have no further initiative.\n\nThe theory Dante adopts mediates between two earlier views; in so far as\nit is Greek, it conceives immortality ideally, as something timeless;\nbut in so far as it is Hebraic, it conceives of a new existence and a\nsecond, different taste of life. Dante thinks of a second experience,\nbut of one that is wholly retrospective and changeless. It is an\nepilogue which sums up the play, and is the last episode in it. The\npurpose of this epilogue is not to carry on the play indefinitely: such\na romantic notion of immortality never entered Dante\u2019s mind. The purpose\nof the epilogue is merely to vindicate (in a more unmistakable fashion\nthan the play, being ill acted, itself could do) the excellence of\ngoodness and the misery of vice. Were this life all, he thinks the\nwicked might laugh. If not wholly happy, at least they might boast that\ntheir lot was no worse than that of many good men. Nothing would make an\noverwhelming difference. Moral distinctions would be largely impertinent\nand remarkably jumbled. If I am a simple lover of goodness, I may\nperhaps put up with this situation. I may say of the excellences I prize\nwhat Wordsworth says of his Lucy: there may be none to praise and few to\nlove them, but they make all the difference to me.\n\nDante, however, was not merely a simple lover of excellence: he was also\na keen hater of wickedness, one that took the moral world tragically\nand wished to heighten the distinctions he felt into something absolute\nand infinite. Now any man who is _enrag\u00e9_ in his preferences will\nprobably say, with Mohammed, Tertullian, and Calvin, that good is\ndishonoured if those who contemn it can go scot-free, and never repent\nof their negligence; that the more horrible the consequences of\nevil-doing, the more tolerable the presence of evil-doing is in the\nworld; and that the everlasting shrieks and contortions of the damned\nalone will make it possible for the saints to sit quiet, and be\nconvinced that there is perfect harmony in the universe. On this\nprinciple, in the famous inscription which Dante places over the gate of\nhell, we read that primal love, as well as justice and power,\nestablished that torture-house; primal love, that is, of that good\nwhich, by the extreme punishment of those who scorn it, is honoured,\nvindicated, and made to shine like the sun. The damned are damned for\nthe glory of God.\n\nThis doctrine, I cannot help thinking, is a great disgrace to human\nnature. It shows how desperate, at heart, is the folly of an egotistic\nor anthropocentric philosophy. This philosophy begins by assuring us\nthat everything is obviously created to serve our needs; it then\nmaintains that everything serves our ideals; and in the end, it reveals\nthat everything serves our blind hatreds and superstitious qualms.\nBecause my instinct taboos something, the whole universe, with insane\nintensity, shall taboo it for ever. This infatuation was inherited by\nDante, and it was not uncongenial to his bitter and intemperate spleen.\nNevertheless, he saw beyond it at times. Like many other Christian\nseers, he betrays here and there an esoteric view of rewards and\npunishments, which makes them simply symbols for the intrinsic quality\nof good and evil ways. The punishment, he then seems to say, is nothing\nadded; it is what the passion itself pursues; it is a fulfilment,\nhorrifying the soul that desired it.\n\nFor instance, spirits newly arrived in hell require no devil with his\nprong to drive them to their punishment. They flit towards it eagerly,\nof their own accord.[15] Similarly, the souls in purgatory are kept by\ntheir own will at the penance they are doing. No external force retains\nthem, but until they are quite purged they are not able, because they\nare not willing, to absolve themselves.[16] The whole mountain, we are\ntold, trembles and bursts into psalmody when any one frees himself and\nreaches heaven. Is it too much of a gloss to say that these souls change\ntheir prison when they change their ideal, and that an inferior state of\nsoul is its own purgatory, and determines its own duration? In one\nplace, at any rate, Dante proclaims the intrinsic nature of punishment\nin express terms. Among the blasphemers is a certain king of Thebes, who\ndefied the thunderbolts of Jupiter. He shows himself indifferent to his\npunishment and says: \u201cSuch as I was alive, such I am dead.\u201d Whereupon\nVirgil exclaims, with a force Dante had never found in his voice before:\n\u201cIn that thy pride is not mortified, thou art punished the more. No\ntorture, other than thy own rage, would be woe enough to match thy\nfury.\u201d[17] And indeed, Dante\u2019s imagination cannot outdo, it cannot even\nequal, the horrors which men have brought upon themselves in this world.\nIf we were to choose the most fearful of the scenes in the _Inferno_, we\nshould have to choose the story of Ugolino, but this is only a pale\nrecital of what Pisa had actually witnessed.\n\nA more subtle and interesting instance, if a less obvious one, may be\nfound in the punishment of Paolo and Francesca di Rimini. What makes\nthese lovers so wretched in the Inferno? They are still together. Can an\neternity of floating on the wind, in each other\u2019s arms, be a punishment\nfor lovers? That is just what their passion, if left to speak for\nitself, would have chosen. It is what passion stops at, and would gladly\nprolong for ever. Divine judgement has only taken it at its word. This\nfate is precisely what Aucassin, in the well-known tale, wishes for\nhimself and his sweetheart Nicolette,--not a heaven to be won by\nrenunciation, but the possession, even if it be in hell, of what he\nloves and fancies. And a great romantic poet, Alfred de Musset, actually\nupbraids Dante for not seeing that such an eternal destiny as he has\nassigned to Paolo and Francesca would be not the ruin of their love,[18]\nbut the perfect fulfilment of it. This last seems to be very true; but\ndid Dante overlook the truth of it? If so, what instinct guided him to\nchoose just the fate for these lovers that they would have chosen for\nthemselves?\n\nThere is a great difference between the apprentices in life, and the\nmasters,--Aucassin and Alfred de Musset were among the apprentices;\nDante was one of the masters. He could feel the fresh promptings of life\nas keenly as any youngster, or any romanticist; but he had lived these\nthings through, he knew the possible and the impossible issue of them;\nhe saw their relation to the rest of human nature, and to the ideal of\nan ultimate happiness and peace. He had discovered the necessity of\nsaying continually to oneself: Thou shalt renounce. And for this reason\nhe needed no other furniture for hell than the literal ideals and\nfulfilments of our absolute little passions. The soul that is possessed\nby any one of these passions nevertheless has other hopes in abeyance.\nLove itself dreams of more than mere possession; to conceive happiness,\nit must conceive a life to be shared in a varied world, full of events\nand activities, which shall be new and ideal bonds between the lovers.\nBut unlawful love cannot pass out into this public fulfilment. It is\ncondemned to be mere possession--possession in the dark, without an\nenvironment, without a future. It is love among the ruins. And it is\nprecisely this that is the torment of Paolo and Francesca--love among\nthe ruins of themselves and of all else they might have had to give to\none another. Abandon yourself, Dante would say to us,--abandon yourself\naltogether to a love that is nothing but love, and you are in hell\nalready. Only an inspired poet could be so subtle a moralist. Only a\nsound moralist could be so tragic a poet.\n\nThe same tact and fine feeling that appear in these little moral dramas\nappear also in the sympathetic landscape in which each episode is set.\nThe poet actually accomplishes the feat which he attributes to the\nCreator; he evokes a material world to be the fit theatre for moral\nattitudes. Popular imagination and the precedents of Homer and Virgil\nhad indeed carried him halfway in this symbolic labour, as tradition\nalmost always carries a poet who is successful. Mankind, from remotest\nantiquity, had conceived a dark subterranean hell, inhabited by unhappy\nghosts. In Christian times, these shades had become lost souls,\ntormented by hideous demons. But Dante, with the Aristotelian chart of\nthe vices before him, turned those vague windy caverns into a\nsymmetrical labyrinth. Seven concentric terraces descended, step by\nstep, towards the waters of the Styx, which in turn encircled the brazen\nwalls of the City of Dis, or Pluto. Within these walls, two more\nterraces led down to the edge of a prodigious precipice--perhaps a\nthousand miles deep--which formed the pit of hell. At the bottom of\nthis, still sinking gently towards the centre, were ten concentric\nfurrows or ditches, to hold ten sorts of rogues; and finally a last\nsheer precipice fell to the frozen lake of Cocytus, at the very centre\nof the earth, in the midst of which Lucifer was congealed amongst lesser\ntraitors.\n\nPrecision and horror, graphic and moral truth, were never so wonderfully\ncombined as in the description of this hell. Yet the conception of\npurgatory is more original, and perhaps more poetical. The very approach\nto the place is enchanting. We hear of it first in the fatal adventure\nascribed to Ulysses by Dante. Restless at Ithaca after his return from\nTroy, the hero had summoned his surviving companions for a last voyage\nof discovery. He had sailed with them past the Pillars of Hercules,\nskirting the African shore; until after three months of open sea, he saw\na colossal mountain, a great truncated cone, looming before him. This\nwas the island and hill of purgatory, at the very antipodes of\nJerusalem. Yet before Ulysses could land there, a squall overtook him;\nand his galley sank, prow foremost, in that untraversed sea, within\nsight of a new world. So must the heathen fail of salvation, though some\noracular impulse bring them near the goal.\n\nHow easy is success, on the other hand, to the ministers of grace! From\nthe mouth of the Tiber, where the souls of Christians congregate after\ndeath, a light skiff, piloted by an angel, and propelled only by his\nwhite wings, skims the sea swiftly towards the mountain of purgatory,\nthere deposits the spirits it carries, and is back at the mouth of the\nTiber again on the same day. So much for the approach to purgatory. When\na spirit lands it finds the skirts of the mountain broad and spreading,\nbut the slope soon becomes hard and precipitous. When he has passed the\nnarrow gate of repentance, he must stay upon each of the ledges that\nencircle the mountain at various heights, until one of his sins is\npurged, and then upon the next ledge above, if he has been guilty also\nof the sin that is atoned for there. The mountain is so high as to lift\nits head into the sphere of the moon, above the reach of terrestrial\ntempests. The top, which is a broad circular plain, contains the Garden\nof Eden, watered by the rivers Lethe and Eunoe, one to heal all painful\nmemories, and the other to bring all good thoughts to clearness. From\nthis place, which literally touches the lowest heaven, the upward flight\nis easy from sphere to sphere.\n\nThe astronomy of Dante\u2019s day fell in beautifully with his poetic task.\nIt described and measured a firmament that would still be identified\nwith the posthumous heaven of the saints. The whirling invisible spheres\nof that astronomy had the earth for their centre. The sublime\ncomplexities of this Ptolemaic system were day and night before Dante\u2019s\nmind. He loves to tell us in what constellation the sun is rising or\nsetting, and what portion of the sky is then over the antipodes; he\ncarries in his mind an orrery that shows him, at any given moment, the\nposition of every star.\n\nSuch a constant dragging in of astronomical lore may seem to us puerile\nor pedantic; but for Dante the astronomical situation had the charm of a\nlandscape, literally full of the most wonderful lights and shadows; and\nit also had the charm of a hard-won discovery that unveiled the secrets\nof nature. To think straight, to see things as they are, or as they\nmight naturally be, interested him more than to fancy things impossible;\nand in this he shows, not want of imagination, but true imaginative\npower and imaginative maturity. It is those of us who are too feeble to\nconceive and master the real world, or too cowardly to face it, that run\naway from it to those cheap fictions that alone seem to us fine enough\nfor poetry or for religion. In Dante the fancy is not empty or\narbitrary; it is serious, fed on the study of real things. It adopts\ntheir tendency and divines their true destiny. His art is, in the\noriginal Greek sense, an imitation or rehearsal of nature, an\nanticipation of fate. For this reason curious details of science or\ntheology enter as a matter of course into his verse. With the\nstraightforward faith and simplicity of his age he devours these\ninteresting images, which help him to clarify the mysteries of this\nworld.\n\nThere is a kind of sensualism or aestheticism that has decreed in our\nday that theory is not poetical; as if all the images and emotions that\nenter a cultivated mind were not saturated with theory. The prevalence\nof such a sensualism or aestheticism would alone suffice to explain the\nimpotence of the arts. The life of theory is not less human or less\nemotional than the life of sense; it is more typically human and more\nkeenly emotional. Philosophy is a more intense sort of experience than\ncommon life is, just as pure and subtle music, heard in retirement, is\nsomething keener and more intense than the howling of storms or the\nrumble of cities. For this reason philosophy, when a poet is not\nmindless, enters inevitably into his poetry, since it has entered into\nhis life; or rather, the detail of things and the detail of ideas pass\nequally into his verse, when both alike lie in the path that has led him\nto his ideal. To object to theory in poetry would be like objecting to\nwords there; for words, too, are symbols without the sensuous character\nof the things they stand for; and yet it is only by the net of new\nconnections which words throw over things, in recalling them, that\npoetry arises at all. Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of\ncrude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm\u2019s\nlength.\n\nNever before or since has a poet lived in so large a landscape as Dante;\nfor our infinite times and distances are of little poetic value while we\nhave no graphic image of what may fill them. Dante\u2019s spaces were\nfilled; they enlarged to the limits of human imagination, the\nhabitations and destinies of mankind. Although the saints did not\nliterally inhabit the spheres, but the empyrean beyond, yet each spirit\ncould be manifested in that sphere the genius of which was most akin to\nhis own. In Dante\u2019s vision spirits appear as points of light, from which\nvoices also flow sometimes, as well as radiance. Further than reporting\ntheir words (which are usually about the things of earth) Dante tells us\nlittle about them. He has indeed, at the end, a vision of a celestial\nrose; tier upon tier of saints are seated as in an amphitheatre, and the\nDeity overarches them in the form of a triple rainbow, with a semblance\nof man in the midst. But this is avowedly a mere symbol, a somewhat\nconventional picture to which Dante has recourse unwillingly, for want\nof a better image to render his mystical intention. What may perhaps\nhelp us to divine this intention is the fact, just mentioned, that\naccording to him the celestial spheres are not the real seat of any\nhuman soul; that the pure rise through them with increasing ease and\nvelocity, the nearer they come to God; and that the eyes of\nBeatrice--the revelation of God to man--are only mirrors, shedding\nmerely reflected beauty and light.\n\nThese hints suggest the doctrine that the goal of life is the very\nbosom of God; not any finite form of existence, however excellent, but a\ncomplete absorption and disappearance in the Godhead. So the\nNeoplatonists had thought, from whom all this heavenly landscape is\nborrowed; and the reservations that Christian orthodoxy requires have\nnot always remained present to the minds of Christian mystics and poets.\nDante broaches this very point in the memorable interview he has with\nthe spirit of Piccarda, in the third canto of the _Paradiso_. She is in\nthe lowest sphere of heaven, that of the inconstant moon, because after\nshe had been stolen from her convent and forcibly married, she felt no\nprompting to renew her earlier vows. Dante asks her if she never longs\nfor a higher station in paradise, one nearer to God, the natural goal of\nall aspiration. She answers that to share the will of God, who has\nestablished many different mansions in his house, is to be truly one\nwith him. The wish to be nearer God would actually carry the soul\nfarther away, since it would oppose the order he has established.[19]\n\nEven in heaven, therefore, the Christian saint was to keep his essential\nfidelity, separation, and lowliness. He was to feel still helpless and\nlost in himself, like Tobias, and happy only in that the angel of the\nLord was holding him by the hand. For Piccarda to say that she accepts\nthe will of God means not that she shares it, but that she submits to\nit. She would fain go higher, for her moral nature demands it, as\nDante--incorrigible Platonist--perfectly perceived; but she dare not\nmention it, for she knows that God, whose thoughts are not her thoughts,\nhas forbidden it. The inconstant sphere of the moon does not afford her\na perfect happiness; but, chastened as she is, she says it brings her\nhappiness enough; all that a broken and a contrite heart has the courage\nto hope for.\n\nSuch are the conflicting inspirations beneath the lovely harmonies of\nthe _Paradiso_. It was not the poet\u2019s soul that was in conflict here; it\nwas only his traditions. The conflicts of his own spirit had been left\nbehind in other regions; on that threshing-floor of earth which, from\nthe height of heaven, he looked back upon with wonder,[20] surprised\nthat men should take so passionately this trouble of ants, which he\njudges best, says Dante, who thinks least of it.\n\nIn this saying the poet is perhaps conscious of a personal fault; for\nDante was far from perfect, even as a poet. He was too much a man of his\nown time, and often wrote with a passion not clarified into judgement.\nSo much does the purely personal and dramatic interest dominate us as we\nread of a Boniface or an Ugolino that we forget that these historical\nfigures are supposed to have been transmuted into the eternal, and to\nhave become bits in the mosaic of Platonic essences. Dante himself\nalmost forgets it. The modern reader, accustomed to insignificant,\nwayward fictions, and expecting to be entertained by images without\nthoughts, may not notice this lack of perspective, or may rejoice in it.\nBut, if he is judicious, he will not rejoice in it long. The Bonifaces\nand the Ugolinos are not the truly deep, the truly lovely figures of the\n_Divine Comedy_. They are, in a relative sense, the vulgarities in it.\nWe feel too much, in these cases, the heat of the poet\u2019s prejudice or\nindignation. He is not just, as he usually is; he does not stop to\nthink, as he almost always does. He forgets that he is in the eternal\nworld, and dips for the moment into a brawl in some Italian\nmarket-place, or into the council-chamber of some factious\n_condottiere_. The passages--such as those about Boniface and\nUgolino--which Dante writes in this mood are powerful and vehement, but\nthey are not beautiful. They brand the object of their invective more\nthan they reveal it; they shock more than they move the reader.\n\nThis lower kind of success--for it is still a success in rhetoric--falls\nto the poet because he has abandoned the Platonic half of his\ninspiration and has become for the moment wholly historical, wholly\nHebraic or Roman. He would have been a far inferior mind if he had\nalways moved on this level. With the Platonic spheres and the\nAristotelian ethics taken out, his _Comedy_ would not have been divine.\nPersons and incidents, to be truly memorable, have to be rendered\nsignificant; they have to be seen in their place in the moral world;\nthey have to be judged, and judged rightly, in their dignity and value.\nA casual personal sentiment towards them, however passionate, cannot\ntake the place of the sympathetic insight that comprehends and the wide\nexperience that judges.\n\nAgain (what is fundamental with Dante) love, as he feels and renders it,\nis not normal or healthy love. It was doubtless real enough, but too\nmuch restrained and expressed too much in fancy; so that when it is\nextended Platonically and identified so easily with the grace of God and\nwith revealed wisdom, we feel the suspicion that if the love in question\nhad been natural and manly, it would have offered more resistance to so\nmystical a transformation. The poet who wishes to pass convincingly from\nlove to philosophy (and that seems a natural progress for a poet) should\naccordingly be a hearty and complete lover--a lover like Goethe and his\nFaust--rather than like Plato and Dante. Faust, too, passes from\nGretchen to Helen, and partly back again; and Goethe made even more\npassages. Had any of them led to something which not only was loved, but\ndeserved to be loved, which not only could inspire a whole life, but\nwhich ought to inspire it--then we should have had a genuine progress.\n\nIn the next place, Dante talks too much about himself. There is a sense\nin which this egotism is a merit, or at least a ground of interest for\nus moderns; for egotism is the distinctive attitude of modern philosophy\nand of romantic sentiment. In being egotistical Dante was ahead of his\ntime. His philosophy would have lost an element of depth, and his poetry\nan element of pathos, had he not placed himself in the centre of the\nstage, and described everything as his experience, or as a revelation\nmade to himself and made for the sake of his personal salvation. But\nDante\u2019s egotism goes rather further than was requisite, so that the\ntranscendental insight might not fail in his philosophy. It extended so\nfar that he cast the shadow of his person not only over the terraces of\npurgatory (as he is careful to tell us repeatedly), but over the whole\nof Italy and of Europe, which he saw and judged under the evident\ninfluence of private passions and resentments.\n\nMoreover, the personality thrust forward so obtrusively is not in every\nrespect worthy of contemplation. Dante is very proud and very bitter; at\nthe same time, he is curiously timid; and one may tire sometimes of his\nperpetual tremblings and tears, of his fainting fits and his intricate\ndoubts. A man who knows he is under the special protection of God, and\nof three celestial ladies, and who has such a sage and magician as\nVirgil for a guide, might have looked even upon hell with a little more\nconfidence. How far is this shivering and swooning philosopher from the\nlaughing courage of Faust, who sees his poodle swell into a monster,\nthen into a cloud, and finally change into Mephistopheles, and says at\nonce: _Das also war des Pudels Kern_! Doubtless Dante was mediaeval, and\ncontrition, humility, and fear of the devil were great virtues in those\ndays; but the conclusion we must come to is precisely that the virtues\nof those days were not the best virtues, and that a poet who represents\nthat time cannot be a fair nor an ultimate spokesman for humanity.\n\nPerhaps we have now reviewed the chief objects that peopled Dante\u2019s\nimagination, the chief objects into the midst of which his poetry\ntransports us; and if a poet\u2019s genius avails to transport us into his\nenchanted world, the character of that world will determine the quality\nand dignity of his poetry. Dante transports us, with unmistakable power,\nfirst into the atmosphere of a visionary love; then into the history of\nhis conversion, affected by this love, or by the divine grace identified\nwith it. The supreme ideal to which his conversion brought him back is\nexpressed for him by universal nature, and is embodied among men in the\ndouble institution of a revealed religion and a providential empire. To\ntrace the fortunes of these institutions, we are transported next into\nthe panorama of history, in its great crises and its great men; and\nparticularly into the panorama of Italy in the poet\u2019s time, where we\nsurvey the crimes, the virtues, and the sorrows of those prominent in\nfurthering or thwarting the ideal of Christendom. These numerous persons\nare set before us with the sympathy and brevity of a dramatist; yet it\nis no mere carnival, no _danse macabre_: for throughout, above the\nconfused strife of parties and passions, we hear the steady voice, the\nimplacable sentence, of the prophet that judges them.\n\nThus Dante, gifted with the tenderest sense of colour, and the firmest\nart of design, has put his whole world into his canvas. Seen there, that\nworld becomes complete, clear, beautiful, and tragic. It is vivid and\ntruthful in its detail, sublime in its march and in its harmony. This is\nnot poetry where the parts are better than the whole. Here, as in some\ngreat symphony, everything is cumulative: the movements conspire, the\ntension grows, the volume redoubles, the keen melody soars higher and\nhigher; and it all ends, not with a bang, not with some casual incident,\nbut in sustained reflection, in the sense that it has not ended, but\nremains by us in its totality, a revelation and a resource for ever. It\nhas taught us to love and to renounce, to judge and to worship. What\nmore could a poet do? Dante poetized all life and nature as he found\nthem. His imagination dominated and focused the whole world. He thereby\ntouched the ultimate goal to which a poet can aspire; he set the\nstandard for all possible performance, and became the type of a supreme\npoet. This is not to say that he is the \u201cgreatest\u201d of poets. The\nrelative merit of poets is a barren thing to wrangle about. The question\ncan always be opened anew, when a critic appears with a fresh\ntemperament or a new criterion. Even less need we say that no greater\npoet can ever arise; we may be confident of the opposite. But Dante\ngives a successful example of the _highest species_ of poetry. His\npoetry covers the whole field from which poetry may be fetched, and to\nwhich poetry may be applied, from the inmost recesses of the heart to\nthe uttermost bounds of nature and of destiny. If to give imaginative\nvalue to something is the minimum task of a poet, to give imaginative\nvalue to all things, and to the system which things compose, is\nevidently his greatest task.\n\nDante fulfilled this task, of course under special conditions and\nlimitations, personal and social; but he fulfilled it, and he thereby\nfulfilled the conditions of supreme poetry. Even Homer, as we are\nbeginning to perceive nowadays, suffered from a certain conventionality\nand one-sidedness. There was much in the life and religion of his time\nthat his art ignored. It was a flattering, a euphemistic art; it had a\nsort of pervasive blandness, like that which we now associate with a\nfashionable sermon. It was poetry addressed to the ruling caste in the\nstate, to the conquerors; and it spread an intentional glamour over\ntheir past brutalities and present self-deceptions. No such partiality\nin Dante; he paints what he hates as frankly as what he loves, and in\nall things he is complete and sincere. If any similar adequacy is\nattained again by any poet, it will not be, presumably, by a poet of the\nsupernatural. Henceforth, for any wide and honest imagination, the\nsupernatural must figure as an idea in the human mind,--a part of the\nnatural. To conceive it otherwise would be to fall short of the insight\nof this age, not to express or to complete it. Dante, however, for this\nvery reason, may be expected to remain the supreme poet of the\nsupernatural, the unrivalled exponent, after Plato, of that phase of\nthought and feeling in which the supernatural seems to be the key to\nnature and to happiness. This is the hypothesis on which, as yet, moral\nunity has been best attained in this world. Here, then, we have the most\ncomplete idealization and comprehension of things achieved by mankind\nhitherto. Dante is the type of a consummate poet.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] Plato, _Phaedo_,97B-99C, Jowett\u2019s translation. I have changed the\nrendering of _\u03bd\u03bf\u1fe1\u03c2_ from \u201cmind\u201d to \u201creason.\u201d\n\n[2] \u201cEst pro fundamento tenenda veritas historiae et desuper spirituales\nexpositiones fabricandae.\u201d Thomas Aquinas, _Summa Theologiae_, i.\nquaest. 102, conclusio.\n\n[3] _Paradiso_, xv. 97, 99:\n\n     Fiorenza dentro dalla cerchia antica...\n       Si stava in pace, sobria e pudica.\n\n\n[4] Ibid., 100-26:\n\n     Non avea catenella, non corona,\n       Non donne contigiate, non cintura\n       Che fosse a veder pin che la persona.\n     Non faceva nascendo ancor paura\n       La figlia al padre, ch\u00e8 il tempo e la dote\n       Non fuggan quinci e quindi la misura.\n     Non avea case di famiglia vote;\n       Non v\u2019era giunto ancor Sardanapalo\n       A mostrar ci\u00f2 che in camera si puote....\n     O fortunate! Ciascuna era certa\n       Delia sua sepoltura, ed ancor nulla\n       Era per Francia nel letto deserta.\n     L\u2019 una vegghiava a studio della culla,\n       E consolando usava l\u2019 idioma\n       Che prima i padri e le madri trastulla;\n     L\u2019 altra traendo alia rocca la chioma,\n       Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia\n       De\u2019 Troiani, di Fiesole, e di Roma.\n\n\n[5] _Paradiso_, xxxiii. 143-45:\n\n           Volgeva il mio disiro e il _velle,_\n       Si come rota ch\u2019 egualmente \u00e8 mossa,\n     L\u2019 amor che move il sole e l\u2019 altre stelle.\n\n\n[6] _Vita Nuova_, \u00a7 22: Secondo l\u2019 usanza della sopradetta cittade,\ndonne con donne, e uomini con uomini si adunino a cotale tristizia;\nmolte donne s\u2019 adunaro col\u00e0, ove questa Beatrice piangea pietosamente,\n&c.\n\nAlso, _Purgatorio_, xxxi. 50, 51:\n\n                Le belle membra in ch\u2019 io\n     Rinchiusa fui, e sono in terra sparte.\n\n\n[7] _Vita Nuova_,\u00a7 v.\n\n[8] _Schermo della veritade_,--natural philosophy.\n\n[9] _Convito_, II. cap. 16: _Faccia che gli occhi d\u2019 esta Donna miri_;\ngli occhi di questa Donna sono le sue _dimostrazioni_, le quali dritte\nnegli occhi dello intelletto inhamorano l\u2019 anima, libera nelle\ncondizioni. Oh dolcissimi ed ineffabili sembianti, e rubatori subitani\ndella mente umana, che nelle dimostrazioni negli occhi della Filosofia\napparite, quando essa alli suoi drudi ragiona! Veramente in voi \u00e8 la\nsalute, per la quale si fa beato chi vi guarda, e salvo dalla morte\ndella ignoranza e delli vizi.... E cosi, in fine di questo secondo\nTrattato, dico e affermo che la Donna, di cui io innamorai appresso lo\nprimo amore, fu la bellissima e onestissima figlia dello Imperadore\ndell\u2019 universo, alla quale Pittagora pose nome _Filosofia_.\n\n[10] _Purgatorio_, xvii. 106-11:\n\n     Or perch\u00e8 mai non pu\u00f2 dalla salute\n       Amor del suo suggetto volger viso,\n       Dall\u2019 odio proprio son le cose tute:\n     E perch\u00e8 intender non si pu\u00f2 diviso,\n       E per s\u00e8 stante, alcuno esser dal primo,\n       Da quello odiare ogni affetto \u00e8 deciso.\n\n\n[11] _Inferno_, iii. 64-66:\n\n     Questi sciaurati, che mai non fur vivi,\n       Erano ignudi e stimolati molto\n       Da mosconi e da vespe ch\u2019 erano ivi.\n\n\n[12] _Ibid._, iv. 41, 42:\n\n     Semo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi\n     Che senza speme vivemo in disio.\n\nCf. _Purgatorio_, iii. 37-45, where Virgil says:\n\n     \u201cState contenti, umana gente, al _quia_;\n       Ch\u00e8 se potuto aveste veder tutto,\n       Mestier non era partorir Maria;\n     E disiar vedeste senza frutto\n       Tai, che sarebbe lor disio quetato,\n       Ch\u2019eternalmente \u00e8 dato lor per lutto.\n     Io dico d\u2019Aristotele e di Plato,\n       E di molti altri.\u201d E qui chin\u00f2 la fronte;\n       E pi\u00f9 non disse, e rimase turbato.\n\n\n[13] _Inferno_, ix. 106-33, and x.\n\n[14] _Ibid_., xxviii.\n\n[15] _Inferno_, iii. 124-26:\n\n     E pronti sono a trapassar lo rio,\n       Ch\u00e8 la divina giustizia gli sprona\n       Si che la tema si volge in disio.\n\n\n[16] _Purgatorio_, xxi. 61-69:\n\n     Della mondizia sol voler fa prova,\n       Che, tutta libera a mutar convento,\n       L\u2019alma sorprende, e di voler le giova....\n     Ed io che son giaciuto a questa doglia\n       Cinquecento anni e pi\u00f9, pur mo sentii\n       Libera volont\u00e0 di miglior soglia.\n\n\n[17] _Inferno_, xiv. 63-66:\n\n       \u201cO Capaneo, in ci\u00f2 che non s\u2019ammorza\n     La tua superbia, se\u2019 tu pi\u00f9 punito:\n       Nullo martirio, fuor che la tua rabbia,\n       Sarebbe al tuo furor dolor compito.\u201d\n\n\n[18] Alfred de Musset, _Po\u00e9sies Nouvelles, Souvenir_:\n\n     Dante, pourquoi dis-tu qu\u2019il n\u2019est pire mis\u00e8re\n     Qu\u2019un souvenir heureux dans les jours de douleur?\n     Quel chagrin t\u2019a dict\u00e9 cette parole am\u00e8re,\n            Cette offense au malheur?\n\n      ... Ce blasph\u00e8me vant\u00e9 ne vient pas de ton c\u0153ur.\n     Un souvenir heureux est peut-\u00eatre sur terre\n            Plus vrai que le bonheur....\n\n     Et c\u2019est \u00e0 ta Fran\u00e7oise, \u00e0 ton ange de gloire,\n     Que tu pouvais donner ces mots \u00e0 prononcer,\n     Elle qui s\u2019interrompt, pour conter son histoire,\n            D\u2019un \u00e9ternel baiser!\n\n\n[19] _Paradiso_, iii. 73-90:\n\n     \u201cSe disiassimo esser pi\u00f9 superne,\n       Foran discordi li nostri disiri\n       Dal voler di colui che qui ne cerne,...\n     E la sua volontate \u00e8 nostra pace;\n       Ella \u00e8 quel mare al qual tutto si move\n       Ci\u00f2 ch\u2019ella crea, e che natura face.\u201d\n     Chiaro mi fu allor com\u2019 ogni dove\n       In cielo \u00e8 Paradiso, e s\u00ec la grazia\n       Del sommo ben d\u2019un modo non vi piove.\n\n\n[20] _Paradiso_, xxii. 133-39:\n\n     Col viso ritornai per tutte e quante\n     Le sette spere, e vidi questo globo\n     Tal, ch\u2019io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante;\n     E quel consiglio per migliore approbo\n     Che l\u2019ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa\n     Chiamar si puote veramente probo.\n\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\nGOETHE\u2019S FAUST\n\n\n\nIn approaching the third of our philosophical poets, there is a scruple\nthat may cross the mind. Lucretius was undoubtedly a philosophical poet;\nhis whole poem is devoted to expounding and defending a system of\nphilosophy. In Dante the case is almost as plain. The _Divine Comedy_ is\na moral and personal fable; yet not only are many passages explicitly\nphilosophical, but the whole is inspired and controlled by the most\ndefinite of religious systems and of moral codes. Dante, too, is\nunmistakably a philosophical poet. But was Goethe a philosopher? And is\n_Faust_ a philosophical poem?\n\nIf we say so, it must be by giving a certain latitude to our terms.\nGoethe was the wisest of mankind; too wise, perhaps, to be a philosopher\nin the technical sense, or to try to harness this wild world in a\nbrain-spun terminology. It is true that he was all his life a follower\nof Spinoza, and that he may be termed, without hesitation, a naturalist\nin philosophy and a pantheist. His adherence to the general attitude of\nSpinoza, however, did not exclude a great plasticity and freedom in his\nown views, even on the most fundamental points. Thus Goethe did not\nadmit the mechanical interpretation of nature advocated by Spinoza. He\nalso assigned, at least to privileged souls, like his own, a more\npersonal sort of immortality than Spinoza allowed. Moreover, he\nharboured a generous sympathy with the dramatic explanations of nature\nand history current in the Germany of his day. Yet such transcendental\nidealism, making the world the expression of a spiritual endeavour, was\na total reversal of that conviction, so profound in Spinoza, that all\nmoral energies are resident in particular creatures, themselves sparks\nin an absolutely infinite and purposeless world. In a word, Goethe was\nnot a systematic philosopher. His feeling for the march of things and\nfor the significance of great personages and great ideas was indeed\nphilosophical, although more romantic than scientific. His thoughts upon\nlife were fresh and miscellaneous. They voiced the genius and learning\nof his age. They did not express a firm personal attitude, radical and\nunified, and transmissible to other times and persons. For philosophers,\nafter all, have this advantage over men of letters, that their minds,\nbeing more organic, can more easily propagate themselves. They scatter\nless influence, but more seeds.\n\nIf from Goethe we turn to _Faust_--and it is as the author of _Faust_\nonly that we shall consider him--the situation is not less ambiguous. In\nthe play, as the young Goethe first wrote it, philosophy appeared in the\nfirst line,--_Hab nun ach die Philosophey_; but it appeared there, and\nthroughout the piece, merely as a human experience, a passion or an\nillusion, a fund of images or an ambitious art. Later, it is true, under\nthe spell of fashion and of Schiller, Goethe surrounded his original\nscenes with others, like the prologue in heaven, or the apotheosis of\nFaust, in which a philosophy of life was indicated; namely, that he who\nstrives strays, yet in that straying finds his salvation. This idea left\nstanding all that satirical and Mephistophelian wisdom with which the\nwhole poem abounds, the later parts no less than the earlier. Frankly,\nit was a moral that adorned the tale, without having been the seed of\nit, and without even expressing fairly the spirit which it breathes.\n_Faust_ remained an essentially romantic poem, written to give vent to a\npregnant and vivid genius, to touch the heart, to bewilder the mind with\na carnival of images, to amuse, to thrill, to humanize; and, if we must\nspeak of philosophy, there were many express maxims in the poem, and\nmany insights, half betrayed, that exceeded in philosophic value the\nbelated and official moral which the author affixed to it, and which he\nhimself warned us not to take too seriously.[1]\n\n_Faust_ is, then, no philosophical poem, after an open or deliberate\nfashion; and yet it offers a solution to the moral problem of existence\nas truly as do the poems of Lucretius and Dante. Heard philosophies are\nsweet, but those unheard may be sweeter. They may be more unmixed and\nmore profound for being adopted unconsciously, for being lived rather\nthan taught. This is not merely to say what might be said of every work\nof art and of every natural object, that it could be made the\nstarting-point for a chain of inferences that should reveal the whole\nuniverse, like the flower in the crannied wall. It is to say, rather,\nthat the vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it\ndominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the\nbest-chosen words.\n\nNow _Faust_ is the foam on the top of two great waves of human\naspiration, merging and heaping themselves up together,--the wave of\nromanticism rising from the depths of northern traditions and genius,\nand the wave of a new paganism coming from Greece over Italy. These are\nnot philosophies to be read into _Faust_ by the critic; they are\npassions seething in the drama. It is the drama of a philosophical\nadventure; a rebellion against convention; a flight to nature, to\ntenderness, to beauty; and then a return to convention again, with a\nfeeling that nature, tenderness, and beauty, unless found there, will\nnot be found at all. Goethe never depicts, as Dante does, the object his\nhero is pursuing; he is satisfied with depicting the pursuit. Like\nLessing, in his famous apologue, he prefers the pursuit of the ideal to\nthe ideal itself; perhaps, as in the case of Lessing, because the hope\nof realizing the ideal, and the interest in realizing it, were beginning\nto forsake him.\n\nThe case is somewhat as that of Dante would have been if, instead of\nrecognizing and loving Beatrice at first sight and rising into a vision\nof the eternal world, ready-made and perfectly ordered, Dante had passed\nfrom love to love, from _donna gentile_ to _donna gentile_, always\nlonging for the eyes of Beatrice without ever meeting them. The _Divine\nComedy_ would then have been only human, yet it might have suggested and\nrequired the very consummation that the _Divine Comedy_ depicts; and\nwithout expressing this consummation, our human comedy might have\nfurnished materials and momentum for it, such that, if ever that\nconsummation came to be expressed, it would be more deeply felt and more\nadequately understood. Dante gives us a philosophical goal, and we have\nto recall and retrace the journey; Goethe gives us a philosophic\njourney, and we have to divine the goal.\n\nGoethe is a romantic poet; he is a novelist in verse. He is a\nphilosopher of experience as it comes to the individual; the philosopher\nof life, as action, memory, or soliloquy may put life before each of us\nin turn. Now the zest of romanticism consists in taking what you know\nis an independent and ancient world as if it were material for your\nprivate emotions. The savage or the animal, who should not be aware of\nnature or history at all, could not be romantic about them, nor about\nhimself. He would be blandly idiotic, and take everything quite\nunsuspectingly for what it was in him. The romanticist, then, should be\na civilized man, so that his primitiveness and egotism may have\nsomething paradoxical and conscious about them; and so that his life may\ncontain a rich experience, and his reflection may play with all\nvarieties of sentiment and thought. At the same time, in his inmost\ngenius, he should be a barbarian, a child, a transcendentalist, so that\nhis life may seem to him absolutely fresh, self-determined, unforeseen,\nand unforeseeable. It is part of his inspiration to believe that he\ncreates a new heaven and a new earth with each revolution in his moods\nor in his purposes. He ignores, or seeks to ignore, all the conditions\nof life, until perhaps by living he personally discovers them.[2] Like\nFaust, he flouts science, and is minded to make trial of magic, which\nrenders a man\u2019s will master of the universe in which he seems to live.\nHe disowns all authority, save that mysteriously exercised over him by\nhis deep faith in himself. He is always honest and brave; but he is\nalways different, and absolves himself from his past as soon as he has\noutgrown or forgotten it. He is inclined to be wayward and foolhardy,\njustifying himself on the ground that all experience is interesting,\nthat the springs of it are inexhaustible and always pure, and that the\nfuture of his soul is infinite. In the romantic hero the civilized man\nand the barbarian must be combined; he should be the heir to all\ncivilization, and, nevertheless, he should take life arrogantly and\negotistically, as if it were an absolute personal experiment.\n\nThis singular combination was strikingly exemplified in Doctor Johannes\nFaustus, a figure half historical, half legendary, familiar to Goethe in\nhis boyhood in puppet-shows and chapbooks. An adventurer in the romantic\nas well as in the vulgar sense of the word, somewhat like Paracelsus or\nGiordano Bruno, Doctor Faustus had felt the mystery of nature, had\nscorned authority, had credited magic, had lived by imposture, and had\nfled from the police. His blasphemous boasts and rascally conduct,\ntogether with his magic arts, had made him even in his lifetime a\nscandalous and interesting personage. He was scarcely dead when legends\ngathered about his name. It was published abroad that he had sold his\nsoul to the devil, in exchange for twenty-four years of wild pleasures\nupon earth.\n\nThis legend purported to offer a terrible and edifying example, a\nwarning to all Christians to avoid the snares of science, of pleasure,\nand of ambition. These things had sent Doctor Faustus into hell-fire;\nhis corpse, found face downward, could not be turned over upon its back.\nNevertheless, we may suspect that even at the beginning people\nrecognized in Doctor Faustus a braver brother, a somewhat enviable\nreprobate who had dared to relish the good things of this life above the\nsad joys vaguely promised for the other. All that the Renaissance valued\nwas here represented as in the devil\u2019s gift; and the man in the street\nmight well doubt whether it was religion or worldly life that was\nthereby made the more unlovely. Doubtless the Lutheran authors of the\nfirst chapbook felt, and felt rightly, that those fine things which\ntempted Faustus were unevangelical, pagan, and popish; yet they could\nnot cease altogether to admire and even to covet them, especially when\nthe first ardours of the Old-Christian revival had had time to cool.\n\nMarlowe, who wrote only a few years later, made a beginning in the\nrehabilitation of the hero. His Faustus is still damned, but he is\ntransformed into the sort of personage that Aristotle approves of for\nthe hero of tragedy, essentially human and noble, but led astray by some\nexcusable vice or error. Marlowe\u2019s public would see in Doctor Faustus a\nman and a Christian like themselves, carried a bit too far by ambition\nand the love of pleasure. He is no radical unbeliever, no natural mate\nfor the devil, conscienceless and heathen, like the typical villain of\nthe Renaissance. On the contrary, he has become a good Protestant, and\nholds manfully to all those parts of the creed which express his\nspontaneous affections. A good angel is often overheard whispering in\nhis ear; and if the bad angel finally prevails, it is in spite of\ncontinual remorse and hesitation on the Doctor\u2019s part. This excellent\nFaustus is damned by accident or by predestination; he is brow-beaten by\nthe devil and forbidden to repent when he has really repented. The\nterror of the conclusion is thereby heightened; we see an essentially\ngood man, because in a moment of infatuation he had signed away his\nsoul, driven against his will to despair and damnation. The alternative\nof a happy solution lies almost at hand; and it is only a lingering\ntaste for the lurid and the horrible, ingrained in this sort of\nmelodrama, that sends him shrieking to hell.\n\nWhat makes Marlowe\u2019s conclusion the more violent and the more\nunphilosophical is the fact that, to any one not dominated by\nconvention, the good angel, in the dialogue, seems to have so much the\nworse of the argument. All he has to offer is sour admonition and\nexternal warnings:\n\n     _O Faustus, lay that damned book aside,_\n     _And gaze not on it lest it tempt thy soul,_\n     _And heap God\u2019s heavy wrath upon thy head._\n     _Read, read, the Scriptures; that is blasphemy...._\n     _Sweet Faustus, think of heaven, and heavenly things._\n\nTo which the evil angel replies:\n\n     _No, Faustus, think of honour and of wealth._\n\nAnd in another place:\n\n     _Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art,_\n     _Wherein all nature\u2019s treasure is contained._\n     _Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,_\n     _Lord and commander of these elements._\n\nThere can be no doubt that the devil here represents the natural ideal\nof Faustus, or of any child of the Renaissance; he appeals to the vague\nbut healthy ambitions of a young soul, that would make trial of the\nworld. In other words, this devil represents the true good, and it is no\nwonder if the honest Faustus cannot resist his suggestions. We like him\nfor his love of life, for his trust in nature, for his enthusiasm for\nbeauty. He speaks for us all when he cries:\n\n     _Was this the face that launched a thousand ships_\n     _And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?_\n\nEven his irreverent pranks, being directed against the pope, endear him\nthe more to an anti-clerical public; and he appeals to courtiers and\ncavaliers by his lofty poetical scorn for such crabbed professions as\nthe law, medicine, or theology. In a word, Marlowe\u2019s Faustus is a martyr\nto everything that the Renaissance prized,--power, curious knowledge,\nenterprise, wealth, and beauty.\n\nHow thoroughly Marlowe and Goethe are on the way towards reversing the\nChristian philosophy of life may be seen if we compare _Faust_ for a\nmoment (as, in other respects, has often been done) with _The\nWonder-working Magician_ of Calderon. This earlier hero, St. Cyprian of\nAntioch, is like Faust in being a scholar, signing away his soul to the\ndevil, practising magic, embracing the ghost of beauty, and being\nultimately saved. Here the analogy ends. Cyprian, far from being\ndisgusted with all theory, and particularly with theology, is a pagan\nphilosopher eagerly seeking God, and working his way, with full faith in\nhis method, toward Christian orthodoxy. He floors the devil in\nscholastic argument about the unity of God, his power, wisdom, and\ngoodness. He falls in love, and sells his soul merely in the hope of\nsatisfying his passion. He studies magic chiefly for the same reason;\nbut magic cannot overrule the free-will of the Christian lady he loves\n(a modern and very Spanish one, though supposed to adorn ancient\nAntioch). The devil can supply only a false phantasm of her person, and\nas Cyprian approaches her and lifts her veil, he finds a hideous\ndeath\u2019s-head beneath; for God can work miracles to cap those of any\nmagician, and can beat the devil at his own game. Thunderstruck at this\nportent, Cyprian becomes a Christian. Half-naked, ecstatic, taken for a\nmadman, he bears witness loudly and persistently to the power, wisdom,\nand goodness of the one true God; and, since the persecution of Decius\nis then going on, he is hurried away to martyrdom. His lady, sentenced\nalso for the same cause, encourages him by her heroic attitude and\nwords. Their earthly passion is dead; but their souls are united in\ndeath and in immortality.\n\nIn this drama we see magic checkmated by miracles, doubt yielding to\nfaith, purity resisting temptation, passion transformed into zeal, and\nall the glories of the world collapsing before disillusion and\nasceticism. These glories are nothing, the poet tells us, but dust,\nashes, smoke, and air.\n\nThe contrast with Goethe\u2019s _Faust_ could not be more complete. Both\npoets take the greatest liberties with their chronology, yet the spirit\nof their dramas is remarkably true to the respective ages in which they\nare supposed to occur. Calderon glorifies the movement from paganism to\nChristianity. The philosophy in which that movement culminated--Catholic\northodoxy--still dominates the poet\u2019s mind, not in a perfunctory way,\nbut so as to kindle his imagination, and render his personages sublime\nand his verses rapturous. Goethe\u2019s _Faust_, on the contrary, glorifies\nthe return from Christianity to paganism. It shows the spirit of the\nRenaissance liberating the soul, and bursting the bonds of traditional\nfaith and traditional morals. This spirit, after manifesting itself\nbrilliantly at the time of the historical Faust, had seemed to be\nsmothered in the great world during the seventeenth century. Men\u2019s\ncharacters and laws had reaffirmed their old allegiance to Christianity,\nand the Renaissance survived only abstractly, in scholarship or the fine\narts, to which it continued to lend a certain classic or pseudo-classic\nelegance. In Goethe\u2019s time, however, a second Renaissance was taking\nplace in the souls of men. The love of life, primal and adventurous, was\ngathering head in many an individual. In the romantic movement and in\nthe French Revolution, this love of life freed itself from the politic\ncompromises and conventions that had been stifling it for two hundred\nyears. Goethe\u2019s hero embodies this second, romantic emancipation of the\nmind, too long an unwilling pupil of Christian tradition. He cries for\nair, for nature, for all experience. Cyprian, on the other hand, an\nunwilling pupil of paganism, had yearned for truth, for solitude, and\nfor heaven.\n\nSuch was the legend that, to the great good fortune of mankind,\nfascinated the young Goethe, and took root in his fancy. Around it\ngathered the experiences and insights of sixty well-filled years:\n_Faust_ became the poetical autobiography and the philosophic testament\nof Goethe. He stuffed it with every enthusiasm that diversified his own\nlife, from the great alternative of romantic or classical art, down to\nthe controversy between Neptunism and Vulcanism in geology, and to his\nfatherly admiration for Lord Byron. Yet in spite of the liberties he\ntook with the legend, and the personal turn he gave it, nothing in its\nhistorical associations escaped him. His life in Frankfort and in\nStrassburg had made the mediaeval scene familiar to his fancy; Herder\nhad communicated to him an imaginative cult for all that was national\nand characteristic in art and manners; the spell of Gothic architecture\nhad fallen on him; and he had learned to feel in Shakespeare the\ninfinite strength of suggestion in details, in multitudinous glimpses,\nin lifelike medleys of sadness and mirth, in a humble realism in\nexternals, amid lyric and metaphysical outpourings of the passions. The\nsense for classic beauty which had inspired Marlowe with immortal lines,\nand was later to inspire his own _Helena,_ was as yet dormant; but\ninstead he had caught the humanitarian craze, then prevalent, for\ndefending and idealizing the victims of law and society, among others,\nthe poor girl who, to escape disgrace, did away with her new-born child.\nSuch a victim of a selfish seducer and a Pharisaical public was to add\na desirable touch of femininity and pathos to the story of Faust:\nGretchen was to take the place, at least for the nonce, of the coveted\nHelen.\n\nThis Gretchen was to be no common creature, but one endowed with all the\ninnocence, sweetness, intelligence, fire, and fortitude which Goethe was\nfinding, or thought he was finding, in his own Gretchens, K\u00e4tchens, and\nFrederickes. For the young Goethe, though very learned, was no mere\nstudent of books; to his human competence and power to succeed, he\njoined the gusts of feeling, the irresponsible raptures, the sudden\nsorrows, of a genuine poet. He was a true lover, and a wayward one. He\ncould delve into magic with awe, in a Faust-like spirit of adventure; he\ncould burn offerings in his attic to the rising sun; he could plunge\ninto Christian mysticism; and there could well up, on occasion, from the\ndeep store of his unconscious mind, floods of words, of images, and of\ntears. He was a genius, if ever there was one; and this genius, in all\nits freshness, was poured into the composition of _Faust_,--the most\nkindred of themes, the most picturesque and magical of romances.\n\nIn Goethe\u2019s first version of the poem, before the story of Gretchen, we\nfind the studious Faust, as in Marlowe, soliloquizing on the vanity of\nthe sciences. They grasp nothing of the genuine truth; they are verbal\nshams. They have not even brought Faust fame or riches. Perhaps magic\nmight do better. The air was full of spirits; could they be summoned to\nour aid, possibly the secrets of nature might be unlocked. We might\nreach true science, and through it undreamt-of power over the material\nworld. For Nature, according to Goethe, really has secrets. She is not\nall open to eventual inspection; she is no mere mechanism of minute\nparts and statable laws. Our last view of her, like our first glimpse,\nmust be interpreted; from the sum of her manifestations we must divine\nher soul. Therefore only a poetic and rhetorical art, like magic, has\nany chance of unveiling her, and of bringing us face to face with the\ntruth.\n\nIn this invocation of spirits, as Goethe\u2019s Faust makes it, there is no\nquestion of selling, or even of risking, the soul. This Faust, unlike\nMarlowe\u2019s, has no faith and no fear. From the point of view of the\nchurch he is damned already as an unbeliever; but, as an unbeliever, he\nis looking for salvation in another quarter. Like the bolder spirits of\nthe Renaissance, he is hoping to find in universal nature, infinite,\nplacid, non-censorious, an escape from the prison-house of Christian\ndoctrine and Christian law. His magic arts are the sacrament that will\ninitiate him into his new religion, the religion of nature. He turns to\nnature also in another sense, more characteristic of the age of Goethe\nthan of that of Faust. He longs for grandiose solitudes. He feels that\nmoonlight, caves, mountains, driving clouds, would be his best medicine\nand his best counsellors. The souls of Rousseau, Byron, and Shelley are\npre-incarnate in this Faust, the epitome of all romantic rebellions.\nThey coexist there with the souls of Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno. The\nwild aspects of nature, he thinks, will melt and renew his heart, while\nmagic reveals the mysteries of cosmic law and helps him to exploit them.\n\nFull of these hopes, Faust opens his book of magic at the sign of the\nMacrocosm: it shows him the mechanism of the world, all forces and\nevents playing into one another and forming an infinite chain. The\nspectacle entrances him; he seems to have attained one of his dearest\nambitions. But here he comes at once upon the other half, or, as Hegel\nwould call it, the other moment, of the romantic life. Every romantic\nideal, once realized, disenchants. No matter what we attain, our\ndissatisfaction must be perpetual. Thus the vision of the universe,\nwhich Faust now has before him, is, he remembers, only a vision; it is a\ntheory or conception.[3] It is not a rendering of the inner life of the\nworld as Shakespeare, for instance, feels and renders it. Experience, as\nit comes to him who lives and works, is not given by that theoretical\nvision; in science experience is turned into so many reviewed events,\nthe passage of so much substance through so many forms. But Faust does\nnot want an image or description of reality; he yearns to enact and to\nbecome the reality itself.\n\nIn this new search, he fixes his eye on the sign of the Earth-Spirit,\nwhich seems more propitious to his present wish. This sign is the key to\nall experience. All experience tempts Faust; he shrinks from nothing\nthat any mortal may have endured; he is ready to undertake everything\nthat any mortal may have done. In all men he would live; and with the\nlast man he will be content to die.[4] So mighty is his yearning for\nexperience that the Earth-Spirit is softened and appears at his bidding.\nIn a red flame he sees its monstrous visage, and his enthusiasm is\nturned to horror. Outspread before him is the furious, indiscriminate\ncataract of life, the merciless flux, the infinite variety, the absolute\ninconstancy of it. This general life is not for any individual to\nrehearse; it bursts all bounds of personality. Each man may assimilate\nthat part only which falls within his understanding, only that aspect\nwhich things wear from his particular angle, and to his particular\ninterests. _Du gleichst_, the Earth-Spirit cries to him,--_du gleichst\ndem Geist den du begreifst, nicht mir._\n\nThis saying--that the life possible and good for man is the life of\nreason, not the life of nature--is a hard one to the romantic,\nunintellectual, insatiable Faust. He thinks, like many another\nphilosopher of feeling, that since his is a part of the sum of\nexperience, the whole of experience should be akin to his. But in fact\nthe opposite is far nearer the truth. Man is constituted by his\nlimitations, by his station contrasted with all other stations, and his\npurposes chosen from amongst all other purposes. Any great scope he can\nattain must be due to his powers of representation. His understanding\nmay render him universal; his life never can. Faust, as he hears this\nsentence from the departing Earth-Spirit, collapses under it. He feels\nimpotent to gainsay what the tumult of the world is thundering at him,\nbut he will not accept on authority so unwelcome and chastening a truth.\nAll his long experience to come will scarcely suffice to convince him of\nit.\n\nThese are the chief philosophical ideas that appear in the two earlier\nversions of Goethe\u2019s _Faust_,--the _Urfaust_ and the _Fragment_. What\nMephistopheles says to the young student is only a clever expansion of\nwhat Faust had said in his first monologue about the vanity of science\nand of the learned professions. Mephistopheles, too, finds theory\nashen, and the tree of life green and full of golden fruit; only, having\nmore experience than Faust of the second disenchanting moment in the\nromantic dialectic, he foresees that this golden fruit also will turn to\nashes in the mouth, as it did in the garden of Eden. Science is folly,\nbut life is no better; for after all is not science a part of life?\n\nWhen we turn to the first part in its final shape, or to the entire\ndrama, we find many changes and additions that seem to transform the\nromantic picture of the opening scene, and to offer us a rounded\nphilosophy. The changes, however, are more in expression than in\nultimate substance, and the additions are chiefly new illustrations of\nthe ancient theme. Critics who study the _Entstehungsgeschichte_ of\nworks of art help us to analyze them more intelligently and reproduce\nmore accurately what, at various times, may have been the intention of\ntheir authors. Yet these bits of information would be dearly bought if\nwe were distracted by them from what gives poetic value and individual\ncharacter to the result--its total idiosyncrasy, its place in the moral\nworld. The place in the moral world of Goethe\u2019s _Faust_ as a whole is\njust the place which the opening scene gave it in the beginning. It\nfills more space, it touches more historical and poetic matters; but its\ncentre is the old centre, and its result the old result. It remains\nromantic in its pictures and in its philosophy.\n\nThe first addition that promises to throw new light on the idea of the\ndrama is the _Prologue in Heaven_. In imitation of _The Book of Job_, we\nfind the morning stars--the three archangels--singing together; and then\nfollows a very agreeable and humorous conversation between the Lord and\nMephistopheles. The scene is in the style of mediaeval religious plays,\nand this circumstance might lead us to suppose that the point at issue\nwas the salvation of Faust\u2019s soul. But that, in the literal sense, is\nfar from being the case. As in _Job_, the question is what sentiments\nthe tempted mortal will maintain during this life, not what fate will\nafterwards overtake his disembodied spirit. Dead men, Mephistopheles\nobserves, do not interest him. He is not a devil from a subterranean\nhell, concerned, out of pique or ambition, to increase the population of\ntortured shades in that fabulous region. He dwells in the atmosphere of\nearth; he knows nothing of the suns or the worlds, the life of man is\nhis element.[5] He remains--what he was in the first versions of the\nplay--a part of the Earth-Spirit, one of its embodiments. His particular\noffice, as we shall see presently, is to precipitate that continual\ndestruction which is involved in the continual renewal of life. He finds\nit very foolish of Faust to demand everything and be satisfied with\nnothing; and his wager is that Faust may be brought to demand nothing\nand be satisfied with what chance throws in his way, that he shall lick\nthe dust, and lick it with pleasure,[6] that he shall renounce the\ndignity of willing what is not and cannot be, and crawl about, like the\nserpent, basking in the comforts of the moment.\n\nAgainst this, the Lord pronounces Faust to be his servant,--the servant,\nthat is, of an ideal,--and declares that whoever strives after an ideal\nmust needs go astray; yet in his necessary errors, the good man never\nmisses the right road.[7] In other words, to have an ideal to strive\nfor, and, like Faust, never to be satisfied, is itself the salvation of\nman. Faust does not yet know this. He half believes there is some\nconcrete and ultimate good beyond, and so is bitter and violent in his\ndissatisfaction; but in due season he will come to clearness on this\nsubject, and understand that only he deserves freedom and life who must\ndaily win them afresh.[8] Mephistopheles himself, with his mockeries and\nseductions, helps to keep the world moving and men wide awake.[9]\nImperfection is all that is possible in the world of action; but the\nangels may gather up and fix in thought the perfect forms approached or\nsuggested by existence.[10]\n\nIn the two earlier versions of _Faust_, Mephistopheles appears without\nintroduction; we find him amusing himself by giving ambiguous advice to\nan innocent scholar, and accompanying Faust in his wanderings. His\nmocking tone and miraculous powers mark him at once as the devil of the\nlegend; but several passages prove that he is a deputy of the\nEarth-Spirit evoked by Faust in the beginning. That he should be both\ndevil and world-demon ought not to surprise the learned.[11] The devils\nof popular mediaeval religion were not cut out of whole cloth: they were\nsimply the Neoplatonic demons of the air, together with the gods of\nOlympus and the more ancient chthonic deities, blackened by sectarian\nzeal, and degraded by a coarse and timid imagination. Many of these\npagan sprites, indeed, had been originally impish and mischievous, since\nnot all the aspects of nature are lovely or propitious, nor all the\ndreams of men. But as a whole they were without malice in their\nirresponsible, elemental life,--winged powers darting through space\nbetween the earth and the moon. They were not dwellers in a subterranean\nhell; they were not tormentors nor tormented. Often they swarmed and\nsang blithely, as they do in _Faust_ and even in the _Wonder-working\nMagician_; and if at other times they croaked or hooted, it was like\nfrogs and owls, less lovely creatures than humming-birds, but not less\nnatural.\n\nOne of these less amiable spirits of the atmosphere, especially of its\nambient fire, is the Mephistopheles of Goethe. Why he delighted in evil\nrather than in good he himself explains in a profound and ingenious\nfashion. Darkness or nothingness, he says, existed alone before the\nbirth of light. Nothingness or darkness still remains the fundamental\nand, to his mind, the better part of that mixture of being and privation\nwhich we call existence. Nothing that exists can be preserved, nor does\nit deserve to be; therefore it would have been better if nothing had\never existed.[12] To deny the value of whatever is, and to wish to\ndestroy it, according to him, is the only rational ambition; he is the\nspirit that denies continually, he is the everlasting No. This\nspirit--which we might compare with the Mars of Lucretius--has great\npower in the world; every change, in one of its aspects, expresses it,\nsince in one of its aspects, every change is the destruction of\nsomething. This spirit is always willing evil, for it wills death, with\nall the folly, crime, and despair that minister to death. But in willing\nevil, it is always accomplishing good; for these evils make for\nnothingness, and nothingness is the true good. The famous couplet--\n\n                                 _Ein Teil von jener Kraft_\n     _Die stets das B\u00f6se will, und stets das Gute schafft--_\n\nis far from expressing the Hegelian commonplace with which it is usually\nidentified. It does not mean that destruction serves a good purpose\nafter all because it clears the way for \u201csomething higher.\u201d\nMephistopheles is not one of those philosophers who think change and\nevolution a good in themselves. He does not admit that his activity,\nwhile aiming at evil, contributes unintentionally to the good. It\ncontributes to the good intentionally, because the evil it does is, in\nhis opinion, less than the evil it cures. He is the cruel surgeon to the\ndisease of life.\n\nIf he admitted the other interpretation, he would be _ipso facto_\nconverted to the view of the Lord in the _Prologue_. His naughtiness\nwould become, in his own eyes, a needful service in the cause of\nlife,--a condition of life being really vital and worth living. He might\nthen continue his sly operations and biting witticisms, without one drop\nmore of kindness, and yet be sanctioned in everything by the Absolute,\nand adopt the smile and halo of the optimist. He would have perceived\nthat he was the spice of life, the yeast and red pepper of the world,\nnecessary to the perfect savour of the providential concoction. As it\nis, Mephistopheles is far more modest. He says that he wills evil,\nbecause what he wills is contrary to what his victims will; he is the\ngreat contradictor, the blaster of young hopes. Yet he does good,\nbecause these young hopes, if let alone, would lead to misery and\nabsurdity. His contradiction nips the folly of living in the bud. To be\nsure, as he goes on to acknowledge, the destructive power never wins a\ndecisive victory. While everything falls successively beneath his\nsickle, the seeds of life are being scattered perpetually behind his\nback. The Lucretian Venus has her innings, as well as the Lucretian\nMars. The eternal see-saw, the ancient flux, continues without end and\nwithout abatement.\n\nThus Mephistopheles has a philosophy, and is justified and consistent in\nhis own eyes; yet in the course of the drama he wears various masks and\nhas various moods. All he says and does cannot be made altogether\ncompatible with the essence of his mind, as Goethe finally conceived it.\nThe dramatic figure of Mephistopheles had been fixed long before in its\ngraphic characteristics. Mephistopheles, for instance, is extremely old;\nhe feels older than the universe. There is nothing new for him; he has\nno illusions. His feeling for anyone he sees is choked, as happens to\nold people, by his feelings for the infinite number of persons he\nremembers. He is heartless, because he is impersonal and universal. He\nis altogether inhuman; he has not the shames nor the tastes of man. He\noften assumes the form of a dog,--it is his favourite mask in this\nearthly carnival. He is not averse to the witches\u2019 kitchen, with its\nsenseless din and obscenity. He puts up good-naturedly with the\ngrotesque etiquette of the spirit-world, observes all the rules about\nsigning contracts in blood, knocking thrice, and respecting pentagrams.\nWhy should he not? Dogs and demons of the air are forms of the\nEarth-Spirit as much as man; man has no special dignity that\nMephistopheles should respect. Man\u2019s morality is one of the moralities,\nhis conventions are not less absurd than the conventions of other\nmonkeys. Mephistopheles has no prejudice against the snake; he\nunderstands and he despises his cousin, the snake, also. He understands\nand he despises himself; he has had time to know himself thoroughly.\n\nHis understanding, however, is not impartial, because he is the advocate\nof death; he cannot sympathize with the other half of the Earth-Spirit,\nwhich he does not represent,--the creative, propulsive, enamoured side,\nthe side that worships the ideal, the love that makes the world go\nround. What enchants an ingenuous soul can only amuse Mephistopheles;\nwhat torments it gives him a sardonic satisfaction. Thus he comes to be\nin fact a sour and mocking devil. At other times, when he opposes the\nsilliness and romanticism of Faust, he seems to be the spokesman of all\nexperience and reason; as when he warns Faust that to be at all you must\nbe something in particular. Yet even this he says by way of checking and\ndenying Faust\u2019s passion for the infinite. The soberest truth, when\nunwelcome, may seem to the sentimental as diabolical as the most cynical\nlie; so that in spite of the very unequal justness of his various\nsentiments, Mephistopheles retains his dramatic unity. We recognize his\ntone and, under whatever mask, we think him a villain and find him\ndelightful.\n\nSuch is the spirit, and such are the conditions, in which Faust\nundertakes his adventures. He thirsts for all experience, including all\nexperience of evil; he fears no hell; and he hopes for no happiness. He\ntrusts in magic; that is, he believes, or is willing to make believe,\nthat apart from any settled conditions laid down by nature or God,\npersonal will can evoke the experience it covets by its sheer force and\nassurance. His bond with Mephistopheles is an expression of this\nromantic faith. It is no bargain to buy pleasures on earth at the cost\nof torments hereafter; for neither Goethe, nor Faust, nor Mephistopheles\nbelieves that such pleasures are worth having, or such torments\npossible.\n\nThe first taste Faust gets of the world is in Auerbach\u2019s cellar, and he\nfinds it at once unpalatable. His mature and disdainful mind cannot be\namused by the sodden merriment he sees there. He is without that\nsimplicity and heartiness which might find even drunken gaiety\nattractive; to put up with such follies, one must know nothing, like\nBrander, or everything, like Mephistopheles. Faust still feels the\n\u201cpathos of distance;\u201d he is acutely conscious of something incomparably\nnoble just out of reach. In the witches\u2019 kitchen, which he next visits,\npleasure is still more ugly and shallow; here the din is even more\nnonsensical, and the fancy more obscene. Yet Faust comes forth with two\npoints gained in his romantic rehabilitation; he has taken the elixir of\nyouth and he has seen the image of Helen in a mirror. He is henceforth\nin love with ideal beauty, and being young again, he is able to find\nideal beauty in the first woman he sees.\n\nThe great episode of Gretchen follows; and when he leaves her (after the\nduel with her brother) to view the wild revels of the Walpurgisnacht,\nhis youth for a moment catches the contagion of that orgy. His love of\nideal beauty, which remains unsatisfied, saves him, however, from any\nlasting illusion. He sees a little red mouse running out of the mouth of\na nymph he is pursuing, and his momentary inclination turns to aversion.\nWhen he goes back to Gretchen in her prison, it is too late for him to\ndo more than recognize the ruin he has brought about,--Gretchen\ndishonoured, her mother poisoned, her brother killed, her child drowned\nby her in a pond, and she herself about to be executed. Gretchen, who is\nthe only true Christian in this poem, refuses to be rescued, because she\nwishes to offer her voluntary death in propitiation for her grave,\nthough almost involuntary, offences.\n\nThis is the end of Faust\u2019s career through the world of private\ninterests,--the little world,--and we may well ask what has been the\nfruit of his experiments so far. What strength or experience has he\namassed for his further adventures? The answer is to be found in the\nfirst scene of the second part, where Goethe reaches his highest potency\nas a poet and as a philosopher. We are transported to a remote,\nmagnificent, virgin country. It is evening, and Faust is lying, weary\nbut restless, on a flowering hillside. Kindly spirits of nature are\nhovering above his head. Ariel, their leader, bids them bring solace to\nthe troubled hero. It is enough he was unfortunate--they make no\nquestion whether he was a saint or a sinner.[13] The spirits in chorus\nthen sing four lovely stanzas, one for each watch of the night. The\nfirst invokes peace, forgetfulness, surrender to the healing influence\nof sleep. Pity and remorse, they seem to say, in the words of Spinoza,\nare evil and vain; failure is incidental; error is innocent. Nature has\nno memory; forgive yourself, and you are forgiven. The song of the\nsecond watch merges the unhappy soul again in the infinite incorruptible\nsubstance of nature. The stars, great or little, twinkling or pure, fill\nthe sky with their ordered peace, and the sea with their trembling\nreflection. In this universal circulation there is no private will, no\npermanent division. In the next watch we find the plastic stress of\nnature beginning to reassert itself; seeds swell, sap mounts up the\nthawing branches, buds grow full; everything recovers a fresh\nindividuality and a tender, untried will. Finally, the song of the\nfourth watch bids the flowers open their petals and Faust his eyes.\nForces renewed in repose should tempt a new career. Nature is open to\nthe brave, to the intelligent; all may be noble, who dare to be so.[14]\n\nSoothed by these ministrations, Faust awakes full of new strength and\nambition. He watches with rapture the sunlight touch the mountain-tops\nand creep down gradually into the valleys. When it reaches him, he\nturns to look directly at the sun; but he is dazzled. He seems to\nremember the Earth-Spirit that had once allured and then rejected him.\nWe wish, he says, to kindle our torch of life, and we produce a\nconflagration, a monstrous medley of joy and sorrow, love and hate. Let\nus turn our backs upon the sun, upon infinite force and infinite\nexistence. Fitter for our eyes the waterfall over against it, the\ntorrent of human affairs, broken into a myriad rills. Upon the mists\nthat rise from it the sunlight paints a rainbow, always vanishing, but\nalways restored. This is the true image of rational human achievement.\nWe have our life in the iridescence of the world.[15] Or, as Shelley has\nsaid it for us,--\n\n     _Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,_\n     _Stains the white radiance of eternity,_\n     _Until death tramples it to fragments._\n\nThis death, however, is itself unstable. The Lucretian Venus, by\nreshaping our senses and instincts, builds that coloured dome once more.\nThe rainbow is renewed, as the mists rise again or the wind dies down,\nand creation is glorious as on the first day.\n\nThis is Goethe\u2019s theory of rejuvenation and immortality. It is\nthoroughly naturalistic. There is a life after death, but only for such\nsouls as have enough scope to identify themselves with those forms which\nnature, in her uncertain oscillations, always tends to reproduce. A deep\nmind has deep roots in nature,--it will bloom many times over. But what\na deep mind carries over into its next incarnation--perhaps in some\nremote sphere--is not its conventional merits and demerits, its load of\nremorse, or its sordid memories. These are washed away in its new\nbaptism. What remains is only what was deep in that deep mind, so deep\nthat new situations may again imply and admit it.\n\nWhen, after the scene with the Earth-Spirit, Faust thought of suicide,\nhe regarded it as a means to escape from oppressive conditions and to\nbegin a fresh life under conditions wholly different and unknown. It was\nas if a man in middle life, disgusted with his profession, should\nabandon it to take up another. Such a resolution is serious. It\nexpresses a great dissatisfaction with things as they stand, but it also\nexpresses a great hope. Death, for Faust, is an adventure, like any\nother; and if, contrary to his presumption, this adventure should prove\nthe last, that, too, is a risk he is willing to run. Accordingly, as he\nlifted the poison to his lips, he drank to the dawn, to a new springtime\nof existence. It was by no means the saddest nor the weakest moment of\nhis life.[16]\n\nAlthough the sound of an Easter hymn checked him, bringing sentimental\nmemories of a religion in which he no longer believed, the\ntransformation scene he looked for was only postponed. There is not much\ndifference between dying as he had thought to die and living as he was\nabout to live. Venomous essences, artificially brewed, were hardly\nnecessary to bring him to a new life; the adventures he was entering\nupon were suicidal enough, for he was to strive without hope of\nattainment, and to proceed by passionate wilfulness or magic, without\naccepting the discipline of art or reason. Now, at the close of the\nfirst part, he has drained this poisoned life to the dregs, and the\nfever into which he falls carries him of itself into a new existence. He\nis not grown better or more reasonable; he is simply starting afresh,\nlike a new day or a new person. It contains, however, the fundamental\npart of his character; his will remains wayward, but indomitable, and\nhis achievements remain fruitless. Only he will henceforth be romantic\non a broader stage, that of history and civilization; and his magic\nwill summon before him illusions somewhat more intellectual,\ncounterfeits of beauty and of power. His old loves have blown over, like\nthe storms of a bygone year; and with only a dreamlike memory of his\npast errors, he goes forth to meet a new day.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAmong the allurements which, in the old legend, prompted Faust to sell\nhis soul to the devil, one was the beauty of woman. The poor recluse,\ngrown gray among his parchments, had never noticed real women, or had\nnot found them beautiful. Pedantic child that he was, when he thought of\nthe beauty of woman, he thought only of Helen of Troy. And Helen, to the\nFaust of the legend, was simply what Venus might be to Tannh\u00e4user,--a\nwoman more ravishing than other ravishing women. She was the supreme\ninstance of a vulgar thing. The young Goethe, however, who was a poet\nand a true German, and loved with his soul, was not attracted by this\nideal. He gave his Faust a tenderer love,--a love of the heart as well\nas of the senses. Later, also, when Goethe took up the old legend again\nin a more antiquarian spirit, and restored Helen to her place in it, he\ntransformed her from a symbol of feminine beauty alone into a symbol for\nall beauty, and especially for the highest beauty, that of Hellas. The\nsecond love of Faust is the passion for classicism.\n\nThis passion in a romantic age is not so paradoxical as it may sound.\nWinckelmann and the philologians were restoring something ancient. It\nwas the romantic passion for all experience--for the faded experience of\nthe ancients also--that made, for them, the poetry and the charm of\nantiquity. How dignified everything was in those heroic days! How noble,\nserene, and abstracted! How pure the blind eyes of statues, how chaste\nthe white folds of the marble drapery! Greece was a remote, fascinating\nvision, the most romantic thing in the history of mankind. The sad,\ndelicious emotion one felt before a ruined temple was as sentimental as\nanything one could feel before a ruined castle, but more elegant and\nmore choice. It was sentimentality in marble. The heroes of the _Iliad_\nwere idealized in the same way as the savages of Rousseau were\nidealized, or as the robbers of Schiller.\n\nThe romantic classicism of the Napoleonic era lies between the polite\nclassicism of the French seventeenth century and the archaeological\nclassicism of our present Grecians. French classicism had been quite\nindifferent to the picturesque aspects of ancient life; it could\ntolerate on the stage an Achilles in a periwig and laces. What the\nFrench tragedians had adopted from the ancients was something inward, a\nstandard of character and motive, or a criterion of taste. They studied\nharmony and restraint, not because these had been Greek qualities, but\nbecause they were qualities essentially reasonable and beautiful,\nnaturally belonging, even in modern times, to a cultivated society and a\ncultivated poet. Again, the admiration for Greece which is common in our\ntime among people of judgement differs from that of Goethe and his age;\nfor if we admire the artistic expression of ancient life in poetry or\nsculpture, we know that these manifestations were made possible by a\nlong political and moral discipline, and that, in spite of that\ndiscipline, ancient art remained very mixed, and often grotesque and\nimpure.\n\nFor Goethe, however, as for Byron, Greece was less a past civilization,\nto be studied scientifically, than a living idea, a summons to new forms\nof art and of sentiment. Goethe was never so romantic as when he was\nclassical. His distichs are like theatrical gestures; he feels the sweep\nof his toga as he rounds them off. His Iphigenia is a sentimental\ndream--_verflucht human_, as he himself came to feel; and his Helena is\nan evocation of magic, magical not merely by accident and in the story,\nbut essentially so, in her ghostly semi-consciousness and glassy beauty.\nThe apparent incongruities of the scenes in which she appears,\nsurrounded by German knights in the court of a feudal castle, are not\nreal incongruities. For this Helen is not a thing of the past; she is\nthe present dream and affectation of things classical in a romantic\nera. Faust and his vassals offer Helen the most chivalrous and\nexaggerated homage; they introduce her, as a play queen, into their\nsociety. Faust retires with her to Arcadia,--the land of intentional and\nmid-summer idleness. Here a son, Euphorion, is born to them, a young\ngenius, classic in aspect, but wildly romantic and ungovernable in\ntemper. He scales the highest peaks, pursues by preference the nymphs\nthat flee from him, loves violence and unreason, and finally, thinking\nto fly, falls headlong, like Icarus, and perishes. His last words call\nhis mother after him, and she follows, leaving her veil and mantle\nbehind, as Euphorion had left his lyre. On the mantle of Helen, which\nswells into a cloud, Faust is borne back again to his native Germany;\nits virtue, as he learns, is to lift him above all commonness.\n\nThis long allegory is charming enough, as a series of pictures and\nmelodies, to leave the reader content not to interpret it; yet the\nintention of the poet is clear, if we care to disentangle it. By going\ndown into the bowels of nature, where the earth goddesses dwell, who are\nthe first mothers of all life and of all civilizations alike, we may\ngather intelligence to comprehend even the most alien existence. Greece,\nafter such a reversion to the elemental, will appear to us in her\nunmatched simplicity and beauty. The vision will be granted us, although\nthe object we see belongs to a distant past; and if our enthusiasm,\nlike that of Faust, is passionate and indomitable, we may actually\npersuade the Queen of the Dead to yield up Helen that we may wed her.\nOur scholarship and philosophy, our faithful imitation of Greek art and\nliterature, may actually render the Greek scene familiar to us. Yet the\nsetting of this recovered genius will still be modern; it will become\nhalf modern itself; we shall have to teach Helen to rhyme. The product\nof this hybrid inspiration will be a romantic soul in the garb of\nclassicism, a lovely wild thing, fated to die young. When this\nenthusiasm has dashed itself against the hard conditions of life, the\nbeauty of Greece, that was its mother, will also pale before our eyes.\nWe shall be, perforce, content to let it return to the realm of\nirrevocable past things. Only its garment, the monuments of its art and\nthought, will remain to raise us, if we have loved them, above all\nvulgarity in taste and in moral allegiance.\n\nIt is an evidence of Goethe\u2019s great wisdom that he felt that romantic\nclassicism must be subordinated or abandoned; that Helen must evaporate,\nwhile Faust returned to Germany and to the feeling that after all\nGretchen was his true love.[17] At the same time the issue of this\nwonderful episode is a little disappointing. At the beginning, the\nvision of Helen in a mirror had inspired Faust with renewed enthusiasm.\nThe sight of her again, in the magic play, had altogether enraptured\nand overwhelmed him; and this inspiration had come just when, after the\ndeath of Gretchen, he had resolved to pursue not all experience, as at\nfirst, but rather the best, experience,[18]--a hint that the\ntransformations of Faust\u2019s will were expected somehow to constitute a\nreal progress. There was, indeed, among mortals such an infinite need of\nthis incomparable and symbolic Helen, that it could move the very\nguardians of the dead to mercy and to tears. When we remember all this,\nwe have some reason to expect that a great and permanent improvement in\nthe life and heart of our hero should follow on his obtaining so rare a\nboon. But to live within Arcadia Helen was not needed; any Phyllis would\nhave served.\n\nHelen, to be sure, leaves some relics behind, by which we may understand\nthat the influence of Greek history, literature, and sculpture may still\navail to cultivate the mind and give it an air of distinction. Perhaps\nin the commonwealth he is about to found, Faust would wish to establish\nnot only dykes and freedom, but also professorships of Greek and\narchaeological museums. And the lyre of Euphorion, which is also left\nus, may signify that poems like Byron\u2019s _Isles of Greece_, Keats\u2019s\n_Grecian Urn, Die G\u00f6tter Griechenlands_ of Schiller, and Goethe\u2019s own\nclassical pieces will continue to enrich European literature. This is\nsomething, but not enough to lift Faust\u2019s immense enthusiasm for Helen\nabove a crass illusion. That dream of a perfect beauty to be achieved,\nof a perfect life to be lived according to nature and reason, would have\nended in a little scholarship and a little pedantry. Faust would have\nwon Helen in order to hand her over to Wagner.\n\nHelen was queen of Sparta; and although of course the Doric Sparta of\nLycurgus was something much later, and had nothing to do with the Sparta\nof Homer, yet taken symbolically it is the happiest accident that Helen,\nthe type of Greek perfection in beauty, should have been queen of\nSparta, the type of Greek perfection in discipline. A Faust that had\ntruly deserved and understood Helen would have built her an Hellenic\ncity; he would have become himself an _\u1f04\u03bd\u03b1\u03be \u1f00\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u1ff6\u03bd_, a master of men,\none of those poets in things, those shapers of well-bred generations and\nwise laws, of which Plato speaks, contrasting them with Homer and other\npoets in words only. For the beauty of mind and body that fascinates the\nromantic classicist, and which inspired the ancient poets themselves,\nwas not a product of idleness and sentimentality, nor of material and\nforced activity; it was a product of orderly war, religion, gymnastics,\nand deliberate self-government.\n\nThe next turn in Faust\u2019s fortunes actually finds him a trader, a\nstatesman, an empire-builder; and if such a rolling stone could gather\nany moss, we should expect to see here, if anywhere, the fruits of that\n\u201caesthetic education of mankind\u201d which Helen represented. We should\nexpect Faust, who had lain in the lap of absolute beauty, to understand\nits nature. We should expect him, in eager search after perfection, to\nestablish his state on the distinction between the better and the\nworse,--a distinction never to be abolished or obscured for one who has\nloved beauty. In other words, he might have established a moral society\nfounding it on great renunciations and on enlightened heroisms, so that\nthe highest beauty might really come down and dwell within that city.\nBut we find nothing of the sort. Faust founds his kingdom because he\nmust do something; and his only ideal of what he hopes to secure for his\nsubjects is that they shall always have something to do. Thus the will\nto live, in Faust, is not in the least educated by his experience. It\nchanges its objects because it must; the passions of youth yield to\nthose of age; and among all the illusions of his life the most fatuous\nis the illusion of progress.\n\nIt is characteristic of the absolute romantic spirit that when it has\nfinished with something it must invent a new interest. It beats the bush\nfor fresh game; it is always on the verge of being utterly bored. So\nnow that Helen is flown, Mephistopheles must come to the rescue, like an\namiable nurse, and propose all sorts of pastimes. Frankfort, Leipzig,\nParis, Versailles, are described, with the entertainments that life\nthere might afford; but Faust, who was always _difficile_, has been\nrendered more so by his recent splendid adventures. However, a new\nimpulse suddenly arises in his breast. From the mountain-top to which\nHelen\u2019s mantle has borne him, he can see the German Ocean, with its\ntides daily covering great stretches of the flat shore, and rendering\nthem brackish and uninhabitable. It would be a fine thing to reclaim\nthose wastes, to plant there a prosperous population. After Greece,\nFaust has a vision of Holland.\n\nThis last ambition of Faust\u2019s is as romantic as the others. He feels the\nprompting towards political art, as he had felt the prompting towards\nlove or beauty.[19] The notion of transforming things by his will, of\nleaving for ages his mark upon nature and upon human society, fascinates\nhim;[20] but this passion for activity and power, which some\nsimple-minded commentators dignify with the name of altruism and of\nliving for others, has no steady purpose or standard about it.[21]\nGoethe is especially lavish in details to prove this point. Magic, the\nexercise of an unteachable will, is still Faust\u2019s instrument.\nMephistopheles, by various arts of illusion, secures the triumph of the\nemperor in a desperate war which he is carrying on against a justifiable\ninsurrection. As a reward for the aid rendered, Faust receives the shore\nmarches in fief. The necessary dykes and canals are built by magic; the\nspirits that Mephistopheles commands dig and build them with strange\nincantations. The commerce that springs up is also illegitimate: piracy\nis involved in it.\n\nNor is this all. On some sand-dunes that diversified the original beach,\nan old man and his wife, Philemon and Baucis, lived before the advent of\nFaust and his improvements. On the hillock, besides their cottage, there\nstood a small chapel, with a bell which disturbed Faust in his newly\nbuilt palace, partly by its importunate sound, partly by its Christian\nsuggestions, and partly by reminding him that he was not master of the\ncountry altogether, and that something existed in it not the product of\nhis magical will. The old people would not sell out; and in a fit of\nimpatience Faust orders that they should be evicted by force, and\ntransferred to a better dwelling elsewhere. Mephistopheles and his\nminions execute these orders somewhat roughly: the cottage and chapel\nare set on fire, and Philemon and Baucis are consumed in the flames, or\nburied in the ruins.\n\nFaust regrets this accident; but it is one of those inevitable\ndevelopments of action which a brave man must face, and forget as soon\nas possible. He had regretted in the same way the unhappiness of\nGretchen, and, presumably, the death of Euphorion; but such is romantic\nlife. His will, though shaken, is not extinguished by such\nmisadventures. He would continue, if life could last, doing things that,\nin some respect, he would be obliged to regret: but he would banish that\nregret easily, in the pursuit of some new interest, and, on the whole,\nhe would not regret having been obliged to regret them. Otherwise, he\nwould not have shared the whole experience of mankind, but missed the\nimportant experience of self-accusation and of self-recovery.\n\nIt is impossible to suppose that the citizens he is establishing behind\nleaky dykes, so that they may always have something to keep them busy,\nwould have given him unmixed satisfaction if he could really have\nforeseen their career in its concrete details. Holland is an\ninteresting country, but hardly a spectacle which would long entrance an\nidealist like Faust, so exacting that he has found the arts and sciences\nwholly vain, domesticity impossible, and kitchens and beer-cellars\nbeneath consideration. The career of Faust himself had been far more\nfree and active than that of his industrious burghers could ever hope to\nbe. His interest in establishing them is a masterful, irresponsible\ninterest. It is one more arbitrary passion, one more selfish illusion.\nAs he had no conscience in his love, and sought and secured nobody\u2019s\nhappiness, so he has no conscience in his ambition and in his political\narchitecture; but if only his will is done, he does not ask whether,\njudged by its fruits, it will be worth doing. As his immense dejection\nat the beginning, when he was a doctor in his laboratory, was not\nfounded on any real misfortune, but on restlessness and a vague infinite\nambition, so his ultimate satisfaction in his work is not founded on any\ngood done, but on a passionate wilfulness. He calls the thing he wants\nfor others good, because he now wants to bestow it on them, not because\nthey naturally want it for themselves. Incapable of sympathy, he has a\nmomentary pleasure in policy; and in the last and \u201chighest\u201d expression\nof his will, in his statesmanship and supposed public spirit, he remains\nromantic and, if need be, aggressive and criminal.\n\nMeantime, his end is approaching. The smoke from that poor little\nconflagration turns into shadowy-shapes of want, guilt, care, and death,\nwhich come and hover about him. Want is kept off by his wealth, and\nguilt is transcended by his romantic courage. But care slips through the\nkeyhole, breathes upon him, and blinds him; while death, though he does\nnot see it, follows close upon his heels. Nevertheless, the old\nman--Faust is in his hundredth year--is undaunted, and all his thoughts\nare intent on the future, on the work to which he has set his hand. He\norders the digging to proceed on the canals he is building; but the\nspirits that seem to obey him are getting out of hand, and dig his grave\ninstead.\n\nWhen he feels death upon him, Faust has one of his most splendid moments\nof self-assertion. He has stormed through the world, he says, taking\nwith equal thanks the buffets and rewards of fortune;[22] and the last\nword of wisdom he has learned is that no man deserves life or freedom\nwho does not daily win them anew. He will leave the dykes he has thrown\nup against the sea to protect the nation he has established; a symbol\nthat their health and freedom must consist in perpetual striving against\nan indomitable foe. The thought of many generations living in that\nwholesome danger and labour fills him with satisfaction; he could almost\nsay to this moment, in which that prospect opens before his mind\u2019s eye,\n\u201cStay, thou art so fair.\u201d[23] And with these words--a last challenge and\nmock surrender to Mephistopheles--he sinks into the grave open at his\nfeet.\n\nWho has won the wager? Faust has almost, though not quite, pronounced\nthe words which were to give Mephistopheles the victory; but the sense\nof them is new, and Mephistopheles has not succeeded in making Faust\nsurrender his will to will, his indefinite idealism. Since what\nsatisfies Faust is merely the consciousness that this will to will is to\nbe maintained, and that neither he, nor the colonists he has brought\ninto being, will ever lick the dust, and take comfort, without any\nfurther aspiration, in the chance pleasures of the moment. Faust has\nmaintained his enthusiasm for a stormy, difficult, and endless life. He\nhas been true to his romantic philosophy.\n\nHe is therefore saved, in the sense in which salvation is defined in the\n_Prologue in Heaven_, and presently again in the song of the angels that\nreceive his soul when they say: \u201cWhosoever is unflagging in his\nstriving for ever, him we can redeem.\u201d[24] This salvation does not hang\non any improvement in Faust\u2019s character,--he was sinful to the end, and\nhad been God\u2019s unwitting servant from the very beginning,--nor does it\nlie in any revolution in his fortunes, as if in heaven he were to be\ndifferently employed than on earth. He is going to teach life to the\nsouls of young boys, who have died too soon to have had in their own\npersons any experience of Rathskellers, Gretchens, Helens, and\nWalpurgisnachts.[25] Teaching (though not exactly in these subjects) had\nbeen Doctor Faustus\u2019 original profession; and the weariness of it was\nwhat had driven him to magic and almost to suicide, until he had escaped\ninto the great world of adventure outside. Certainly, with his new\npupils he will not be more content; his romantic restlessness will not\nforsake him in heaven. Some fine day he will throw his celestial\nschool-books out of the window, and with his pupils after him, go forth\nto taste life in some windier region of the clouds.\n\nNo, Faust is not saved in the sense of being sanctified or brought to a\nfinal, eternal state of bliss. The only improvement in his nature has\nbeen that he has passed, at the beginning of the second part, from\nprivate to public activities. If, at the end of this part, he expresses\na wish to abandon magic and to live like a man among men, in the bosom\nof real nature, that wish remains merely Platonic.[26] It is a thought\nthat visited Goethe often during his long career, that it is the part of\nwisdom to accept life under natural conditions rather than to pretend to\nevoke the conditions of life out of the will to live. This thought, were\nit held steadfastly, would constitute an advance from transcendentalism\nto naturalism. But the spirit of nature is itself romantic. It lives\nspontaneously, bravely, without premeditation, and for the sake of\nliving rather than of enjoying or attaining anything final. And under\nnatural conditions, the vicissitudes of an endless life would be many;\nand there could be no question of an ultimate goal, nor even of an\nendless progress in any particular direction. The veering of life is\npart of its vitality,--it is essential to romantic irony and to romantic\npluck.\n\nThe secret of what is serious in the moral of _Faust_ is to be looked\nfor in Spinoza,--the source of what is serious in the philosophy of\nGoethe. Spinoza has an admirable doctrine, or rather insight, which he\ncalls seeing things under the form of eternity. This faculty is\nfundamental in the human mind; ordinary perception and memory are cases\nof it. Therefore, when we use it to deal with ultimate issues, we are\nnot alienated from experience, but, on the contrary, endowed with\nexperience and with its fruits. A thing is seen under the form of\neternity when all its parts or stages are conceived in their true\nrelations, and thereby conceived together. The complete biography of\nCaesar is Caesar seen under the form of eternity. Now the complete\nbiography of Faust, Faust seen under the form of eternity, shows forth\nhis salvation. God and Faust himself, in his last moment of insight, see\nthat to have led such a life, in such a spirit, _was_ to be saved; it\nwas to be the sort of man a man should be. The blots on that life were\nhelpful and necessary blots; the passions of it were necessary and\ncreative passions. To have felt such perpetual dissatisfaction is truly\nsatisfactory; such desire for universal experience is the right\nexperience. You are saved in that you lived well; saved not after you\nhave stopped living well, but during the whole process. Your destiny has\nbeen to be the servant of God. That God and your own conscience should\npronounce this sentence is your true salvation. Your worthiness is\nthereby established under the form of eternity.\n\nThe play, in its philosophic development, ends here; but Goethe added\nseveral more details and scenes, with that abundance, that love, of\nsymbolic pictures and poetic epigrams which characterizes the whole\nsecond part. As Faust expires, or rather before he does so,\nMephistopheles posts one of his little demons at each aperture of the\nhero\u2019s body, lest the soul should slip out without being caught. At the\nsame time a bevy of angels descends, scattering the red roses of love\nand singing its praises. These roses, if they touch Mephistopheles and\nhis demons, turn to balls of fire; and although fire is their familiar\nelement, they are scorched and scared away. The angels are thus enabled\nto catch the soul of Faust at their leisure, and bear it away\ntriumphantly.\n\nIt goes without saying that this fight of little boys over a fluttering\nbutterfly cannot be what really determines the issue of the wager and\nthe salvation of Faust; but Goethe, in his conversations with Eckermann,\njustifies this intervention of a sort of mechanical accident, by the\nanalogy of Christian doctrine. Grace is needed, besides virtue; and the\nintercession of Gretchen and the Virgin Mary, like that of the Virgin\nMary, Lucia, and Beatrice, in Dante\u2019s case, and the stratagem of the\nballs of fire, all stand for this external condition of salvation.\n\nThis intervention of grace is, at bottom, only a new symbol for the\nessential justification, under the form of eternity, of what is\nimperfect and insufficient in time. The chequered and wilful life of\nFaust is not righteous in any of its parts; yet righteousness is\nimputed to it as a whole; divine love accepts it as sufficient;\nspeculative reason declares that to be the best possible life which, to\nhumdrum understanding, seems a series of faults and of failures. If the\nforetaste of his new Holland fills, from a distance, the dying Faust\nwith satisfaction, how much more must the wonderful career of Faust\nhimself deserve to be accepted and envied, and proclaimed to be its own\nexcuse for being! The faults of Faust in time are not counted against\nhim in eternity. His crimes and follies were blessings in disguise. Did\nthey not render his life interesting and fit to make a poem of? Was it\nnot by falling into them, and rising out of them, that Faust was Faust\nat all? This insight is the higher reason, the divine love, supervening\nto save him. What ought to be imperfect in time is, because of its\nvery imperfection there, perfect when viewed under the form of\neternity. To live, to live just as we do, that--if we could only realize\nit--is the purpose and the crown of living. We must seek improvement; we\nmust be dissatisfied with ourselves; that is the appointed attitude, the\nhistrionic pose, that is to keep the ball rolling. But while we feel\nthis dissatisfaction we are perfectly satisfactory, and while we play\nour game and constantly lose it, we are winning the game for God.\n\nEven this scene, however, did not satisfy the prolific fancy of the\npoet, and he added a final one,--the apotheosis or _Himmelfahrt_ of\nFaust. In the Campo Santo at Pisa Goethe had seen a fresco representing\nvarious anchorites dwelling on the flanks of some sacred\nmountain,--Sinai, Carmel, or Athos,--each in his little cave or\nhermitage; and above them, in the large space of sky, flights of angels\nwere seen rising towards the Madonna. Through such a landscape the poet\nnow shows us the soul of Faust carried slowly upwards.\n\nThis scene has been regarded as inspired by Catholic ideas, whereas the\n_Prologue in Heaven_ was Biblical and Protestant; and Goethe himself\nsays that his \u201cpoetic intention\u201d could best be rendered by images\nborrowed from the tradition of the mediaeval church. But in truth there\nis nothing Catholic about the scene, except the names or titles of the\npersonages. What they say is all sentimental landscape-painting or vague\nmysticism, such as might go with any somewhat nebulous piety; and much\nis actually borrowed from Swedenborg. What is Swedenborgian,\nhowever,--such as the notion of heavenly instruction, passage from\nsphere to sphere, and looking through other people\u2019s eyes,--is in turn a\nmere form of expression. The \u201cpoetic intention\u201d of the author is, as we\nhave seen, altogether Spinozitic. Undoubtedly he conceives that the soul\nof Faust is to pass, in another world, through some new series of\nexperiences. But that destiny is not his salvation; it is the\ncontinuance of his trial. The famous chorus at the very end repeats,\nwith an interesting variation, the same contrast we have seen before\nbetween the point of view of time and that of eternity. Everything\ntransitory, says the mystic chorus,[27] is only an image; here (that is,\nunder the form of eternity) the insufficient is turned into something\nactual and complete; and what seemed in experience an endless pursuit\nbecomes to speculation a perfect fulfilment. The ideal of something\ninfinitely attractive and essentially inexhaustible--the eternal\nfeminine, as Goethe calls it--draws life on from stage to stage.\n\nGretchen and Helen had been symbols of this ideal; Goethe\u2019s green old\nage had felt, to the very last, the charm of woman, the sweetness and\nthe sorrow of loving what he could not hope to possess, and what, in its\nideal perfection, necessarily eludes possession. He had reconciled\nhimself, not without tears, to this desire without hope, and, like\nPiccarda in the _Paradiso_, he had blessed the hand that gave the\npassion and denied the happiness.[28] Thus, in dreaming of one\nsatisfaction and renouncing it, he had found a satisfaction of another\nkind. _Faust_ ends on the same philosophical level on which it\nbegan,--the level of romanticism. The worth of life lies in pursuit, not\nin attainment; therefore, everything is worth pursuing, and nothing\nbrings satisfaction--save this endless destiny itself.\n\nSuch is the official moral of _Faust_, and what we may call its general\nphilosophy. But, as we saw just now, this moral is only an afterthought,\nand is far from exhausting the philosophic ideas which the poem\ncontains. Here is a scheme for experience; but experience, in filling it\nout, opens up many vistas; and some of these reveal deeper and higher\nthings than experience itself. The path of the pilgrim and the inns he\nstops at are neither the whole landscape he sees as he travels, nor the\ntrue shrine he is making for. And the incidental philosophy or\nphilosophies of Goethe\u2019s _Faust_ are, to my mind, often better than its\nultimate philosophy. The first scene of the second part, for instance,\nis better, poetically and philosophically, than the last. It shows a\ndeeper sense for the realities of nature and of the soul, and it is\nmore sincere. Goethe there is interpreting nature with Spinoza; he is\nnot dreaming with Swedenborg, nor talking equivocal paradoxes with\nHegel.\n\nIn fact, the great merit of the romantic attitude in poetry, and of the\ntranscendental method in philosophy, is that they put us back at the\nbeginning of our experience. They disintegrate convention, which is\noften cumbrous and confused, and restore us to ourselves, to immediate\nperception and primordial will. That, as it would seem, is the true and\ninevitable starting-point. Had we not been born, had we not peeped into\nthis world, each out of his personal eggshell, this world might indeed\nhave existed without us, as a thousand undiscoverable worlds may now\nexist; but for us it would not have existed. This obvious truth would\nnot need to be insisted on but for two reasons: one that conventional\nknowledge, such as our notions of science and morality afford, is often\ntop-heavy; asserts and imposes on us much more than our experience\nwarrants,--our experience, which is our only approach to reality. The\nother reason is the reverse or counterpart of this; for conventional\nknowledge often ignores and seems to suppress parts of experience no\nless actual and important for us as those parts on which the\nconventional knowledge itself is reared. The public world is too narrow\nfor the soul, as well as too mythical and fabulous. Hence the double\ncritical labour and reawakening which romantic reflection is good\nfor,--to cut off the dead branches and feed the starving shoots. This\nphilosophy, as Kant said, is a cathartic: it is purgative and\nliberating; it is intended to make us start afresh and start right.\n\nIt follows that one who has no sympathy with such a philosophy is a\ncomparatively conventional person. He has a second-hand mind. Faust has\na first-hand mind, a truly free, sincere, courageous soul. It follows\nalso, however, that one who has no philosophy but this has no wisdom; he\ncan say nothing that is worth carrying away; everything in him is\nattitude and nothing is achievement. Faust, and especially\nMephistopheles, do have other philosophies on top of their\ntranscendentalism; for this is only a method, to be used in reaching\nconclusions that shall be critically safeguarded and empirically\ngrounded. Such outlooks, such vistas into nature, are scattered\nliberally through the pages of _Faust_. Words of wisdom diversify this\ncareer of folly, as exquisite scenes fill this tortuous and overloaded\ndrama. The mind has become free and sincere, but it has remained\nbewildered.\n\nThe literary merits of Goethe\u2019s _Faust_ correspond accurately with its\nphilosophical excellences. In the prologue in the theatre Goethe himself\nhas described them; much scenery, much wisdom, some folly, great wealth\nof incident and characterization; and behind, the soul of a poet singing\nwith all sincerity and fervour the visions of his life. Here is\nprofundity, inwardness, honesty, waywardness; here are the most touching\naccents of nature, and the most varied assortment of curious lore and\ngrotesque fancies. This work, says Goethe (in a quatrain intended as an\nepilogue, but not ultimately inserted in the play),--this work is like\nhuman life: it has a beginning, it has an end; but it has no totality,\nit is not one whole.[29] How, indeed, should we draw the sum of an\ninfinite experience that is without conditions to determine it, and\nwithout goals in which it terminates? Evidently all a poet of pure\nexperience can do is to represent some snatches of it, more or less\nprolonged; and the more prolonged the experience represented is the more\nit will be a collection of snatches, and the less the last part of it\nwill have to do with the beginning. Any character which we may attribute\nto the whole of what we have surveyed would fail to dominate it, if that\nwhole had been larger, and if we had had memory or foresight enough to\ninclude other parts of experience differing altogether in kind from the\nepisodes we happen to have lived through. To be miscellaneous, to be\nindefinite, to be unfinished, is essential to the romantic life. May we\nnot say that it is essential to all life, in its immediacy; and that\nonly in reference to what is not life--to objects, ideals, and\nunanimities that cannot be experienced but may only be conceived--can\nlife become rational and truly progressive? Herein we may see the\nradical and inalienable excellence of romanticism; its sincerity,\nfreedom, richness, and infinity. Herein, too, we may see its\nlimitations, in that it cannot fix or trust any of its ideals, and\nblindly believes the universe to be as wayward as itself, so that nature\nand art are always slipping through its fingers. It is obstinately\nempirical, and will never learn anything from experience.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[1] Eckermann, Conversation of May 6, 1827: \u201cDas ist zwar ein wirksamer,\nmanches erkl\u00e4render, guter Gedanke, aber es ist keine Idee die dem\nGanzen ... zugrunde liege.\u201d\n\n[2] _Faust_, Part it-i. Act v. 375-82:\n\n     Ich bin nur durch die Welt gerannt;\n     Ein jed\u2019 Gel\u00fcst ergriff ich bei den Haaren,\n     Was nicht gen\u00fcgte, liess ich fahren,\n     Was mir entwischte, liess ich ziehn.\n     Ich habe nur begehrt und nur vollbracht\n     Und abermals gew\u00fcnscht und so mit Macht\n     Mein Leben durchgest\u00fcrmt; erst gross und m\u00e4chtig,\n     Nun aber geht es weise, geht bed\u00e4chtig.\n\n\n[3] _Faust_, Part i., _Studierzimmer_, i.:\n\n     Welch Schauspiel! aber, ach! ein Schauspiel nur!\n     Wo fass\u2019 ich dich, unendliche Natur?\n     Euch, Br\u00fcste, wo?\n\n\n[4] _Faust_, Part i., _Studierzimmer_:\n\n     Du, Geist der Erde, bist mir n\u00e4her;\n     Schon f\u00fchl\u2019 ich meine Kr\u00e4fte h\u00f6her,\n     Schon gl\u00fch\u2019 ich wie von neuem Wein;\n     Ich f\u00fchle Mut, mich in die Welt zu wagen,\n     Der Erde Weh, der Erde Gl\u00fcck zu tragen,...\n     Mit St\u00fcrmen mich herumzuschlagen\n     Und in des Schiffbruchs Knirschen nicht zu zagen.\n\n\n[5] _Faust, Prolog im Himmel_:\n\n                             Mit den Toten\n     Hab\u2019 ich mich niemals gern befangen.\n     Am meisten lieb\u2019 ich mir die vollen, frischen Wangen.\n     F\u00fcr einen Leichnam bin ich nicht zu Haus;\n     Mir geht es, wie der Katze mit der Maus....\n     Von Sonn\u2019 und Welten weiss ich nichts zu sagen,\n     Ich sehe nur, wie sich die Menschen plagen.\n\n\n[6] _Faust, Prolog im Himmel_:\n\n     Staub soll er fressen, und mit Lust.\n\n\n[7] Ibid.:\n\n     Es irrt der Mensch, so lang\u2019 er strebt.\n     Ein guter Mensch in seinem dunkeln Drange\n     Ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewusst.\n\n\n[8] _Faust_, Part ii. Act v.:\n\n     Ja! diesem Sinne bin ich ganz ergeben.\n     Das ist der Weisheit letzter Schluss:\n     Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben,\n     Der t\u00e4glich sie erobern muss.\n\n\n\n[9] Ibid., Part i., _Prolog im Himmel_:\n\n     Des Menschen Th\u00e4tigkeit kann allzu leicht erschlaffen,\n     Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh;\n     Drum geb\u2019 ich gem ihm den Gesellen zu,\n     Der reizt und wirkt und muss als Teufel schaffen.\n\n\n\n[10] Ibid.:\n\n     Das Werdende, das ewig wirkt und lebt,\n     Umfass\u2019 euch mit der Liebe holden Schranken,\n     Und was in schwankender Erscheinung schwebt,\n     Befestiget mit dauernden Gedanken!\n\n\n[11] _Faust_, Part i., _Wald und H\u00f6hle_:\n\n         Erhabner Geist, du gabst mir, gabst mir alles,\n     Warum ich bat. Du hast mir nicht umsonst\n     Dein Angesicht im Feuer zugewendet....\n         O, dass dem Menschen nichts Vollkommnes wird,\n     Empfind\u2019 ich nun. Du gabst zu dieser Wonne,\n     Die mich den G\u00f6ttern nah und n\u00e4her bringt,\n     Mir den Gef\u00e4hrten, &c.\n\nAlso, ibid., _Tr\u00fcber Tag_: Grosser herrlicher Geist, der du mir zu\nerscheinen w\u00fcrdigtest, der du mein Herz kennest und meine Seele, warum\nan den Schandgesellen mich Schmieden, der sich am Schaden weidet und am\nVerderben sich letzt?\n\n[12] _Faust_, Part i., _Studierzimmer_, ii.:\n\n     Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!\n     Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht,\n     Ist wert, dass es zu Grunde geht;,\n     Drum besser w\u00e4r\u2019s, dass nichts entst\u00fcnde....\n     Ich bin ein Teil des Teils, der anfangs alles war,\n     Ein Teil der Finsternis, die sich das Licht gebar....\n     Was sich dem Nichts entgegenstellt,\n     Das Etwas, diese plumpe Welt,\n     So viel als ich schon unternommen,\n     Ich wusste nicht ihr beizukommen....\n     Wie viele hab\u2019 ich schon begraben!\n     Und immer cirkuliert ein neues, frisches Blut.\n     So geht es fort, man m\u00f6chte rasend werden!\n\n\n[13] _Faust_, Part ii. Act i., _Anmutige Gegend_:\n\n     Kleiner Elfen Geistergr\u00f6sse\n     Eilet, we sie helfen kann;\n     Ob er heilig, ob er b\u00f6se,\n     Jammert sie der Ungl\u00fccksmann.\n\n\n[14] _Faust_, Part ii. Act i., _Anmutige Gegend_:\n\n     Alles kann der Edle leisten,\n     Der versteht und rasch ergreift.\n\nThe whole scene will repay study.\n\n[15] _Faust_, Part ii. Act i., _Anmutige Gegend_:\n\n     Des Lebens Fackel wollten wir entz\u00fcnden,\n     Ein Feuermeer umschlingt uns, welch ein Feuer!...\n       So bleibe denn die Sonne mir im R\u00fccken!\n     Der Wassersturz, das Felsenriff durchbrausend,\n     Ihn schau\u2019 ich an mit wachsendem Entz\u00fccken....\n     Allein wie herrlich, diesem Sturm erspriessend,\n     Wolbt sich des bunten Bogens Wechseldauer,...\n     Der spiegelt ab das menschliche Bestreben....\n     Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben.\n\n\n[16] _Faust_, Part i., _Studierzimmer_:\n\n     Ins hohe Meer werd\u2019 ich hinausgewiesen,...\n     Zu neuen Sph\u00e4ren reiner Th\u00e4tigkeit....\n     Hier ist es Zeit, durch Thaten zu beweisen,\n     Dass Mannesw\u00fcrde nicht der G\u00f6tterh\u00f6he weicht,...\n     Zu diesem Schritt sich heiter zu entschliessen\n     Und war\u2019 es mit Gefahr, ins Nichts dahin zu fliessen.\n\n\n[17] _Faust_, Part ii. Act iv., _Hochgebirg_: The first monologue.\n\n\n[18] _Faust_, Part i, Act ii., _Anmutige Gegend_:\n\n     Du, Erde,... regst und r\u00fchrst ein kraftiges Beschliessen\n     Zum h\u00f6chsten Dasein immerfort zu streben.\n\n\n[19] _Faust_, Part ii. Act iv., _Hochgebirg_:\n\n     Erstaunensw\u00fcrdiges soll geraten,\n     Ich f\u00fchle Kraft zu k\u00fchnem Fleiss.\n     Herrschaft gewinn\u2019 ich, Eigentum!\n     Die That ist alles, nichts der Ruhm.\n     Da wagt mein Geist, sich selbst zu \u00fcberfliegen;\n     Hier m\u00f6cht\u2019 ich k\u00e4mpfen, dies m\u00f6cht\u2019 ich besiegen.\n\n\n[20] Ibid., Act v., _Grosser Vorhof des Palasts_:\n\n     Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdetagen\n     Nicht in Aeonen untergehn.\n\n\n[21] _Faust_, Part ii. Act iv., _Hochgebirg_:\n\n     Wer befehlen soll\n     Muss im Befehlen Seligkeit empfinden.\n     Ihm ist die Brust von hohem Willen voll,\n     Doch was er will, es darf\u2019s kein Mensch ergr\u00fcnden.\n\n\n[22] _Faust_, Part ii. Act v., _Mitternacht_:\n\n     Ich bin nur durch die Welt gerannt:\n     Ein jed\u2019 Gel\u00fcst ergriff ich bei den Haaren,\n     Was nicht gen\u00fcgte, liess ich fahren,\n     Was mich entwischte, liess ich ziehn.\n\n\n[23] _Faust_, Part ii. Act v., _Grosser Vorhof des Palasts_:\n\n     Solch ein Gewimmel m\u00f6cht ich sehn,\n     Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volke stehn.\n     Zum Augenblicke d\u00fcrft\u2019 ich sagen:\n     Verweile doch, du bist so sch\u00f6n!\n\n\n[24] _Faust_, Part ii. Act v., _Himmel_:\n\n     Wer immer strebend sich bem\u00fcht,\n     Den konnen wir erl\u00f6sen.\n\n\n[25] Ibid.:\n\n     Wir wurden fr\u00fch entfernt\n     Von Lebech\u00f6ren;\n     Doch dieser hat gelernt,\n     Er wird uns lehren.\n\n\n[26] _Faust_, Part ii. Act v., _Mitternacht_:\n\n     Noch hab\u2019 ich mich ins Freie nicht gek\u00e4mpft.\n     K\u00f6nnt ich Magie von meinem Pfad entfernen,\n     Die Zauberspr\u00fcche ganz und gar verlernen,\n     St\u00fcnd\u2019 ich, Natur, vor dir ein Mann allein.\n     Da w\u00e4r\u2019s der M\u00fche wert, ein Mensch zu sein.\n\n\n[27] _Faust_, Part ii, Act v., _Himmel_:\n\n     Alles Verg\u00e4ngliche\n     Ist nur ein Gleichnis;\n     Das Unzul\u00e4ngliche,\n     Hier wird\u2019s Ereignis;\n     Das Unbeschreibliche,\n     Hier ist es gethan;\n     Das Ewig-Weibliche\n     Zieht uns hinan.\n\n\n[28] Cf. _Trilogie der Leidenschaft_, 1823:\n\n     Mich treibt umher ein unbezwinglich Sehnen;\n     Da bleibt kein Rat als grenzenlose Thr\u00e4nen....\n     Und so das Herz erleichtert merkt behende\n     Dass es noch lebt und schl\u00e4gt und m\u00f6chte schlagen,...\n     Da f\u00fchlte sich--o, dass es ewig bliebe!--\n     Das Doppelgl\u00fcck der T\u00f6ne wie der Liebe.\n\n\n[29] _Aus dem Nachlass, Abk\u00fcndigung:_\n\n     Des Menschen Leben ist ein \u00e4hnliches Gedicht;\n     Es hat wohl einen Anfang, hat ein Ende,\n     Allein ein Ganzes ist es nicht.\n\n\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n\nIt may be possible, after studying these three philosophical poets, to\nestablish some comparison between them. By a comparison is not meant a\ndiscussion as to which of our poets is the best. Each is the best in his\nway, and none is the best in every way. To express a preference is not\nso much a criticism as a personal confession. If it were a question of\nthe relative pleasure a man might get from each poet in turn, this\npleasure would differ according to the man\u2019s temperament, his period of\nlife, the language he knew best, and the doctrine that was most familiar\nto him. By a comparison is meant a review of the analysis we have\nalready made of the type of imagination and philosophy embodied in each\nof the poets, to see what they have in common, how they differ, or what\norder they will fall into from different points of view. Thus we have\njust seen that Goethe, in his _Faust_, presents experience in its\nimmediacy, variety, and apparent groundlessness; and that he presents it\nas an episode, before and after which other episodes, differing from it\nmore and more as you recede, may be conceived to come. There is no\npossible totality in this, for there is no known ground. Turn to\nLucretius, and the difference is striking. Lucretius is the poet of\nsubstance. The ground is what he sees everywhere; and by seeing the\nground, he sees also the possible products of it. Experience appears in\nLucretius, not as each man comes upon it in his own person, but as the\nscientific observer views it from without. Experience for him is a\nnatural, inevitable, monotonous round of feelings, involved in the\noperations of nature. The ground and the limits of experience have\nbecome evident together.\n\nIn Dante, on the other hand, we have a view of experience also in its\ntotality, also from above and, in a sense, from outside; but the\nexternal point of reference is moral, not physical, and what interests\nthe poet is what experience is best, what processes lead to a supreme,\nself-justifying, indestructible sort of existence. Goethe is the poet of\nlife; Lucretius the poet of nature; Dante the poet of salvation. Goethe\ngives us what is most fundamental,--the turbid flux of sense, the cry of\nthe heart, the first tentative notions of art and science, which magic\nor shrewdness might hit upon. Lucretius carries us one step farther. Our\nwisdom ceases to be impressionistic and casual. It rests on\nunderstanding of things, so that what happiness remains to us does not\ndeceive us, and we can possess it in dignity and peace. Knowledge of\nwhat is possible is the beginning of happiness. Dante, however, carries\nus much farther than that. He, too, has knowledge of what is possible\nand impossible. He has collected the precepts of old philosophers and\nsaints, and the more recent examples patent in society around him, and\nby their help has distinguished the ambitions that may be wisely\nindulged in this life from those which it is madness to foster,--the\nfirst being called virtue and piety and the second folly and sin. What\nmakes such knowledge precious is not only that it sketches in general\nthe scope and issue of life, but that it paints in the detail as\nwell,--the detail of what is possible no less than that (more familiar\nto tragic poets) of what is impossible.\n\nLucretius\u2019 notion, for instance, of what is positively worth while or\nattainable is very meagre: freedom from superstition, with so much\nnatural science as may secure that freedom, friendship, and a few cheap\nand healthful animal pleasures. No love, no patriotism, no enterprise,\nno religion. So, too, in what is forbidden us, Lucretius sees only\ngeneralities,--the folly of passion, the blight of superstition. Dante,\non the contrary, sees the various pitfalls of life with intense\ndistinctness; and seeing them clearly, and how fatal each is, he sees\nalso why men fall into them, the dream that leads men astray, and the\nsweetness of those goods that are impossible. Feeling, even in what we\nmust ultimately call evil, the soul of good that attracts us to it, he\nfeels, in good all its loveliness and variety. Where, except in Dante,\ncan we find so many stars that differ from other stars in glory; so\nmany delightful habitations for excellences; so many distinct beauties\nof form, accent, thought, and intention; so many delicacies and\nheroisms? Dante is the master of those who know by experience what is\nworth knowing by experience; he is the master of _distinction_.\n\nHere, then, are our three poets and their messages: Goethe, with human\nlife in its immediacy, treated romantically; Lucretius, with a vision of\nnature and of the limits of human life; Dante, with spiritual mastery of\nthat life, and a perfect knowledge of good and evil.\n\nYou may stop at what stage you will, according to your sense of what is\nreal and important; for what one man calls higher another man calls\nunreal; and what one man feels to be strength smells rank to another. In\nthe end, we should not be satisfied with any one of our poets if we had\nto drop the other two. It is true that taken formally, and in respect to\ntheir type of philosophy and imagination, Dante is on a higher plane\nthan Lucretius, and Lucretius on a higher plane than Goethe. But the\nplane on which a poet dwells is not everything; much depends on what he\nbrings up with him to that level. Now there is a great deal, a very\ngreat deal, in Goethe that Lucretius does not know of. Not knowing of\nit, Lucretius cannot carry this fund of experience up to the\nintellectual and naturalistic level; he cannot transmute this abundant\nsubstance of Goethe\u2019s by his higher insight and clearer faith; he has\nnot woven so much into his poem. So that while to see nature, as\nLucretius sees it, is a greater feat than merely to live hard in a\nromantic fashion, and produces a purer and more exalted poem than\nGoethe\u2019s magical medley, yet this medley is full of images, passions,\nmemories, and introspective wisdom that Lucretius could not have dreamed\nof. The intellect of Lucretius rises, but rises comparatively empty; his\nvision sees things as a whole, and in their right places, but sees very\nlittle of them; he is quite deaf to their intricacy, to their birdlike\nmultiform little souls. These Goethe knows admirably; with these he\nmakes a natural concert, all the more natural for being sometimes\ndiscordant, sometimes overloaded and dull. It is necessary to revert\nfrom Lucretius to Goethe to get at the volume of life.\n\nSo, too, if we rise from Lucretius to Dante, there is much left behind\nwhich we cannot afford to lose. Dante may seem at first sight to have a\nview of nature not less complete and clear than that of Lucretius; a\nview even more efficacious than materialism for fixing the limits of\nhuman destiny and marking the path to happiness. But there is an\nillusion here. Dante\u2019s idea of nature is not genuine; it is not\nsincerely put together out of reasoned observation. It is a view of\nnature intercepted by myths and worked out by dialectic. Consequently,\nhe has no true idea either of the path to happiness or of its real\nconditions. His notion of nature is an inverted image of the moral\nworld, cast like a gigantic shadow upon the sky. It is a mirage.\n\nNow, while to know evil, and especially good, in all their forms and\ninward implications is a far greater thing than to know the natural\nconditions of good and evil, or their real distribution in space and\ntime, yet the higher philosophy is not safe if the lower philosophy is\nwanting or is false. Of course it is not safe practically; but it is not\nsafe even poetically. There is an attenuated texture and imagery in the\n_Divine Comedy_. The voice that sings it, from beginning to end, is a\nthin boy-treble, all wonder and na\u00efvet\u00e9. This art does not smack of\nlife, but of somnambulism. The reason is that the intellect has been\nhypnotized by a legendary and verbal philosophy. It has been unmanned,\ncuriously enough, by an excess of humanism; by the fond delusion that\nman and his moral nature are at the centre of the universe. Dante is\nalways thinking of the divine order of history and of the spheres; he\nbelieves in controlling and chastening the individual soul; so that he\nseems to be a cosmic poet, and to have escaped the anthropocentric\nconceit of romanticism. But he has not escaped it. For, as we have seen,\nthis golden cage in which his soul sings is artificial; it is\nconstructed on purpose to satisfy and glorify human distinctions and\nhuman preferences. The bird is not in his native wilds; man is not in\nthe bosom of nature. He is, in a moral sense, still at the centre of the\nuniverse; his ideal is the cause of everything. He is the appointed lord\nof the earth, the darling of heaven; and history is a brief and\nprearranged drama, with Judea and Rome for its chief theatre.\n\nSome of these illusions are already abandoned; all are undermined.\nSometimes, in moments when we are unnerved and uninspired, we may\nregret the ease with which Dante could reconcile himself to a world, so\nimagined as to suit human fancy, and flatter human will. We may envy\nDante his ignorance of nature, which enabled him to suppose that he\ndominated it, as an infinite and exuberant nature cannot be dominated\nby any of its parts. In the end, however, knowledge is good for the\nimagination. Dante himself thought so; and his work proved that he was\nright, by infinitely excelling that of all ignorant contemporary poets.\nThe illusion of knowledge is better than ignorance for a poet; but the\nreality of knowledge would be better than the illusion; it would\nstretch the mind over a vaster and more stimulating scene; it would\nconcentrate the will upon a more attainable, distinct, and congenial\nhappiness. The growth of what is known increases the scope of what may\nbe imagined and hoped for. Throw open to the young poet the infinity of\nnature; let him feel the precariousness of life, the variety of\npurposes, civilizations, and religions even upon this little planet;\nlet him trace the triumphs and follies of art and philosophy, and their\nperpetual resurrections--like that of the downcast Faust. If, under the\nstimulus of such a scene, he does not some day compose a natural comedy\nas much surpassing Dante\u2019s divine comedy in sublimity and richness as\nit will surpass it in truth, the fault will not lie with the subject,\nwhich is inviting and magnificent, but with the halting genius that\ncannot render that subject worthily.\n\nUndoubtedly, the universe so displayed would not be without its dark\nshadows and its perpetual tragedies. That is in the nature of things.\nDante\u2019s cosmos, for all its mythical idealism, was not so false as not\nto have a hell in it. Those rolling spheres, with all their lights and\nmusic, circled for ever about hell. Perhaps in the real life of nature\nevil may not prove to be so central as that. It would seem to be rather\na sort of inevitable but incidental friction, capable of being\ndiminished indefinitely, as the world is better known and the will is\nbetter educated. In Dante\u2019s spheres there could be no discord whatever;\nbut at the core of them was eternal woe. In the star-dust of our physics\ndiscords are everywhere, and harmony is only tentative and approximate,\nas it is in the best earthly life; but at the core there is nothing\nsinister, only freedom, innocence, inexhaustible possibilities of all\nsorts of happiness. These possibilities may tempt future poets to\ndescribe them; but meantime, if we wish to have a vision of nature not\nfundamentally false, we must revert from Dante to Lucretius.\n\nObviously, what would be desirable, what would constitute a truly\nphilosophical or comprehensive poet, would be the union of the insights\nand gifts which our three poets have possessed. This union is not\nimpossible. The insights may be superposed one on the other. Experience\nin all its extent, what Goethe represents, should be at the foundation.\nBut as the extent of experience is potentially infinite, as there are\nall sorts of worlds possible and all sorts of senses and habits of\nthought, the widest survey would still leave the poet, where Goethe\nleaves us, with a sense of an infinity beyond. He would be at liberty to\nsummon from the limbo of potentiality any form that interested him;\npoetry and art would recover their early freedom; there would be no\nbeauties forbidden and none prescribed. For it is a very liberating and\nsublime thing to summon up, like Faust, the image of _all_ experience.\nUnless that has been done, we leave the enemy in our rear; whatever\ninterpretations we offer for experience will become impertinent and\nworthless if the experience we work upon is no longer at hand. Nor will\nany construction, however broadly based, have an _absolute_ authority;\nthe indomitable freedom of life to be more, to be new, to be what it has\nnot entered into the heart of man as yet to conceive, must always remain\nstanding. With that freedom goes the modesty of reason, both in physics\nand in morals, that can lay claim only to partial knowledge, and to the\nordering of a particular soul, or city, or civilization.\n\nPoetry and philosophy, however, are civilized arts; they are proper to\nsome particular genius, which has succeeded in flowering at a particular\ntime and place. A poet who merely swam out into the sea of sensibility,\nand tried to picture all possible things, real or unreal, human or\ninhuman, would bring materials only to the workshop of art; he would not\nbe an artist. To the genius of Goethe he must add that of Lucretius and\nDante.\n\nThere are two directions in which it seems fitting that rational art\nshould proceed, on the basis which a limited experience can give it. Art\nmay come to buttress a particular form of life, or it may come to\nexpress it. All that we call industry, science, business, morality,\nbuttresses our life; it informs us about our conditions and adjusts us\nto them; it equips us for life; it lays out the ground for the game we\nare to play. This preliminary labour, however, need not be servile. To\ndo it is also to exercise our faculties; and in that exercise our\nfaculties may grow free,--as the imagination of Lucretius, in tracing\nthe course of the atoms, dances and soars most congenially. One\nextension of art, then, would be in the direction of doing artistically,\njoyfully, sympathetically, whatever we have to do. Literature in\nparticular (which is involved in history, politics, science, affairs)\nmight be throughout a work of art. It would become so not by being\nornate, but by being appropriate; and the sense of a great precision and\njustness would come over us as we read or wrote. It would delight us; it\nwould make us see how beautiful, how satisfying, is the art of being\nobservant, economical, and sincere. The philosophical or comprehensive\npoet, like Homer, like Shakespeare, would be a poet of business. He\nwould have a taste for the world in which he lived, and a clean view of\nit.\n\nThere remains a second form of rational art, that of expressing the\nideal towards which we would move under these improved conditions. For\nas we react we manifest an inward principle, expressed in that reaction.\nWe have a nature that selects its own direction, and the direction in\nwhich practical arts shall transform the world. The outer life is for\nthe sake of the inner; discipline is for the sake of freedom, and\nconquest for the sake of self-possession. This inner life is wonderfully\nredundant; there is, namely, very much more in it than a consciousness\nof those acts by which the body adjusts itself to its surroundings. _Am\nfarbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben_; each sense has its arbitrary\nquality, each language its arbitrary euphony and prosody; every game has\nits creative laws, every soul its own tender reverberations and secret\ndreams. Life has a margin of play which might grow broader, if the\nsustaining nucleus were more firmly established in the world. To the art\nof working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well. To\nplay with nature and make it decorative, to play with the overtones of\nlife and make them delightful, is a sort of art. It is the ultimate, the\nmost artistic sort of art, but it will never be practised successfully\nso long as the other sort of art is in a backward state; for if we do\nnot know our environment, we shall mistake our dreams for a part of it,\nand so spoil our science by making it fantastic, and our dreams by\nmaking them obligatory. The art and the religion of the past, as we see\nconspicuously in Dante, have fallen into this error. To correct it would\nbe to establish a new religion and a new art, based on moral liberty and\non moral courage.\n\nWho shall be the poet of this double insight? He has never existed, but\nhe is needed nevertheless. It is time some genius should appear to\nreconstitute the shattered picture of the world. He should live in the\ncontinual presence of all experience, and respect it; he should at the\nsame time understand nature, the ground of that experience; and he\nshould also have a delicate sense for the ideal echoes of his own\npassions, and for all the colours of his possible happiness. All that\ncan inspire a poet is contained in this task, and nothing less than this\ntask would exhaust a poet\u2019s inspiration. We may hail this needed genius\nfrom afar. Like the poets in Dante\u2019s limbo, when Virgil returns among\nthem, we may salute him, saying: _Onorate l\u2019altissimo poeta_. Honour the\nmost high poet, honour the highest possible poet. But this supreme poet\nis in limbo still.\n\n\n\n\n<pre id=\"pg-footer\">","title":"Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":48804}