{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_48563/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_48563","id":"gutenberg_48563","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48563","summary":null,"tags":["Aesthetics","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Literature -- History and criticism","Poetry","Religion"],"text":"INTERPRETATIONS\n\nOF\n\nPOETRY AND RELIGION\n\nBY\n\nGEORGE SANTAYANA\n\nNEW YORK\n\nCHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS\n\n\n1900\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThe following volume is composed of a number of papers written at\nvarious times and already partially printed; they are now revised and\ngathered together in the hope that they may lead the reader, from\nsomewhat different points of approach, to a single idea. This idea is\nthat religion and poetry are identical in essence, and differ merely\nin the way in which they are attached to practical affairs. Poetry\nis called religion when it intervenes in life, and religion, when it\nmerely supervenes upon life, is seen to be nothing but poetry.\n\nIt would naturally follow from this conception that religious doctrines\nwould do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters\nof fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of\nreligion with science and of the vain and bitter controversies of\nsects; it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion\nin the soul, when it seeks its sanctions in the sphere of reality,\nand forgets that its proper concern is to express the ideal. For the\ndignity of religion, like that of poetry and of every moral ideal, lies\nprecisely in its ideal adequacy, in its fit rendering of the meanings\nand values of life, in its anticipation of perfection; so that the\nexcellence of religion is due to an idealization of experience which,\nwhile making religion noble if treated as poetry, makes it necessarily\nfalse if treated as science. Its function is rather to draw from\nreality materials for an image of that ideal to which reality ought\nto conform, and to make us citizens, by anticipation, in the world we\ncrave.\n\nIt also follows from our general conception that poetry has a universal\nand a moral function. Its rudimentary essays in the region of fancy\nand pleasant sound, as well as its idealization of episodes in human\nexistence, are only partial exercises in an art that has all time and\nall experience for its natural subject-matter and all the possibilities\nof being for its ultimate theme. As religion is deflected from its\ncourse when it is confused with a record of facts or of natural laws,\nso poetry is arrested in its development if it remains an unmeaning\nplay of fancy without relevance to the ideals and purposes of life. In\nthat relevance lies its highest power. As its elementary pleasantness\ncomes from its response to the demands of the ear, so its deepest\nbeauty comes from its response to the ultimate demands of the soul.\n\nThis theory can hardly hope for much commendation either from the\napologists of theology or from its critics. The mass of mankind is\ndivided into two classes, the Sancho Panzas who have a sense for\nreality, but no ideals, and the Don Quixotes with a sense for ideals,\nbut mad. The expedient of recognizing facts as facts and accepting\nideals as ideals,--and this is all we propose,--although apparently\nsimple enough, seems to elude the normal human power of discrimination.\nIf, therefore, the champion of any orthodoxy should be offended at our\nconception, which would reduce his artful cosmos to an allegory, all\nthat could be said to mitigate his displeasure would be that our view\nis even less favourable to his opponents than to himself.\n\nThe liberal school that attempts to fortify religion by minimizing\nits expression, both theoretic and devotional, seems from this point\nof view to be merely impoverishing religious symbols and vulgarizing\nreligious aims; it subtracts from faith that imagination by which faith\nbecomes an interpretation and idealization of human life, and retains\nonly a stark and superfluous principle of superstition. For meagre and\nabstract as may be the content of such a religion, it contains all\nthe venom of absolute pretensions; it is no less cursed than the more\ndeveloped systems with a controversial unrest and with a consequent\nundertone of constraint and suspicion. It tortures itself with the\nsame circular proofs in its mistaken ambition to enter the plane of\nvulgar reality and escape its native element of ideas. It casts a\ngreater blight than would a civilized orthodoxy on any joyous freedom\nof thought. For the respect exacted by an establishment is limited and\nexternal, and not greater than its traditional forms probably deserve,\nas normal expressions of human feeling and apt symbols of moral truth.\nA reasonable deference once shown to authority, the mind remains, under\nsuch an establishment, inwardly and happily free; the conscience is not\nintimidated, the imagination is not tied up. But the preoccupations of\na hungry and abstract fanaticism poison the liberty nominally allowed,\nbias all vision, and turn philosophy itself, which should be the purest\nof delights and consolations, into an obsession and a burden to the\nsoul. In such a spectral form religious illusion does not cease to be\nillusion. Mythology cannot become science by being reduced in bulk, but\nit may cease, as a mythology, to be worth having.\n\nOn the other hand, the positivistic school of criticism would seem, if\nour theory is right, to have overlooked in its programme the highest\nfunctions of human nature. The environing world can justify itself to\nthe mind only by the free life which it fosters there. All observation\nis observation of brute fact, all discipline is mere repression, until\nthese facts digested and this discipline embodied in humane impulses\nbecome the starting-point for a creative movement of the imagination,\nthe firm basis for ideal constructions in society, religion, and art.\nOnly as conditions of these human activities can the facts of nature\nand history become morally intelligible or practically important. In\nthemselves they are trivial incidents, gossip of the Fates, cacklings\nof their inexhaustible garrulity. To regard the function of man as\naccomplished when these chance happenings have been recorded by him or\ncontributed to by his impulsive action, is to ignore his reason, his\nprivilege,--shared for the rest with every living creature,--of using\nNature as food and substance for his own life. This human life is not\nmerely animal and passionate. The best and keenest part of it consists\nin that very gift of creation and government which, together with all\nthe transcendental functions of his own mind, man has significantly\nattributed to God as to his highest ideal. Not to see in this rational\nactivity the purpose and standard of all life is to have left human\nnature half unread. It is to look to the removal of certain incidental\nobstacles in the work of reason as to the solution of its positive\ntasks. In comparison with such apathetic naturalism, all the errors\nand follies of religion are worthy of indulgent sympathy, since they\nrepresent an effort, however misguided, to interpret and to use the\nmaterials of experience for moral ends, and to measure the value of\nreality by its relation to the ideal.\n\nThe moral function of the imagination and the poetic nature of religion\nform, then, the theme of the following pages. It may not be amiss to\nannounce it here, as the rather miscellaneous subjects of these essays\nmight at first sight obscure the common import of them all.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n      I.   UNDERSTANDING, IMAGINATION, AND MYSTICISM\n     II.   THE HOMERIC HYMNS\n    III.   THE DISSOLUTION OF PAGANISM\n     IV.   THE POETRY OF CHRISTIAN DOGMA\n      V.   PLATONIC LOVE IN SOME ITALIAN POETS\n     VI.   THE ABSENCE OF RELIGION IN SHAKESPEARE\n    VII.   THE POETRY OF BARBARISM\n   VIII.   EMERSON\n     IX.   A RELIGION OF DISILLUSION\n      X.   THE ELEMENTS AND FUNCTION OF POETRY\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nUNDERSTANDING, IMAGINATION, AND MYSTICISM\n\n\nWhen we consider the situation of the human mind in Nature, its limited\nplasticity and few channels of communication with the outer world, we\nneed not wonder that we grope for light, or that we find incoherence\nand instability in human systems of ideas. The wonder rather is that we\nhave done so well, that in the chaos of sensations and passions that\nfills the mind, we have found any leisure for self-concentration and\nreflection, and have succeeded in gathering even a light harvest of\nexperience from our distracted labours. Our occasional madness is less\nwonderful than our occasional sanity. Relapses into dreams are to be\nexpected in a being whose brief existence is so like a dream; but who\ncould have been sure of this sturdy and indomitable perseverance in the\nwork of reason in spite of all checks and discouragements?\n\nThe resources of the mind are not commensurate with its ambition. Of\nthe five senses, three are of little use in the formation of permanent\nnotions: a fourth, sight, is indeed vivid and luminous, but furnishes\ntranscripts of things so highly coloured and deeply modified by the\nmedium of sense, that a long labour of analysis and correction is\nneeded before satisfactory conceptions can be extracted from it. For\nthis labour, however, we are endowed with the requisite instrument.\nWe have memory and we have certain powers of synthesis, abstraction,\nreproduction, invention,--in a word, we have understanding. But this\nfaculty of understanding has hardly begun its work of deciphering the\nhieroglyphics of sense and framing an idea of reality, when it is\ncrossed by another faculty--the imagination. Perceptions do not remain\nin the mind, as would be suggested by the trite simile of the seal\nand the wax, passive and changeless, until time wear off their sharp\nedges and make them fade. No, perceptions fall into the brain rather\nas seeds into a furrowed field or even as sparks into a keg of powder.\nEach image breeds a hundred more, sometimes slowly and subterraneously,\nsometimes (when a passionate train is started) with a sudden burst of\nfancy. The mind, exercised by its own fertility and flooded by its\ninner lights, has infinite trouble to keep a true reckoning of its\noutward perceptions. It turns from the frigid problems of observation\nto its own visions; it forgets to watch the courses of what should be\nits \"pilot stars.\" Indeed, were it not for the power of convention in\nwhich, by a sort of mutual cancellation of errors, the more practical\nand normal conceptions are enshrined, the imagination would carry men\nwholly away,--the best men first and the vulgar after them. Even as it\nis, individuals and ages of fervid imagination usually waste themselves\nin dreams, and must disappear before the race, saddened and dazed,\nperhaps, by the memory of those visions, can return to its plodding\nthoughts.\n\nFive senses, then, to gather a small part of the infinite influences\nthat vibrate in Nature, a moderate power of understanding to interpret\nthose senses, and an irregular, passionate fancy to overlay that\ninterpretation--such is the endowment of the human mind. And what is\nits ambition? Nothing less than to construct a picture of all reality,\nto comprehend its own origin and that of the universe, to discover\nthe laws of both and prophesy their destiny. Is not the disproportion\nenormous? Are not confusions and profound contradictions to be looked\nfor in an attempt to build so much out of so little?\n\nYet the metaphysical ambition we speak of cannot be abandoned, because\nwhatever picture of things we may carry about in our heads we are bound\nto regard as a map of reality; although we may mark certain tracts\nof it \"unexplored country,\" the very existence of such regions is\nvouched for only by our representation, and is necessarily believed\nto correspond to our idea. All we can do is, without abandoning\nthe aspiration to knowledge which is the inalienable birthright of\nreason, to control as best we may the formation of our conceptions; to\narrange them according to their derivation and measure them by their\napplicability in life, so prudently watching over their growth that we\nmay be spared the deepest of sorrows--to survive the offspring of our\nown thought.\n\nThe inadequacy of each of our faculties is what occasions the intrusion\nof some other faculty into its field. The defect of sense calls in\nimagination, the defect of imagination calls in reasoning, the defect\nof reasoning divination. If our senses were clairvoyant and able to\nobserve all that is going on in the world, if our instincts were\nsteady, prompting us to adequate reactions upon these observations, the\nfancy might remain free. We should not need to call upon it to piece\nout the imperfections of sense and reflection, but we should employ it\nonly in avowed poetry, only in building dream-worlds alongside of the\nreal, not interfering with the latter or confusing it, but repeating\nits pattern with as many variations as the fertility of our minds\ncould supply. As it is, the imagination is brought into the service\nof sense and instinct, and made to do the work of intelligence. This\nsubstitution is the more readily effected, in that imagination and\nintelligence do not differ in their origin, but only in their validity.\nUnderstanding is an applicable fiction, a kind of wit with a practical\nuse. Common sense and science live in a world of expurgated mythology,\nsuch as Plato wished his poets to compose, a world where the objects\nare imaginative in their origin and essence, but useful, abstract, and\nbeneficent in their suggestions. The sphere of common sense and science\nis concentric with the sphere of fancy; both move in virtue of the same\nimaginative impulses. The eventual distinction between intelligence and\nimagination is ideal; it arises when we discriminate various functions\nin a life that is dynamically one. Those conceptions which, after\nthey have spontaneously arisen, prove serviceable in practice, and\ncapable of verification in sense, we call ideas of the understanding.\nThe others remain ideas of the imagination. The shortness of life,\nthe distractions of passion, and the misrepresentation to which all\ntransmitted knowledge is subject, have made the testing of ideas by\npractice extremely slow in the history of mankind. Hence the impurity\nof our knowledge, its confusion with fancy, and its painful inadequacy\nto interpret the whole world of human interests. These shortcomings are\nso many invitations to foreign powers to intervene, so many occasions\nfor new waves of imagination to sweep away the landmarks of our old\nlabour, and flood the whole mind with impetuous dreams.\n\nIt is accordingly the profounder minds that commonly yield to the\nimagination, because it is these minds that are capable of feeling\nthe greatness of the problems of life and the inadequacy of the\nunderstanding, with its present resources, to solve them. The same\nminds are, moreover, often swayed by emotion, by the ever-present\ndesire to find a noble solution to all questions, perhaps a solution\nalready hallowed by authority and intertwined inextricably, for those\nwho have always accepted it, with the sanctions of spiritual life.\nSuch a coveted conclusion may easily be one which the understanding,\nwith its basis in sense and its demand for verification, may not be\nable to reach. Therefore the impassioned soul must pass beyond the\nunderstanding, or else go unsatisfied; and unless it be as disciplined\nas it is impassioned it will not tolerate dissatisfaction. From what\nquarter, then, will it draw the wider views, the deeper harmonies,\nwhich it craves? Only from the imagination. There is no other faculty\nleft to invoke. The imagination, therefore, must furnish to religion\nand to metaphysics those large ideas tinctured with passion, those\nsupersensible forms shrouded in awe, in which alone a mind of great\nsweep and vitality can find its congenial objects. Thus the stone\nwhich the builder, understanding, rejected, becomes the chief stone\nof the corner; the intuitions which science could not use remain the\ninspiration of poetry and religion.\n\nThe imagination, when thus employed to anticipate or correct the\nconclusions of the understanding, is of course not called imagination\nby those, who appeal to it. The religious teachers call it prophecy or\nrevelation, the philosophers call it a higher reason. But these names\nare merely eulogistic synonyms for imagination, implying (what is\nperfectly possible) that the imagination has not misled us. They imply\non the contrary that in the given instances the imagination has hit\nupon an ultimate truth. A prophet, unless he be the merely mechanical\nvehicle of truths he does not understand, cannot be conceived as\nanything but a man of imagination, whose visions miraculously mirror\nthe truth. A metaphysician who transcends the intellect by his reason\ncan be conceived only as using his imagination to such good purpose\nas to divine by it the ideal laws of reality or the ultimate goals of\nmoral effort. His reason is an imagination that succeeds, an intuition\nthat guesses the principle of experience. But if this intuition were of\nsuch a nature that experience could verify it, then that higher reason\nor imagination would be brought down to the level of the understanding;\nfor understanding, as we have defined it, is itself a kind of\nimagination, an imagination prophetic of experience, a spontaneity of\nthought by which the science of perception is turned into the art of\nlife. The same absence of verification distinguishes revelation from\nscience; for when the prophecies of faith are verified, the function\nof faith is gone. Faith and the higher reason of the metaphysicians\nare therefore forms of imagination believed to be avenues to truth,\nas dreams or oracles may sometimes be truthful, not because their\nnecessary correspondence to truth can be demonstrated, for then they\nwould be portions of science, but because a man dwelling on those\nintuitions is conscious of a certain moral transformation, of a certain\nwarmth and energy of life. This emotion, heightening his ideas and\ngiving them power over his will, he calls faith or high philosophy, and\nunder its dominion he is able to face his destiny with enthusiasm, or\nat least with composure.\n\nThe imagination, even when its premonitions are not wholly justified\nby subsequent experience, has thus a noble role to play in the life\nof man. Without it his thoughts would be not only far too narrow\nto represent, although it were symbolically, the greatness of the\nuniverse, but far too narrow even to render the scope of his own\nlife and the conditions of his practical welfare. Without poetry and\nreligion the history of mankind would have been darker than it is. Not\nonly would emotional life have been poorer, but the public conscience,\nthe national and family spirit, so useful for moral organization and\ndiscipline, would hardly have become articulate. By what a complex\nand uninspired argumentation would the pure moralist have to insist\nupon those duties which the imagination enforces so powerfully in\noaths sworn before the gods, in commandments written by the finger of\nGod upon stone tablets, in visions of hell and heaven, in chivalrous\nlove and loyalty, and in the sense of family dignity and honour? What\nintricate, what unavailing appeals to positive interests would have to\nbe made before those quick reactions could be secured in large bodies\nof people which can be produced by the sight of a flag or the sound\nof a name? The imagination is the great unifier of humanity. Men's\nperceptions may be various, their powers of understanding very unequal;\nbut the imagination is, as it were, the self-consciousness of instinct,\nthe contribution which the inner capacity and demand of the mind makes\nto experience. To indulge the imagination is to express the universal\nself, the common and contagious element in all individuals, that\nrudimentary potency which they all share. To stimulate the imagination\nis to produce the deepest, the most pertinacious emotions. To repress\nit is to chill the soul, so that even the clearest perception of the\ntruth remains without the joy and impetuosity of conviction. The\npart played by imagination is thus indispensable; but obviously the\nnecessity and beneficence of this contribution makes the dangers\nof it correspondingly great. Wielding a great power, exercising an\nomnipresent function, the imagination may abuse a great force. While\nits inspirations coincide with what would be the dictates of reason,\nwere reason audible in the world, all is well, and the progress of man\nis accelerated by his visions; but being a principle _a priori_ the\nimagination is an irresponsible principle; its rightness is an inward\nrightness, and everything in the real world may turn out to be disposed\notherwise than as it would wish. Our imaginative preconceptions\nare then obstacles to the perception of fact and of rational duty;\nthe faith that stimulated our efforts and increased our momentum,\nmultiplies our wanderings. The too hasty organization of our thoughts\nbecomes the cause of their more prolonged disorganization, for to the\nnatural obscurity of things and the difficulty of making them fit\ntogether among themselves, we add the cross lights of our prejudices\nand the impossibility of fitting reality into the frame we have made\nfor it in our ignorance of its constitution and extent. And as we love\nour hopes, and detest the experience that seems to contradict them,\nwe add fanaticism to our confusion. The habits of the imagination, in\nconflict with the facts of sense, thus come to cloud science with\npassion, with fiction, with sentimental prejudice. Nor is this the\nend of our troubles. For Imagination herself suffers violence in this\nstruggle; she seeks to reduce herself to conformity with existence,\nin the hope of vindicating her nominal authority at the price of some\nconcessions. She begins to feign that she demanded nothing but what\nshe finds. Thus she loses her honesty and freedom, becomes a flatterer\nof things instead of the principle of their ideal correction, and in\nthe attempt to prove herself prophetic and literally valid (as in a\nmoment of infatuation she had fancied herself to be) she forfeits that\nsymbolic truth, that inner propriety, which gave her a moral value.\nThus the false steps of the imagination lead to a contorted science and\nto a servile ideal.\n\nThese complications not unnaturally inspire discouragement and a sense\nof the hopeless relativity of human thought. Indeed, if there be any\nspecial endowment of mind and body called human nature, as there seems\nto be, it is obvious that all human experience must be relative to\nthat. But the truth, the absolute reality, surrounds and precedes\nthese operations of finite faculty. What value, then, we may say, have\nthese various ideals or perceptions, or the conflicts between them?\nAre not our senses as human, as \"subjective\" as our wills? Is not the\nunderstanding as visionary as the fancy? Does it not transform the\nUnknowable into as remote a symbol as does the vainest dream?\n\nThe answer which a rational philosophy would make to these questions\nwould be a double one. It is true that every idea is equally relative\nto human nature and that nothing can be represented in the human mind\nexcept by the operation of human faculties. But it is not true that all\nthese products of human ideation are of equal value, since they are not\nequally conducive to human purposes or satisfactory to human demands.\n\nThe impulse that would throw over as equally worthless every product\nof human art, because it is not indistinguishable from some alleged\nexternal reality, does not perceive the serious self-contradictions\nunder which it labours. In the first place the notion of an external\nreality is a human notion; our reason makes that hypothesis, and its\nverification in our experience is one of the ideals of science, as its\nvalidity is one of the assumptions of daily life. In throwing over all\nhuman ideas, because they are infected with humanity, all human ideas\nare being sacrificed to one of them--the idea of an absolute reality.\nIf this idea, being human, deserved that such sacrifices should be made\nfor it, have the other notions of the mind no rights? Furthermore, even\nif we granted for the sake of argument a reality which our thoughts\nwere essentially helpless to represent, whence comes the duty of our\nthoughts to represent it? Whence comes the value of this unattainable\ntruth? From an ideal of human reason. We covet truth. So that the\nattempt to surrender all human science as relative and all human ideals\nas trivial is founded on a blind belief in one human idea and an\nabsolute surrender to one human passion.\n\nIn spite of these contradictions, which only a dispassionate logic\ncould thoroughly unravel, the enthusiast is apt to rush on. The vision\nof absolute truth and absolute reality intoxicates him, and as he\nis too subtle a thinker, too inward a man, to accept the content of\nhis senses or the conventions of his intelligence for unqualified\nverities, he fortifies himself against them with the consciousness of\ntheir relativity, and seeks to rise above them in his meditations.\nBut to rise to what? To some more elaborate idea? To some object,\nlike a scientific cosmos or a religious creed, put together by longer\nand more indirect processes than those of common perception? Surely\nnot. If I renounce my senses and vulgar intellect because they are\ninfected with finitude and smell of humanity, how shall I accept\na work of art, a product of reasoning, or an idol made originally\nwith hands and now encrusted all over, like the statue of Glaucus,\nwith traditional accretions? Poetry, science, and religion, in their\npositive constructions, are more human, more conditioned, than are the\nsenses and the common understanding themselves. The lover of inviolate\nreality must not look to them. If the data of human knowledge must be\nrejected as subjective, how much more should we reject the inferences\nmade from those data by human thought. The way of true wisdom,\ntherefore, if true wisdom is to deal with the Absolute, can only lie\nin abstention: neither the senses nor the common understanding, and\nmuch less the superstructure raised upon these by imagination, logic,\nor tradition, must delude us: we must keep our thoughts fixed upon the\ninanity of all this in comparison with the unthinkable truth, with the\nundivided and unimaginable reality. Everything, says the mystic, is\nnothing, in comparison with the One.\n\nThis confusion, the logical contradiction of which we have just seen,\nmay, for lack of a more specific word, be called mysticism. It consists\nin the surrender of a category of thought on account of the discovery\nof its relativity. If I saw or reasoned or judged by such a category,\nI should be seeing, reasoning, or judging in a specific manner, in\na manner conditioned by my finite nature. But the specific and the\nfinite, I feel, are odious; let me therefore aspire to see, reason and\njudge in no specific or finite manner--that is, not to see, reason or\njudge at all. So I shall be like the Infinite, nay I shall become one\nwith the Infinite and (marvellous thought!) one with the One.\n\nThe ideal of mysticism is accordingly exactly contrary to the ideal\nof reason; instead of perfecting human nature it seeks to abolish it;\ninstead of building a better world, it would undermine the foundations\neven of the world we have built already; instead of developing our mind\nto greater scope and precision, it would return to the condition of\nprotoplasm--to the blessed consciousness of an Unutterable Reality. In\nthe primary stages, of course, mysticism does not venture to abolish\nall our ideas, or to renounce all our categories of thought. Thus many\nChristian mystics have still clung, out of respect for authority,\nto traditional theology, and many philosophical mystics have made\nsome room for life and science in the post-scripts which they, like\nParmenides, have appended to the blank monism of their systems. But\nsuch concessions or hesitations are inconsistent with the mystical\nspirit which will never be satisfied, if fully developed and fearless,\nwith anything short of Absolute Nothing.\n\nFor the very reason, however, that mysticism is a tendency to\nobliterate distinctions, a partial mysticism often serves to bring\nout with wonderful intensity those underlying strata of experience\nwhich it has not yet decomposed. The razing of the edifice of reason\nmay sometimes discover its foundations. Or the disappearance of one\ndepartment of activity may throw the mind with greater energy into\nanother. So Spinoza, who combined mysticism in morals with rationalism\nin science, can bring out the unqualified naturalism of his system\nwith a purity and impressiveness impossible to men who still retain an\nideal world, and seek to direct endeavour as well as to describe it.\nHaving renounced all ideal categories, Spinoza has only the material\ncategories left with which to cover the ground. He thus acquires all\nthe concentrated intensity, all the splendid narrowness, which had\nbelonged to Lucretius, while his mystical treatment of the spheres\nwhich Lucretius simply ignored, gives him the appearance of a greater\nprofundity. So an ordinary Christian who is mystical, let us say,\nabout time and space, may use his transcendentalism in that sphere to\nintensify his positivism in theology, and to emphasize his whole-souled\nsurrender to a devout life.\n\nWhat is impossible is to be a transcendentalist \"all 'round.\" In that\ncase there would be nothing left to transcend; the civil war of the\nmind would have ended in the extermination of all parties. The art of\nmysticism is to be mystical in spots and to aim the heavy guns of your\ntranscendental philosophy against those realities or those ideas which\nyou find particularly galling. Planted on your dearest dogma, on your\nmost precious postulate, you may then transcend everything else to your\nheart's content. You may say with an air of enlightened profundity\nthat nothing is \"really\" right or wrong, because in Nature all things\nare regular and necessary, and God cannot act for purposes as if\nhis will were not already accomplished; your mysticism in religion\nand morals is kept standing, as it were, by the stiff backing which\nis furnished by your materialistic cosmology. Or you may say with a\ntone of devout rapture that all sights and sounds are direct messages\nfrom Divine Providence to the soul, without any objects \"really\"\nexisting in space; your mysticism about the world of perception and\nscientific inference is sustained by the naive theological dogmas\nwhich you substitute for the conceptions of common sense. Yet among\nthese partialities and blind denials a man's positive insight seems to\nthrive, and he fortifies and concentrates himself on his chosen ground\nby his arbitrary exclusions. The patient art of rationalizing the\nvarious sides of life, the observational as well as the moral, without\nconfusing them, is an art apparently seldom given to the haste and\npugnacity of philosophers.\n\nThus mysticism, although a principle of dissolution, carries with it\nthe safeguard that it can never be consistently applied. We reach it\nonly in exceptional moments of intuition, from which we descend to our\npots and pans with habits and instincts virtually unimpaired. Life goes\non; virtues and affections endure, none the worse, the mystic feels,\nfor that slight film of unreality which envelops them in a mind not\nunacquainted with ecstasy. And although mysticism, left free to express\nitself, can have no other goal than Nirvana, yet moderately indulged\nin and duly inhibited by a residuum of conventional sanity, it serves\nto give a touch of strangeness and elevation to the character and to\nsuggest superhuman gifts. It is not, however, in the least superhuman.\nIt is hardly even abnormal, being only an exaggeration of a rational\ninterest in the highest abstractions. The divine, the universal, the\nabsolute, even the One, are legitimate conceptions. They are terms\nof human thought having as such a meaning in language and a place\nin speculation. Those who live in the mind, whose passions are only\naudible in the keen overtones of dialectic, are no doubt exalted and\nprivileged natures, choosing a better part which should not be taken\nfrom them. So the poet and the mathematician have their spheres of\nabstract and delicate labour, in which a liberal legislator would not\ndisturb them. Trouble only arises when the dialectician represents\nhis rational dreams as knowledge of existences, and the mystic his\nexcusable raptures as the only way of life. Poets and mathematicians do\nnot imagine that their pursuits raise them above human limitations and\nare no part of human life, but rather its only goal and justification.\nSuch a pretension would be regarded as madness in the mathematician\nor the poet; and is not the mystic as miserably a man? Is he not\nembodying, at his best, the analytic power of a logician, or the\nimagination of an enthusiast, and, at his worst, the lowest and most\nobscure passions of human nature?\n\nYes, in spite of himself, the mystic remains human. Nothing is\nmore normal than abstraction. A contemplative mind drops easily\nits practical preoccupations, rises easily into an ideal sympathy\nwith impersonal things. The wheels of the universe have a wonderful\nmagnetism for the human will. Our consciousness likes to lose itself\nin the music of the spheres, a music that finer ears are sometimes\nprivileged to catch. The better side of mysticism is an \u00e6sthetic\ninterest in large unities and cosmic laws. The \u00e6sthetic attitude is\nnot the moral, but it is not for that reason illegitimate. It gives us\nrefreshment and a foretaste of that perfect adaptation of things to\nour faculties and of our faculties to things which, could it extend\nto every part of experience, would constitute the ideal life. Such\nhappiness is denied us in the concrete; but a hint and example of it\nmay be gathered by an abstracted element of our nature as it travels\nthrough an abstracted world. Such an indulgence adds to the value of\nreality only such value as it may itself have in momentary experience;\nit may have a doubtful moral effect on the happy dreamer himself. But\nit serves to keep alive the conviction, which a confused experience\nmight obscure, that perfection is essentially possible; it reminds\nus, like music, that there are worlds far removed from the actual\nwhich are yet living and very near to the heart. Such is the fruit\nof abstraction when abstraction bears any fruit. If the imagination\nmerely alienates us from reality, without giving us either a model for\nits correction or a glimpse into its structure, it becomes the refuge\nof poetical selfishness. Such selfishness is barren, and the fancy,\nfeeding only on itself, grows leaner every day. Mysticism is usually an\nincurable disease. Facts cannot arouse it, since it never denied them.\nReason cannot convince it, for reason is a human faculty, assuming a\nvalidity which it cannot prove. The only thing that can kill mysticism\nis its own uninterrupted progress, by which it gradually devours every\nfunction of the soul and at last, by destroying its own natural basis,\nimmolates itself to its inexorable ideal.\n\nNeed we ask, after all these reflections, where we should look for\nthat expansion and elevation of the mind which the mystic seeks so\npassionately and so unintelligently? We can find that expansion, in\nthe first place, in the imagination itself. That is the true realm of\nman's infinity, where novelty may exist without falsity and perpetual\ndiversity without contradiction. But such exercise of imagination\nleaves the world of knowledge untouched. Is there no escape from the\nprison, as the mystic thinks it, of science and history which shall\nyet not carry us beyond reality? Is there no truth beyond conventional\ntruth, no life behind human existence?\n\nCertainly. Behind the discovered there is the discoverable, beyond\nthe actual, the possible. Science and history are not exhausted. In\ntheir determinate directions they are as infinite as fancy in its\nindetermination. The spectacle which science and history now spread\nbefore us is as far beyond the experience of an ephemeral insect as any\nAbsolute can be beyond our own; yet we have put that spectacle together\nout of just such sensations as the insect may have--out of this\nsunlight and this buzz and these momentary throbs of existence. The\nunderstanding has indeed supervened, but it has supervened not to deny\nthe validity of those sensations, but to combine their messages. We may\nstill continue in the same path, by the indefinite extension of science\nover a world of experience and of intelligible truth. Is that prospect\ninsufficient for our ambition? With a world so full of stuff before\nhim, I can hardly conceive what morbid instinct can tempt a man to look\nelsewhere for wider vistas, unless it be unwillingness to endure the\nsadness and the discipline of the truth.\n\nBut can our situation be made better by refusing to understand it? If\nwe renounced mysticism altogether and kept imagination in its place,\nshould we not live in a clearer and safer world, as well as in a\ntruer? Nay, are we sure that this gradually unfolding, intelligible,\nand real world would not turn out to be more congenial and beautiful\nthan any wilful fiction, since it would be the product of a universal\nhuman labour and the scene of the accumulated sufferings and triumphs\nof mankind? When we compare the temple which we call Nature, built of\nsights and sounds by memory and understanding, with all the wonderful\nworlds evocable by the magician's wand, may we not prefer the humbler\nand more lasting edifice, not only as a dwelling, but even as a house\nof prayer? It is not always the loftiest architecture that expresses\nthe deepest soul; the inmost religion of the Pagan haunted his\nhearth as that of the Christian his catacombs or his hermitage. So\nphilosophy is more spiritual in her humility and abstinence than in\nher short-lived audacities, and she would do well to inscribe over her\ngates what, in an ancient Spanish church, may be seen written near the\nsteep entrance to a little subterraneous crypt:--\n\n    \"Wouldst thou pass this lowly door?\n    Go, and angels greet thee there;\n    For by this their sacred stair\n    To descend is still to soar.\n    Bid a measured silence keep\n    What thy thoughts be telling o'er;\n    Sink, to rise with wider sweep\n    To the heaven of thy rest,\n    For he climbs the heavens best\n    Who would touch the deepest deep.\"\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nTHE HOMERIC HYMNS\n\n\nWe of this generation look back upon a variety of religious conceptions\nand forms of worship, and a certain unsatisfied hunger in our own souls\nattaches our attention to the spectacle. We observe how literally\nfables and mysteries were once accepted which can have for us now only\na thin and symbolical meaning. Judging other minds and other ages\nby our own, we are tempted to ask if there ever was any fundamental\ndifference between religion and poetry. Both seem to consist in what\nthe imagination adds to science, to history, and to morals. Men looked\nattentively on the face of Nature: their close struggle with her\ncompelled them to do so: but before making statistics of her movements\nthey made dramatizations of her life. The imagination enveloped the\nmaterial world, as yet imperfectly studied, and produced the cosmos of\nmythology.\n\nThus the religion of the Greeks was, we might say, nothing but poetry:\nnothing but what imagination added to the rudiments of science, to\nthe first impressions of a mind that pored upon natural phenomena and\nresponded to them with a quick sense of kinship and comprehension.\nThe religion of the Hebrews might be called poetry with as good\nreason. Their \"sense for conduct\" and their vivid interest in their\nnational destiny carried them past any prosaic record of events or\ncautious theory of moral and social laws. They rose at once into a\nbold dramatic conception of their race's covenant with Heaven: just\nsuch a conception as the playwright would seek out in order to portray\nwith awful acceleration the ways of passion and fate. Finally, we have\napparently a third kind of poetry in what has been the natural religion\nof the detached philosophers of all ages. In them the imagination\ntouches the precepts of morals and the ideals of reason, attributing\nto them a larger scope and more perfect fulfilment than experience can\nshow them to have. Philosophers ever tend to clothe the harmonies of\ntheir personal thought with universal validity and to assign to their\nideals a latent omnipotence and an ultimate victory over the forces of\nunreason. This which is obviously a kind of poetry is at the same time\nthe spontaneous religion of conscience and thought.\n\nYet religion in all these cases differs from a mere play of the\nimagination in one important respect; it reacts directly upon life;\nit is a factor in conduct. Our religion is the poetry in which we\nbelieve. Mere poetry is an ineffectual shadow of life; religion is,\nif you will, a phantom also, but a phantom guide. While it tends to\nits own expansion, like any growth in the imagination, it tends also\nto its application in practice. Such an aim is foreign to poetry. The\ninspirations of religion demand fidelity and courageous response on\nour part. Faith brings us not only peace, not only the contemplation\nof ideal harmonies, but labour and the sword. These two tendencies--to\nimaginative growth and to practical embodiment--coexist in every\nliving religion, but they are not always equally conspicuous. In the\nformative ages of Christianity, for instance, while its legends were\nbeing gathered and its dogma fixed, the imaginative expansion absorbed\nmen's interest; later, when the luxuriant branches of the Church began\nto shake off their foliage, and there came a time of year\n\n    \"When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang\n    Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,\"\n\nthe energy of religious thought, released from the enlargement of\ndoctrine, spent itself upon a more rigid and watchful application of\nthe residuum of faith.\n\nIn the Pagan religion the element of applicability might seem at first\nsight to be lacking, so that nothing would subsist but a poetic fable.\nAn unbiassed study of antiquity, however, will soon dispel that idea.\nBesides the gods whom we may plausibly regard as impersonations of\nnatural forces, there existed others; the spirits of ancestors, the\ngods of the hearth, and the ideal patrons of war and the arts. Even the\ngods of Nature inspired reverence and secured a cultus only as they\ninfluenced the well-being of man. The worship of them had a practical\nimport. The conception of their nature and presence became a sanction\nand an inspiration in the conduct of life. When the figments of the\nfancy are wholly divorced from reality they can have no clearness or\nconsistency; they can have no permanence when they are wholly devoid of\nutility. The vividness and persistence of the figures of many of the\ngods came from the fact that they were associated with institutions and\npractices which controlled the conception of them and kept it young.\nThe fictions of a poet, whatever his genius, do not produce illusion\nbecause they do not attach themselves to realities in the world of\naction. They have character without power and names without local\nhabitations. The gods in the beginning had both. Their image, their\nhaunts, the reports of their apparitions and miracles, gave a nucleus\nof empirical reality to the accretions of legend. The poet who came\nto sing their praise, to enlarge upon their exploits, and to explain\ntheir cultus, gave less to the gods in honour than he received from\nthem in inspiration. All his invention was guided by the genius of the\ndeity, as represented by the traditions of his shrine. This poetry,\nthen, even in its most playful mood, is not mere poetry, but religion.\nIt is a poetry in which men believe; it is a poetry that beautifies and\njustifies to their minds the positive facts of their ancestral worship,\ntheir social unity, and their personal conscience.\n\nThese general reflections may help us to approach the hymns of Homer\nin a becoming spirit. For in them we find the extreme of fancy, the\napproach to a divorce between the imagination and the faith of the\nworshipper. Consequently there is danger that we may allow ourselves\nto read these lives of the gods as the composition of a profane poet.\nIf we did so we should fail to understand not only their spirit as\na whole but many of their parts, in which notes are struck now of\ndevotion and affectionate pride, now of gratitude and entreaty. These\nmay be addressed, it is true, to a being that has just been described\nas guilty of some signal vice or treachery, and the contradiction may\nwell stagger a Puritan critic. But the lusts of life were once for\nall in the blood of the Pagan gods, who were the articulate voices of\nNature and of passion. The half-meant exaggeration of a well-known\ntrait in the divinity would not render the poets that indulged in it\nunwelcome to the god; he could feel the sure faith and affection of\nhis worshippers even in their good-humoured laughter at his imaginary\nplights and naughtiness. The clown was not excluded from these rites.\nHis wit also counted as a service.\n\nThe Homeric Hymns, if we may trust the impression they produce on\na modern, are not hymns and are not Homer's. They are fragments of\nnarrative in Ionic hexameter recited during the feasts and fairs at\nvarious Greek shrines. They are not melodies to be chanted with a\ncommon voice by the assemblage during a sacrifice; they are tales\ndelivered by the minstrel to the listening audience of citizens and\nstrangers. They usually have a local reference. Thus we find under the\ntitle of a hymn to Apollo a song of Delos and one of Delphi. Delos is\na barren rock; its wealth was due to the temple that attracted to the\nplace pilgrimages and embassies, not without rich offerings, from many\nGreek cities. Accordingly we hear how Leto or Latona, when about to\nbecome the mother of Apollo, wandered about the cities and mountains\nof Greece and Asia, seeking a birthplace for her son. None would\nreceive her, but all the islands trembled at the awful honour of such a\nnativity, profitable as the honour might eventually prove,--\n\n                        \"Until at length\n    The lovely goddess came to Delos' side\n    And, making question, spake these wing\u00e8d words:\n    'Delos, were it thy will to be the seat\n    Of my young son Apollo, brightest god,\n    And build him a rich fane, no other power\n    Should ever touch thee or work ill upon thee.\n    I tell thee not thou shalt be rich in kine\n    Or in fair flocks, much fruit, or myriad flowers;\n    But when Apollo of the far-felt dart\n    Hath here his shrine, all men will gather here\n    Bringing thee hecatombs.... And though thy soil be poor,\n    The gods shall make thee strong against thy foes.'\"\n\nThe spirit of the island is naturally not averse to so favourable a\nproposition but, like some too humble maiden wooed by a great prince,\nhas some misgivings lest this promise of unexpected good fortune should\nveil the approach of some worse calamity. \"When the god is born into\nthe light of day,\" she says, \"will he not despise me, seeing how barren\nI am, and sink me in the sea\n\n                        \"That ever will\n    Oppress my heart with many a watery hill?\n    And therefore let him choose some other land,\n    Where he shall please, to build at his command\n    Temple and grove set thick with many a tree.\n    For wretched polypuses breed in me,\n    Retiring chambers, and black sea-calves den\n    In my poor soil, for penury of men.\"[1]\n\nLeto reassures the island, however, and swears to build a great\ntemple there which her son will haunt perpetually, preferring it to\nall his other shrines. Delos consents, and Apollo is born amid the\nministrations of all the goddesses except Hera, who sits indignant\nand revengeful in the solitudes of Olympus. The child is bathed in\nthe stream and delicately swaddled; but after tasting the nectar and\nambrosia which one of the nymphs is quick to offer him, he bursts his\nbands, calls for his bow and his lyre, and flies upward into the sky\nannouncing that he will henceforth declare the will of Zeus to mortals.\nThereupon--\n\n    \"All the immortals stood\n    In deep amaze....\n    All Delos, looking on him, all with gold\n    Was loaded straight, and joy'd to be extoll'd.\n    For so she flourished, as a hill that stood\n    Crown'd with the flower of an abundant wood.\"[2]\n\nThis legend, with all that accompanies it concerning the glories of\nDelos and its gods, and the pilgrimages and games that enlivened the\nisland, was well-conceived to give form and justification to the\ncultus of the temple, and to delight the votaries whom custom or vague\ninstincts of piety had gathered there. The sacred poet, in another part\nof this hymn, does the same service to the even greater sanctuary of\nDelphi. He tells us how Apollo wandered over many lands and waters,\nand he stops lovingly to recall the names of the various spots that\nclaimed the honour of having at some time been visited by the god.\nThe minstrels, wanderers themselves, loved to celebrate in this way\nthe shores they had seen or heard of, and to fill at the same time\ntheir listener's minds with the spell of sonorous names, the sense of\nspace and the thrill of mystery. In his journeys Apollo, the hymn tells\nus, finally came to the dell and fountain of Delphusa on the skirts\nof Parnassus. The nymph of the spot, fearing the encroachments of so\nmuch more powerful a deity, deceived him and persuaded him to plant\nhis temple on another site, where Parnassus fronts the west, and the\noverhanging rocks form a cavern. There Apollo established his temple\nfor the succour and enlightenment of mankind, while Trophonius and\nAgamedes, sons of Erginus, men dear to the immortal gods, built the\napproaches of stone.\n\nThus the divine origin of the temple is vindicated, the structure\ndescribed, and the human architects honoured, whose descendants,\nvery likely, were present to hear their ancestors' praise. But here\na puzzling fact challenges the attention and stimulates the fancy of\nthe poet: Apollo was a Dorian deity, yet his chief shrine was here\nupon Phocian ground. Perhaps some traditions remained to suggest an\nexplanation of the anomaly; at any rate the poet is not at a loss\nfor an account of the matter. The temple being established, Apollo\nbethought himself what race of priests he should make its ministers:\nat least, such is the na\u00efve account in the poem, which expects us\nto forget that temples do not arise in the absence of predetermined\nservants and worshippers. While pondering this question, however,\nApollo cast his eyes on the sea where it chanced that a swift ship,\nmanned by many and excellent Cretans, was merrily sailing: whereupon\nthe god, taking the form of a huge dolphin, leapt into the ship, to the\ninfinite surprise and bewilderment of those worthy merchants, who, as\ninnocent as the fishers of the Galil\u00e6an Lake of the religious destiny\nthat awaited them, were thinking only of the pecuniary profits of their\nvoyage. The presence of the god benumbed their movements, and they\nstood silent while the ship sailed before the wind. And the blast,\nveering at this place with the changed configuration of the coast, blew\nthem irresistibly to the very foot of Parnassus, to the little haven of\nCrissa. There Apollo appeared to them once more, this time running down\nto the beach to meet them in the form of\n\n                    \"A stout and lusty fellow,\n    His mighty shoulders covered with his mane;\n    Who sped these words upon the wings of sound:\n    'Strangers, who are ye? and whence sail ye hither\n    The watery ways? Come ye to traffic justly\n    Or recklessly like pirates of the deep\n    Rove ye, adventuring your souls, to bring\n    Evil on strangers? Why thus sit ye grieving,\n    Nor leap on land, nor strike the mast and lay it\n    In your black ship? For so should traders do\n    When, sated with the labour of the sea,\n    They quit their painted galley for the shore,\n    And presently the thought of needful food\n    Comes gladsomely upon them.' So he spake,\n    Putting new courage in their breasts. To whom\n    The Cretan captain in his turn replied:\n    'Since thou art nothing like to things of earth\n    In form or stature, but most like the gods\n    That ever live, Hail, and thrice hail, O Stranger,\n    And may the gods pour blessings on thy head.\n    Now tell me truly, for I need to know,\n    What land is this, what people, from what race\n    Descended? As for us, over the deep\n    Broad sea, we sought another haven, Pylos,\n    Sailing from Crete, for thence we boast to spring;\n    But now our ship is cast upon this shore,\n    For some god steered our course against our will.'\n    Then the far-darter spoke and answered them.\n    'Friends, in well-wooded Cnossus hitherto\n    Ye have had homes, but ye shall not again\n    Return to your good native town, to find\n    Each his fair house and well-belov\u00e8d wife,\n    But here shall ye possess my temple, rich\n    And greatly honoured by the tribes of men.\n    For I am son to Zeus. Apollo is\n    My sacred name. 'Twas I that led you hither\n    Over the mighty bosom of the deep,\n    Intending you no ill; for ye shall here\n    Possess a temple sacred to me, rich,\n    And greatly honoured of all mortal men.\n    The counsels of the deathless gods shall be\n    Revealed to you, and by their will your days\n    Shall pass in honour and in peace for ever.\n    Come then and, as I bid, make haste to do.\n    ... Build by the sea an altar; kindle flame;\n    Sprinkle white barley grains thereon, and pray,\n    Standing about the altar. And as first\n    Ye saw me leap into your swift black bark\n    In likeness of a dolphin, so henceforth\n    Worship me by the name Delphinius,\n    And Delphian ever be my far-seen shrine.'\"\n\nThus the establishment of the Dorian god in Phocis is explained, and\nthe wealth and dignity of his temple are justified by prophecy and\nby divine intention. For Apollo is not satisfied with repeatedly\ndescribing the future temple, by an incidental epithet, as opulent;\nthat hint would not have been enough for the simplicity of those\nmerchant sailors, new as they were to the mysteries of priestcraft.\nIt was necessary for Apollo to allay their fears of poverty by a more\nexplicit assurance that it will be easy for them to live by the altar.\nAnd what is more, Hermes and all the thieves he inspires will respect\nthe shrine; its treasures, although unprotected by walls, shall be safe\nfor-ever.\n\nThese were truly, as we see, the hymns of a levitical patriotism. With\nHomeric breadth and candour they dilated on the miracles, privileges,\nand immunities of the sacred places and their servitors, and they thus\nkept alive in successive generations an awe mingled with familiar\ninterest toward divine persons and things which is characteristic of\nthat more primitive age. Gods and men were then nearer together, and\nboth yielded more frankly to the tendency, inherent in their nature, to\nresemble one another.\n\nThe same quality is found in another fragment, the most beautiful and\nthe most familiar of all. This is the hymn to Demeter in which two\nstories are woven together, one telling of the rape of Persephone, and\nthe other of the reception of Demeter, disguised in her sorrow, into\nthe household of Celeus, where she becomes the nurse of his infant son\nDemophoon. Both stories belong to the religion of Eleusis, where this\nversion of them seems intended to be sung. The place was sacred to\nDemeter and Persephone and its mysteries dealt particularly with the\npassage of souls to the nether world and with their habitation there.\nThe pathetic beauty of the first fable--in which we can hardly abstain\nfrom seeing some symbolical meaning--expresses for us something of the\nmystic exaltation of the local rites; while the other tale of Celeus,\nhis wife, his daughters, and his son, whom his nurse, the disguised\ngoddess, almost succeeds in endowing with immortality, celebrates the\nancient divine affinities of the chiefs of the Eleusinian state.\n\nThe first story is too familiar to need recounting; who has not heard\nof the gentle Persephone gathering flowers in the meadow and suddenly\nswallowed by the yawning earth and carried away to Hades, the god of\nthe nether world, to share his sombre but sublime dominion over the\nshades?--a dignity of which she is not insensible, much as she grieves\nat the separation from her beloved mother; and how Demeter in turn\nis disconsolate and (in her wrath and despair at the indifference of\nthe gods) conceals her divinity, refuses the fruits of the earth, and\nwanders about in the guise of an old woman, nursing her grief, until\nat last Zeus sends his messenger to Hades to effect a compromise; and\nPersephone, after eating the grain of pomegranate that obliges her to\nreturn yearly to her husband, is allowed to come back to the upper\nworld to dwell for two-thirds of the year in her mother's company.\n\nThe underlying allegory is here very interesting. We observe how the\ngenius of the Greek religion, while too anthropomorphic to retain any\nclear consciousness of the cosmic processes that were symbolized by its\ndeities and their adventures, was anthropomorphic also in a moral way,\nand tended to turn the personages which it ceased to regard as symbols\nof natural forces into types of human experience. So the parable of\nthe seed that must die if it is to rise again and live an immortal, if\ninterrupted, life in successive generations, gives way in the tale of\nDemeter and Persephone, to a prototype of human affection. The devotee,\nno longer reminded by his religion of any cosmic laws, was not reduced\nto a mere superstition,--to a fable and a belief in the efficacy of\nexternal rites,--he was encouraged to regard the mystery as the\ndivine counterpart of his own experience. His religion in forgetting\nto be natural had succeeded in becoming moral; the gods were now\nmodels of human endurance and success; their histories offered sublime\nconsolations to mortal destiny. Fancy had turned the aspects of Nature\ninto persons; but devotion, directed upon these imaginary persons,\nturned them into human ideals and into patron saints, thereby relating\nthem again to life and saving them from insignificance.\n\nA further illustration of the latter transformation may be found in the\nsecond story contained in our hymn. Demeter, weary of her wanderings\nand sick at heart, has come to sit down beside a well, near the house\nof Celeus. His four young daughters, dancing and laughing, come to\nfetch water in their golden jars,--\n\n    \"As hinds or heifers gambol in the fields\n    When Spring is young.\"\n\nThey speak kindly to the goddess, who asks them for employment. \"And\nfor me,\" she says,--\n\n    \"And for me, damsels, harbour pitiful\n    And favouring thoughts, dear children, that I come\n    To some good man's or woman's house, to ply\n    My task in willing service of such sort\n    As ag\u00e8d women use. A tender child\n    I could nurse well and safely in my arms,\n    And tend the house, and spread the master's couch\n    Recessed in the fair chamber, or could teach\n    The maids their handicraft.\"\n\nThe offer is gladly accepted, for Celeus himself has an infant son,\nDemophoon, the hope of his race: The aged woman enters the dwelling,\nmaking in her long-robed grief a wonderful contrast to the four\nsportive girls:--\n\n    \"Who lifting up their ample kirtle-folds\n    Sped down the waggon-furrowed way, and shook\n    Their curls about their shoulders--yellow gold\n    Like crocuses in bloom.\"\n\nOnce within the house, which she awes with her uncomprehended presence,\nthe goddess sits absorbed in grief, until she is compelled to smile\nfor a moment at the jests of the quick-witted maid Iambe, and consents\nto take in lieu of the wine that is offered her, a beverage of beaten\nbarley, water, and herbs. These details are of course introduced to\njustify the ritual of Eleusis, in which the clown and the barley-water\nplayed a traditional part.\n\nThus Demeter becomes nurse to Demophoon, but she has ideas of\nher duties differing from the common, and worthy of her unusual\nqualifications. She neither suckles nor feeds the infant but anoints\nhim with ambrosia and lays him at night to sleep on the embers of the\nhearth. This his watchful mother discovers with not unnatural alarm;\nwhen the goddess reveals herself and departs, foiled in her desire to\nmake her nursling immortal.\n\nThe spirit that animates this fable is not that poetic frivolity which\nwe are accustomed to associate with Paganism. Here we find an immortal\nin profoundest grief and mortals entertaining an angel unawares; we are\ntold of supernatural food, and of a burning fire that might make this\nmortal put on immortality did not the generous but ignorant impulses of\nthe natural man break in upon that providential purpose and prevent its\nconsummation. Eleusis was the natural home for such a myth, and we may\nwell believe that those initiated into the mysteries there were taught\nto dwell on its higher interpretation.\n\nBut there are other hymns in a lighter vein in which the play of\nfancy is not guided by any moral intuition. The hymn to Hermes is one\nperpetual ebullition of irresponsible humour.\n\nHermes is the child of Maia, a nymph of Cyllene whose cave Zeus has\nsurreptitiously visited while the white-armed Juno--for, unsympathetic\nprude as this goddess may be, she must still be beautiful--slept\nsoundly in Olympus. The child is hardly born when he catches a\ntortoise, kills it, scoops out the shell, and makes a lute of it, upon\nwhich he begins to play delicious music. Not satisfied with that feat,\nhowever, he escapes from his cradle, and drives from their pasture\nthe kine that Apollo has left feeding there. Accused afterward of this\nmischief, he defends himself after the following fashion, while he lies\nin his crib, holding his new-made lyre lightly in his hand under the\nbedclothes. I quote Shelley's version:--\n\n    \"'An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong\n        And I am but a little new-born thing\n      Who yet, at least, can think of nothing wrong.\n        My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling\n      The cradle-clothes about me all day long,\n        Or, half-asleep, hear my sweet mother sing\n      And to be washed in water clean and warm\n        And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm.'\"\n      *       *       *       *       *       *\n    \"Sudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill\n       Subdued the strong Latonian, by the might\n     Of winning music, to his mightier will.\n       His left hand held the lyre, and in his right\n     The plectrum struck the chords: unconquerable\n       Up from beneath his hand in circling flight\n     The gathering music rose--and sweet as Love\n     The penetrating notes did live and move\n\n    \"Within the heart of great Apollo. He\n       Listened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure.\n     Close to his side stood harping fearlessly\n       The unabash\u00e8d boy, and to the measure\n     Of the sweet lyre there followed loud and free\n       His joyous voice: for he unlocked the treasure\n     Of his deep song, illustrating the birth\n     Of the bright Gods, and the dark desert Earth;\n\n    \"And how to the Immortals every one\n       A portion was assigned of all that is.\n     But chief Mnemosyne did Maia's son\n       Clothe in the light of his loud melodies.\n     And, as each god was born or had begun,\n       He in their order due and fit degrees\n     Sung of his birth and being--and did move\n     Apollo to unutterable love.\"\n\nIn fact, after the most enthusiastic encomiums on the young god's art,\nand on the power of music in general, Apollo offers the child his\nprotection and friendship:--\n\n    \"Now, since thou hast, although so very small,\n       Science of arts so glorious, thus I swear,--\n     And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall,\n       Witness between us what I promise here,--\n     That I will lead thee to the Olympian hall,\n       Honoured and mighty, with thy mother dear,\n     And many glorious gifts in joy will give thee\n     And even at the end will ne'er deceive thee.\"\n\nHermes is not insensible to this offer and its advantages; he accepts\nit with good grace and many compliments, nor does he wish to remain\nbehind in the exchange of courtesies and benefits: he addresses Apollo\nthus:--\n\n    \"Thou canst seek out and compass all that wit\n       Can find or teach. Yet, since thou wilt, come, take\n     The lyre--be mine the glory giving it--\n       Strike the sweet chords, and sing aloud, and wake\n     The joyous pleasure out of many a fit\n       Of tranced sound--and with fleet fingers make?\n     Thy liquid-voiced comrade speak with thee,--\n     It can talk measured music eloquently.\n\n    \"Then bear it boldly to the revel loud,\n       Love-wakening dance, or feast of solemn state,\n     A joy by night or day: for those endowed\n       With art and wisdom who interrogate\n     It teaches, babbling in delightful mood\n       All things which make the spirit most elate.\n     Soothing the mind with sweet familiar play,\n     Chasing the heavy shadows of dismay.\n\n    \"To those that are unskilled in its sweet tongue,\n       Though they should question most impetuously\n     Its hidden soul, it gossips something wrong--\n       Some senseless and impertinent reply.\n     But thou, who art as wise as thou art strong,\n       Canst compass all that thou desirest. I\n     Present thee with this music-flowing shell,\n     Knowing thou canst interrogate it well....\"\n\nApollo is not slow to learn the new art with which he is ever after\nto delight both gods and men; but he is not at first quite at ease in\nhis mind, fearing that Hermes will not only recapture the lyre but\nsteal his friend's bow and arrows into the bargain. Hermes, however,\nswears by all that is holy never to do so, and the friendship of the\ntwo artful gods is sealed for ever. The minstrel does not forget, at\nthis point, to remind his hearers, among whom we may imagine not a few\nprofessional followers of Hermes to have been mixed, that the robber's\nhonour is pledged by his divine patron to respect the treasures of\nApollo's shrines. Let not the votary think, he adds, that Apollo's\noracles are equally useful to good and to bad men: these mysteries\nare truly efficacious only for the pious and orthodox who follow the\nestablished traditions of the temple and honour its servants. Apollo\nsays:--\n\n                                 \"He who comes consigned\n     By voice and wings of perfect augury\n     To my great shrine shall find avail in me:\n\n    \"Him I will not deceive, but will assist.\n       But he who comes relying on such birds\n     As chatter vainly, who would strain and twist\n       The purpose of the gods with idle words,\n     And deems their knowledge light, he shall have missed\n       His road--whilst I among my other hoards\n     His gifts deposit....\"\n\nThe wildest fairy-story thus leads easily to a little drama not\nwithout its human charm and moral inspiration; while the legend is\nattached to the cultus, and the cultus is intertwined with the practice\nand sanctions of daily life. Even here, in its most playful mood,\ntherefore, this mythological poetry retains the spirit and function\nof religion. Even here sacerdotal interests are not forgotten. Delphi\nshall be safe; the lyre is Apollo's by right although it be Hermes' by\ninvention. A certain amiable harmony is after all drawn from the riot\nof foolishness. All is sweet and unmalicious and lovable enough, and\nthe patronage of both the friendly gods, the enthusiast and the wag,\nmay be invoked with confidence and benefit.\n\nNot less remarkable, although for other reasons, is the hymn to\nAphrodite. Here we find a more human fable and a more serious tone:\nwhile the poem, if we choose to consider it in its allegorical meaning,\ntouches one of the deepest convictions of the Greek conscience. All the\ngods save three--Athena, Artemis, and Hestia,--are subject to the power\nof Aphrodite, Zeus at least as much as the rest. In revenge for this\nsubjection, Zeus determines to make Aphrodite feel the passion which\nshe boasts to be able to inspire in others.\n\nThe fair shepherd Anchises feeds his flocks upon Mount Ida, and with\nhim Aphrodite is made to fall in love. She presents herself to him in a\nhuman disguise, and meets his advances with a long account of her birth\nand parentage, and begs him to take her back to her parents, and having\nasked for her hand and fulfilled all customary formalities, to lead her\naway as his lawful wife. The passion which at the same time, however,\nshe is careful to breathe into him cannot brook so long a delay: and\nshe yields to his impatience. When about to leave him she awakes him\nfrom his sleep, turns upon him the full glance of her divinity, and\nreveals her name and his destiny. She will bear him a son, \u00c6neas, who\nwill be one of the greatest princes and heroes of Troy; but he himself\nwill be stricken with feebleness and a premature old age, in punishment\nfor the involuntary sacrilege which he has committed.\n\nThe description of the disguised goddess, with its Homeric pomp and\nelaborate propriety, is a noble and masterly one, underlined, as\nit were, with a certain satirical or dramatic intention; we have\nthe directness of a Nausicaa, with a more luxurious and passionate\nbeauty. The revelation of the goddess is wonderfully made, with that\nparallel movement of natural causes and divine workings which is so\noften to be admired in Homer. The divinity of the visitant appears\nonly at the moment of her flight, when she becomes a consecration and\nan unattainable memory. The sight of deity leaves the eyes dull, like\nthose of the Platonic prisoners returning from the sunlight of truth\ninto the den of appearance. Nay more, a communion with the divinity,\ncloser than is consonant with human frailty, leaves the seer impotent\nand a burden upon the world; but this personal tragedy is not without\nits noble fruits to posterity. Anchises suffers, but his son \u00c6neas, the\nissue of that divine though punishable union, lives to bear, not only\nthe aged Anchises himself, but the gods of Ilium, out of the ruins of\nTroy.\n\nSuch analogies carry us, no doubt, far beyond the intention of the hymn\nor of the exoteric religion to which it ministers. The story-teller's\ndelight in his story is the obvious motive of such compositions, even\nwhen they reflect indirectly the awe in which the divine impersonations\nof natural forces were held by the popular religion. All that we may\nfairly imagine to have been in the mind of the pious singer is the\nsense that something divine comes down among us in the crises of our\nexistence, and that this visitation is fraught with immense although\nvague possibilities of both good and evil. The gods sometimes appear,\nand when they do they bring us a foretaste of that sublime victory of\nmind over matter which we may never gain in experience but which may\nconstantly be gained in thought. When natural phenomena are conceived\nas the manifestation of divine life, human life itself, by sympathy\nwith that ideal projection of itself, enlarges its customary bounds,\nuntil it seems capable of becoming the life of the universe. A god\nis a conceived victory of mind over Nature. A visible god is the\nconsciousness of such a victory momentarily attained. The vision soon\nvanishes, the sense of omnipotence is soon dispelled by recurring\nconflicts with hostile forces; but the momentary illusion of that\nrealized good has left us with the perennial knowledge of good as an\nideal. Therein lies the essence and the function of religion.\n\nThat such a function was fulfilled by this Homeric legend, with all its\nlove of myth and lust of visible beauty, is witnessed by another short\nhymn, which we may quote almost entire by way of conclusion. It is\naddressed to Castor and Polydeuces, patrons of sailors no less than of\nhorsemen and boxers. It is impossible to read it without feeling that\nthe poet, however entangled he may have been in superstition and fable,\ngrasped that high essence of religion which makes religion rational. He\nfelt the power of contemplation to master the contradictions of life\nand to overspread experience, sublime but impalpable, like a rainbow\nover retreating storms:--\n\n    \"Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove\n    ... Mild Pollux, void of blame,\n    And steed-subduing Castor, heirs of fame.\n    These are the powers who earth-born mortals save\n    And ships, whose flight is swift along the wave.\n    When wintry tempests o'er the savage sea\n    Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly\n    Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow,\n    Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow,\n    And sacrifice with snow-white lambs--the wind\n    And the huge billow bursting close behind\n    Even then beneath the weltering waters bear\n    The staggering ship,--they suddenly appear,\n    On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky,\n    And lull the blasts in mute tranquillity\n    And strew the waves on the white ocean's bed,\n    Fair omen of the voyage; from toil and dread\n    The sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight,\n    And plough the quiet sea in safe delight.\"[3]\n\n\n[1] Chapman's version.\n\n[2] Chapman's version.\n\n[3] Shelley's translation.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nTHE DISSOLUTION OF PAGANISM\n\n\nGreek religion seems to have contained three factors of unequal\nprominence, but ultimately of about equal importance and longevity.\nMost obvious, especially if we begin our study with Homer, is the\nmythology which presents us with a multitude of gods, male and female,\noften related by blood, and having social and even hostile relations\nwith one another. If we examine their characters, attributes, and\nfables, we readily perceive that most of them are impersonations of\nnatural forces. Some, however, figure prominently as patrons of special\narts or special places, as Apollo of prophecy and music, of Delos and\nDelphi; and yet others seem to be wholly personifications of human\npowers, as Athena of prudence and of martial and industrial arts.\n\nUnderlying this mythology is another element, probably more ancient,\nthe worship of ancestors, local divinities, and domestic gods. With\nthese were naturally connected various ritual observances, and\nespecially the noblest and most important of rites, the sacrifice.\nSuch practices may be supposed to have belonged originally to the\ntribal religion, and to have passed by analogy to the great natural\ngods, when these had been once created by the poet and perhaps\nidentified with the older genius of that spot where their efficacy was\nfirst signally manifested.\n\nFinally, as a third element, we find the religion of the priests,\nsoothsayers, and magicians, as well as the rites of Orpheus, Bacchus,\nand the Great Goddesses at Eleusis. These forms of worship showed\nOriental affinities and partook of a kind of nocturnal horror and\nmystical enthusiasm. They were the Greek representatives of the\nreligion of revelation and of sacraments, and bore much the same\nrelation to the supernaturalistic elements in Christianity as does\nthe idea of a shade in Hades to the idea of a soul in heaven. The\nfundamental intuitions were the same, but in Pagan times they remained\nvague, doubtful, and incoherent.\n\nThese three forms of religion lay together in men's minds and habits\nthroughout the formative period of Greek literature. There was an\noccasional rivalry among them, but the tolerance characteristic\nof Paganism could reconcile their claims without much difficulty,\nand admit them all to a share of honour. The history of the three\nelements, however, differs essentially, as might be expected after a\nconsideration of their respective natures. The antique family religion\nlived by inertia; it was obeyed without being justified theoretically,\nand remained strong by its very obscurity. Many customs which a man\nmay have occasion to conform to only once or twice in his life endure\nfor ages and survive the ebb and flow of intellectual and political\nsystems. Nursery tales, trivial superstitions, customs connected\nwith weddings or funerals, or with certain days of the year, have a\nstrange and irrational persistence; they surprise us by emerging into\nprominence after centuries of a sort of subterraneous existence. Thus\nthe deification of Roman emperors was not the sacrilegious innovation\nwhich it might appear to be, but on the contrary a restoration of the\nspirit of the most ancient faith, a revival called to the aid of a new\npolity by the mingled statecraft and superstition of the times. Thus,\ntoo, the Christian care in the burial of the dead (contrary as it is to\nthe theoretical spiritualism of Christianity), the feast of All Souls,\nand the prayers for the departed are evidences of the same latent human\nreligion underlying the cosmic flights and public controversies of\ntheology.\n\nThe mysteries, on the other hand, had essentially a spirit of\nself-consciousness and propaganda. They came as revelations or as\nreforms; they pretended to disclose secrets handed down from remote\nantiquity, from the primeval revelation of God to man, or truths\nrecovered by the inspiration of later prophets supernaturally\nillumined. The history of these movements is, accordingly, the\nhistory-of sects. They never constituted the normal and common religion\nof the people, and never impressed their spirit on the national\nliterature. \u00c6schylus or Plato may have borrowed something from them;\nbut they did so most when they assumed an attitude of open opposition\nto the exoteric religion of their country. Thus when Plato makes his\nSocrates propound a Pythagorean or Orphic doctrine of transmigration,\nhe represents the very members of the Socratic circle as surprised,\nor as incredulous: and when they are finally silenced by the proofs\nadvanced, it is only because they are overawed by the dogmatic unction\nof a dying sage, who stimulates their imagination with poetic myths,\nand confuses their intellect with verbal equivocations. When the mist\nof the argument has cleared away, like incense after the sacrifice,\nthere remains indeed a profound emotion, a catharsis produced by the\nsublimity and pathos, so artfully mingled, of both scene and argument;\nbut the bare doctrine enunciated, true and profound as it is in its\ndeeper meaning, is quite incapable of appealing to an undisciplined\nmind, and could not pass for a religious dogma except for the priestly\nrobes in which it is dressed. Thus the function of the mysteries\nof which Plato's Ph\u00e6do may be regarded as a philosophic echo, was\nto be the vehicle of revolutionary tendencies, tendencies which a\nphilosopher might privately shape in one way and a superstitious man in\nanother. Both could find in the spell of an occult ceremonial and in\nthe prophecies of an oracular creed an escape from the limitations of\nthe official religion. Mysticism and the claim to illumination found\nin these mysteries their natural expression. The many fundamental\nquestions left unanswered and unasked by Paganism, the many\npotentialities of religious emotion left unexercised by it, were thus\nallowed to appear.\n\nIndependently of these two comparatively silent streams of religious\nlife, we may trace the current of polytheistic theology,--a current\nwhich naturally left a plainer trace in literature, since it contained\nall there might be in Greece of speculation and controversy in\nreligious matters. The moral sanctions of religion were embodied in the\ndomestic and civic worship; the pious imagination remained thereby all\nthe freer to follow the analogies of physical objects in its mythology.\nApollo was the father of Asclepius and the leader of the Muses; his\nideal dignity and beneficence were vouched for by those attributes.\nHe could well afford, therefore, as the Sun-god, to decimate the\nGreek army with the same fatal shafts with which he slew the Python.\nThe moral function of the god was certain on other grounds, being\nenshrined in the local religions of the people. The poet might follow\nwithout scruple the suggestions of experience; he might attribute to\nthe god the various activities, beneficent and maleficent, observable\nin the element over which he presided. This is a liberty taken even\nin the most moralistic religions. In the Gospels, for instance, we\nsometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn\nfrom observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of\njustice; as when we hear that to him that hath shall be given and from\nhim that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. Such\ncharacterizations appeal to our sense of fact. They remind us that the\nGod we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God;\nthey are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing\ninto a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought\nand endeavour. For we naturally seek to express his awful actuality,\nhis unchallengeable power, no less than his holiness and beauty. This\nsense of the real existence of religious objects can only be maintained\nby identifying them with objects of actual experience, with the forces\nof Nature, or the passions or conscience of man, or (if it must come to\nthat) with written laws or visible images.\n\nAn instinctive recognition of this necessity kept Greek mythology\never ready to return to Nature to gather its materials afresh from a\ndocile, if poetical, observation of reality. The character of the god\nmust be studied in the manifestations of his chosen element; otherwise\nmen might forget that, although the form of the god was poetical, his\nessence was a positive reality of the most practical kind. Zeus must\nstill toss his ambrosial locks with a certain irritation, in order\nthat we may recognize him in the rumblings of the sky; he must still\nbe capable of wrath and deliberate malice, that his awful hand may be\nthought to have hurled the thunderbolt. Cronos must not be forbidden\nto devour his children, else we should no longer reverence in him the\ninexorable might of time. Mythology was quite right in not shrinking\nfrom such poetic audacities. They were its chief title to legitimacy,\nthe proof, amid the embroideries of fancy which over-lay the divine\nidea, that the god was not an invention, but a fact. He had been found,\nhe was known. His character, like all character, was merely a principle\nwhich reflection discovered in his observed conduct. The reality, then,\nof the mythological gods was initially unquestionable; and the more\nfaithful the study of Nature by which the poet was inspired, the more\nauthority did his prophetic vision retain.\n\nBut the intense imaginative vitality that must have preceded Homer and\nHesiod, the prodigious gift of sympathetic observation to which we owe\nZeus and Pan and all their endless retinue, was too glorious to last.\nNo later interpreter could find so much meaning in his text. Mythology\nwas accordingly placed in a sad dilemma, with either horn fatal to\nits life; it must either be impoverished to remain sincere, or become\nartificial to remain adequate. The history of Greek religion, on its\nspeculative side, is nothing but the story of this double decadence.\nReflection upon the process of Nature and desire for philosophic truth\nled inevitably to a blank pantheism and to the reduction of positive\ntraditions to moral allegories. This was the direction taken by the\nStoic theology. On the other hand, adherence to the traditional gods,\nwith no further vivifying reference to their natural functions in\nthe world, could lead only to arbitrary fictions, which, having no\nfoothold or justification in reality, were incapable of withstanding\nthe first sceptical attack. What an age of imagination had intuited as\ntruth, an age of reflection could preserve only as fable; and as fable,\naccordingly, the religion of the ancients survived throughout the\nChristian ages. It remains still the mother-tongue of the imagination\nand, in spite of all revolutions and admixtures, is the classic\nlanguage of art and poetry, which no other means of expression has\nsuperseded.\n\nBeginning, however, with that zealous Protestant, the old Xenophanes,\nthe austerer minds, moralists, naturalists, and wits, united in\ndecrying the fanciful polytheism of the poets. This criticism was\nin one sense unjust; it did not consider the original justification\nof mythology in human nature and in the external facts. It was,\nlike all heresy or partial scepticism, in a sense superficial and\nunphilosophical. It was far from conceiving that its own tenets and\nassumptions were as groundless, without being as natural or adequate,\nas the system it attacked. To a person sufficiently removed by time or\nby philosophy from the controversies of sects, orthodoxy must always\nappear right and heresy wrong; for he sees in orthodoxy the product of\nthe creative mind, of faith and constructive logic, but in heresy only\nthe rebellion of some partial interest or partial insight against the\ncorollaries of a formative principle imperfectly grasped and obeyed\nwith hesitation. At a distance, the criticism that disintegrates any\ngreat product of art or mind must always appear short-sighted and\nunamiable. Socrates, invoking; the local deities of brooks and meadows,\nor paying the debt of a cock to Asclepius (in thanksgiving, it is said,\nfor a happy death), is more reasonable and noble to our mind than are\nthe hard denials of Xenophanes or Theodoras. But in their day the\nrevolt of the sceptics had its relative justification. The imagination\nhad dried up, and what had once been a natural interpretation of\nfacts now seemed an artificial addition to them. An elaborate and\nirrelevant world of fiction seemed to have been imposed on human\ncredulity. Mythology was, in fact, already largely irrelevant; the\nexperience poetized by it had been forgotten and the symbol, in its\ninsignificance, could not be honestly or usefully retained.\n\nThe Greek philosophers, as a rule, proceeded cautiously in these\nmatters. They passed mythology by with a conventional reverence and\nlooked elsewhere for the true object of their personal religion. But\nthe old mythological impulse was not yet spent; it showed itself\nstill active in all the early philosophers who gave the godhead new\nincarnations congruous with the character of their respective physical\nsystems. To the Socratic School the natural world was no longer the\nsphere in which divinity was to be found. They looked for the divine\nrather in moral and intelligible ideas. But not only did they carry the\nmythological instinct with them into that new field, they also retained\nit in the field of Nature, whenever they still regarded Nature as real.\nThus Aristotle, while he rejected the anthropomorphism of the popular\nfaith, attributing it to political exigencies, turned the forty-nine\nspheres, of which he conjectured that the heaven might be composed,\ninto a pantheon of forty-nine divinities. Every primary movement,\nhe argued, must be the expression of an eternal essence by which\nthe movement is justified, as the movement of the mind in thinking\nor loving is justified by the truth or excellence of the object of\nthought or of love. Without such a worthy object, these spiritual\nactivities would be irrational; and no less irrational would be the\nmotion of the spheres, were each not obedient to the influence of some\nsacred and immutable principle. Forty-nine gods accordingly exist;\nbut no more. For, since the essence of each is to be the governing\nideal of a motion, the number of motions in the sky determines the\nnumber of divine first principles. The gods, we see, are still the\nsouls of Nature; a soul without a body would be a principle without an\napplication; there can be no gods, then, without a phenomenal function,\nno gods that do not appear in the operations of Nature. This astronomic\nmythology was surely not less poetical than that of Homer, even if, by\nvirtue of a certain cold and abstract purity, not unworthy of the stars\nof which it spoke, it was more difficult and sublime. We may observe in\nit a last application of the ancient mythological method by which the\nphenomena of Nature became evidence of the existence and character of\nthe gods.\n\nBut the celestial deities of Aristotle, and the minor creative gods of\nPlato that correspond to them, retained too much poetic individuality\nfor the still poorer imagination of later times. The most religious\nof sects during the classical decadence was that of the Stoics; in\nthem the spirit of conformity, which is a chief part even of the\nreligions of hope, constituted by its exclusive cultivation a religion\nof despair. The name of Zeus, and an equally equivocal use of the word\n\"reason\" to designate the regularity of Nature, served to disguise the\nalien brutality of the power or law to which all the gods had been\nreduced. Against the background of a materialistic pantheism, in which\nStoic speculation culminated, two positive interests stood out: one,\nthe resolute and truly human courage with which the Stoic faced the\nreality as he conceived it, and kept his dignity and his conscience\npure although heaven might fall; the other, the efforts he made, in his\nneed for religion, to rejuvenate and reinterpret the pagan forms. The\nfables he turned into ethical allegories, the oracles, auspices, and\nother superstitious rites, he transformed into quasi-scientific ways of\nreading the book of Nature and forecasting events.\n\nThis possibility of prophecy constituted the Stoic \"providence\" which\nthe sentimentality of modern apologists has been glad to confuse\nwith the _benevolent_ Providence of Christian dogma, a Providence\nmaking for the salvation of men. The Stoic providence excluded that\nessential element of benevolence; it was merely the fact that Nature\nwas prophetic of her own future, that her parts, both in space and in\ntime, were magically composed into one living system. Mythology thus\nended with the conception of a single god whose body was the whole\nphysical universe, whose fable was all history, and whose character\nwas the principle of the universal natural order. No attempt was made\nby the ancient Stoics to make this divinity better or more amiable\nthan the evidence of experience showed it to be; the self-centred,\nself-sufficient Stoic morality, the recourse to suicide, and the\nequality in happiness and dignity between the wise man and Zeus, all\nprove quite conclusively that nothing more was asked or expected of\nNature than what she chose to give; to be virtuous was in man's power,\nand nothing else was a good to man. The universe could neither benefit\nnor injure him; and thus we see that, despite a reverential tone and\nan occasional reminiscence of the thunderbolts of Zeus, the Stoic's\nconscience knew how to scorn the moral nothingness of that blank deity\nto which his metaphysics had reduced the genial company of the gods.\n\nThus the reality which the naturalistic gods had borrowed from the\nelements proved to be a dangerous prerogative; being real and manifest,\nthese gods had to be conceived according to our experience of their\noperation, so that with every advance in scientific observation\ntheology had to be revised, and something had to be subtracted from\nthe personality and benevolence of the gods. The moral character\noriginally attributed to them necessarily receded before the clearer\ndefinition of natural forces and the accumulated experience of\nnational disasters. Finally, little remained of the gods except their\nnames, reduced to rhetorical synonyms for the various departments of\nNature; Phoebus was nothing but a bombastic way of saying the sun;\nHeph\u00e6stus became nothing but fire, Eros or Aphrodite nothing but love,\nZeus nothing but the general force and law of Nature. Thus the gods\nremained real, but were no longer gods. If belief in their reality\nwas to be kept up, they could not retain too many attributes that\nhad no empirical manifestation. They must be reduced, as it were, to\ntheir fighting weight. All that the imagination had added to them by\nway of personal character, sanctity, and life must be rejected as\nanthropomorphism and fable.\n\nSuch is the necessary logic of natural religion. If Nature manifests\nthe existence of a god, she must to that extent manifest his character;\nif she does not manifest his character, she cannot involve his\nexistence. We observe to-day a process exactly analogous to that by\nwhich the natural divinities of Greece were reduced again to the\nphysical or social forces from which poetry had originally evoked\ntheir forms. Many minds are grown too timid to build their religious\nfaith unblushingly on revelation, or on that moral imagination or\ninward demand which revelation comes to express and to satisfy. They\nseek, therefore, to naturalize the Deity and to identify it with some\nprinciple of history, of Nature, or of logic. But this identification\ncannot be made without great concessions on both sides. The\naccommodations which ensue inevitably involve many equivocations, and\nsome misrepresentations of the heterogeneous principles, now natural,\nnow moral, which it is sought to unify. Confused and agonized by\nthese contradictions, the natural theologian, if he keep his honesty,\ncan only rest in the end in a chastened recognition of the facts of\nexperience, toward which he will, no doubt, exercise his acquired\nhabits of acquiescence and euphemism. But these habits, the survival\nof which gives his philosophy some air of being still a religion, will\nnot be inherited by his disciples and successors; a pious manner may\nsurvive religious faith, but will not survive it long. The society\nto whom the reformer teaches a reticent and embarrassed naturalism\nwill discard the reticence and avow the naturalism with pride. The\nmasses of men will see no reason why they should not live out their\nnative impulses or acquired passions without fear of that environing\npower of which they are, after all, the highest embodiment; while a\nfew thinkers, devout and rational by temperament, will know how to\nmaintain their dignity of spirit in the face of a universe of which\nthey ask no favour save the revelation of its laws. Thus irreligion for\nthe many and Stoicism for the few is the end of natural religion in the\nmodern world as it was in the ancient.\n\nBut natural religion (that is, the turning of the facts and laws of\nNature or of experience into an object of worship) is by no means a\nprimitive nor an ultimate form of religion; it is rather of all the\nforms of religion the most unnatural and the least capable of existing\nwithout a historical and emotional setting, independent of its own\nessence and inconsistent with its principle. No nation has ever had\na merely natural religion. What is called by that name has been the\nappanage of a few philosophers in ages of religious disintegration,\nwhen the habit of worship, surviving the belief in any proper object\nof worship, has been transferred with effort and uncertainty to the\nnatural order which alone remained before the mind,--to the cosmos,\nthe self, the state, or humanity. Mythology, of which natural religion\nis the last and most abstract phase, was originally religious only in\nso far as it was supernatural in so far, I mean, as the analogies of\nouter Nature led the poet to conceive some moral ideal, some glorious\nbeing full of youth and serenity, of passion and wisdom. Only when\nthus transfigured into the human could the natural seem divine. The\nGreeks were never idolaters, and no more worshipped the sun or moon\nor the whole of Nature than they did statues of bronze or marble; they\nworshipped only the god who had a temporal image in the temple as he\nhad an eternal image in the sun or in the universe.\n\nIt happened, therefore, that in the decay of mythology the gods could\nstill survive as moral ideals. The more they were cut off from their\naccidental foothold in the world of fact, the more clearly could they\nmanifest their essence as expressions of the world of values. We have\nmentioned the fact that the greater gods of Greece were almost wholly\ndetached from the cosmographical hints which had originally suggested\ntheir character and fable. Thus emancipated, these nobler gods could\nsurvive in the consciousness of the devout, fixed there by their\npurely moral significance and poetic truth. Apollo or Athena showed\nlittle or nothing of a naturalistic origin; they were patrons of life,\nembodiments of the ideal, objects of contemplation for souls that by\nprayer would rise to the semblance of the god to whom they prayed. This\ntransformation into the moral had been going on from the beginning in\nthe religious mind of Greece. It was really the legitimate fulfilment\nof that translation into the human to which mythology itself was due.\nBut mythology had merely turned the physical into the personal and\nimpassioned; religion was now to turn the psychical into the good.\nThis tendency came to a vivid and rational expression in Plato. The\ngods, he declared, should be represented only as they were, _i.e._ as\nmoral ideals. The scandal of their fables should be removed and they\nshould be regarded as authors only of the good, in their own lives as\nin ours. To refer all things to the efficacy of the gods should be\naccounted impiety. They, like the supreme and abstract principle of all\nexcellence which they embodied, could be the authors only of what is\ngood.\n\nHad this remarkable doctrine been carried out fully it would have led\nto important results. We should have had goodness as the criterion of\ndivinity, to the exclusion of power. God would have become avowedly an\nideal, a pattern to which the world might or might not conform. Such\npotential conformity would have remained dependent on causes, natural\nor free, with which God, not being a power, could have nothing to do.\nPlato and Aristotle did, in fact, construct a theology on these lines,\nbut they obscured its purity in their well-meant attempts to connect\n(more or less mythically or magically) their own Socratic principle\nof excellence with the cosmic principles of the earlier philosophers.\nThe elements of confusion and pantheism which were thus introduced\ninto the Socratic philosophy made it more acceptable, perhaps, to the\ntheologians of later times, in whose religion a pantheistic tendency\nwas also latent. In the hands of Jewish, Christian, or Mohammedan\ncommentators the mythical and magical part of the Greek conceptions\nwas naturally emphasized and the rational part reinterpreted and\nobscured. Plato had spoken, in one of his myths, of a Demiurgos, a\npersonification of the Idea of the Good, who directly or indirectly\nmade the world in his own image, rendering it as perfect as the\nindeterminate Chaos he worked on would allow. Aristotle had spoken of\nan intelligence, happy and self-contemplative, who was the principle of\nmovement in the heavens, and through the heavens in the rest of Nature.\nSuch expressions had a sound far too congruous with Mosaic doctrine not\nto be seized upon with joy by the apologists of the new faiths, who\nwere glad to invoke the authority of classic poets and philosophers in\nfavour of doctrines that in their Hebrew expression might so easily\nseem crude and irrational to the Gentiles. This assimilation gave to\nthe casual myths of Plato and to the meagre though bold argumentation\nof Aristotle a turn and a significance which they hardly had to their\nauthors. If we approach these philosophers as we should from the point\nof view of Greek literature and life, and prepare ourselves to see\nin them the disciples of Socrates rather than (what Plato was once\nactually declared to be) the disciples of Moses, we shall see that\nthey were simply, mythologists of the Ideal; they refined the gods of\ntradition into patrons of civic discipline and art, the gods of natural\nphilosophy into principles of intelligibility and beauty.\n\nThe creation described in the Tim\u00e6us is a transparent parable. Elements\nwhich ethical reflection distinguishes in the field of experience\nare turned in that dialogue, with undisguised freedom of fancy, into\nso many half-personified primitive powers; the Ideas, the Demiurgos,\nChaos, the Indeterminate, and the \"gods of gods.\" Plato has not\nforgotten the lessons of Socrates and Parmenides. He distrusts as much\nas they any natural or genetic philosophy of existence. He virtually\ntells us that, if we must have a history of creation, we can hardly\ndo better than to take ideal or moral principles, combine them as we\nmight so many material elements, and see how the intelligible part\nof existence may thus receive a quasi-explanation. God remains the\ncreator of the good only, because what he is mythically said to create\nis merely that in Nature which spontaneously resembles him or conforms\nto his idea; only this element in Nature is intelligible or good, and\ntherefore the principle of goodness may be said to be its cause. Thus,\nfor example, if we chose to write an Anatomy of Melancholy, we might\nattribute to the Demon of Spleen or to the Blue Devils only the sombre\nelements of that soulful compound, which, however, the evil imps would\neternally tend to make as absolutely dyspeptic and like unto themselves\nas its primordial texture would allow. In exactly such a way Plato,\nin his allegorical manner, constructed a universe with a poetical\nmachinery of moral forces, personified and treated as agents. When\nthe thin veil of allegory is drawn aside, there remains nothing but a\nsplendid illustration of the Socratic philosophy; we are taught that\nthe only science is moral science, and that, if we wish to understand\nthe world, we must bend our minds to the definition of its qualities\nand values, which are all that is intelligible in it. Essences and\nvalues alone are knowable and fixed and amenable to science. If we\ninsist on history and cosmogony, we must be satisfied with having them\npresented to us in allegorical form, and made to follow ethics as the\nTim\u00e6us follows the Republic. Natural philosophy can be nothing but a\nsort of analytic retrospect by which we trace the first glimmerings\nand the progressive manifestation in Nature of those ideas which have\nauthority over our own minds.\n\nPhenomena had for Plato existence without reality, that is, without\nintelligibility or value. They were a mere appearance. We need not be\nsurprised, then, that he refused altogether to construct a theology\nby the poetic interpretation of phenomena and preferred to construct\none allegorically out of his moral conceptions, the good and the\nideal. Aristotle, too, while adhering incidentally, as we have seen,\nto a purified astronomical theology, capped this with a purified moral\ntheology of his own. The Platonic picture-gallery of ideas, with\nthe abstract principle of excellence that unified them, gave place\nin his philosophy to an Ideal realized in the concrete and existing\nas an individual. We may venture to say that among the thinkers of\nall nations Aristotle was the first to reach the conception of what\nmay fitly be called God. Neither the national deity of the Hebrews,\nas then conceived, nor the natural deities of the Gentiles, nor\nthe half-physical, half-logical abstractions of the earlier Greek\nphilosophers really corresponded to the notion of a being spiritual,\npersonal, and perfect, immutable without being abstract, and omnipotent\nwithout effort and without degradation. Aristotle first constructed\nthis ideal, not out of his fancy, but by building on the solid ground\nof human nature and following to their point of union the lines\nwhich moral aspiration and effort actually follow. Nay, the ideal he\npointed to was to be the goal not of human life only but of natural\nlife in all its forms. The analytic study of Nature (a study which at\nthe same time must be imaginative and sympathetic) could guide us to\nthe conception of her inner needs and tendencies and of what their\nproper fulfilment would be. We could then see that this fulfilment\nwould lie in intelligence and thought. Growth is for the sake of the\nfruition of life, and the fruition of life consists in the pursuit and\nattainment of objects. The moral virtues belong to the pursuit, the\nintellectual to the attainment. Knowledge is the end of all endeavour,\nthe justification and fulfilment of all growth. Intelligence is the\nclarification of love.\n\nA being, then, whose life should be a life of pure and complete\nknowledge, would embody the goal toward which all Nature strives.\nWhen we ponder duly the short phrases in which Aristotle propounds\nhis conception of God we find that he has called up before us the\nnoblest possible object of human thought, the presentiment of that\nthought's perfect fulfilment. There is no alloy of naturalism in this\nconception, and at the same time no suspicion of irrelevancy. This\nGod is not a mere title of honour for the psycho-physical universe,\nconfusedly conceived and lumped together; he is an ultra-mundane ideal,\nto be an inviolate standard and goal for all moving reality. Yet he\nis not irrelevant to the facts and forces of the world, not the dream\nof an abstracted poet. He is an idea which reality everywhere evokes\nin evoking its own deepest craving and need. Nothing is so pertinent\nand momentous in life as the object we are trying to attain by thought\nor action, since that object is the source of our inspiration and\nthe standard of our success. Thus Aristotle's God is not superfluous,\nnot invented. This theology is a true idealism, I mean an idealism\nitself purely ideal, which establishes the authority of human demands,\nethical, and logical, without impugning the existence or efficacy of\nthat material universe which it endows with a meaning and a standard.\n\nYet this rational conception, the natural out-growth of the Socratic\nphilosophy, establishes a dualism between the actual and the ideal\nagainst which the human mind easily rebels. Aristotle himself was\nhardly faithful to it. He tried to prove the existence of his God, and\nexistence is something quite irrelevant to an ideal. This confusion is\nvery excusable, especially in an age when the strictly mechanical view\nof Nature still seemed hopelessly inadequate. Aristotle consequently\ntried to understand the natural world by viewing it systematically\nfrom the point of view of moral science, as Plato had done less\ncoherently in his myths; and hence came what we must regard as the\ngreat error of Aristotle's philosophy, the belief in the efficacy\nof final causes and in the pre\u00ebxistence of entelechies. But, apart\nfrom this unhappy question of existence, which is, as we have said,\nirrelevant to an ideal, Aristotle's conception of God remains, perhaps,\nthe most philosophical that has yet been constructed. Without any\nconcessions to sentiment or superstition, it presents us with a sublime\nvision of the essentially human, of a nature as free from an unworthy\nanthropomorphism as from an inhuman abstractness. It is made both human\nand superhuman by the same principle of idealization. It is the final\ncause of Nature and man, the realization of their imminent upward\neffort, the essence that would contain all their values and escape all\ntheir imperfections.\n\nWe may well doubt, however, whether men in general will ever be ready\nto accept so austere a theology in guise of a religion; they were\ncertainly not ready to do so at the end of the classical period. The\ninheritance of Paganism fell instead to Christianity, in which ethical\nand naturalistic elements were again united, although united in a new\nway. For, while the scheme of Paganism, and of all the philosophies\nthat sought to rationalize Paganism, was cosmic and static, the scheme\nof Christianity was historical. They spoke of the dynamic relations of\nheaven and earth, or of the immutable hierarchy of ideas and essences;\neven Aristotle's God was somehow in spatial relations to the Universe\nwhich he set in motion. The religion of the Hebrews, on the other\nhand, had been essentially historical and civic: it had been concerned\nwith the moral destinies of Israel and the dealings of Jehovah with\nhis people. Christianity inherited this historical character; its\nmysteries occurred in time. Not only the redemption of the world but\nthe vocation and sanctification of the individual were progressive,\nand when the habits and problems of Christian theology were carried\nover by the German idealists into the region of pure metaphysics, the\nsystems they conceived were still systems of evolution. God was to be\nmanifest in the development of things. For Christianity in its own way\nhad spoken from the beginning of a gradual and yet to be completed\ndescent of the divine into the natural by the agency of prophecy, law,\nand sacramental institutions; it had represented the relations of God\nto man in a vast historic drama, of which creation constituted the\nopening, the fall and redemption the nexus, and the last judgment the\nunravelling.\n\nThus appeared a new scheme for the unification of the natural and the\nmoral. The harmony which the old religion had failed to establish\nin space and in Nature, the new sought to establish in history and\nin time. It was hoped that life and experience, sin and redemption,\nmight manifest that divinity which had fled out of the sea and sky,\nand which it seemed sacrilege to identify any longer with the animal\nvitality of the universe. Whether the same criticism that disintegrated\nmythology and isolated its elements of science and of poetry would\nnot be fatal to the new combination of the moral and the factual in\nthe history of man, is hardly a question for us here. Suffice it to\npoint out the problem and to register the solution which was found\nin the ancient world to the analogous problem that presented itself\nthere. The first impulse of the imagination is always to combine\nin the object all the elements which lie together in the mind, to\nproject them indiscriminately into a single conception of reality,\nenriched with as many qualities as there are phases and values in our\nexperience. But these phases and values have diverse origins and do not\npermanently hang together. It becomes after a while impossible to keep\nthem attached to a single image; they have to be distributed according\nto their true order and connections, some objectified into a physical\nuniverse of mechanism and law, others built into a system of rational\nobjects, into a hierarchy of logical and moral ideas. So the lovely\npantheon of the Greeks yielded in time to analysis and was dissolved\ninto abstract science and conscious fable. So, too, the body and soul\nof later religions may come to be divided, when they render back to\nearth what they contain of positive history and to the heaven of man's\nindomitable idealism what they contain of aspiration and hope.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nTHE POETRY OF CHRISTIAN DOGMA\n\n\nThe deathbed of Paganism was surrounded by doctors. Some, the Stoics,\nadvised a conversion into pantheism (with an allegorical interpretation\nof mythology to serve the purposes of edification); others, the\nNeo-Platonists, prescribed instead a supernatural philosophy, where the\nefficacy of all traditional rites would be justified by incorporation\ninto a system of universal magic, and the gods would find their\nplace among the legions of spirits and demons that were to people\nthe concentric spheres. But these doctors had no knowledge of the\npatient's natural constitution; their medicines, prescribed with the\nbest intentions, were in truth poisons and only hastened the inevitable\nend. Nor had the unfortunate doctors the consolation of being heirs.\nParasites that they were, they perished with the patron on whose\nsubstance they had fed, and Christianity, their despised rival, came\ninto sole possession.\n\nYet Neo-Platonism, for all we can see, responded as well as\nChristianity to the needs of the time, and had besides great external\nadvantages in its alliance with tradition, with civil power, and with\nphilosophy. If the demands of the age were for a revealed religion and\nan ascetic morality, Neo-Platonism could satisfy them to the full.\nWhy, then, should the Hellenic world have broken with the creations\nof its own genius, so plastic, eloquent, and full of resource, to\nrun after foreign gods and new doctrines that must naturally have\nbeen stumbling-blocks to its prejudices, and foolishness to its\nintelligence? Shall we say that the triumph of Christianity was a\nmiracle? Is it not a doubtful encomium on a religion to say that only\nby miracle could it come to be believed? Perhaps the forces of human\nreason and emotion suffice to explain this faith. We prefer to think\nso; otherwise, however complete and final the triumph of Christianity\nmight be, it would not be justified or beneficent.\n\nNeo-Platonism arose in the midst of the same conditions as\nChristianity. There was weariness and disgust with the life of nature,\ndecay of political virtue, desire for some personal and supernatural\ngood. It was hardly necessary to preach the doctrine of original\nsin to that society; the visible blight that had fallen on classic\ncivilization was proof enough of that. What it was necessary to preach\nwas redemption. It was necessary to point to some sphere of refuge and\nof healthful resort, where the ignominies and the frivolities of this\nworld might be forgotten, and where the hunger of a heart left empty\nby its corroding passions might be finally satisfied. But where find\nsuch a supernatural world? By what revelation learn its nature and be\nassured of its existence?\n\nNeo-Platonism opened vistas into the supernatural, but the avenues of\napproach which it had chosen and the principle which had given form\nto its system foredoomed it to failure as a religion. This avenue was\ndialectic, and this principle the hypostasis of abstractions. Plato\nhad pointed out this path in his genial allegories. He had, by a\npoetical figure, turned the ideas of reason into the component forces\nof creation. This was, with him, a method of expression, but being\nthe only method he was inclined to employ, it naturally entangled\nand occasionally, perhaps, deceived his intelligence; for a poet\neasily mistakes his inspired tropes for the physiology of Nature. Yet\nPlatonic dogma, even when meant as such, retained the transparency\nand significance of a myth; philosophy was still a language for the\nexpression of experience, and dialectic a method and not a creed. But\nthe master's counters, current during six centuries of intellectual\ndecadence, had become his disciples' money. Each of his abstractions\nseemed to them a discovery, each of his metaphors a revelation. The\nmyths of the great dialogues, and, above all, the fanciful machinery\nof the Tim\u00e6us, interpreted with an incredible literalness and naive\nearnestness, such as only Biblical exegesis can rival, formed the\nstarting point of the new revelation. The method and insight thus\nobtained were then employed in filling the _lacun\u00e6_ of the system and\nspreading its wings wider and wider, until a prodigious hierarchy of\nsupernatural existences had been invented, from which the natural world\nwas made to depend as a last link and lowest emanation.\n\nThe baselessness and elaboration of this theology were, of course, far\nfrom being obstacles to its success in such an age. On the contrary,\nthe less evidence could be found in common experience for what a man\nappeared to know, the more deeply, people inferred, must he be versed\nin supernatural lore, and the greater, accordingly, was his authority.\nNor was the spell of personal genius and even holiness wanting in the\nleaders of the new philosophy to lend it colour and persuasiveness with\nthe many, to whom metaphysical conceptions are less impressive than\nis an eloquent personality, or a reputation for miraculous powers.\nPlotinus, to speak only of the greatest of the sect, had, in fact, a\nnotable success in his day. His lectures at Rome, we are told, were\nattended by all the fashion and intellect of the capital; and his large\nand systematic thought, his subtlety and precision, his comparatively\nsober eloquence, and his assurance, if we may say so, in treading the\nclouds, have made him at all times a great authority with those persons\nwho look in philosophy rather for impressive results than for solid\nfoundations. His contemporaries were eminently persons of that type. A\nhungry man, when you bring him bread, does not stop to make scrupulous\ninquiries about the mill or the oven from which you bring it.\n\nBut the trouble was that the bread of Plotinus was a stone. The heart\ncannot feed on thin and elaborate abstractions, irrelevant to its\nneeds and divorced from the natural objects of its interest. Men will\noften accept the baldest fictions as truths; but it is impossible\nfor them to give a human meaning to vacuous conceptions, or to grow\nto love the categories of logic, interweaving their image with the\nactions and emotions of daily life. Religion must spring from the\npeople; it must draw its form from tradition and its substance from\nthe national imagination and conscience. Neo-Platonism drew both\nform and substance from a system of abstract thought. Its gods were\nstill-born, being generated by logical dichotomy. Only in the lower\npurlieus of the system, filled in by accepting current superstitions,\nwas there any contact with something like vital religious forces. But\nthose minor elements--hopes and fears about another world, fasts and\npenances, ecstasies and marvels--had no necessary relation to that\nmetaphysical system. Such practices could be found in every religion,\nin every philosophical sect of the time. The Alexandrian dialectic of\nthe supernatural accordingly remained a mere schema or skeleton, to be\nfilled in with the materials of some real religion, if such a religion\nshould arise. As such a schema the Neo-Platonic system actually passed\nover to Christian theology, furnishing the latter with its categories,\nits language, and its speculative method. But that dialectic served in\nChristianity to give form to a religious substance furnished by Hebrew\nand apostolic tradition, a religious substance such as, after the Pagan\nreligion was discredited, Neo-Platonism necessarily lacked and was\npowerless to generate.\n\nWe have mentioned apostolic tradition. It is fortunately not requisite\nfor our purpose to discuss the origin of this tradition, much less to\ndecide how much of what the Christian Church eventually taught might\nbe traced to its Founder. That is a point which even the most thorough\nscholars seem still to decide mainly by their prejudices, perhaps\nbecause other material is lacking on which to base a decision. For our\npresent object we may admit the most extreme hypotheses as equally\npossible. The whole body of Catholic doctrine may have been contained\nin the oral teaching of Christ; or, on the other hand, a historical\nJesus may not have existed at all, or may have been one among many\nobscure Jewish revolutionists, the one who, by accident, came afterward\nto be regarded as the initiator of a movement to which all sorts of\nforces contributed, and with which he had really had nothing to do. In\neither case the fact remains which alone interests us here; that after\nthree or four centuries of confused struggles, an institution emerged\nwhich called itself the Catholic Church. This church, possessed of\na recognized hierarchy and a recognized dogma, triumphed, both over\nthe ancient religion, which it called Paganism, and over its many\ncollateral rivals, which it called heresies. Why did it triumph? What\nwas there in its novel dogma and practice that enchained the minds that\nPaganism could retain no longer, and that would not be content with\nNeo-Platonism, native, philosophical, and pliable as that system was?\n\nThe answer, to be adequate, would have to be long; but perhaps we\nmay indicate the spirit in which it ought to be conceived. Paganism\nwas a religion, but was discarded because it was not supernatural:\nNeo-Platonism could not be maintained because it was not a religion.\nChristianity was both. It had its roots in a national faith, moulded\nby the trials and passions of a singularly religious people; that\nconnection with Judaism gave Christianity a foothold in history, a\ndefinite dogmatic nucleus, which it was a true instinct in the Church\nnever to abandon, much as certain speculative heresies might cry out\nagainst the unnatural union of a theory of redemption with one of\ncreation, and of a world-denying ascetic idealism, which Christianity\nwas essentially, with the national laws, the crude deism, and the\nstrenuous worldliness of the ancient Jews. However, had the Gnostic\nor Manich\u00e6an heresies been victorious, Christianity would have been\nreduced to a floating speculation: its hard kernel of positive dogma,\nof Scripture, and of hieratic tradition would have been dissolved. It\nwould have ceased to represent antiquity or to hand down an ancestral\npiety: in fine, by its eagerness to express itself as a perfect\nphilosophy, it would have ceased to be a religion. How essential an\nelement its Hebraism was, we can see now by the study of Protestantism,\na group of heresies in which the practical instincts and sentimental\nneeds of the Teutonic race found expression, by throwing over more or\nless completely the Catholic dogma and ritual. Yet in this revolution\nthe Protestants maintained, or rather increased, the intensity of their\nreligious consciousness, chiefly by absorbing the elements of Hebrew\nlaw and prophecy which they could find in the Bible and casting into\nthat traditional form their personal conscience or their national\nideals.\n\nHow inadequate, on the other hand, this Hebraic element would have\nbeen to constitute the supernatural religion that was now needed,\nappears very clearly from the case of Philo Jud\u00e6us. Here was a man,\nheir to all the piety and fervour of his race, who at the same time\nwas a Neo-Platonist three hundred years before Plotinus and, as it\nwere, the first Father of the Church. But his religion, being national,\nwas not communicable and, being positivistic, was at fundamental odds\nwith the spirit of his philosophy. It remained, therefore, as a merely\npersonal treasure and heirloom, the possession of his private life:\nhis disciples, had he had any, must either have been Jews themselves\nor else must have been the followers merely of his philosophy. His\nreligion could not have passed to them; they would have regarded it, as\nwe might regard the Christianity of Kant or the wife-worship of Comte,\nas a private circumstance, a detached trait, less damaging, perhaps, to\nhis philosophy than favourable to his loyal heart.\n\nPhilo, in his commentaries on the Bible, sought to envelop and\ntransform every detail in the light of Platonic metaphysics. His\ninterpretations are often violent, but the ingenuous artifice of them\nwould have delighted his contemporaries as much as himself, and was\nadopted afterward by all the Fathers and theologians of the Church.\nPhilo's theology was thus a success, even a model; yet he failed,\nbecause of the inadequacy of his religion. What interest, what\nrelevance, could it have for any Gentile to hear about the deliverance\nof Israel out of Egypt or out of Babylon, or about circumcision and\nprescribed meats, or about the sacrifices in the Temple? What charm or\ncredibility could he find in further promises of glorious kingdoms,\nflowing with milk and honey? Such images might later appeal to the\nimagination of New England Puritans and make a religion for them: but\nwhat meaning could they have to the weary Pagan? No doubt the Jews\ncarried with them an ideal of righteousness, and prosperity; but the\nGentile was sick of heroes and high priests and founders of cities.\nStoic virtues were as vain in his eyes as Sybaritic joys. He did not\nwish his passions to be flattered, not even his pride or the passion\nfor a social Utopia. He wished his passions to be mortified and his\nsoul to be redeemed. He would not look for a Messiah, unless he could\nfind him on a cross.\n\nThat is the essence of the matter. What overcame the world, because\nit was what the world desired, was not a moral reform--for that was\npreached by every sect; not an ascetic regimen--for that was practised\nby heathen gymnosophists and Pagan philosophers; not brotherly love\nwithin the Church--for the Jews had and have that at least in equal\nmeasure; but what overcame the world was what Saint Paul said he\nwould always preach: Christ and him crucified. Therein was a new\npoetry, a new ideal, a new God. Therein was the transcript of the\nreal experience of humanity, as men found it in their inmost souls\nand as they were dimly aware of it in universal history. The moving\npower was a fable--for who stopped to question whether its elements\nwere historical, if only its meaning were profound and its inspiration\ncontagious? This fable had points of attachment to real life in a\nvisible brotherhood and in an extant worship, as well as in the\nreligious past of a whole people. At the same time it carried the\nimagination into a new sphere; it sanctified the poverty and sorrow at\nwhich Paganism had shuddered; it awakened tenderer emotions, revealed\nmore human objects of adoration, and furnished subtler instruments of\ngrace. It was a whole world of poetry descended among men, like the\nangels at the Nativity, doubling, as it were, their habitation, so that\nthey might move through supernatural realms in the spirit while they\nwalked the earth in the flesh. The consciousness of new loves, new\nduties, fresh consolations, and luminous unutterable hopes accompanied\nthem wherever they went. They stopped willingly in the midst of their\nbusiness for recollection, like men in love; they sought to stimulate\ntheir imaginations, to focus, as it were, the long vistas of an\ninvisible landscape.\n\nIf the importunity of affairs or of ill-subdued passions disturbed\nthat dream, they could still return to it at leisure in the solitude of\nsome shrine or under the spell of some canticle or of some sacramental\nimage; and meantime they could keep their faith in reserve as their\nsecret and their resource. The longer the vision lasted and the\nsteadier it became, the more closely, of course, was it intertwined\nwith daily acts and common affections; and as real life gradually\nenriched that vision with its suggestions, so religion in turn\ngradually coloured common life with its unearthly light. In the saint,\nin the soul that had become already the perpetual citizen of that\nhigher sphere, nothing in this world remained without reference to the\nother, nor was anything done save for a supernatural end. Thus the\nredemption was actually accomplished and the soul was lifted above the\nconditions of this life, so that death itself could bring but a slight\nand unessential change of environment.\n\nMorbid as this species of faith may seem, visionary as it certainly\nwas, it is not to be confused with an arbitrary madness or with\npersonal illusions. Two circumstances raised this imaginative piety\nto a high dignity and made it compatible with great accomplishments,\nboth in thought and in action. In the first place the religious world\nconstituted a system complete and consistent within itself. There was\noccasion within it for the exercise of reason, for the awakening and\ndiscipline of emotion, for the exertion of effort. As music, for all\nthat it contains nothing of a material or practical nature, offers\na field for the development of human faculty and presents laws and\nconditions which, within its sphere, must be obeyed and which reward\nobedience with the keenest and purest pleasures; so a supernatural\nreligion, when it is traditional and systematic like Christianity,\noffers another world, almost as vast and solid as the real one, in\nwhich the soul may develop. In entering it we do not enter a sphere\nof arbitrary dreams, but a sphere of law where learning, experience,\nand happiness may be gained. There is more method, more reason, in\nsuch madness than in the sanity of most people. The world of the\nChristian imagination was eminently a field for moral experience; moral\nideas were there objectified into supernatural forces, and instead of\nbeing obscured as in the real world by irrational accidents formed an\nintelligible cosmos, vast, massive, and steadfast. For this reason the\nbeliever in any adequate and mature supernatural religion clings to\nit with such strange tenacity and regards it as his highest heritage,\nwhile the outsider, whose imagination speaks another language or is\ndumb altogether, wonders how so wild a fiction can take root in a\nreasonable mind.\n\nThe other circumstance that ennobled the Christian system was that\nall its parts had some significance and poetic truth, although they\ncontained, or needed to contain, nothing empirically real. The system\nwas a great poem which, besides being well constructed in itself, was\nallegorical of actual experience, and contained, as in a hieroglyph,\na very deep knowledge of the world and of the human mind. For what\nwas the object that unfolded itself before the Christian imagination,\nthe vision that converted and regenerated the world? It was a picture\nof human destiny. It was an epic, containing, as it were, the moral\nautobiography of man. The object of Pagan religion and philosophy had\nbeen a picture of the material cosmos, conceived as a vast animal and\ninhabited by a multitude of individual spirits. Even the Neo-Platonists\nthought of nothing else, much as they might multiply abstract names for\nits principles and fancifully confuse them with the spheres. It was\nalways a vast, living, physical engine, a cosmos of life in which man\nhad a determinate province. His spirit, losing its personality, might\nbe absorbed into the ethereal element from which it came; but this\nemanation and absorption was itself an unchanging process, the systole\nand diastole of the universal heart. Practical religion consisted in\nhonouring the nearest gods and accepting from them man's apportioned\ngoods, not without looking, perhaps, with a reverence that needed\nno ritual, to the enveloping whole that prescribed to gods and men\ntheir respective functions. Thus even Neo-Platonism represented man as\na minor incident in the universe, supernatural though that universe\nmight be. The spiritual spheres were only the invisible repetitions of\nthe visible, as the Platonic ideas from the beginning had been only a\ndialectic reduplication of the objects in this world. It was against\nthis allotment that the soul was rebelling. It was looking for a\ndeliverance that should be not so much the consciousness of something\nhigher as the hope of something better.\n\nNow, the great characteristic of Christianity, inherited from Judaism,\nwas that its scheme was historical. Not existences but events were the\nsubject of its primary interest. It presented a story, not a cosmology.\nIt was an epic in which there was, of course, superhuman machinery,\nbut of which the subject was man, and, notable circumstance, the Hero\nwas a man as well. Like Buddhism, it gave the highest honour to a\nman who could lead his fellow-men to perfection. What had previously\nbeen the divine reality--the engine of Nature--now became a temporary\nstage, built for the exigencies of a human drama. What had been before\na detail of the edifice--the life of man--now became the argument and\npurpose of the whole creation. Notable transformation, on which the\nphilosopher cannot meditate too much.\n\nWas Christianity right in saying that the world was made for man? Was\nthe account it adopted of the method and causes of Creation conceivably\ncorrect? Was the garden of Eden a historical reality, and were the\nHebrew prophecies announcements of the advent of Jesus Christ? Did the\ndeluge come because of man's wickedness, and will the last day coincide\nwith the dramatic denouement of the Church's history? In other words,\nis the spiritual experience of man the explanation of the universe?\nCertainly not, if we are thinking of a scientific, not of a poetical\nexplanation. As a matter of fact, man is a product of laws which\nmust also destroy him, and which, as Spinoza would say, infinitely\nexceed him in their scope and power. His welfare is indifferent to\nthe stars, but dependent on them. And yet that counter-Copernican\nrevolution accomplished by Christianity--a revolution which Kant should\nhardly have attributed to himself--which put man in the centre of the\nuniverse and made the stars circle about him, must have some kind of\njustification. And indeed its justification (if we may be so brief on\nso great a subject) is that what is false in the science of facts may\nbe true in the science of values. While the existence of things must\nbe understood by referring them to their causes, which are mechanical,\ntheir functions can only be explained by what is interesting in their\nresults, in other words, by their relation to human nature and to\nhuman happiness.\n\nThe Christian drama was a magnificent poetic rendering of this side\nof the matter, a side which Socrates had envisaged by his admirable\nmethod, but which now flooded the consciousness of mankind with\ntorrential emotions. Christianity was born under an eclipse, when the\nlight of Nature was obscured; but the star that intercepted that light\nwas itself luminous, and shed on succeeding ages a moonlike radiance,\npaler and sadder than the other, but no less divine, and meriting no\nless to be eternal. Man now studied his own destiny, as he had before\nstudied the sky, and the woods, and the sunny depths of water; and as\nthe earlier study produced in his soul--_anima naturaliter poeta_--the\nimages of Zeus, Pan, and Nereus, so the later study produced the\nimages of Jesus and of Mary, of Heaven and Hell, of miracles and\nsacraments. The observation was no less exact, the translation into\npoetic images no less wonderful here than there. To trace the endless\ntransfiguration, with all its unconscious ingenuity and harmony, might\nbe the theme of a fascinating science. Let not the reader fancy that in\nChristianity everything was settled by records and traditions. The idea\nof Christ himself had to be constructed by the imagination in response\nto moral demands, tradition giving only the barest external points\nof attachment. The facts were nothing until they became symbols; and\nnothing could turn them into symbols except an eager imagination on the\nwatch for all that might embody its dreams.\n\nThe crucifixion, for example, would remain a tragic incident without\nfurther significance, if we regard it merely as a historical fact; to\nmake it a religious mystery, an idea capable of converting the world,\nthe moral imagination must transform it into something that happens for\nthe sake of the soul, so that each believer may say to himself that\nChrist so suffered for the love of him. And such a thought is surely\nthe objectification of an inner impulse; the idea of Christ becomes\nsomething spiritual, something poetical. What literal meaning could\nthere be in saying that one man or one God died for the sake of each\nand every other individual? By what effective causal principle could\ntheir salvation be thought to necessitate his death, or his death to\nmake possible their salvation? By an [Greek: usteron proteron] natural\nto the imagination; for in truth the matter is reversed. Christ's death\nis a symbol of human life. Men could \"believe in\" his death, because\nit was a figure and premonition of the burden of their experience.\nThat is why, when some Apostle told them the story, they could say to\nhim: \"Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet: thou hast told me all\nthings whatsoever I have felt.\" Thus the central fact of all Christ's\nhistory, narrated by every Evangelist, could still be nothing but a\npainful incident, as unessential to the Christian religion as the death\nof Socrates to the Socratic philosophy, were it not transformed by\nthe imagination of the believer into the counterpart of his own moral\nneed. Then, by ceasing to be viewed as a historical fact, the death of\nChrist becomes a religious inspiration. The whole of Christian doctrine\nis thus religious and efficacious only when it becomes poetry, because\nonly then is it the felt counterpart of personal experience and a\ngenuine expansion of human life.\n\nTake, as another example, the doctrine of eternal rewards and\npunishments. Many perplexed Christians of our day try to reconcile\nthis spirited fable with their modern horror of physical suffering and\ntheir detestation of cruelty; and it must be admitted that the image\nof men suffering unending tortures in retribution for a few ignorant\nand sufficiently wretched sins is, even as poetry, somewhat repellent.\nThe idea of torments and vengeance is happily becoming alien to our\nsociety and is therefore not a natural vehicle for our religion. Some\naccordingly reject altogether the Christian doctrine on this point,\nwhich is too strong for their nerves. Their objection, of course, is\nnot simply that there is no evidence of its truth. If they asked for\nevidence, would they believe anything? Proofs are the last thing\nlooked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginative\nfitness of its faith and knows instinctively that, in such a matter,\nimaginative fitness is all that can be required. The reason men reject\nthe doctrine of eternal punishment is that they find it distasteful\nor unmeaning. They show, by the nature of their objections, that they\nacknowledge poetic propriety or moral truth to be the sole criterion of\nreligious credibility.\n\nBut, passing over the change of sentiment which gives rise to\nthis change of doctrine, let us inquire of what reality Christian\neschatology was the imaginative rendering. What was it in the actual\nlife of men that made them think of themselves as hanging between\neternal bliss and eternal perdition? Was it not the diversity, the\nmomentousness, and the finality of their experience here? No doubt\nthe desire to make the reversal of the injustices of this world as\nmelodramatic and picturesque as possible contributed to the adoption\nof this idea; the ideal values of life were thus contrasted with its\napparent values in the most absolute and graphic manner. But we may\nsay that beneath this motive, based on the exigences of exposition\nand edification, there was a deeper intuition. There was the genuine\nmoralist's sympathy with a philosophic and logical view of immortality\nrather than with a superstitious and sentimental one. Another life\nexists and is infinitely more important than this life; but it is\nreached by the intuition of ideals, not by the multiplication of\nphenomena; it is an eternal state not an indefinite succession of\nchanges. Transitory life ends for the Christian when the balance-sheet\nof his individual merits and demerits is made up, and the eternity that\nensues is the eternal reality of those values.\n\nFor the Oriental, who believed in transmigration, the individual\ndissolved into an infinity of phases; he went on actually and\nperpetually, as Nature does; his immortality was a long Purgatory\nbehind which a shadowy Hell and Heaven scarcely appeared in the form\nof annihilation or absorption. This happened because the Oriental mind\nhas no middle; it oscillates between extremes and passes directly from\nsense to mysticism, and back again; it lacks virile understanding and\nintelligence creative of form. But Christianity, following in this\nthe Socratic philosophy, rose to the conception of eternal essences,\nforms suspended above the flux of natural things and expressing the\nideal suggestions and rational goals of experience. Each man, for\nChristianity, has an immortal soul; each life has the potentiality of\nan eternal meaning, and as this potentiality is or is not actualized,\nas this meaning is or is not expressed in the phenomena of this\nlife, the soul is eternally saved or lost. As the tree falleth, so\nit lieth. The finality of this brief and personal experiment, the\nconsequent awful solemnity of the hour of death when all trial is over\nand when the eternal sentence is passed, has always been duly felt\nby the Christian. The Church, indeed, in answer to the demand for a\nmore refined and discriminating presentation of its dogma, introduced\nthe temporary discipline of Purgatory, in which the virtues already\nstamped on the soul might be brought to greater clearness and rid of\nthe alloy of imperfection; but this purification allowed no essential\ndevelopment, no change of character or fate; the soul in Purgatory was\nalready saved, already holy.\n\nThe harshness of the doctrine of eternal judgment is therefore a\nconsequence of its symbolic truth. The Church might have been less\nabsolute in the matter had she yielded more, as she did in the doctrine\nof Purgatory, to the desire for merely imaginary extensions of human\nexperience. But her better instincts kept her, after all, to the\nmoral interpretation of reality; and the facts to be rendered were\nuncompromising enough. Art is long, life brief. To have told men they\nwould have infinite opportunities to reform and to advance would have\nbeen to feed them on gratuitous fictions without raising them, as it\nwas the function of Christianity to do, to a consciousness of the\nspiritual meaning and upshot of existence. To have speculated about the\ninfinite extent of experience and its endless transformations, after\nthe manner of the barbarous religions, and never to have conceived\nits moral essence, would have been to encourage a dream which may by\nchance be prophetic, but which is as devoid of ideal meaning as of\nempirical probability. Christian fictions were at least significant;\nthey beguiled the intellect, no doubt, and were mistaken for accounts\nof external fact; but they enlightened the imagination; they made\nman understand, as never before or since, the pathos and nobility of\nhis life, the necessity of discipline, the possibility of sanctity,\nthe transcendence and the humanity of the divine. For the divine\nwas reached by the idealization of the human. The supernatural was\nan allegory of the natural, and rendered the values of transitory\nthings under the image of eternal existences. Thus the finality of\nour activity in this world, together with the eternity of its ideal\nmeanings, was admirably rendered by the Christian dogma of a final\njudgment.\n\nBut there was another moral truth which was impressed upon the believer\nby that doctrine and which could not be enforced in any other way\nwithout presupposing in him an unusual philosophic acumen and elevation\nof mind. That is the truth that moral distinctions are absolute. A\ncool philosophy suffices to show us that moral distinctions exist,\nsince men prefer some experiences to others and can by their action\nbring these good and evil experiences upon themselves and upon their\nfellows. But a survey of Nature may at the same time impress us with\nthe fact that these goods and evils are singularly mixed, that there\nis hardly an advantage gained which is not bought by some loss, or any\nloss which is not an opportunity for the attainment of some advantage.\nWhile it would be chimerical to pretend that such compensation was\nalways adequate, and that, in consequence, no one condition was ever\nreally preferable to any other, yet the perplexities into which moral\naspiration is thrown by these contradictory vistas is often productive\nof the desire to reach some other point of view, to escape into what\nis irrationally thought to be a higher category than the moral. The\nserious consideration of those things which are right according to\nhuman reason and interest may then yield to a fanatical reliance on\nsome facile general notion.\n\nIt may be thought, for instance, that what is regular or necessary\nor universal is therefore right and good; thus a dazed contemplation\nof the actual may take the place of the determination of the ideal.\nMysticism in regard to the better and the worse, by which good and bad\nare woven into a seamless garment of sorry magnificence in which the\nwhole universe is wrapped up, is like mysticism on other subjects; it\nconsists in the theoretic renunciation of a natural attitude, in this\ncase of the natural attitude of welcome and repulsion in the presence\nof various things. But this category is the most fundamental of all\nthose that the human mind employs, and it cannot be surrendered so\nlong as life endures. It is indeed the conscious echo of those vital\ninstincts by whose operation we exist. Levity and mysticism may do all\nthey can--and they can do much--to make men think moral distinctions\nunauthoritative, because moral distinctions may be either ignored or\ntranscended. Yet the essential assertion that one thing is really\nbetter than another remains involved in every act of every living\nbeing. It is involved even in the operation of abstract thinking, where\na cogent conclusion, being still coveted, is assumed to be a good, or\nin that \u00e6sthetic and theoretic enthusiasm before cosmic laws, which is\nthe human foundation of this mysticism itself.\n\nIt is accordingly a moral truth which no subterfuge can elude, that\nsome things are really better than others. In the daily course of\naffairs we are constantly in the presence of events which by turning\nout one way or the other produce a real, an irrevocable, increase of\ngood or evil in the world. The complexities of life, struggling as it\ndoes amidst irrational forces, may make the attainment of one good\nthe cause of the unattainableness of another; they cannot destroy\nthe essential desirability of both. The niggardliness of Nature\ncannot sterilize the ideal; the odious circumstances which make the\nattainment of many goods conditional on the perpetration of some evil,\nand which punish every virtue by some incapacity or some abuse,--these\nodious circumstances cannot rob any good of its natural sweetness, nor\nall goods together of their conceptual harmony. To the heart that has\nfelt it and that is the true judge, every loss is irretrievable and\nevery joy indestructible. Eventual compensations may obliterate the\nmemory of these values but cannot destroy their reality. The future can\nonly furnish further applications of the principle by which they arose\nand were justified.\n\nNow, how utter this moral truth imaginatively, how clothe it in an\nimage that might render its absoluteness and its force? Could any\nmethod be better than to say: Your eternal destiny is hanging in\nthe balance: the grace of God, the influences of others, and your\nown will reacting upon both are shaping at every moment issues of\nabsolute importance. What happens here and now decides not merely\nincidental pains and pleasures--which perhaps a brave and careless\nspirit might alike despise--but helps to determine your eternal\ndestiny of joy or anguish, and the eternal destiny of your neighbour.\nIn place of the confused vistas of the empirical world, in which the\nthreads of benefit and injury might seem to be mingled and lost, the\nimagination substituted the clear vision of Hell and Heaven; while\nthe determination of our destiny was made to depend upon obedience to\nrecognized duties.\n\nNow these duties may often have been far from corresponding to those\nwhich reason would impose; but the intention and the principle at least\nwere sound. It was felt that the actions and passions of this world\nbreed momentous values, values which being ideal are as infinite as\nvalues can be in the estimation of reason--the values of truth, of\nlove, of rationality, of perfection--although both the length of the\nexperience in which they arise and the number of persons who share\nthat experience may be extremely limited. But the mechanical measure\nof experience in length, intensity, or multiplication has nothing to\ndo with its moral significance in realizing truth or virtue. Therefore\nthe difference in dignity between the satisfactions of reason and\nthe satisfactions of sense is fittingly rendered by the infinite\ndisproportion between heavenly and earthly joys. In our imaginative\ntranslation we are justified in saying that the alternative between\ninfinite happiness and infinite misery is yawning before us, because\nthe alternative between rational failure or success is actually\npresent. The decisions we make from moment to moment, on which the\nideal value of our life and character depends, actually constitute in a\nfew years a decision which is irrevocable.\n\nThe Christian doctrine of rewards and punishments is thus in harmony\nwith moral truths which a different doctrine might have obscured.\nThe good souls that wish to fancy that everybody will be ultimately\nsaved, subject a fable to standards appropriate to matters of fact,\nand thereby deprive the fable of that moral significance which is its\nexcuse for being. If every one is ultimately saved, there is nothing\ntruly momentous about alternative events: all paths lead more or less\ncircuitously to the same end. The only ground which then remains\nfor discriminating the better from the worse is the pleasantness or\nunpleasantness of the path to salvation. All moral meanings inhere,\nthen, in this life, and the other life is without significance. Heaven\ncomes to replace life empirically without fulfilling it ideally. We are\nreduced for our moral standards to phenomenal values, to the worth of\nlife in transitory feeling. These values are quite real, but they are\nnot those which poetry and religion have for their object. They are\nvalues present to sense, not to reason and imagination.\n\nThe ideal of a supervening general bliss presents indeed an abstract\ndesideratum, but not the ideal involved in the actual forces of life;\nthat end would have no rational relation to its primary factors; it\nwould not be built on our instinctive preferences but would abolish\nthem by a miraculous dream, following alike upon every species of\nactivity. Moral differences would have existed merely to be forgotten;\nfor if we say they were remembered, but transcended and put to rest,\nwe plunge into an even worse contradiction to the conscience and the\nwill. For if we say that the universal bliss consists in the assurance,\nmystically received, that while individual experiences may differ in\nvalue they all equally conduce to the perfection of the universe, we\ndeny not merely the momentousness but even the elementary validity of\nmoral distinctions. We assert that the best idea of God is that least\nlike the ideal of man, and that the nearer we come to the vision of\ntruth the farther we are from the feeling of preference. In our attempt\nto extend the good we thus abolish its essence. Our religion consists\nin denying the authority of the ideal, which is its only rational\nfoundation; and thus that religion, while gaining nothing in empirical\nreality, comes to express a moral falsehood instead of a moral truth.\n\nIf we looked in religion for an account of facts, as most people do,\nwe should have to pass a very different judgment on these several\nviews. The mechanical world is a connected system and Nature seems\nto be dynamically one; the intuitions on which mysticism feeds are\ntherefore true intuitions. The expectation of a millennium is on the\nother hand quite visionary, because the evidence of history, while it\nshows undeniable progress in many directions, shows that this progress\nis essentially relative, partial, and transitory. As for the Christian\ndoctrine of the judgment, it is something wholly out of relation to\nempirical facts, it assumes the existence of a supernatural sphere, and\nis beyond the reach of scientific evidence of any kind. But if we look\non religion as on a kind of poetry, as we have decided here to do,--as\non a kind of poetry that expresses moral values and reacts beneficently\nupon life,--we shall see that the Christian doctrine is alone\njustified. For mysticism is not an imaginative construction at all but\na renunciation or confusion of our faculties; here a surrender of the\nhuman ideal in the presence of a mechanical force that is felt, and\ncorrectly felt, to tend to vaguer results or rather to tend to nothing\nin particular. Mysticism is not a religion but a religious disease.\nThe idea of universal salvation, on the other hand, is the expression\nof a feeble sentimentality, a pleasant reverie without structure or\nsignificance. But the doctrine of eternal rewards and punishments\nis, as we have tried to show, an expression of moral truth, a poetic\nrendering of the fact that rational values are ideal, momentous, and\nirreversible.\n\nIt would be easy to multiply examples and to exhibit the various parts\nof Christianity as so many interpretations of human life in its ideal\naspects. But we are not attempting to narrate facts so much as to\nadvance an idea, and the illustrations given will perhaps suffice\nto make our conception intelligible. There is, however, a possible\nmisunderstanding which we should be careful to avoid in this dangerous\nfield of philosophic interpretation. In saying that a given religion\nwas the poetic transformation of an experience, we must not imagine\nthat it was thought to be such--for it is evident that every sincere\nChristian believed in the literal and empirical reality of all that the\nChristian epic contained. Nor should we imagine that philosophic ideas,\nor general reflections on life, were the origin of religion, and that\nafterward certain useful myths, known to be such by their authors, were\nmistaken for history and for literal prophecy. That sometimes happens,\nwhen historians, poets, or philosophers are turned by the unintelligent\nveneration of posterity into religious prophets. Such was the fate of\nPlato, for instance, or of the writer of the \"Song of Solomon\"; but 110\ngreat and living religion was ever founded in that way.\n\nHad Christianity or any other religion had its basis in literary or\nphilosophical allegories, it would never have become a religion,\nbecause the poetry of it would never have been interwoven with the\nfigures and events of real life. No tomb, no relic, no material\nmiracle, no personal derivation of authority, would have existed to\nserve as the nucleus of devotion and the point of junction between\nthis world and the other. The origin of Christian dogma lay in historic\nfacts and in doctrines literally meant by their authors. It is one of\nthe greatest possible illusions in these matters to fancy that the\nmeaning which we see in parables and mysteries was the meaning they had\nin the beginning, but which later misinterpretation had obscured. On\nthe contrary--as a glance at any incipient religious movement now going\non will show us--the authors of doctrines, however obvious it may be to\nevery one else that these doctrines have only a figurative validity,\nare the first dupes to their own intuitions. This is no less true of\nmetaphysical theories than of spontaneous superstitions: did their\npromulgator understand the character of their justification he would\ngive himself out for a simple poet, appeal only to cultivated minds,\nand never turn his energies to stimulating private delusions, not to\nspeak of public fanaticisms. The best philosophers seldom perceive the\npoetic merit of their systems.\n\nSo among the ancients it was not an abstract observation of Nature,\nwith conscious allegory supervening, that was the origin of mythology,\nbut the interpretation was spontaneous, the illusion was radical, a\nconsciousness of the god's presence was the first impression produced\nby the phenomenon. Else, in this case too, poetry would never have\nbecome superstition; what made it superstition was the initial\nincapacity in people to discriminate the objects of imagination from\nthose of the understanding. The fancy thus attached its images, without\ndistinguishing their ideal locus, to the visible world, and men became\nsuperstitious not because they had too much imagination, but because\nthey were not aware that they had any.\n\nIn what sense, then, are we justified in saying that religion expresses\nmoral ideals? In the sense that moral significance, while not the\nsource of religions, is the criterion of their value and the reason\nwhy they may deserve to endure. Far as the conception of an allegory\nmay be from the minds of prophets, yet the prophecy can only take\nroot in the popular imagination if it recommends itself to some human\ninterest. There must be some correspondence between the doctrine\nannounced or the hopes set forth, and the natural demands of the\nhuman spirit. Otherwise, although the new faith might be preached, it\nwould not be accepted. The significance of religious doctrines has\ntherefore been the condition of their spread, their maintenance, and\ntheir development, although not the condition of their origin. In\nDarwinian language, moral significance has been a spontaneous variation\nof superstition, and this variation has insured its survival as a\nreligion. For religion differs from superstition not psychologically\nbut morally, not in its origin but in its worth. This worth, when\nactually felt and appreciated, becomes of course a dynamic factor and\ncontributes like other psychological elements to the evolution of\nevents; but being a logical harmony, a rational beauty, this worth is\nonly appreciable by a few minds, and those the least primitive and the\nleast capable of guiding popular movements. Reason is powerless to\nfound religions, although it is alone competent to judge them. Good\nreligions are therefore the product of unconscious rationality, of\nimaginative impulses fortunately moral.\n\nParticularly does this appear in the early history of Christianity.\nEvery shade of heresy, every kind of mixture of Christian and other\nelements was tried and found advocates; but after a greater or less\nsuccess they all disappeared, leaving only the Church standing. For the\nChurch had known how to combine those dogmas and practices in which\nthe imagination of the time, and to a great extent of all times, might\nfind fitting expression. Imaginative significance was the touchstone\nof orthodoxy; tradition itself was tested by this standard. By this\nstandard the canon of Scripture was fixed, so as neither to exclude the\nOld Testament, which the pure metaphysicians would have rejected, nor\nto accept every gospel that circulated under the name of an apostle,\nand which might please a wonder-loving and detail-loving piety. By\nthe same criterion the ritual was composed, the dogma developed, the\nnature of Christ defined, the sacraments and discipline of the Church\nregulated. The result was a comprehensive system where, under the\nshadow of a great epic, which expanded and interpreted the history\nof mankind from the Creation to the Day of Doom, a place was found\nfor as many religious instincts and as many religious traditions as\npossible; while at the same time the dialectic proficiency of an age\nthat inherited the discipline of Greek philosophy, introduced into the\nsystem a great consistency and a great metaphysical subtlety. Time\nmellowed and expanded these dogmas, bringing them into relation with\nthe needs of a multiform piety; a justification was found both for\nasceticism and for a virtuous naturalism, both for contemplation and\nfor action; and thus it became possible for the Church to insinuate her\nsanctions and her spirit into the motives of men, and to embody the\nreligion of many nations during many ages.\n\nThe Church's successes, however, were not all legitimate; they were\nnot everywhere due to a real correspondence between her forms and the\nideal life of men. It was only the inhabitants of the Gr\u00e6co-Roman\nworld that were quite prepared to understand her. When the sword, or\nthe authority of a higher worldly civilization, carried her influence\nbeyond the borders of the Roman Empire we may observe that her\nauthority seldom proved stable. She was felt, by those peoples whose\nimaginative traditions and whose moral experience she did not express,\nto be something alien and artificial. The Teutonic races finally threw\noff what they felt to be her yoke. If they reconstructed their religion\nout of elements which she had furnished, that was only because religion\nis bound to be traditional, and they had been Christians for many\nhundred years. A wholly new philosophy or poetry could not have taken\nimmediate root in their minds; even the philosophy which Germany has\nsince produced, when the national spirit was reaching, so to speak, its\nmajority, hardly seems able to constitute an independent religion, but\ntakes shelter under some form of Christianity, however much the spirit\nof that religion may be transformed.\n\nAt first, indeed, the new movement took the Bible for its\nstarting-point. So heterogeneous a book, which was already habitually\ninterpreted in so many fanciful ways, was indeed an admirable basis\nfor the imagination to build upon. The self-reliant and dreamy Teuton\ncould spin out of the Biblical chronicles and rhapsodies convictions\nafter his own heart; while his fixed persuasion that the Bible was the\nword of God, was strengthened (not illegitimately) by his ability to\nmake it express his own moral ideals. The intensity of his religion was\nproportionate to the degree in which he had made it the imaginative\nrendering of his own character.\n\nProtestantism in its vital elements was thus a perfectly new, a\nperfectly spontaneous religion. The illusion that it was a return to\nprimitive Christianity was useful for controversial purposes and helped\nto justify the iconoclastic passions of the time; but this illusion\ndid not touch the true essence of Protestantism, nor the secret of its\nlegitimacy and power as a religion. This was its new embodiment of\nhuman ideals in imaginative forms, whereby those ideals became explicit\nand found a remarkable expression in action. These ideals were quite\nTeutonic and looked to inner spontaneity and outward prosperity; they\nwere more allied to those of the Hebrews than to those of the early\nChristians, whose religion was all miracles, asceticism, and withdrawal\nfrom the world. Indeed we may say that the typical Protestant was\nhimself his own church and made the selection and interpretation of\ntradition according to the demands of his personal spirit. What the\nFathers did for the Church in the fourth century, the Reformers did for\nthemselves in the sixteenth, and have continued to do on the occasion\nof their various appearances.\n\nIf we judge this interpretation by poetic standards, we cannot\nresist the conclusion that the old version was infinitely superior.\nThe Protestant, with his personal resources, was reduced to making\ngrotesquely and partially that translation of moral life which the\nFathers had made comprehensively and beautifully, inspired as they\nwere by all the experience of antiquity and all the hopes of youthful\nChristendom. Nevertheless, Protestantism has the unmistakable character\nof a genuine religion, a character which tradition passively accepted\nand dogma, regarded as so much external truth, may easily lose; it\nis in correspondence with the actual ideals and instincts of the\nbeliever; it is the self-assertion of a living soul. Its meagreness\nand eccentricity are simply evidences of its personal basis. It is in\nfull harmony with the practical impulses it comes to sanction, and\naccordingly it gains in efficiency all that it loses in dignity and\ntruth.\n\nThe principle by which the Christian system had developed, although\nreapplied by the Protestants to their own inner life, was not\nunderstood by them in its historical applications. They had little\nsympathy with the spiritual needs and habits of that Pagan society in\nwhich Christianity had grown up. That society had found in Christianity\na sort of last love, a rejuvenating supersensible hope, and had\nbequeathed to the Gospel of Redemption, for its better embodiment and\nornament, all its own wealth of art, philosophy, and devotion. This\nembodiment of Christianity represented a civilization through which\nthe Teutonic races had not passed and which they never could have\nproduced; it appealed to a kind of imagination and sentiment which\nwas foreign to them. This embodiment, accordingly, was the object of\ntheir first and fiercest attack, really because it was unsympathetic\nto their own temperament but ostensibly because they could not find\nits basis in those Hebraic elements of Christianity which make up the\ngreater bulk of the Bible. They did not value the sublime aspiration\nof Christianity to be not something Hebraic or Teutonic but something\nCatholic and human; and they blamed everything which went beyond the\naccidental limits of their own sympathies and the narrow scope of their\nown experience.\n\nYet it was only by virtue of this complement inherited from Paganism,\nor at least supplied by the instincts and traditions on which Paganism\nhad reposed, that Christianity could claim to approach a humane\nuniversality or to achieve an imaginative adequacy. The problem was to\ncompose, in the form of a cosmic epic, with metaphysical justifications\nand effectual starting-points for moral action, the spiritual\nautobiography of man. The central idea of this composition was to be\nthe idea of a Redemption. Around this were to be gathered and moulded\ntogether elements drawn from Hebrew tradition and scripture, others\nfurnished by Paganism, together with all that the living imagination\nof the time could create. Nor was it right or fitting to make a merely\ntheoretical or ethical synthesis. Doctrine must find its sensible echo\nin worship, in art, in the feasts and fasts of the year. Only when\nthus permeating life and expressing itself to every sense and faculty\ncan a religion be said to have reached completion; only then has the\nimagination exhausted its means of utterance.\n\nThe great success which Christianity achieved in this immense\nundertaking makes it, after classic antiquity, the most important phase\nin the history of mankind. It is clear, however, that this success was\nnot complete. That fallacy from which the Pagan religion alone has\nbeen free, that [Greek: proton pseudos] of all fanaticism, the natural\nbut hopeless misunderstanding of imagining that poetry in order to\nbe religion, in order to be the inspiration of life, must first deny\nthat it is poetry and deceive us about the facts with which we have\nto deal--this misunderstanding has marred the work of the Christian\nimagination and condemned it, if we may trust appearances, to be\ntransitory. For by this misunderstanding Christian doctrine was brought\ninto conflict with reality, of which it pretends to prejudge the\ncharacter, and also into conflict with what might have been its own\nelements, with all excluded religious instincts and imaginative ideals.\nHuman life is always essentially the same, and therefore a religion\nwhich, like Christianity, seizes the essence of that life, ought to be\nan eternal religion. But it may forfeit that privilege by entangling\nitself with a particular account of matters of fact, matters irrelevant\nto its ideal significance, and further by intrenching itself, by\nvirtue of that entanglement, in an inadequate regimen or a too narrow\nimaginative development, thus putting its ideal authority in jeopardy\nby opposing it to other intuitions and practices no less religious than\nits own.\n\nCan Christianity escape these perils? Can it reform its claims, or\ncan it overwhelm all opposition and take the human heart once more by\nstorm? The future alone can decide. The greatest calamity, however,\nwould be that which seems, alas! not unlikely to befall our immediate\nposterity, namely, that while Christianity should be discredited no\nother religion, more disillusioned and not less inspired, should come\nto take its place. Until the imagination should have time to recover\nand to reassert its legitimate and kindly power, the European races\nwould then be reduced to confessing that while they had mastered the\nmechanical forces of Nature, both by science and by the arts, they had\nbecome incapable of mastering or understanding themselves, and that,\nbewildered like the beasts by the revolutions of the heavens and by\ntheir own irrational passions, they could find no way of uttering the\nideal meaning of their life.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nPLATONIC LOVE IN SOME ITALIAN POETS\n\n\nWhen the fruits of philosophic reflection, condensed into some phrase,\npass into the common language of men, there does not and there cannot\naccompany them any just appreciation of their meaning or of the long\nexperience and travail of soul from which they have arisen. Few\ndoctrines have suffered more by popularization than the intuitions\nof Plato. The public sees in Platonic sayings little more than\nphrases employed by unpractical minds to cloak the emptiness of their\nyearnings. Finding these fragments of an obsolete speech put to bad\nuses, we are apt to ignore and despise them, much as a modern peasant\nmight despise the fragment of a frieze or a metope which he found\nbuilt into his cottage wall. It is not only the works of plastic art\nthat moulder and disintegrate to furnish materials for the barbarous\nmasons of a later age: the great edifices of reason also crumble, their\nplan is lost, and their fragments, picked where they happen to lie,\nbecome the materials of a feebler thought. In common speech we find\nsuch bits of ancient wisdom embedded; they prove the intelligence of\nsome ancestor of ours, but are no evidence of our own. When used in\nignorance of their meaning, they become misplaced flourishes, lapses\ninto mystery in the businesslike plainness of our thought.\n\nYet there is one man, the arch\u00e6ologist, to whom nothing is so\ninteresting as just these stones which a practical builder would have\nrejected. He forgives the ignorance and barbarism that placed them\nwhere they are; he is absorbed in studying their sculptured surface\nand delighted if his fancy can pass from them to the idea of the\nmajestic whole to which they once belonged. So in the presence of a\nmuch-abused philosophic phrase, we may be interested in reconstructing\nthe experience which once gave it meaning and form. Words are at least\nthe tombs of ideas, and the most conventional formulas of poets or\ntheologians are still good subjects for the arch\u00e6ologist of passion. He\nmay find a treasure there; or at any rate he may hope to be rewarded\nfor his labour by the ideal restoration of some once beautiful temple\nof Athena.\n\nSomething of this kind is what we may now attempt to do with regard to\none or two Platonic ideas, ideas which under the often ironical title\nof Platonic love, are constantly referred to and seldom understood.\nThese ideas may be defined as the transformation of the appreciation\nof beautiful things into the worship of an ideal beauty and the\ntransformation of the love of particular persons into the love of God.\nThese mystical phrases may acquire a new and more human meaning if we\nunderstand, at least in part, how they first came to be spoken. We\nshall then not think of them merely as the reported sayings of Plato\nor Plotinus, Porphyry or Proclus; we shall not learn them by rote, as\nthe unhappy student learns the enigmas, which, in the histories of\nphilosophy, represent all that survives of the doctrine of a Thales or\na Pythagoras. We shall have some notion of the ideas that once prompted\nsuch speech.\n\nAnd we shall be the better able to reconstruct those conceptions\ninasmuch as the reflection by which they are bred has recurred often\nin the world--has recurred, very likely, in our own experience.\nWe are often Platonists without knowing it. In some form or other\nPlatonic ideas occur in all poetry of passion when it is seasoned with\nreflection. They are particularly characteristic of some Italian poets,\nscattered from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. These poets\nhad souls naturally Platonic; even when they had heard something of\nPlato they borrowed nothing from him. They repeated his phrases, when\nthey did so, merely to throw the authority of an ancient philosopher\nover the spontaneous suggestions of their own minds. Their Platonism\nwas all their own: it was Christian, medi\u00e6val, and chivalrous, both\nin origin and expression. But it was all the more genuine for being a\nreincarnation rather than an imitation of the old wisdom.\n\nNothing, for example, could be a better object-lesson in Platonism than\nthe well-known sentimental history of Dante. There is no essential\nimportance in the question whether Dante could have read anything of\nPlato or come indirectly under his influence. The Platonism of Dante,\nis, in any case, quite his own. It is the expression of his inner\nexperience moulded by the chivalry and theology of his time. He tells\nus the story himself very quaintly in the \"Vita Nuova.\"\n\nAt the age of nine he saw, at a wedding-feast in Florence, Beatrice,\nthen a child of seven, who became, forthwith, the mistress of his\nthoughts. This precocious passion ruled his imagination for life, so\nthat, when he brings to an end the account of the emotions she aroused\nin him by her life and death, he tells us that he determined to speak\nno more about her until he should be able to do so more worthily, and\nto say of her what had never been said of any woman. In the \"Divine\nComedy,\" accordingly, where he fulfils this promise, she appears\ntransfigured into a heavenly protectress and guide, whose gentle\nwomanhood fades into an impersonation of theological wisdom. But this\nlife-long devotion of Dante to Beatrice was something purely mental\nand poetical; he never ventured to woo; he never once descended or\nsought to descend from the sphere of silent and distant adoration;\nhis tenderness remained always tearful and dreamy, like that of a\nsupersensitive child.\n\nYet, while his love of Beatrice was thus constant and religious, it\nwas by no means exclusive. Dante took a wife as Beatrice herself had\ntaken a husband; the temptations of youth, as well as the affection\nof married life, seem to have existed beneath this ideal love, not\nunrebuked by it, indeed, but certainly not disturbing it. Should we be\nsurprised at this species of infidelity? Should we regard it as proof\nof the artificiality and hollowness of that so transcendental passion,\nand smile, as people have done in the case of Plato himself, at the\nthin disguise of philosophy that covers the most vulgar frailties of\nhuman nature? Or, should we say, with others, that Beatrice is a merely\nallegorical figure, and the love she is said to inspire nothing but a\nsymbol for attachment to wisdom and virtue? These are old questions,\nand insoluble by any positive method, since they cannot be answered by\nthe facts but only by our interpretation of them. Our solution can have\nlittle historical value, but it will serve to test our understanding of\nthe metaphysics of feeling.\n\nTo guide us in this delicate business we may appeal to a friend of\nDante, his fellow-poet Guido Cavalcanti, who will furnish us with\nanother example of this same sort of idealization, and this same sort\nof inconstancy, expressed in a manner that will repay analysis. Guido\nCavalcanti had a Beatrice of his own--something of the kind was then\nexpected of every gentle knight and poet--and Guido's Beatrice was\ncalled Giovanna. Dante seems to acknowledge the parity of his friend's\npassion with his own by coupling the names of the two ladies, Monna\nVanna and Monna Bice, in one or two of the sonnets he addresses to\nGuido. Now it came to pass that Guido, in the fervour of his devotion,\nat once chivalrous and religious, bethought him of making a pilgrimage\nto the tomb of Saint James the Apostle, at Compostela in Spain.\nUpon this journey--a journey beguiled, no doubt, by thoughts of the\nbeautiful Giovanna he had left in Florence--he halted in the city of\nToulouse. But at Toulouse, as chance would have it, there lived a\nlovely lady by the name of Mandetta, with whom it was impossible for\nthe chivalrous pilgrim not to fall in love; for chivalry is nothing\nbut a fine emblazoning of the original manly impulse to fight every\nman and love every woman. Now in an interesting sonnet Guido describes\nthe conflict of these two affections, or perhaps we should rather say,\ntheir union.\n\n    \"There is a lady in Toulouse so fair,\n       So young, so gentle, and so chastely gay,\n     She doth a true and living likeness bear\n       In her sweet eyes to Love, whom I obey.\"\n\nThe word I have, to avoid confusion, here rendered by \"Love\" is in the\noriginal \"la Donna mia,\" \"my Lady\"; so that we have our poet falling in\nlove with Mandetta on account of her striking resemblance to Giovanna.\nIs this inconstancy or only a more delicate and indirect homage? We\nshall see; for Guido goes on to represent his soul, according to his\ncustom, as a being that dwells and moves about in the chambers of\nhis heart; and speaking still of Mandetta, the lady of Toulouse, he\ncontinues:--\n\n    \"Within my heart my soul, when she appeared,\n       Was filled with longing and was fain to flee\n     Out of my heart to her, yet was afeared\n       To tell the lady who my Love might be.\n     She looked upon me with her quiet eyes,\n       And under their sweet ray my bosom burned,\n     Cheered by Love's image, that within them lies.\"\n\nSo far we have still the familiar visible in the new and making its\npower; Mandetta is still nothing but a stimulus to reawaken the memory\nof Giovanna. But before the end there is trouble. The sting of the\npresent attraction is felt in contrast to the eternal ideal. There is\na necessity of sacrifice, and he cries, as the lady turns away her\neyes:--\n\n    \"Alas! they shot an arrow as she turned,\n     And with a death-wound from the piercing dart\n     My soul came sighing back into my heart.\"\n\nPerhaps this merely means that the lady was disdainful; had she been\notherwise the poet might never have written sonnets about her, and\nsurely not sonnets in which her charms were reduced to a Platonic\nreminiscence of a fairer ideal. But it is this turning away of the\nface of love, this ephemeral quality of its embodiments, that usually\nstimulates the imagination to the construction of a supersensible ideal\nin which all those evaporated impulses may meet again and rest in an\nadequate and permanent object. So that while Guido's \"death-wound\" was\nperhaps in reality nothing but the rebuff offered him by a prospective\nmistress, yet the sting of it, in a mind of Platonic habit, served\nat once to enforce the distinction between the ideal beauty, so full\nof sweetness and heavenly charm, which had tempted the soul out of\nhis heart on its brief adventure, and the particular and real object\nagainst which the soul was dashed, and from which it returned bruised\nand troubled to its inward solitude.\n\nSo the meditative Guido represents his experience: a new planet swam\ninto his ken radiant with every grace and virtue; yet all the magic\nof that lady lay in her resemblance to the mysterious Giovanna, the\ndouble of Beatrice, the ideal of the poet's imagination. The soul, at\nfirst, went out eagerly to the new love as to an image and embodiment\nof the old, but was afraid, and justly, to mention the ideal in the\npresence of the reality. There is always danger in doing that; it\nbreaks the spell and reduces us again to the old and patient loyalty to\nthe unseen. The present thing being so like the ideal we unhesitatingly\npursue it: but we are quickly disappointed, and the soul returns\nsighing and mortally wounded, as the new object of passion fades away.\n\nWe may now understand somewhat better that strange combination of\nloyalty and disloyalty which we find in Dante. While the object of\nlove is any particular thing, it excludes all others; but it includes\nall others as soon as it becomes a general ideal. All beauties attract\nby suggesting the ideal and then fail to satisfy by not fulfilling\nit. While Giovanna remained a woman, Guido, as his after life plainly\nshowed, had no difficulty in forgetting her and in loving many others\nwith a frank heart; but when Giovanna had become a name for the\nabsolute ideal, that sovereign mistress could never be forgotten, and\nthe thought of her subordinated every particular attachment and called\nthe soul away from it. Compared with the ideal, every human perfection\nbecomes a shadow and a deceit; every mortal passion leaves, as Keats\nhas told us,\n\n    \"A heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,\n     A burning forehead and a parching tongue.\"\n\nSuch is the nature of idealization. Like the Venus of Apelles, in\nwhich all known beauties were combined, the ideal is the union of\nall we prize in all creatures; and the mind that has once felt the\nirresistible compulsion to create this ideal and to believe in it has\nbecome incapable of unreserved love of anything else. The absolute\nis a jealous god; it is a consuming fire that blasts the affections\nupon which it feeds. For this reason the soul of Guido, in his sonnet,\nis mortally wounded by the shaft of that beauty which has awakened a\nvehement longing for perfection without being able to satisfy it. All\nthings become to the worshipper of the ideal so many signs and symbols\nof what he seeks; like the votary who, kneeling now before one image\nand now before another, lets his incense float by all with a certain\nabstracted impartiality, because his aspiration mounts through them\nequally to the invisible God they alike represent.\n\nAnother aspect of the same process is well described by Shakespeare, in\nwhom Italian influences count for much, when he says to the person he\nhas chosen as the object of his idealization:--\n\n    \"Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts\n       Which I, by lacking, have supposed dead,\n     And there reigns love and all love's loving parts\n       And all those friends which I thought buried.\n     How many a holy and obsequious tear\n       Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye\n     As interest for the dead, which now appear\n       But things removed, which hidden in thee lie.\n     Thou art the grave where buried love doth live\n       Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,\n     Who all their parts of me to thee did give:\n       That due of many now is thine alone.\n     Their images I loved I view in thee,\n     And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.\"\n\nWe need not, then, waste erudition in trying to prove whether Dante's\nBeatrice or Guido's Giovanna or any one else who has been the subject\nof the greater poetry of love, was a symbol or a reality. To poets and\nphilosophers real things are themselves symbols. The child of seven\nwhom Dante saw at the Florentine feast was, if you will, a reality. As\nsuch she is profoundly unimportant. To say that Dante loved her then\nand ever after is another way of saying that she was a symbol to him.\nThat is the way with childish loves. Neither the conscious spell of the\nsenses nor the affinities of taste and character can then be powerful,\nbut the sense of loneliness and the vague need of loving may easily\nconspire with the innocence of the eyes to fix upon a single image and\nto make it the imaginary goal of all those instincts which as yet do\nnot know themselves.\n\nWhen with time these instincts become explicit and select their\nrespective objects, if the inmost heart still remains unsatisfied, as\nit must in all profound or imaginative natures, the name and memory\nof that vague early love may well subsist as a symbol for the perfect\ngood yet unattained. It is intelligible that as time goes on that\nimage, grown thus consciously symbolic, should become interchangeable\nwith the abstract method of pursuing perfection--that Beatrice, that\nis, should become the same as sacred theology. Having recognized that\nshe was to his childish fancy what the ideals of religion were to his\nmature imagination, Dante intentionally fused the two, as every poet\nintentionally fuses the general and the particular, the universal and\nthe personal. Beatrice thenceforth appeared, as Plato wished that our\nloves should, as a manifestation of absolute beauty and as an avenue of\ndivine grace. Dante merely added his Christian humility and tenderness\nto the insight of the Pagan philosopher.\n\nThe tendency to impersonality, we see, is essential to the ideal. It\ncould not fulfil its functions if it retained too many of the traits\nof any individual. A blind love, an unreasoning passion, is therefore\ninconsistent with the Platonic spirit, which is favourable rather to\nabstraction from persons and to admiration of qualities. These may, of\ncourse, be found in many individuals. Too much subjection to another\npersonality makes the expression of our own impossible, and the ideal\nis nothing but a projection of the demands of our imagination. If\nthe imagination is over-powered by too strong a fascination, by the\nabsolute dominion of an alien influence, we form no ideal at all. We\nmust master a passion before we can see its meaning.\n\nFor this reason, among others, we find so little Platonism in that\npoet in whom we might have expected to find most--I mean in Petrarch.\nPetrarch is musical, ingenious, learned, and passionate, but he is\nweak. His art is greater than his thought. In the quality of his mind\nthere is nothing truly distinguished. The discipline of his long and\nhopeless love brings him little wisdom, little consolation. He is\nlachrymose and sentimental at the end as at the beginning, and his best\ndream of heaven, expressed, it is true, in entrancing verse, is only to\nhold his lady's hand and hear her voice. Sometimes, indeed, he repeats\nwhat he must have read and heard so often, and gives us his version of\nPlato in half a sonnet. Thus, for instance, speaking of his love for\nLaura, he says in one place:--\n\n    \"Hence comes the understanding of love's scope\n     That seeking her to perfect good aspires,\n     Accounting little what all flesh desires;\n     And hence the spirit's happy pinions ope\n     In flight impetuous to the heaven's choirs,\n     Wherefore I walk already proud in hope.\"\n\nIf we are looking, however, for more direct expressions of the idealism\nof feeling, of love, and the sense of beauty passing into religion,\nwe shall do well to turn to another Italian, not so great a poet as\nPetrarch by any means, but a far greater man--to Michael Angelo.\nMichael Angelo justly regarded himself as essentially a sculptor, and\nsaid even of painting that it was not his art; his verses are therefore\nboth laboured and rough. Yet they have been too much neglected, for\nthey breathe the same pathos of strength, the same agony in hope, as\nhis Titanic designs.\n\nLike every Italian of culture in those days, Michael Angelo was in the\nhabit of addressing little pieces to his friends, and of casting his\nthoughts or his prayers into the mould of a sonnet or a madrigal. Verse\nhas a greater naturalness and a wider range among the Latin peoples\nthan among the English; poetry and prose are less differentiated. In\nFrench, Italian, and Spanish, as in Latin itself, elegance and neatness\nof expression suffice for verse. The reader passes without any sense of\nincongruity or anti-climax from passion to reflection, from sentiment\nto satire, from flights of fancy to homely details: the whole has a\ncertain human sincerity and intelligibility which weld it together.\nAs the Latin languages are not composed of two diverse elements, as\nEnglish is of Latin and German, so the Latin mind does not have two\nspheres of sentiment, one vulgar and the other sublime. All changes\nare variations on a single key, which is the key of intelligence. We\nmust not be surprised, therefore, to find now a message to a friend,\nnow an artistic maxim, now a bit of dialectic, and now a confession of\nsin, taking the form of verse and filling out the fourteen lines of a\nsonnet. On the contrary, we must look to these familiar compositions\nfor the most genuine evidence of a man's daily thoughts.\n\nWe find in Michael Angelo's poems a few recurring ideas, or rather the\nvaried expression of a single half \u00e6sthetic, half religious creed.\nThe soul, he tells us in effect, is by nature made for God and for\nthe enjoyment of divine beauty. All true beauty leads to the idea of\nperfection; the effort toward perfection is the burden of all art,\nwhich labours, therefore, with a superhuman and insoluble problem.\nAll love, also, that does not lead to the love of God and merge into\nthat love, is a long and hopeless torment; while the light of love is\nalready the light of heaven, the fire of love is already the fire of\nhell. These are the thoughts that perpetually recur, varied now with\na pathetic reference to the poet's weariness and old age, now with an\nalmost despairing appeal for divine mercy, often with a powerful and\nrugged description of the pangs of love, and with a pious acceptance\nof its discipline. The whole is intense, exalted, and tragic, haunted\nby something of that profound terror, of that magnificent strength,\nwhich we admire in the figures of the Sixtine Chapel, those noble\nagonies of beings greater than any we find in this world.\n\nWhat, we may ask, is all this tragedy about? What great sorrow,\nwhat great love, had Michael Angelo or his giants that they writhe\nso supernaturally As those decorative youths are sprinkled over the\nSixtine vault, filled, we know not why, with we know not what emotion,\nso these scraps of verse, these sibylline leaves of Michael Angelo's,\ngive us no reason for their passion. They tell no story; there seems to\nhave been no story to tell. There is something impersonal and elusive\nabout the subject and occasion of these poems. Attempts have been made\nto attribute them to discreditable passions, as also to a sentimental\nlove for Vittoria Colonna. But the friendship with Vittoria Colonna\nwas an incident of Michael Angelo's mature years; some of the sonnets\nand madrigals are addressed to her, but we cannot attribute to her\ninfluence the passion and sorrow that seem to permeate them all.\n\nPerhaps there is less mystery in this than the curious would have us\nsee in it. Perhaps the love and beauty, however base their primal\nincarnation, are really, as they think themselves, aspirations toward\nthe Most High. In the long studies and weary journeys of the artist,\nin his mighty inspiration, in his intense love of the structural\nbeauty of the human body, in his vicissitudes of fortune and his\nartistic disappointments, in his exalted piety, we may see quite enough\nexplanation for the burden of his soul. It is not necessary to find\nvulgar causes for the extraordinary feelings of an extraordinary man.\nIt suffices that life wore this aspect to him; that the great demands\nof his spirit so expressed themselves in the presence of his world.\nHere is a madrigal in which the Platonic theory of beauty is clearly\nstated:--\n\n    \"For faithful guide unto my labouring heart\n     Beauty was given me at birth,\n     To be my glass and lamp in either art.\n     Who thinketh otherwise misknows her worth,\n     For highest beauty only gives me light\n     To carve and paint aright.\n     Rash is the thought and vain\n     That maketh beauty from the senses grow.\n     She lifts to heaven hearts that truly know,\n     But eyes grown dim with pain\n     From mortal to immortal cannot go\n     Nor without grace of God look up again.\"\n\nAnd here is a sonnet, called by Mr. Symonds \"the heavenly birth of love\nand beauty.\" I borrow in part from his translation:--\n\n    \"My love's life comes not from this heart of mine.\n     The love wherewith I love thee hath no heart,\n     Turned thither whither no fell thoughts incline\n     And erring human passion leaves no smart.\n     Love, from God's bosom when our souls did part,\n     Made me pure eye to see, thee light to shine,\n     And I must needs, half mortal though thou art,\n     In spite of sorrow know thee all divine.\n     As heat in fire, so must eternity\n     In beauty dwell; through thee my soul's endeavour.\n     Mounts to the pattern and the source of thee;\n     And having found all heaven in thine eyes,\n     Beneath thy brows my burning spirit flies\n     There where I loved thee first to dwell for ever.\"\n\nSomething of this kind may also be found in the verses of Lorenzo de'\nMedici, who, like Michael Angelo, was a poet only incidentally, and\neven thought it necessary to apologize in a preface for having written\nabout love. Many of his compositions are, indeed, trivial enough, but\nhis pipings will not seem vain to the severest philosopher when he\nfinds them leading to strains like the following, where the thought\nrises to the purest sphere of tragedy and of religion:--\n\n    \"As a lamp, burning through the waning night,\n     When the oil begins to fail that fed its fire\n     Flares up, and in its dying waxes bright\n     And mounts and spreads, the better to expire;\n     So in this pilgrimage and earthly flight\n     The ancient hope is spent that fed desire,\n     And if there burn within a greater light\n     'Tis that the vigil's end approacheth nigher.\n     Hence thy last insult, Fortune, cannot move,\n     Nor death's inverted torches give alarm;\n     I see the end of wrath and bitter moan.\n     My fair Medusa into sculptured stone\n     Turns me no more, my Siren cannot charm.\n     Heaven draws me up to its supernal love.\"\n\nFrom such spontaneous meditation Lorenzo could even pass to verses\nofficially religious; but in them too, beneath the threadbare metaphors\nof the pious muse and her mystical paradoxes, we may still feel the\nausterity and firmness of reason. The following stanzas, for instance,\ntaken from his \"Laudi Spirituali,\" assume a sublime meaning if we\nremember that the essence to which they are addressed, before being a\ncelestial Monarch into whose visible presence any accident might usher\nus, was a general idea of what is good and an intransitive rational\nenergy, indistinguishable from the truth of things.\n\n    \"O let this wretched life within me die\n       That I may live in thee, my life indeed;\n     In thee alone, where dwells eternity,\n       While hungry multitudes death's hunger feed.\n     I list within, and hark! Death's stealthy tread!\n     I look to thee, and nothing then is dead.\n\n    \"Then eyes may see a light invisible\n       And ears may hear a voice without a sound,--\n     A voice and light not harsh, but tempered well,\n       Which the mind wakens when the sense is drowned,\n     Till, wrapped within herself, the soul have flown\n     To that last good which is her inmost own.\n\n    \"When, sweet and beauteous Master, on that day,\n       Reviewing all my loves with aching heart,\n       I take from each its bitter self away,\n     The remnant shall be thou, their better part.\n     This perfect sweetness be his single store\n     Who seeks the good; this faileth nevermore.\n\n    \"A thirst unquenchable is not beguiled\n       By draught on draught of any running river\n     Whose fiery waters feed our pangs for ever,\n       But by a living fountain undefiled.\n     O sacred well, I seek thee and were fain\n     To drink; so should I never thirst again.\"\n\nHaving before us these characteristic expressions of Platonic feeling,\nas it arose again in a Christian age, divorced from the accidental\nsetting which Greek manners had given it, we may be better able to\nunderstand its essence. It is nothing else than the application to\npassion of that pursuit of something permanent in a world of change,\nof something absolute in a world of relativity, which was the essence\nof the Platonic philosophy. If we may give rein to the imagination\nin a matter which without imagination could not be understood at\nall, we may fancy Plato trying to comprehend the power which beauty\nexerted over his senses by applying to the objects of love that\nprofound metaphysical distinction which he had learned to make in his\ndialectical studies--the distinction between the appearance to sense\nand the reality envisaged by the intellect, between the phenomenon\nand the ideal. The whole natural world had come to seem to him like\na world of dreams. In dreams images succeed one another without\nother meaning than that which they derive from our strange power\nof recognition--a power which enables us somehow, among the most\nincongruous transformations and surroundings, to find again the objects\nof our waking life, and to name those absurd and unmannerly visions by\nthe name of father or mother or by any other familiar name. As these\nresemblances to real things make up all the truth of our dream, and\nthese recognitions all its meaning, so Plato thought that all the truth\nand meaning of earthly things was the reference they contained to a\nheavenly original. This heavenly original we remember and recognize\neven among the distortions, disappearances, and multiplications of its\nearthly copies.\n\nThis thought is easily applicable to the affections; indeed, it is not\nimpossible that it was the natural transcendence of any deep glance\ninto beauty, and the lessons in disillusion and idealism given by that\nnatural metaphysician we call love, that first gave Plato the key to\nhis general system. There is, at any rate, no sphere in which the\nsupersensible is approached with so warm a feeling of its reality, in\nwhich the phenomenon is so transparent and so indifferent a symbol of\nsomething perfect and divine beyond. In love and beauty, if anywhere,\neven the common man thinks he has visitations from a better world,\napproaches to a lost happiness; a happiness never tasted by us in\nthis world, and yet so natural, so expected, that we look for it at\nevery turn of a corner, in every new face; we look for it with so much\nconfidence, with so much depth of expectation, that we never quite\novercome our disappointment that it is not found.\n\nAnd it is not found,--no, never,--in spite of what we may think when\nwe are first in love. Plato knew this well from his experience. He\nhad had successful loves, or what the world calls such, but he could\nnot fancy that these successes were more than provocations, more\nthan hints of what the true good is. To have mistaken them for real\nhappiness would have been to continue to dream. It would have shown\nas little comprehension of the heart's experience as the idiot shows\nof the experience of the senses when he is unable to put together\nimpressions of his eyes and hands and to say, \"Here is a table; here\nis a stool.\" It is by a parallel use of the understanding that we put\ntogether the impressions of the heart and the imagination and are\nable to say, \"Here is absolute beauty: here is God.\" The impressions\nthemselves have no permanence, no intelligible essence. As Plato said,\nthey are never anything fixed but are always either becoming or ceasing\nto be what we think them. There must be, he tells us, an eternal and\nclearly definable object of which the visible appearances to us are the\nmanifold semblance; now by one trait now by another the phantom before\nus lights up that vague and haunting idea, and makes us utter its name\nwith a momentary sense of certitude and attainment.\n\nJust so the individual beauties that charm our attention and enchain\nthe soul have only a transitive existence; they are momentary visions,\nirrecoverable moods. Their object is unstable; we never can say what\nit is, it changes so quickly before our eyes. What is it that a mother\nloves in her child? Perhaps the babe not yet born, or the babe that\ngrew long ago by her suffering and unrecognized care; perhaps the man\nto be or the youth that has been. What does a man love in a woman?\nThe girl that is yet, perhaps, to be his, or the wife that once chose\nto give him her whole existence. Where, among all these glimpses, is\nthe true object of love? It flies before us, it tempts us on, only\nto escape and turn to mock us from a new quarter. And yet nothing\ncan concern us more or be more real to us than this mysterious good,\nsince the pursuit of it gives our lives whatever they have of true\nearnestness and meaning, and the approach to it whatever they have of\njoy.\n\nSo far is this ideal, Plato would say, from being an illusion, that it\nis the source of the world, the power that keeps us in existence. But\nfor it, we should be dead. A profound indifference, an initial torpor,\nwould have kept us from ever opening our eyes, and we should have no\nworld of business or pleasure, politics or science, to think about at\nall. We, and the whole universe, exist only by the passionate attempt\nto return to our perfection, by the radical need of losing ourselves\nagain in God. That ineffable good is our natural possession; all we\nhonour in this life is but the partial recovery of our birthright;\nevery delightful thing is like a rift in the clouds through which we\ncatch a glimpse of our native heaven. If that heaven seems so far away\nand the idea of it so dim and unreal, it is because we are so far from\nperfect, so much immersed in what is alien and destructive to the soul.\n\nThus the history of our loves is the record of our divine\nconversations, of our intercourse with heaven. It matters very\nlittle whether this history seems to us tragic or not. In one sense,\nall mortal loves are tragic because never is the creature we think\nwe possess the true and final object of our love; this love must\nultimately pass beyond that particular apparition, which is itself\ncontinually passing away and shifting all its lines and colours. As\nHeraclitus could never bathe twice in the same river, because its water\nhad flowed away, so Plato could never look twice at the same face, for\nit had become another. But on the other hand the most unsuccessful\npassion cannot be a vain thing. More, perhaps, than if it had found\nan apparent satisfaction, it will reveal to us an object of infinite\nworth, and the flight of the soul, detached by it from the illusions of\ncommon life, will be more straight and steady toward the ultimate good.\n\nSuch, if we are not mistaken, is the lesson of Plato's experience\nand also of that of the Italian poets whom we have quoted. Is this\nexperience something normal? Is it the rational outcome of our own\nlives? That is a question which each man must answer for himself.\nOur immediate object will have been attained if we have made more\nintelligible a tendency which is certainly very common among men, and\nnot among the men least worthy of honour. It is the tendency to make\nour experience of love rational, as scientific thinking is a tendency\nto make rational our experience of the outer world. The theories of\nnatural science are creations of human reason; they change with the\ngrowth of reason, and express the intellectual impulses of each nation\nand age. Theories about the highest good do the same; only being less\napplicable in practice, less controllable by experiment, they seldom\nattain the same distinctness and articulation. But there is nothing\nauthoritative in those constructions of the intellect, nothing coercive\nexcept in so far as our own experience and reflection force us to\naccept them. Natural science is persuasive because it embodies the\nmomentum of common sense and of the practical arts; it carries on\ntheir spontaneous processes by more refined but essentially similar\nmethods. Moral science is persuasive under the same conditions, but\nthese conditions are not so generally found in the minds of men. Their\nconscience is often superstitious and perfunctory; their imagination is\nusually either disordered or dull. There is little momentum in their\nlives which the moralist can rely upon to carry them onward toward\nrational ideals. Deprived of this support his theories fall to the\nground; they must seem, to every man whose nature cannot elicit them\nfrom his own experience, empty verbiage and irrelevant dreams.\n\nNothing in the world of fact obliges us to agree with Michael Angelo\nwhen he says that eternity can no more be separated from beauty than\nheat from fire. Beauty is a thing we experience, a value we feel;\nbut eternity is something problematical. It might well happen that\nbeauty should exist for a while in our contemplation and that eternity\nshould have nothing to do with it or with us. It might well happen\nthat our affections, being the natural expression of our instincts in\nthe family and in the state, should bind us for a while to the beings\nwith whom life has associated us--a father, a lover, a child--and that\nthese affections should gradually fade with the decay of our vitality,\ndeclining in the evening of life, and passing away when we surrender\nour breath, without leading us to any single and supreme good, to any\neternal love. If, therefore, the thoughts and consolations we have\nbeen rehearsing have sounded to us extravagant or unnatural, we cannot\njustify them by attempting to prove the actual existence of their\nobjects, by producing the absolute beauty or by showing where and how\nwe may come face to face with God. We may well feel that beauty and\nlove are clear and good enough without any such additional embodiments.\nWe may take the world as it is, without feigning another, and study\nactual experience without postulating any that is hypothetical. We can\nwelcome beauty for the pleasure it affords and love for the happiness\nit brings, without asking that these things should receive supernatural\nextensions.\n\nBut we should have studied Plato and his kindred poets to little\npurpose if we thought that by admitting all this we were rejecting more\nthan the mythical element that was sometimes mixed with their ideal\nphilosophy. Its essence is not touched by any acknowledgment of what\nseems true or probable in the realm of actual existence. Nothing is\nmore characteristic of the Platonic mind than a complete indifference\nto the continuance of experience and an exclusive interest in its\ncomprehension. If we wish to understand this classic attitude of\nreason, all we need do is to let reason herself instruct us. We do\nnot need more data, but more mind. If we take the sights and the loves\nthat our mortal limitations have allowed of, and surrender ourselves\nunreservedly to their natural eloquence; if we say to the spirit that\nstirs within them, \"Be thou me, impetuous one\"; if we become, as\nMichael Angelo says he was, all eyes to see or all heart to feel, then\nthe force of our spiritual vitality, the momentum of our imagination,\nwill carry us beyond ourselves, beyond an interest in our personal\nexistence or eventual emotions, into the presence of a divine beauty\nand an eternal truth--things impossible to realize in experience,\nalthough necessarily envisaged by thought.\n\nAs the senses that perceive, in the act of perceiving assert an\nabsolute reality in their object, as the mind that looks before and\nafter believes in the existence of a past and a future which cannot\nnow be experienced, so the imagination and the heart behold, when they\nare left free to expand and express themselves, an absolute beauty\nand a perfect love. Intense contemplation disentangles the ideal from\nthe idol of sense, and a purified will rests in it as in the true\nobject of worship. These are the oracles of reason, the prophecies of\nthose profounder spirits who in the world of Nature are obedient unto\ndeath because they belong intrinsically to a world where death is\nimpossible, and who can rise continually, by abstraction from personal\nsensibility, into identity with the eternal objects of rational life.\n\nSuch a religion must elude popular apprehension until it is translated\ninto myths and cosmological dogmas. It is easier for men to fill out\nthe life of the spirit by supplementing the facts of experience by\nother facts for which there is no evidence than it is for them to\nmaster the given facts and turn them to spiritual uses. Many can fight\nfor a doubtful fact when they cannot perform a difficult idealization.\nThey trust, as all men must, to what they can see; they believe in\nthings as their faculties represent things to them. By the same right,\nhowever, the rationalizer of experience believes in his visions; he\nrests, like the meanest of us, in the present object of his thought.\nSo long as we live at all we must trust in something, at least in the\ncoherence and permanence of the visible world and in the value of the\nobjects of our own desires. And if we live nobly, we are under the same\nnecessity of believing in noble things. However unreal, therefore,\nthese Platonic intuitions may seem to those of us whose interests lie\nin other quarters, we may rest assured that these very thoughts would\ndominate our minds and these eternal companionships would cheer our\ndesolation, if we had wrestled as manfully with the same passions and\npassed through the transmuting fire of as great a love.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nTHE ABSENCE OF RELIGION IN SHAKESPEARE\n\n\nWe are accustomed to think of the universality of Shakespeare as not\nthe least of his glories. No other poet has given so many-sided an\nexpression to human nature, or rendered so many passions and moods\nwith such an appropriate variety of style, sentiment, and accent. If,\ntherefore, we were asked to select one monument of human civilization\nthat should survive to some future age, or be transported to another\nplanet to bear witness to the inhabitants there of what we have been\nupon earth, we should probably choose the works of Shakespeare. In them\nwe recognize the truest portrait and best memorial of man. Yet the\narch\u00e6ologists of that future age, or the cosmographers of that other\npart of the heavens, after conscientious study of our Shakespearian\nautobiography, would misconceive our life in one important respect.\nThey would hardly understand that man had had a religion.\n\nThere are, indeed, numerous exclamations and invocations in\nShakespeare which we, who have other means of information, know to\nbe evidences of current religious ideas. Shakespeare adopts these,\nas he adopts the rest of his vocabulary, from the society about\nhim. But he seldom or never gives them their original value. When\nIago says \"'_sblood_\" a commentator might add explanations which\nshould involve the whole philosophy of Christian devotion; but this\nChristian sentiment is not in Iago's mind, nor in Shakespeare's, any\nmore than the virtues of Heracles and his twelve labours are in the\nmind of every slave and pander that cries \"_hercule\"_ in the pages of\nPlautus and Terence. Oaths are the fossils of piety. The geologist\nrecognizes in them the relics of a once active devotion, but they are\nnow only counters and pebbles tossed about in the unconscious play of\nexpression. The lighter and more constant their use, the less their\nmeaning.\n\nOnly one degree more inward than this survival of a religious\nvocabulary in profane speech is the reference we often find in\nShakespeare to religious institutions and traditions. There are monks,\nbishops, and cardinals; there is even mention of saints, although\nnone is ever presented to us in person. The clergy, if they have any\nwisdom, have an earthly one. Friar Lawrence culls his herbs like a\nmore benevolent Medea; and Cardinal Wolsey flings away ambition with\na profoundly Pagan despair; his robe and his integrity to heaven are\ncold comfort to him. Juliet goes to shrift to arrange her love affairs,\nand Ophelia should go to a nunnery to forget hers. Even the chastity\nof Isabella has little in it that would have been out of place in\nIphigenia. The metaphysical Hamlet himself sees a \"true ghost,\" but so\nfar reverts to the positivism that underlies Shakespeare's thinking as\nto speak soon after of that \"undiscovered country from whose bourn no\ntraveller returns.\" There are only two or three short passages in the\nplays, and one sonnet, in which true religious feeling seems to break\nforth. The most beautiful of these passages is that in \"Richard II,\"\nwhich commemorates the death of Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk--\n\n    \"Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought\n     For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field,\n     Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross\n     Against black Pagans, Turks, and Saracens;\n     And, toiled with works of war, retired himself\n     To Italy; and there, at Venice, gave\n     His body to that pleasant country's earth,\n     And his pure soul unto his captain Christ,\n     Under whose colours he had fought so long.\"\n\nThis is tender and noble, and full of an indescribable chivalry and\npathos, yet even here we find the spirit of war rather than that of\nreligion, and a deeper sense of Italy than of heaven. More unmixed is\nthe piety of Henry V after the battle of Agincourt:--\n\n                   \"O God, thy arm was here;\n     And not to us, but to thy arm alone,\n     Ascribe we all!--When, without stratagem,\n     But in plain shock and even play of battle,\n     Was ever known so great and little loss,\n     On one part and on the other?--Take it, God,\n     For it is none but thine....\n     Come, go we in procession to the village,\n     And be it death proclaimed through our host,\n     To boast of this, or take that praise from God,\n     Which is his only....\n                                 Do we all holy rites;\n     Let there be sung _Non nobis_ and _Te Deum_.\"\n\nThis passage is certainly a true expression of religious feeling, and\njust the kind that we might expect from a dramatist. Religion appears\nhere as a manifestation of human nature and as an expression of human\npassion. The passion, however, is not due to Shakespeare's imagination,\nbut is essentially historical: the poet has simply not rejected, as he\nusually does, the religious element in the situation he reproduces.[1]\n\nWith this dramatic representation of piety we may couple another, of a\nmore intimate kind, from the Sonnets:--\n\n    \"Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,\n     Fooled by these rebel powers that thee array,\n     Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,\n     Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?\n     Why so large cost, having so short a lease,\n     Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?\n     Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,\n     Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?\n     Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,\n     And let that pine to aggravate thy store;\n     Buy terms divine by selling hours of dross,\n     Within be fed, without be rich no more:\n     Then shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,\n     And death once dead, there's no more dying then.\"\n\nThis sonnet contains more than a natural religious emotion inspired by\na single event. It contains reflection, and expresses a feeling not\nmerely dramatically proper but rationally just. A mind that habitually\nran into such thoughts would be philosophically pious; it would be\nspiritual. The Sonnets, as a whole, are spiritual; their passion is\ntransmuted into discipline. Their love, which, whatever its nominal\nobject, is hardly anything but love of beauty and youth in general,\nis made to triumph over time by a metaphysical transformation of the\nobject into something eternal. At first this is the beauty of the race\nrenewing itself by generation, then it is the description of beauty in\nthe poet's verse, and finally it is the immortal soul enriched by the\ncontemplation of that beauty. This noble theme is the more impressively\nrendered by being contrasted with another, with a vulgar love that by\nits nature refuses to be so transformed and transmuted. \"Two loves,\"\ncries the poet, in a line that gives us the essence of the whole, \"Two\nloves I have,--of comfort, and despair.\"\n\nIn all this depth of experience, however, there is still wanting any\nreligious image. The Sonnets are spiritual, but, with the doubtful\nexception of the one quoted above, they are not Christian. And, of\ncourse, a poet of Shakespeare's time could not have found any other\nmould than Christianity for his religion. In our day, with our wide and\nconscientious historical sympathies, it may be possible for us to find\nin other rites and doctrines than those of our ancestors an expression\nof some ultimate truth. But for Shakespeare, in the matter of religion,\nthe choice lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing; he\nchose to leave his heroes and himself in the presence of life and of\ndeath with no other philosophy than that which the profane world can\nsuggest and understand.\n\nThis positivism, we need hardly say, was not due to any grossness or\nsluggishness in his imagination. Shakespeare could be idealistic when\nhe dreamed, as he could be spiritual when he reflected. The spectacle\nof life did not pass before his eyes as a mere phantasmagoria. He\nseized upon its principles; he became wise. Nothing can exceed\nthe ripeness of his seasoned judgment, or the occasional breadth,\nsadness, and terseness of his reflection. The author of \"Hamlet\"\ncould not be without metaphysical aptitude; \"Macbeth\" could not\nhave been written without a sort of sibylline inspiration, or the\nSonnets without something of the Platonic mind. It is all the more\nremarkable, therefore, that we should have to search through all the\nworks of Shakespeare to find half a dozen passages that have so much\nas a religious sound, and that even these passages, upon examination,\nshould prove not to be the expression of any deep religious conception.\nIf Shakespeare had been without metaphysical capacity, or without\nmoral maturity, we could have explained his strange insensibility to\nreligion; but as it is, we must marvel at his indifference and ask\nourselves what can be the causes of it. For, even if we should not\nregard the absence of religion as an imperfection in his own thought,\nwe must admit it to be an incompleteness in his portrayal of the\nthought of others. Positivism may be a virtue in a philosopher, but it\nis a vice in a dramatist, who has to render those human passions to\nwhich the religious imagination has always given a larger meaning and\na richer depth.\n\nThose greatest poets by whose side we are accustomed to put Shakespeare\ndid not forego this advantage. They gave us man with his piety and\nthe world with its gods. Homer is the chief repository of the Greek\nreligion, and Dante the faithful interpreter of the Catholic. Nature\nwould have been inconceivable to them without the supernatural, or man\nwithout the influence and companionship of the gods. These poets live\nin a cosmos. In their minds, as in the mind of their age, the fragments\nof experience have fallen together into a perfect picture, like the\nbits of glass in a kaleidoscope. Their universe is a total. Reason\nand imagination have mastered it completely and peopled it. No chaos\nremains beyond, or, if it does, it is thought of with an involuntary\nshudder that soon passes into a healthy indifference. They have a\ntheory of human life; they see man in his relations, surrounded by a\nkindred universe in which he fills his allotted place. He knows the\nmeaning and issue of his life, and does not voyage without a chart.\n\nShakespeare's world, on the contrary, is only the world of human\nsociety. The cosmos eludes him; he does not seem to feel the need\nof framing that idea. He depicts human life in all its richness and\nvariety, but leaves that life without a setting, and consequently\nwithout a meaning. If we asked him to tell us what is the significance\nof the passion and beauty he had so vividly displayed, and what is the\noutcome of it all, he could hardly answer in any other words than those\nhe puts into the mouth of Macbeth:--\n\n    \"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,\n     Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,\n     To the last syllable of recorded time;\n     And all our yesterdays have lighted fools\n     The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!\n     Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player\n     That struts and frets his hour upon the stage\n     And then is heard no more: it is a tale\n     Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,\n     Signifying nothing.\"\n\nHow differently would Homer or Dante have answered that question!\nTheir tragedy would have been illumined by a sense of the divinity\nof life and beauty, or by a sense of the sanctity of suffering and\ndeath. Their faith had enveloped the world of experience in a world\nof imagination, in which the ideals of the reason, of the fancy, and\nof the heart had a natural expression. They had caught in the reality\nthe hint of a lovelier fable,--a fable in which that reality was\ncompleted and idealized, and made at once vaster in its extent and more\nintelligible in its principle. They had, as it were, dramatized the\nuniverse, and endowed it with the tragic unities. In contrast with such\na luminous philosophy and so well-digested an experience, the silence\nof Shakespeare and his philosophical incoherence have something in\nthem that is still heathen; something that makes us wonder whether the\nnorthern mind, even in him, did not remain morose and barbarous at its\ninmost core.\n\nBut before we allow ourselves such hasty and general inferences, we\nmay well stop to consider whether there is not some simpler answer to\nour question. An epic poet, we might say, naturally deals with cosmic\nthemes. He needs supernatural machinery because he depicts the movement\nof human affairs in their generality, as typified in the figures of\nheroes whose function it is to embody or to overcome elemental forces.\nSuch a poet's world is fabulous, because his inspiration is impersonal.\nBut the dramatist renders the concrete reality of life. He has no\nneed of a superhuman setting for his pictures. Such a setting would\ndestroy the vitality of his creations. His plots should involve only\nhuman actors and human motives: the _deus ex machina_ has always been\nregarded as an inter-loper on his stage. The passions of man are his\nall-sufficient material; he should weave his whole fabric out of them.\n\nTo admit the truth of all this would not, however, solve our problem.\nThe dramatist cannot be expected to put cosmogonies on the boards.\nMiracle-plays become dramatic only when they become human. But the\nsupernatural world, which the playwright does not bring before the\nfoot-lights, may exist nevertheless in the minds of his characters\nand of his audience. He may refer to it, appeal to it, and imply it,\nin the actions and in the sentiments he attributes to his heroes. And\nif the comparison of Shakespeare with Homer or Dante on the score of\nreligious inspiration is invalidated by the fact that he is a dramatist\nwhile they are epic poets, a comparison may yet be instituted between\nShakespeare and other dramatists, from which his singular insensibility\nto religion will as readily appear.\n\nGreek tragedy, as we know, is dominated by the idea of fate. Even when\nthe gods do not appear in person, or where the service or neglect\nof them is not the moving cause of the whole play,--as it is in the\n\"Bacch\u00e6\" and the \"Hippolytus\" of Euripides,--still the deep conviction\nof the limits and conditions of human happiness underlies the fable.\nThe will of man fulfils the decrees of Heaven. The hero manifests a\nhigher force than his own, both in success and in failure. The fates\nguide the willing and drag the unwilling. There is no such fragmentary\nview of life as we have in our romantic drama, where accidents make the\nmeaningless happiness or unhappiness of a supersensitive adventurer.\nLife is seen whole, although in miniature. Its boundaries and its\nprinciples are studied more than its incidents. The human, therefore,\neverywhere merges with the divine. Our mortality, being sharply defined\nand much insisted upon, draws the attention all the more to that\neternity of Nature and of law in which it is embosomed. Nor is the\nfact of superhuman control left for our reflection to discover; it is\nemphatically asserted in those oracles on which so much of the action\ncommonly turns.\n\nWhen the Greek religion was eclipsed by the Christian, the ancient way\nof conceiving the ultra-human relations of human life became obsolete.\nIt was no longer possible to speak with sincerity of the oracles and\ngods, of Nemesis and [Greek: hubris]. Yet for a long time it was not\npossible to speak in any other terms. The new ideas were without\nartistic definition, and literature was paralyzed. But in the course\nof ages, when the imagination had had time and opportunity to develop\na Christian art and a Christian philosophy, the dramatic poets were\nready to deal with the new themes. Only their readiness in this respect\nsurpassed their ability, at least their ability to please those who had\nany memory of the ancient perfection of the arts.\n\nThe miracle-plays were the beginning. Their crudity was extreme and\ntheir levity of the frankest; but they had still, like the Greek plays,\na religious excuse and a religious background. They were not without\ndramatic power, but their offences against taste and their demands upon\nfaith were too great for them to survive the Renaissance. Such plays as\nthe \"Polyeucte\" of Corneille and the \"Devocion de la Cruz\" of Calderon,\nwith other Spanish plays that might be mentioned, are examples of\nChristian dramas by poets of culture; but as a whole we must say that\nChristianity, while it succeeded in expressing itself in painting\nand in architecture, failed to express itself in any adequate drama.\nWhere Christianity was strong, the drama either disappeared or became\nsecular; and it has never again dealt with cosmic themes successfully,\nexcept in such hands as those of Goethe and Wagner, men who either\nneglected Christianity altogether or used it only as an incidental\nornament, having, as they say, transcended it in their philosophy.\n\nThe fact is, that art and reflection have never been able to unite\nperfectly the two elements of a civilization like ours, that draws its\nculture from one source and its religion from another. Modern taste has\never been, and still is, largely exotic, largely a revolution in favour\nof something ancient or foreign. The more cultivated a period has been,\nthe more wholly it has reverted to antiquity for its inspiration. The\nexistence of that completer world has haunted all minds struggling for\nself-expression, and interfered, perhaps, with the natural development\nof their genius. The old art which they could not disregard distracted\nthem from the new ideal, and prevented them from embodying this ideal\noutwardly; while the same ideal, retaining their inward allegiance,\nmade their revivals of ancient forms artificial and incomplete. The\nstrange idea could thus gain admittance that art was not called to deal\nwith everything; that its sphere was the world of polite conventions.\nThe serious and the sacred things of life were to be left unexpressed\nand inarticulate; while the arts masqueraded in the forms of a Pagan\nantiquity, to which a triviality was at the same time attributed which\nin fact it had not possessed. This unfortunate separation of experience\nand its artistic expression betrayed itself in the inadequacy of what\nwas beautiful and the barbarism of what was sincere.\n\nWhen such are the usual conditions of artistic creation, we need\nnot wonder that Shakespeare, a poet of the Renaissance, should have\nconfined his representation of life to its secular aspects, and that\nhis readers after him should rather have marvelled at the variety of\nthe things of which he showed an understanding than have taken note of\nthe one thing he overlooked. To omit religion was after all to omit\nwhat was not felt to be congenial to a poet's mind. The poet was to\ntrace for us the passionate and romantic embroideries of life; he was\nto be artful and humane, and above all he was to be delightful. The\nbeauty and charm of things had nothing any longer to do with those\npainful mysteries and contentions which made the temper of the pious\nso acrid and sad. In Shakespeare's time and country, to be religious\nalready began to mean to be Puritanical; and in the divorce between the\nfulness of life on the one hand and the depth and unity of faith on\nthe other, there could be no doubt to which side a man of imaginative\ninstincts would attach himself. A world of passion and beauty without\na meaning must seem to him more interesting and worthy than a world of\nempty principle and dogma, meagre, fanatical, and false. It was beyond\nthe power of synthesis possessed by that age and nation to find a\nprinciple of all passion and a religion of all life.\n\nThis power of synthesis is indeed so difficult and rare that the\nattempt to gain it is sometimes condemned as too philosophical, and\nas tending to embarrass the critical eye and creative imagination\nwith futile theories. We might say, for instance, that the absence of\nreligion in Shakespeare was a sign of his good sense; that a healthy\ninstinct kept his attention within the sublunary world; and that he\nwas in that respect superior to Homer and to Dante. For, while they\nallowed their wisdom to clothe itself in fanciful forms, he gave us his\nin its immediate truth, so that he embodied what they signified. The\nsupernatural machinery of their poems was, we might say, an accidental\nincumbrance, a traditional means of expression, which they only half\nunderstood, and which made their representation of life indirect and\npartly unreal. Shakespeare, on the other hand, had reached his poetical\nmajority and independence. He rendered human experience no longer\nthrough symbols, but by direct imaginative representation. What I have\ntreated as a limitation in him would, then, appear as the maturity of\nhis strength.\n\nThere is always a class of minds in whom the spectacle of history\nproduces a certain apathy of reason. They flatter themselves that they\ncan escape defeat by not attempting the highest tasks. We need not\nhere stop to discuss what value as truth a philosophical synthesis may\nhope to attain, nor have we to protest against the \u00e6sthetic preference\nfor the sketch and the episode over a reasoned and unified rendering\nof life. Suffice it to say that the human race hitherto, whenever it\nhas reached a phase of comparatively high development and freedom,\nhas formed a conception of its place in Nature, no less than of the\ncontents of its life; and that this conception has been the occasion\nof religious sentiments and practices; and further, that every art,\nwhether literary or plastic, has drawn its favourite themes from this\nreligious sphere. The poetic imagination has not commonly stopped\nshort of the philosophical in representing a superhuman environment of\nman.\n\nShakespeare, however, is remarkable among the greater poets for being\nwithout a philosophy and without a religion. In his drama there is\nno fixed conception of any forces, natural or moral, dominating and\ntranscending our mortal energies. Whether this characteristic be\nregarded as a merit or as a defect, its presence cannot be denied.\nThose who think it wise or possible to refrain from searching for\ngeneral principles, and are satisfied with the successive empirical\nappearance of things, without any faith in their rational continuity or\ncompleteness, may well see in Shakespeare their natural prophet. For\nhe, too, has been satisfied with the successive description of various\npassions and events. His world, like the earth before Columbus, extends\nin an indefinite plane which he is not tempted to explore.\n\nThose of us, however, who believe in circumnavigation, and who think\nthat both human reason and human imagination require a certain totality\nin our views, and who feel that the most important thing in life is the\nlesson of it, and its relation to its own ideal,--we can hardly find\nin Shakespeare all that the highest poet could give. Fulness is not\nnecessarily wholeness, and the most profuse wealth of characterization\nseems still inadequate as a picture of experience, if this picture is\nnot somehow seen from above and reduced to a dramatic unity,--to that\nunity of meaning that can suffuse its endless details with something of\ndignity, simplicity, and peace. This is the imaginative power found in\nseveral poets we have mentioned,--the power that gives certain passages\nin Lucretius also their sublimity, as it gives sublimity to many\npassages in the Bible.\n\nFor what is required for theoretic wholeness is not this or that\nsystem but some system. Its value is not the value of truth, but that\nof victorious imagination. Unity of conception is an \u00e6sthetic merit\nno less than a logical demand. A fine sense of the dignity and pathos\nof life cannot be attained unless we conceive somehow its outcome\nand its relations. Without such a conception our emotions cannot be\nsteadfast and enlightened. Without it the imagination cannot fulfil\nits essential function or achieve its supreme success. Shakespeare\nhimself, had it not been for the time and place in which he lived, when\nreligion and imagination blocked rather than helped each other, would\nperhaps have allowed more of a cosmic background to appear behind his\ncrowded scenes. If the Christian in him was not the real man, at least\nthe Pagan would have spoken frankly. The material forces of Nature,\nor their vague embodiment in some northern pantheon, would then have\nstood behind his heroes. The various movements of events would have\nappeared as incidents in a larger drama to which they had at least\nsome symbolic relation. We should have been awed as well as saddened,\nand purified as well as pleased, by being made to feel the dependence\nof human accidents upon cosmic forces and their fated evolution. Then\nwe should not have been able to say that Shakespeare was without a\nreligion. For the effort of religion, says Goethe, is to adjust us to\nthe inevitable; each religion in its way strives to bring about this\nconsummation.\n\n\n[1] \"And so aboute foure of the clocke in the afternoone, the Kynge\nwhen he saw no apparaunce of enemies, caused the retreite to be blowen,\nand gathering his army togither, gave thankes to almightie god for\nso happy a victory, causing his prelates and chapleines to sing this\npsalm, _In exitu Israeli de Egipto_, and commandyng every man to kneele\ndowne on the grounde at this verse; _Non nobis, domine, non nobis, sed\nnomini tuo da gloriam_. Which done, he caused _Te Deum_, with certain\nanthems, to be song, giving laud & praise to god, and not boasting of\nhis owne force or any humaine power.\" HOLINSHED.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nTHE POETRY OF BARBARISM\n\n\nI\n\nIt is an observation at first sight melancholy but in the end, perhaps,\nenlightening, that the earliest poets are the most ideal, and that\nprimitive ages furnish the most heroic characters and have the clearest\nvision of a perfect life. The Homeric times must have been full of\nignorance and suffering. In those little barbaric towns, in those camps\nand farms, in those shipyards, there must have been much insecurity\nand superstition. That age was singularly poor in all that concerns\nthe convenience of life and the entertainment of the mind with arts\nand sciences. Yet it had a sense for civilization. That machinery of\nlife which men were beginning to devise appealed to them as poetical;\nthey knew its ultimate justification and studied its incipient\nprocesses with delight. The poetry of that simple and ignorant age was,\naccordingly, the sweetest and sanest that the world has known; the\nmost faultless in taste, and the most even and lofty in inspiration.\nWithout lacking variety and homeliness, it bathed all things human in\nthe golden light of morning; it clothed sorrow in a kind of majesty,\ninstinct with both self-control and heroic frankness. Nowhere else can\nwe find so noble a rendering of human nature, so spontaneous a delight\nin life, so uncompromising a dedication to beauty, and such a gift of\nseeing beauty in everything. Homer, the first of poets, was also the\nbest and the most poetical.\n\nFrom this beginning, if we look down the history of Occidental\nliterature, we see the power of idealization steadily decline. For\nwhile it finds here and there, as in Dante, a more spiritual theme\nand a subtler and riper intellect, it pays for that advantage by a\nmore than equivalent loss in breadth, sanity, and happy vigour. And if\never imagination bursts out with a greater potency, as in Shakespeare\n(who excels the patriarch of poetry in depth of passion and vividness\nof characterization, and in those exquisite bubblings of poetry and\nhumour in which English genius is at its best), yet Shakespeare also\npays the price by a notable loss in taste, in sustained inspiration,\nin consecration, and in rationality. There is more or less rubbish in\nhis greatest works. When we come down to our own day _we_ find poets of\nhardly less natural endowment (for in endowment all ages are perhaps\nalike) and with vastly richer sources of inspiration; for they have\nmany arts and literatures behind them, with the spectacle of a varied\nand agitated society, a world which is the living microcosm of its own\nhistory and presents in one picture many races, arts, and religions.\nOur poets have more wonderful tragedies of the imagination to depict\nthan had Homer, whose world was innocent of any essential defeat,\nor Dante, who believed in the world's definitive redemption. Or, if\nperhaps their inspiration is comic, they have the pageant of medi\u00e6val\nmanners, with its picturesque artifices and passionate fancies, and the\nlong comedy of modern social revolutions, so illusory in their aims and\nso productive in their aimlessness. They have, moreover, the new and\nmarvellous conception which natural science has given us of the world\nand of the conditions of human progress.\n\nWith all these lessons of experience behind them, however, we find\nour contemporary poets incapable of any high wisdom, incapable of any\nimaginative rendering of human life and its meaning. Our poets are\nthings of shreds and patches; they give us episodes and studies, a\nsketch of this curiosity, a glimpse of that romance; they have no total\nvision, no grasp of the whole reality, and consequently no capacity for\na sane and steady idealization. The comparatively barbarous ages had a\npoetry of the ideal; they had visions of beauty, order, and perfection.\nThis age of material elaboration has no sense for those things. Its\nfancy is retrospective, whimsical, and flickering; its ideals, when\nit has any, are negative and partial; its moral strength is a blind\nand miscellaneous vehemence. Its poetry, in a word, is the poetry of\nbarbarism.\n\nThis poetry should be viewed in relation to the general moral crisis\nand imaginative disintegration of which it gives a verbal echo; then\nwe shall avoid the injustice of passing it over as insignificant, no\nless than the imbecility of hailing it as essentially glorious and\nsuccessful. We must remember that the imagination of our race has been\nsubject to a double discipline. It has been formed partly in the school\nof classic literature and polity, and partly in the school of Christian\npiety. This duality of inspiration, this contradiction between the two\naccepted methods of rationalizing the world, has been a chief source\nof that incoherence, that romantic indistinctness and imperfection,\nwhich largely characterize the products of the modern arts. A main\ncannot serve two masters; yet the conditions have not been such as to\nallow him wholly to despise the one or wholly to obey the other. To be\nwholly Pagan is impossible after the dissolution of that civilization\nwhich had seemed universal, and that empire which had believed itself\neternal. To be wholly Christian is impossible for a similar reason, now\nthat the illusion and cohesion of Christian ages is lost, and for the\nfurther reason that Christianity was itself fundamentally eclectic.\nBefore it could succeed and dominate men even for a time, it was\nobliged to adjust itself to reality, to incorporate many elements of\nPagan wisdom, and to accommodate itself to many habits and passions at\nvariance with its own ideal.\n\nIn these latter times, with the prodigious growth of material life in\nelaboration and of mental life in diffusion, there has supervened upon\nthis old dualism a new faith in man's absolute power, a kind of return\nto the inexperience and self-assurance of youth. This new inspiration\nhas made many minds indifferent to the two traditional disciplines 5\nneither is seriously accepted by them, for the reason, excellent from\ntheir own point of view, that no discipline whatever is needed. The\nmemory of ancient disillusions has faded with time. Ignorance of the\npast has bred contempt for the lessons which the past might teach. Men\nprefer to repeat the old experiment without knowing that they repeat it.\n\nI say advisedly ignorance of the past, in spite of the unprecedented\nhistorical erudition of our time for life is an art not to be learned\nby observation, and the most minute and comprehensive studies do not\nteach us what the spirit of man should have learned by its long living.\nWe study the past as a dead object, as a ruin, not as an authority\nand as an experiment. One reason why history was less interesting\nto former ages was that they were less conscious of separation\nfrom the past. The perspective of time was less clear because the\nsynthesis of experience was more complete. The mind does not easily\ndiscriminate the successive phases of an action in which it is still\nengaged; it does not arrange in a temporal series the elements of a\nsingle perception, but posits them all together as constituting a\npermanent and real object. Human nature and the life of the world\nwere real and stable objects to the apprehension of our fore-fathers\n; the actors changed, but not the characters or the play. Men were\nthen less studious of derivations because they were more conscious of\nidentities. They thought of all reality as in a sense contemporary,\nand in considering the maxims of a philosopher or the style of a poet,\nthey were not primarily concerned with settling his date and describing\nhis environment. The standard by which they judged was eternal; the\nenvironment in which man found himself did not seem to them subject of\nany essential change.\n\nTo us the picturesque element in history is more striking because we\nfeel ourselves the children of our own age only, an age which being\nitself singular and revolutionary, tends to read its own character into\nthe past, and to regard all other periods as no less fragmentary and\neffervescent than itself. The changing and the permanent elements are,\nindeed, everywhere present, and the bias of the observer may emphasize\nthe one or the other as it will: the only question is whether we find\nthe significance of things in their variations or in their similarities.\n\nNow the habit of regarding the past as effete and as merely a\nstepping-stone to something present or future, is unfavourable to any\ntrue apprehension of that element in the past which was vital and which\nremains eternal. It is a habit of thought that destroys the sense of\nthe moral identity of all ages, by virtue of its very insistence on the\nmechanical derivation of one age from another. Existences that cause\none another exclude one another; each is alien to the rest inasmuch as\nit is the product of new and different conditions. Ideas that cause\nnothing unite all things by giving them a common point of reference and\na single standard of value.\n\nThe classic and the Christian systems were both systems of ideas,\nattempts to seize the eternal morphology of reality and describe\nits unchanging constitution. The imagination was summoned thereby\nto contemplate the highest objects, and the essence of things\nbeing thus described, their insignificant variations could retain\nlittle importance and the study of these variations might well seem\nsuperficial. Mechanical science, the science of causes, was accordingly\nneglected, while the science of values, with the arts that express\nthese values, was exclusively pursued. The reverse has now occurred\nand the spirit of life, innocent of any rationalizing discipline\nand deprived of an authoritative and adequate method of expression,\nhas relapsed into miscellaneous and shallow exuberance. Religion\nand art have become short-winded. They have forgotten the old maxim\nthat we should copy in order to be copied and remember in order to\nbe remembered. It is true that the multiplicity of these incompetent\nefforts seems to many a compensation for their ill success, or even a\nground for asserting their absolute superiority. Incompetence, when\nit flatters the passions, can always find a greater incompetence to\napprove of it. Indeed, some people would have regarded the Tower of\nBabel as the best academy of eloquence on account of the variety of\noratorical methods prevailing there.\n\nIt is thus that the imagination of our time has relapsed into\nbarbarism. But discipline of the heart and fancy is always so rare\na thing that the neglect of it need not be supposed to involve any\nvery terrible or obvious loss. The triumphs of reason have been few\nand partial at any time, and perfect works of art are almost unknown.\nThe failure of art and reason, because their principle is ignored, is\ntherefore hardly more conspicuous than it was when their principle,\nalthough perhaps acknowledged, was misunderstood or disobeyed. Indeed,\nto one who fixes his eye on the ideal goal, the greatest art often\nseems the greatest failure, because it alone reminds him of what it\nshould have been. Trivial stimulations coming from vulgar objects, on\nthe contrary, by making us forget altogether the possibility of a deep\nsatisfaction, often succeed in interesting and in winning applause.\nThe pleasure they give us is so brief and superficial that the wave of\nessential disappointment which would ultimately drown it has not time\nto rise from the heart.\n\nThe poetry of barbarism is not without its charm. It can play with\nsense and passion the more readily and freely in that it does not\naspire to subordinate them to a clear thought or a tenable attitude of\nthe will. It can impart the transitive emotions which it expresses; it\ncan find many partial harmonies of mood and fancy; it can, by virtue\nof its red-hot irrationality, utter wilder cries, surrender itself\nand us to more absolute passion, and heap up a more indiscriminate\nwealth of images than belong to poets of seasoned experience or of\nheavenly inspiration. Irrational stimulation may tire us in the end,\nbut it excites us in the beginning; and how many conventional poets,\ntender and prolix, have there not been, who tire us now without ever\nhaving excited anybody? The power to stimulate is the beginning of\ngreatness, and when the barbarous poet has genius, as he well may\nhave, he stimulates all the more powerfully on account of the crudity\nof his methods and the recklessness of his emotions. The defects\nof such art--lack of distinction, absence of beauty, confusion of\nideas, incapacity permanently to please--will hardly be felt by the\ncontemporary public, if once its attention is arrested; for no poet\nis so undisciplined that he will not find many readers, if he finds\nreaders at all, less disciplined than himself.\n\nThese considerations may perhaps be best enforced by applying them to\ntwo writers of great influence over the present generation who seem to\nillustrate them on different planes--Robert Browning and Walt Whitman.\nThey are both analytic poets--poets who seek to reveal and express\nthe elemental as opposed to the conventional; but the dissolution\nhas progressed much farther in Whitman than in Browning, doubtless\nbecause Whitman began at a much lower stage of moral and intellectual\norganization; for the good will to be radical was present in both.\nThe elements to which Browning reduces experience are still passions,\ncharacters, persons; Whitman carries the disintegration further and\nknows nothing but moods and particular images. The world of Browning\nis a world of history with civilization for its setting and with the\nconventional passions for its motive forces. The world of Whitman\nis innocent of these things and contains only far simpler and more\nchaotic elements. In him the barbarism is much more pronounced; it is,\nindeed, avowed, and the \"barbaric yawp\" is sent \"over the roofs of the\nworld\" in full consciousness of its inarticulate character; but in\nBrowning the barbarism is no less real though disguised by a literary\nand scientific language, since the passions of civilized life with\nwhich he deals are treated as so many \"barbaric yawps,\" complex indeed\nin their conditions, puffings of an intricate engine, but aimless in\ntheir vehemence and mere ebullitions of lustiness in adventurous and\nprofoundly ungoverned souls.\n\nIrrationality on this level is viewed by Browning with the same\nsatisfaction with which, on a lower level, it is viewed by Whitman;\nand the admirers of each hail it as the secret of a new poetry\nwhich pierces to the quick and awakens the imagination to a new and\ngenuine vitality. It is in the rebellion against discipline, in the\nabandonment of the ideals of classic and Christian tradition, that this\nrejuvenation is found. Both poets represent, therefore, and are admired\nfor representing, what may be called the poetry of barbarism in the\nmost accurate and descriptive sense of this word. For the barbarian\nis the man who regards his passions as their own excuse for being;\nwho does not domesticate them either by understanding their cause or\nby conceiving their ideal goal. He is the man who does not know his\nderivations nor perceive his tendencies, but who merely feels and acts,\nvaluing in his life its force and its filling, but being careless of\nits purpose and its form. His delight is in abundance and vehemence;\nhis art, like his life, shows an exclusive respect for quantity and\nsplendour of materials. His scorn for what is poorer and weaker than\nhimself is only surpassed by his ignorance of what is higher.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nWALT WHITMAN\n\nThe works of Walt Whitman offer an extreme illustration of this\nphase of genius, both by their form, and by their substance. It was\nthe singularity of his literary form--the challenge it threw to\nthe conventions of verse and of language--that first gave Whitman\nnotoriety: but this notoriety has become fame, because those\nincapacities and solecisms which glare at us from his pages are only\nthe obverse of a profound inspiration and of a genuine courage.\nEven the idiosyncrasies of his style have a side which is not mere\nperversity or affectation; the order of his words, the procession of\nhis images, reproduce the method of a rich, spontaneous, absolutely\nlazy fancy. In most poets such a natural order is modified by various\ngoverning motives--the thought, the metrical form, the echo of other\npoems in the memory. By Walt Whitman these conventional influences are\nresolutely banished. We find the swarms of men and objects rendered\nas they might strike the retina in a sort of waking dream. It is\nthe most sincere possible confession of the lowest--I mean the most\nprimitive--type of perception. All ancient poets are sophisticated in\ncomparison and give proof of longer intellectual and moral training.\nWalt Whitman has gone back to the innocent style of Adam, when the\nanimals filed before him one by one and he called each of them by its\nname.\n\nIn fact, the influences to which Walt Whitman was subject were as\nfavourable as possible to the imaginary experiment of beginning the\nworld over again. Liberalism and transcendentalism both harboured\nsome illusions on that score; and they were in the air which our\npoet breathed. Moreover he breathed this air in America, where the\nnewness of the material environment made it easier to ignore the\nfatal antiquity of human nature. When he afterward became aware that\nthere was or had been a world with a history, he studied that world\nwith curiosity and spoke of it not without a certain shrewdness. But\nhe still regarded it as a foreign world and imagined, as not a few\nAmericans have done, that his own world was a fresh creation, not\namenable to the same laws as the old. The difference in the conditions\nblinded him, in his merely sensuous apprehension, to the identity of\nthe principles.\n\nHis parents were farmers in central Long Island and his early years\nwere spent in that district. The family seems to have been not too\nprosperous and somewhat nomadic; Whitman himself drifted through\nboyhood without much guidance. We find him now at school, now helping\nthe labourers at the farms, now wandering along the beaches of Long\nIsland, finally at Brooklyn working in an apparently desultory way as\na printer and sometimes as a writer for a local newspaper. He must\nhave read or heard something, at this early period, of the English\nclassics; his style often betrays the deep effect made upon him by the\ngrandiloquence of the Bible, of Shakespeare, and of Milton. But his\nchief interest, if we may trust his account, was already in his own\nsensations. The aspects of Nature, the forms and habits of animals,\nthe sights of cities, the movement and talk of common people, were his\nconstant delight. His mind was flooded with these images, keenly felt\nand afterward to be vividly rendered with bold strokes of realism and\nimagination.\n\nMany poets have had this faculty to seize the elementary aspects of\nthings, but none has had it so exclusively; with Whitman the surface\nis absolutely all and the underlying structure is without interest and\nalmost without existence. He had had no education and his natural\ndelight in imbibing sensations had not been trained to the uses of\npractical or theoretical intelligence. He basked in the sunshine of\nperception and wallowed in the stream of his own sensibility, as later\nat Camden in the shallows of his favourite brook. Even during the civil\nwar, when he heard the drum-taps so clearly, he could only gaze at the\npicturesque and terrible aspects of the struggle, and linger among the\nwounded day after day with a canine devotion; he could not be aroused\neither to clear thought or to positive action. So also in his poems; a\nmultiplicity of images pass before him and he yields himself to each\nin turn with absolute passivity. The world has no inside; it is a\nphantasmagoria of continuous visions, vivid, impressive, but monotonous\nand hard to distinguish in memory, like the waves of the sea or the\ndecorations of some barbarous temple, sublime only by the infinite\naggregation of parts.\n\nThis abundance of detail without organization, this wealth of\nperception without intelligence and of imagination without taste, makes\nthe singularity of Whitman's genius. Full of sympathy and receptivity,\nwith a wonderful gift of graphic characterization and an occasional\nrare grandeur of diction, he fills us with a sense of the individuality\nand the universality of what he describes--it is a drop in itself yet a\ndrop in the ocean. The absence of any principle of selection or of a\nsustained style enables him to render aspects of things and of emotion\nwhich would have eluded a trained writer. He is, therefore, interesting\neven where he is grotesque or perverse. He has accomplished, by the\nsacrifice of almost every other good quality, something never so well\ndone before. He has approached common life without bringing in his\nmind any higher standard by which to criticise it; he has seen it,\nnot in contrast with an ideal, but as the expression of forces more\nindeterminate and elementary than itself; and the vulgar, in this\ncosmic setting, has appeared to him sublime.\n\nThere is clearly some analogy between a mass of images without\nstructure and the notion of an absolute democracy. Whitman, inclined\nby his genius and habits to see life without relief or organization,\nbelieved that his inclination in this respect corresponded with the\nspirit of his age and country, and that Nature and society, at least\nin the United States, were constituted after the fashion of his own\nmind. Being the poet of the average man, he wished, all men to be\nspecimens of that average, and being the poet of a fluid Nature, he\nbelieved that Nature was or should be a formless flux. This personal\nbias of Whitman's was further encouraged by the actual absence of\ndistinction in his immediate environment. Surrounded by ugly things\nand common people, he felt himself happy, ecstatic, overflowing with a\nkind of patriarchal love. He accordingly came to think that there was\na spirit of the New World which he embodied, and which was in complete\nopposition to that of the Old, and that a literature upon novel\nprinciples was needed to express and strengthen this American spirit.\n\nDemocracy was not to be merely a constitutional device for the better\ngovernment of given nations, not merely a movement for the material\nimprovement of the lot of the poorer classes. It was to be a social\nand a moral democracy and to involve an actual equality among all\nmen. Whatever kept them apart and made it impossible for them to be\nmessmates together was to be discarded. The literature of democracy\nwas to ignore all extraordinary gifts of genius or virtue, all\ndistinction drawn even from great passions or romantic adventures. In\nWhitman's works, in which this new literature is foreshadowed, there\nis accordingly not a single character nor a single story. His only\nhero is Myself, the \"single separate person,\" endowed with the primary\nimpulses, with health, and with sensitiveness to the elementary aspects\nof Nature. The perfect man of the future, the prolific begetter of\nother perfect men, is to work with his hands, chanting the poems of\nsome future Walt, some ideally democratic bard. Women are to have\nas nearly as possible the same character as men: the emphasis is to\npass from family life and local ties to the friendship of comrades and\nthe general brotherhood of man. Men are to be vigorous, comfortable,\nsentimental, and irresponsible.\n\nThis dream is, of course, unrealized and unrealizable, in America as\nelsewhere. Undeniably there are in America many suggestions of such\na society and such a national character. But the growing complexity\nand fixity of institutions necessarily tends to obscure these traits\nof a primitive and crude democracy. What Whitman seized upon as the\npromise of the future was in reality the survival of the past. He\nsings the song of pioneers, but it is in the nature of the pioneer\nthat the greater his success the quicker must be his transformation\ninto something different. When Whitman made the initial and amorphous\nphase of society his ideal, he became the prophet of a lost cause.\nThat cause was lost, not merely when wealth and intelligence began\nto take shape in the American Commonwealth, but it was lost at the\nvery foundation of the world, when those laws of evolution were\nestablished which Whitman, like Rousseau, failed to understand. If we\nmay trust Mr. Herbert Spencer, these laws involve a passage from the\nhomogeneous to the heterogeneous, and a constant progress at once in\ndifferentiation and in organization--all, in a word, that Whitman\nsystematically deprecated or ignored. He is surely not the spokesman\nof the tendencies of his country, although he describes some aspects\nof its past and present condition: nor does he appeal to those whom he\ndescribes, but rather to the _dilettanti_ he despises. He is regarded\nas representative chiefly by foreigners, who look for some grotesque\nexpression of the genius of so young and prodigious a people.\n\nWhitman, it is true, loved and comprehended men; but this love and\ncomprehension had the same limits as his love and comprehension of\nNature. He observed truly and responded to his observation with genuine\nand pervasive emotion. A great gregariousness, an innocent tolerance of\nmoral weakness, a genuine admiration for bodily health and strength,\nmade him bubble over with affection for the generic human creature.\nIncapable of an ideal passion, he was full of the milk of human\nkindness. Yet, for all his acquaintance with the ways and thoughts of\nthe common man of his choice, he did not truly understand him. For to\nunderstand people is to go much deeper than they go themselves; to\npenetrate to their characters and disentangle their inmost ideals.\nWhitman's insight into man did not go beyond a sensuous sympathy;\nit consisted in a vicarious satisfaction in their pleasures, and an\ninstinctive love of their persons. It never approached a scientific or\nimaginative knowledge of their hearts.\n\nTherefore Whitman failed radically in his dearest ambition: he can\nnever be a poet of the people. For the people, like the early races\nwhose poetry was ideal, are natural believers in perfection. They\nhave no doubts about the absolute desirability of wealth and learning\nand power, none about the worth of pure goodness and pure love. Their\nchosen poets, if they have any, will be always those who have known how\nto paint these ideals in lively even if in gaudy colours. Nothing is\nfarther from the common people than the corrupt desire to be primitive.\nThey instinctively look toward a more exalted life, which they imagine\nto be full of distinction and pleasure, and the idea of that brighter\nexistence fills them with hope or with envy or with humble admiration.\n\nIf the people are ever won over to hostility to such ideals, it is\nonly because they are cheated by demagogues who tell them that if\nall the flowers of civilization were destroyed its fruits would\nbecome more abundant. A greater share of happiness, people think,\nwould fall to their lot could they destroy everything beyond their\nown possible possessions. But they are made thus envious and ignoble\nonly by a deception: what they really desire is an ideal good for\nthemselves which they are told they may secure by depriving others of\ntheir preeminence. Their hope is always to enjoy perfect satisfaction\nthemselves; and therefore a poet who loves the picturesque aspects of\nlabour and vagrancy will hardly be the poet of the poor. He may have\ndescribed their figure and occupation, in neither of which they are\nmuch interested; he will not have read their souls. They will prefer\nto him any sentimental story-teller, any sensational dramatist, any\nmoralizing poet; for they are hero-worshippers by temperament, and are\ntoo wise or too unfortunate to be much enamoured of themselves or of\nthe conditions of their existence.\n\nFortunately, the political theory that makes Whitman's principle of\nliterary prophecy and criticism does not always inspire his chants, nor\nis it presented, even in his prose works, quite bare and unadorned.\nIn \"Democratic Vistas\" we find it clothed with something of the same\npoetic passion and lighted up with the same flashes of intuition which\nwe admire in the poems. Even there the temperament is finer than\nthe ideas and the poet wiser than the thinker. His ultimate appeal\nis really to something more primitive and general than any social\naspirations, to something more elementary than an ideal of any kind. He\nspeaks to those minds and to those moods in which sensuality is touched\nwith mysticism. When the intellect is in abeyance, when we would \"turn\nand live with the animals, they are so placid and self-contained,\"\nwhen we are weary of conscience and of ambition, and would yield\nourselves for a while to the dream of sense, Walt Whitman is a welcome\ncompanion. The images he arouses in us, fresh, full of light and health\nand of a kind of frankness and beauty, are prized all the more at such\na time because they are not choice, but drawn perhaps from a hideous\nand sordid environment. For this circumstance makes them a better means\nof escape from convention and from that fatigue and despair which\nlurk not far beneath the surface of conventional life. In casting off\nwith self-assurance and a sense of fresh vitality the distinctions of\ntradition and reason a man may feel, as he sinks back comfortably to\na lower level of sense and instinct, that he is returning to Nature\nor escaping into the infinite. Mysticism makes us proud and happy to\nrenounce the work of intelligence, both in thought and in life, and\npersuades us that we become divine by remaining imperfectly human. Walt\nWhitman gives a new expression to this ancient and multiform tendency.\nHe feels his own cosmic justification and he would lend the sanction\nof his inspiration to all loafers and holiday-makers. He would be the\ncongenial patron of farmers and factory hands in their crude pleasures\nand pieties, as Pan was the patron of the shepherds of Arcadia: for\nhe is sure that in spite of his hairiness and animality, the gods\nwill acknowledge him as one of themselves and smile upon him from the\nserenity of Olympus.\n\n\n\nIII\n\nROBERT BROWNING\n\nIf we would do justice to Browning's work as a human document, and\nat the same time perceive its relation to the rational ideals of\nthe imagination and to that poetry which passes into religion, we\nmust keep, as in the case of Whitman, two things in mind. One is the\ngenuineness of the achievement, the sterling quality of the vision and\ninspiration; these are their own justification when we approach them\nfrom below and regard them as manifesting a more direct or impassioned\ngrasp of experience than is given to mildly blatant, convention-ridden\nminds. The other thing to remember is the short distance to which this\ncomprehension is carried, its failure to approach any finality, or to\nachieve a recognition even of the traditional ideals of poetry and\nreligion.\n\nIn the case of Walt Whitman such a failure will be generally felt;\nit is obvious that both his music and his philosophy are those of\na barbarian, nay, almost of a savage. Accordingly there is need of\ndwelling rather on the veracity and simple dignity of his thought and\nart, on their expression of an order of ideas latent in all better\nexperience. But in the case of Browning it is the success that is\nobvious to most people. Apart from a certain superficial grotesqueness\nto which we are soon accustomed, he easily arouses and engages the\nreader by the pithiness of his phrase, the volume of his passion, the\nvigour of his moral judgment, the liveliness of his historical fancy.\nIt is obvious that we are in the presence of a great writer, of a great\nimaginative force, of a master in the expression of emotion. What\nis perhaps not so obvious, but no less true, is that we are in the\npresence of a barbaric genius, of a truncated imagination, of a thought\nand an art inchoate and ill-digested, of a volcanic eruption that\ntosses itself quite blindly and ineffectually into the sky.\n\nThe points of comparison by which this becomes clear are perhaps\nnot in every one's mind, although they are merely the elements of\ntraditional culture, \u00e6sthetic and moral. Yet even without reference\nto ultimate ideals, one may notice in Browning many superficial signs\nof that deepest of all failures, the failure in rationality and the\nindifference to perfection. Such a sign is the turgid style, weighty\nwithout nobility, pointed without naturalness or precision. Another\nsign is the \"realism\" of the personages, who, quite like men and women\nin actual life, are always displaying traits of character and never\nattaining character as a whole. Other hints might be found in the\nstructure of the poems, where the dramatic substance does not achieve\na dramatic form; in the metaphysical discussion, with its confused\nprolixity and absence of result; in the moral ideal, where all energies\nfigure without their ultimate purposes; in the religion, which breaks\noff the expression of this life in the middle, and finds in that\nsuspense an argument for immortality. In all this, and much more that\nmight be recalled, a person coming to Browning with the habits of a\ncultivated mind might see evidence of some profound incapacity in\nthe poet; but more careful reflection is necessary to understand the\nnature of this incapacity, its cause, and the peculiar accent which its\npresence gives to those ideas and impulses which Browning stimulates in\nus.\n\nThere is the more reason for developing this criticism (which might\nseem needlessly hostile and which time and posterity will doubtless\nmake in their own quiet and decisive fashion) in that Browning did not\nkeep within the sphere of drama and analysis, where he was strong, but\nallowed his own temperament and opinions to vitiate his representation\nof life, so that he sometimes turned the expression of a violent\npassion into the last word of what he thought a religion. He had a\ndidactic vein, a habit of judging the spectacle he evoked and of\nloading the passions he depicted with his visible sympathy or scorn.\n\nNow a chief support of Browning's popularity is that he is, for\nmany, an initiator into the deeper mysteries of passion, a means of\nescaping from the moral poverty of their own lives and of feeling the\nrhythm and compulsion of the general striving. He figures, therefore,\ndistinctly as a prophet, as a bearer of glad tidings, and it is easy\nfor those who hail him as such to imagine that, knowing the labour of\nlife so well, he must know something also of its fruits, and that in\ngiving us the feeling of existence, he is also giving us its meaning.\nThere is serious danger that a mind gathering from his pages the raw\nmaterials of truth, the unthreshed harvest of reality, may take him for\na philosopher, for a rationalizer of what he describes. Awakening may\nbe mistaken for enlightenment, and the galvanizing of torpid sensations\nand impulses for wisdom.\n\nAgainst such fatuity reason should raise her voice. The vital and\nhistoric forces that produce illusions of this sort in large groups of\nmen are indeed beyond the control of criticism. The ideas of passion\nare more vivid than those of memory, until they become memories in\nturn. They must be allowed to fight out their desperate battle against\nthe laws of Nature and reason. But it is worth while in the meantime,\nfor the sake of the truth and of a just philosophy, to meet the varying\nthough perpetual charlatanism of the world with a steady protest. As\nsoon as Browning is proposed to us as a leader, as soon as we are asked\nto be not the occasional patrons of his art, but the pupils of his\nphilosophy, we have a right to express the radical dissatisfaction\nwhich we must feel, if we are rational, with his whole attitude and\ntemper of mind.\n\nThe great dramatists have seldom dealt with perfectly virtuous\ncharacters. The great poets have seldom represented mythologies that\nwould bear scientific criticism. But by an instinct which constituted\ntheir greatness they have cast these mixed materials furnished by life\ninto forms congenial to the specific principles of their art, and by\nthis transformation they have made acceptable in the \u00e6sthetic sphere\nthings that in the sphere of reality were evil or imperfect: in a word,\ntheir works have been beautiful as works of art. Or, if their genius\nexceeded that of the technical poet and rose to prophetic intuition,\nthey have known how to create ideal characters, not possessed, perhaps,\nof every virtue accidentally needed in this world, but possessed of\nwhat is ideally better, of internal greatness and perfection. They\nhave also known how to select and reconstruct their mythology so as to\nmake it a true interpretation of moral life. When we read the maxims\nof Iago, Falstaff, or Hamlet, we are delighted if the thought strikes\nus as true, but we are not less delighted if it strikes us as false.\nThese characters are not presented to us in order to enlarge our\ncapacities of passion nor in order to justify themselves as processes\nof redemption; they are there, clothed in poetry and imbedded in plot,\nto entertain us with their imaginable feelings and their interesting\nerrors. The poet, without being especially a philosopher, stands by\nvirtue of his superlative genius on the plane of universal reason, far\nabove the passionate experience which he overlooks and on which he\nreflects; and he raises us for the moment to his own level, to send\nus back again, if not better endowed for practical life, at least not\nunacquainted with speculation.\n\nWith Browning the case is essentially different. When his heroes are\nblinded by passion and warped by circumstance, as they almost always\nare, he does not describe the fact from the vantage-ground of the\nintellect and invite us to look at it from that point of view. On the\ncontrary, his art is all self-expression or satire. For the most part\nhis hero, like Whitman's, is himself; not appearing, as in the case\nof the American bard, _in puris naturalibus,_ but masked in all sorts\nof historical and romantic finery. Sometimes, however, the personage,\nlike Guido in \"The Ring and the Book\" or the \"frustrate ghosts\" of\nother poems, is merely a Marsyas, shown flayed and quivering to the\ngreater glory of the poet's ideal Apollo. The impulsive utterances and\nthe crudities of most of the speakers are passionately adopted by the\npoet as his own. He thus perverts what might have been a triumph of\nimagination into a failure of reason.\n\nThis circumstance has much to do with the fact that Browning, in spite\nof his extraordinary gift for expressing emotion, has hardly produced\nworks purely and unconditionally delightful. They not only portray\npassion, which is interesting, but they betray it, which is odious.\nHis art was still in the service of the will. He had not attained, in\nstudying the beauty of things, that detachment of the phenomenon, that\nlove of the form for its own sake, which is the secret of contemplative\nsatisfaction. Therefore, the lamentable accidents of his personality\nand opinions, in themselves no worse than those of other mortals,\npassed into his art. He did not seek to elude them: he had no free\nspeculative faculty to dominate them by. Or, to put the same thing\ndifferently, he was too much in earnest in his fictions, he threw\nhimself too unreservedly into his creations. His imagination, like\nthe imagination we have in dreams, was merely a vent for personal\npreoccupations. His art was inspired by purposes less simple and\nuniversal than the ends of imagination itself. His play of mind\nconsequently could not be free or pure. The creative impulse could not\nreach its goal or manifest in any notable degree its own organic ideal.\n\nWe may illustrate these assertions by considering Browning's treatment\nof the passion of love, a passion to which he gives great prominence\nand in which he finds the highest significance.\n\nLove is depicted by Browning with truth, with vehemence, and with\nthe constant conviction that it is the supreme thing in life. The\ngreat variety of occasions in which it appears in his pages and the\ndifferent degrees of elaboration it receives, leave it always of the\nsame quality--the quality of passion. It never sinks into sensuality;\nin spite of its frequent extreme crudeness, it is always, in Browning's\nhands, a passion of the imagination, it is always love. On the other\nhand it never rises into contemplation: mingled as it may be with\nfriendship, with religion, or with various forms of natural tenderness,\nit always remains a passion; it always remains a personal impulse,\na hypnotization, with another person for its object or its cause.\nKept within these limits it is represented, in a series of powerful\nsketches, which are for most readers the gems of the Browning gallery,\nas the last word of experience, the highest phase of human life.\n\n        \"The woman yonder, there's no use in life\n    But just to obtain her! Heap earth's woes in one\n    And bear them--make a pile of all earth's joys\n    And spurn them, as they help or help not this;\n    Only, obtain her!\"\n    \"When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,\n            Either hand\n    On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace\n            Of my face,\n    Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech\n            Each on each....\n    O  heart, O blood that freezes, blood that burns!\n            Earth's returns\n    For whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin--\n            Shut them in--\n    With their triumphs and their follies and the rest.\n            Love is best.\"\n\nIn the piece called \"In a Gondola\" the lady says to her lover:--\n\n                      \"Heart to heart\n    And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part,\n    Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art.\"\n\nAnd he, after being surprised and stabbed in her arms, replies:--\n\n    \"It was ordained to be so, sweet!--and best\n     Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy breast:\n     Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards; care\n     Only to put aside thy beauteous hair\n     My blood will hurt! The Three I do not scorn\n     To death, because they never lived, but I\n     Have lived indeed, and so--(yet one more kiss)--can die.\"\n\nWe are not allowed to regard these expressions as the cries of souls\nblinded by the agony of passion and lust. Browning unmistakably adopts\nthem as expressing his own highest intuitions. He so much admires the\nstrength of this weakness that he does not admit that it is a weakness\nat all. It is with the strut of self-satisfaction, with the sensation,\nalmost, of muscular Christianity, that he boasts of it through the\nmouth of one of his heroes, who is explaining to his mistress the\nmotive of his faithful services as a minister of the queen:--\n\n         \"She thinks there was more cause\n    In love of power, high fame, pure loyalty?\n    Perhaps she fancies men wear out their lives\n    Chasing such shades....\n    I worked because I want you with my soul.\"\n\nReaders of the fifth chapter of this volume need not be reminded here\nof the contrast which this method of understanding love offers to that\nadopted by the real masters of passion and imagination. They began with\nthat crude emotion with which Browning ends; they lived it down, they\nexalted it by thought, they extracted the pure gold of it in a long\npurgation of discipline and suffering. The fierce paroxysm which for\nhim is heaven, was for them the proof that heaven cannot be found on\nearth, that the value of experience is not in experience itself but\nin the ideals which it reveals. The intense, voluminous emotion, the\nsudden, overwhelming self-surrender in which he rests was for them\nthe starting-point of a life of rational worship, of an austere and\nimpersonal religion, by which the fire of love, kindled for a moment by\nthe sight of some creature, was put, as it were, into a censer, to burn\nincense before every image of the Highest Good. Thus love ceased to be\na passion and became the energy of contemplation: it diffused over the\nuniverse, natural and ideal, that light of tenderness and that faculty\nof worship which the passion of love often is first to quicken in a\nman's breast.\n\nOf this art, recommended by Plato and practised in the Christian Church\nby all adepts of the spiritual life, Browning knew absolutely nothing.\nAbout the object of love he had no misgivings. What could the object\nbe except somebody or other? The important thing was to love intensely\nand to love often. He remained in the phenomenal sphere: he was a lover\nof experience; the ideal did not exist for him. No conception could be\nfarther from his thought than the essential conception of any rational\nphilosophy, namely, that feeling is to be treated as raw material\nfor thought, and that the destiny of emotion is to pass into objects\nwhich shall contain all its value while losing all its formlessness.\nThis transformation of sense and emotion into objects agreeable to\nthe intellect, into clear ideas and beautiful things, is the natural\nwork of reason; when it has been accomplished very imperfectly, or not\nat all, we have a barbarous mind, a mind full of chaotic sensations,\nobjectless passions, and undigested ideas. Such a mind Browning's was,\nto a degree remarkable in one with so rich a heritage of civilization.\n\nThe nineteenth century, as we have already said, has nourished the hope\nof abolishing the past as a force while it studies it as an object; and\nBrowning, with his fondness for a historical stage setting and for the\ngossip of history, rebelled equally against the Pagan and the Christian\ndiscipline. The \"Soul\" which he trusted in was the barbarous soul,\nthe \"Spontaneous Me\" of his half-brother Whitman. It was a restless\npersonal impulse, conscious of obscure depths within itself which it\nfancied to be infinite, and of a certain vague sympathy with wind and\ncloud and with the universal mutation. It was the soul that might have\nanimated Attila and Alaric when they came down into Italy, a soul not\nincurious of the tawdriness and corruption of the strange civilization\nit beheld, but incapable of understanding its original spirit; a soul\nmaintaining in the presence of that noble, unappreciated ruin all its\nown lordliness and energy, and all its native vulgarity.\n\nBrowning, who had not had the education traditional in his own country,\nused to say that Italy had been his university. But it was a school for\nwhich he was ill prepared, and he did not sit under its best teachers.\nFor the superficial ferment, the worldly passions, and the crimes of\nthe Italian Renaissance he had a keen interest and intelligence. But\nItaly has been always a civilized country, and beneath the trappings\nand suits of civilization which at that particular time it flaunted\nso gayly, it preserved a civilized heart to which Browning's insight\ncould never penetrate. There subsisted in the best minds a trained\nimagination and a cogent ideal of virtue. Italy had a religion, and\nthat religion permeated all its life, and was the background without\nwhich even its secular art and secular passions would not be truly\nintelligible. The most commanding and representative, the deepest and\nmost appealing of Italian natures are permeated with this religious\ninspiration. A Saint Francis, a Dante, a Michael Angelo, breathe hardly\nanything else. Yet for Browning these men and what they represented\nmay be said not to have existed. He saw, he studied, and he painted a\ndecapitated Italy. His vision could not mount so high as her head.\n\nOne of the elements of that higher tradition which Browning was not\nprepared to imbibe was the idealization of love. The passion he\nrepresents is lava hot from the crater, in no way moulded, smelted,\nor refined. He had no thought of subjugating impulses into the\nharmony of reason. He did not master life, but was mastered by it.\nAccordingly the love he describes has no wings; it issues in nothing.\nHis lovers \"extinguish sight and speech, each on each\"; sense, as\nhe says elsewhere, drowning soul. The man in the gondola may well\nboast that he can die; it is the only thing he can properly do.\nDeath is the only solution of a love that is tied to its individual\nobject and inseparable from the alloy of passion and illusion within\nitself. Browning's hero, because he has loved intensely, says that\nhe has lived; he would be right, if the significance of life were\nto be measured by the intensity of the feeling it contained, and if\nintelligence were not the highest form of vitality. But had that hero\nknown how to love better and had he had enough spirit to dominate his\nlove, he might perhaps have been able to carry away the better part of\nit and to say that he could not die; for one half of himself and of his\nlove would have been dead already and the other half would have been\neternal, having fed--\n\n          \"On death, that feeds on men;\n    And death once dead, there's no more dying then.\"\n\nThe irrationality of the passions which Browning glorifies, making them\nthe crown of life, is so gross that at times he cannot help perceiving\nit.\n\n          \"How perplexed\n    Grows belief! Well, this cold clay clod\n          Was man's heart:\n    Crumble it, and what comes next? Is it God?\"\n\nYes, he will tell us. These passions and follies, however desperate in\nthemselves and however vain for the individual, are excellent as parts\nof the dispensation of Providence:--\n\n    \"Be hate that fruit or love that fruit,\n     It forwards the general deed of man,\n     And each of the many helps to recruit\n     The life of the race by a general plan,\n         Each living his own to boot.\"\n\nIf we doubt, then, the value of our own experience, even perhaps\nof our experience of love, we may appeal to the interdependence of\ngoods and evils in the world to assure ourselves that, in view of\nits consequences elsewhere, this experience was great and important\nafter all. We need not stop to consider this supposed solution, which\nbristles with contradictions; it would not satisfy Browning himself,\nif he did not back it up with something more to his purpose, something\nnearer to warm and transitive feeling. The compensation for our\ndefeats, the answer to our doubts, is not to be found merely in a proof\nof the essential necessity and perfection of the universe; that would\nbe cold comfort, especially to so uncontemplative a mind. No: that\nanswer, and compensation are to come very soon and very vividly to\nevery private bosom. There is another life, a series of other lives,\nfor this to happen in. Death will come, and--\n\n              \"I shall thereupon\n         Take rest, ere I be gone\n    Once more on my adventure brave and new,\n         Fearless and unperplexed,\n         When I wage battle next,\n    What weapons to select, what armour to endue.\"\n\n    \"For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,\n           The black minute's at end,\n    And the element's rage, the fiend-voices that rave\n           Shall dwindle, shall blend,\n    Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,\n           Then a light, then thy breast,\n    O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again\n           And with God be the rest!\"\n\nInto this conception of continued life Browning has put, as a\ncollection of further passages might easily show, all the items\nfurnished by fancy or tradition which at the moment satisfied his\nimagination--new adventures, reunion with friends, and even, after\na severe strain and for a short while, a little peace and quiet. The\ngist of the matter is that we are to live indefinitely, that all our\nfaults can be turned to good, all our unfinished business settled, and\nthat therefore there is time for anything we like in this world and\nfor all we need in the other. It is in spirit the direct opposite of\nthe philosophic maxim of regarding the end, of taking care to leave a\nfinished life and a perfect character behind us. It is the opposite,\nalso, of the religious _memento mori,_ of the warning that the time\nis short before we go to our account. According to Browning, there\nis no account: we have an infinite credit. With an unconscious and\ncharacteristic mixture of heathen instinct with Christian doctrine, he\nthinks of the other world as heaven, but of the life to be led there as\nof the life of Nature.\n\nAristotle observes that we do not think the business of life worthy\nof the gods, to whom we can only attribute contemplation; if Browning\nhad had the idea of perfecting and rationalizing this life rather than\nof continuing it indefinitely, he would have followed Aristotle and\nthe Church in this matter. But he had no idea of anything eternal; and\nso he gave, as he would probably have said,' a filling to the empty\nChristian immortality by making every man busy in it about many things.\nAnd to the irrational man, to the boy, it is no unpleasant idea to\nhave an infinite number of days to live through, an infinite number of\ndinners to eat, with an infinity of fresh fights and new love-affairs,\nand no end of last rides together.\n\nBut it is a mere euphemism to call this perpetual vagrancy a\ndevelopment of the soul. A development means the unfolding of a\ndefinite nature, the gradual manifestation of a known idea. A\nseries of phases, like the successive leaps of a water-fall, is no\ndevelopment. And Browning has no idea of an intelligible good which the\nphases of life might approach and with reference to which they might\nconstitute a progress. His notion is simply that the game of life, the\nexhilaration of action, is inexhaustible. You may set up your tenpins\nagain after you have bowled them over, and you may keep up the sport\nfor ever. The point is to bring them down as often as possible with\na master-stroke and a big bang. That will tend to invigorate in you\nthat self-confidence which in this system passes for faith. But it is\nunmeaning to call such an exercise heaven, or to talk of being \"with\nGod\" in such a life, in any sense in which we are not with God already\nand under all circumstances. Our destiny would rather be, as Browning\nhimself expresses it in a phrase which Attila or Alaric might have\ncomposed, \"bound dizzily to the wheel of change to slake the thirst of\nGod.\"\n\nSuch an optimism and such a doctrine of immortality can give no\njustification to experience which it does not already have in its\ndetached parts. Indeed, those dogmas are not the basis of Browning's\nattitude, not conditions of his satisfaction in living, but rather\noverflowings of that satisfaction. The present life is presumably a\nfair average of the whole series of \"adventures brave and new\" which\nfall to each man's share; were it not found delightful in itself, there\nwould be no motive for imagining and asserting that it is reproduced\n_in infinitum_. So too if we did not think that the evil in experience\nis actually utilized and visibly swallowed up in its good effects, we\nshould hardly venture to think that God could have regarded as a good\nsomething which has evil for its condition and which is for that reason\nprofoundly sad and equivocal. But Browning's philosophy of life and\nhabit of imagination do not require the support of any metaphysical\ntheory. His temperament is perfectly self-sufficient and primary; what\ndoctrines he has are suggested by it and are too loose to give it more\nthan a hesitant expression; they are quite powerless to give it any\njustification which it might lack on its face.\n\nIt is the temperament, then, that speaks; we may brush aside as\nunsubstantial, and even as distorting, the web of arguments and\ntheories which it has spun out of itself. And what does the temperament\nsay? That life is an adventure, not a discipline; that the exercise\nof energy is the absolute good, irrespective of motives or of\nconsequences. These are the maxims of a frank barbarism; nothing could\nexpress better the lust of life, the dogged unwillingness to learn\nfrom experience, the contempt for rationality, the carelessness about\nperfection, the admiration for mere force, in which barbarism always\nbetrays itself. The vague religion which seeks to justify this attitude\nis really only another outburst of the same irrational impulse.\n\nIn Browning this religion takes the name of Christianity, and\nidentifies itself with one or two Christian ideas arbitrarily selected;\nbut at heart it has far more affinity to the worship of Thor or of\nOdin than to the religion of the Cross. The zest of life becomes\na cosmic emotion; we lump the whole together and cry, \"Hurrah for\nthe Universe!\" A faith which is thus a pure matter of lustiness and\ninebriation rises and falls, attracts or repels, with the ebb and flow\nof the mood from which it springs. It is invincible because unseizable;\nit is as safe from refutation as it is rebellious to embodiment. But\nit cannot enlighten or correct the passions on which it feeds. Like\na servile priest, it flatters them in the name of Heaven. It cloaks\nirrationality in sanctimony; and its admiration for every bluff folly,\nbeing thus justified by a theory, becomes a positive fanaticism, eager\nto defend any wayward impulse.\n\nSuch barbarism of temper and thought could hardly, in a man of\nBrowning's independence and spontaneity, be without its counterpart in\nhis art. When a man's personal religion is passive, as Shakespeare's\nseems to have been, and is adopted without question or particular\ninterest from the society around him, we may not observe any analogy\nbetween it and the free creations of that man's mind. Not so when the\nreligion is created afresh by the private imagination; it is then\nmerely one among many personal works of art, and will naturally bear a\nfamily likeness to the others. The same individual temperament, with\nits limitations and its bias, will appear in the art which has appeared\nin the religion. And such is the case with Browning. His limitations\nas a poet are the counterpart of his limitations as a moralist and\ntheologian; only in the poet they are not so regrettable. Philosophy\nand religion are nothing if not ultimate; it is their business to deal\nwith general principles and final aims. Now it is in the conception of\nthings fundamental and ultimate that Browning is weak; he is strong\nin the conception of things immediate. The pulse of the emotion, the\nbobbing up of the thought, the streaming of the reverie--these he can\nnote down with picturesque force or imagine with admirable fecundity.\n\nYet the limits of such excellence are narrow, for no man can safely go\nfar without the guidance of reason. His long poems have no structure\n--for that name cannot be given to the singular mechanical division of\n\"The Ring and the Book.\" Even his short poems have no completeness,\nno limpidity. They are little torsos made broken so as to stimulate\nthe reader to the restoration of their missing legs and arms. What is\nadmirable in them is pregnancy of phrase, vividness of passion and\nsentiment, heaped-up scraps of observation, occasional flashes of\nlight, occasional beauties of versification,--all like\n\n        \"the quick sharp scratch\n    And blue spurt of a lighted match.\"\n\nThere is never anything largely composed in the spirit of pure beauty,\nnothing devotedly finished, nothing simple and truly just. The poet's\nmind cannot reach equilibrium; at best he oscillates between opposed\nextravagances; his final word is still a _boutade_, still an explosion.\nHe has no sustained nobility of style. He affects with the reader a\nconfidential and vulgar manner, so as to be more sincere and to feel\nmore at home. Even in the poems where the effort at impersonality is\nmost successful, the dramatic disguise is usually thrown off in a\npreface, epilogue or parenthesis. The author likes to remind us of\nhimself by some confidential wink or genial poke in the ribs, by some\nlittle interlarded sneer. We get in these tricks of manner a taste of\nthat essential vulgarity, that indifference to purity and distinction,\nwhich is latent but pervasive in all the products of this mind. The\nsame disdain of perfection which appears in his ethics appears here in\nhis verse, and impairs its beauty by allowing it to remain too often\nobscure, affected, and grotesque.\n\nSuch a correspondence is natural: for the same powers of conception\nand expression are needed in fiction, which, if turned to reflection,\nwould produce a good philosophy. Reason is necessary to the perception\nof high beauty. Discipline is indispensable to art. Work from which\nthese qualities are absent must be barbaric; it can have no ideal form\nand must appeal to us only through the sensuousness and profusion of\nits materials. We are invited by it to lapse into a miscellaneous\nappreciativeness, into a subservience to every detached impression. And\nyet, if we would only reflect even on these disordered beauties, we\nshould see that the principle by which they delight us is a principle\nby which an ideal, an image of perfection, is inevitably evoked. We\ncan have no pleasure or pain, nor any preference whatsoever, without\nimplicitly setting up a standard of excellence, an ideal of what\nwould satisfy us there. To make these implicit ideals explicit, to\ncatch their hint, to work out their theme, and express clearly to\nourselves and to the world what they are demanding in the place of the\nactual--that is the labour of reason and the task of genius. The two\ncannot be divided. Clarification of ideas and disentanglement of values\nare as essential to \u00e6sthetic activity as to intelligence. A failure of\nreason is a failure of art and taste.\n\nThe limits of Browning's art, like the limits of Whitman's, can\ntherefore be understood by considering his mental habit. Both poets\nhad powerful imaginations, but the type of their imaginations was low.\nIn Whitman imagination was limited to marshalling sensations in single\nfile; the embroideries he made around that central line were simple and\ninsignificant. His energy was concentrated on that somewhat animal form\nof contemplation, of which, for the rest, he was a great, perhaps an\nunequalled master. Browning rose above that level; with him sensation\nis usually in the background; he is not particularly a poet of the\nsenses or of ocular vision. His favourite subject-matter is rather the\nstream of thought and feeling in the mind; he is the poet of soliloquy.\nNature and life as they really are, rather than as they may appear to\nthe ignorant and passionate participant in them, lie beyond his range.\nEven in his best dramas, like \"A Blot in the 'Scutcheon\" or \"Colombe's\nBirthday,\" the interest remains in the experience of the several\npersons as they explain it to us. The same is the case in \"The King and\nthe Book,\" the conception of which, in twelve monstrous soliloquies, is\na striking evidence of the poet's predilection for this form.\n\nThe method is, to penetrate by sympathy rather than to portray by\nintelligence. The most authoritative insight is not the poet's or the\nspectator's, aroused and enlightened by the spectacle, but the various\nheroes' own, in their moment of intensest passion. We therefore miss\nthe tragic relief and exaltation, and come away instead with the\nuncomfortable feeling that an obstinate folly is apparently the most\nglorious and choiceworthy thing in the world. This is evidently the\npoet's own illusion, and those who do not happen to share it must feel\nthat if life were really as irrational as he thinks it, it would be\nnot only profoundly discouraging, which it often is, but profoundly\ndisgusting, which it surely is not; for at least it reveals the ideal\nwhich it fails to attain.\n\nThis ideal Browning never disentangles. For him the crude experience is\nthe only end, the endless struggle the only ideal, and the perturbed\n\"Soul\" the only organon of truth. The arrest of his intelligence at\nthis point, before it has envisaged any rational object, explains the\narrest of his dramatic art at soliloquy. His immersion in the forms of\nself-consciousness prevents him from dramatizing the real relations\nof men and their thinkings to one another, to Nature, and to destiny.\nFor in order to do so he would have had to view his characters from\nabove (as Cervantes did, for instance), and to see them not merely\nas they appeared to themselves, but as they appear to reason. This\nhigher attitude, however, was not only beyond Browning's scope, it\nwas positively contrary to his inspiration. Had he reached it, he\nwould no longer have seen the universe through the \"Soul,\" but through\nthe intellect, and he would not have been able to cry, \"How the\nworld is made for each one of us!\" On the contrary, the \"Soul\" would\nhave figured only in its true conditions, in all its ignorance and\ndependence, and also in its essential teachableness, a point against\nwhich Browning's barbaric wilfulness particularly rebelled. Booted\nin his persuasion that the soul is essentially omnipotent and that\nto live hard can never be to live wrong, he remained fascinated by\nthe march and method of self-consciousness, and never allowed himself\nto be weaned from that romantic fatuity by the energy of rational\nimagination, which prompts us not to regard our ideas as mere filling\nof a dream, but rather to build on them the conception of permanent\nobjects and overruling principles, such as Nature, society, and the\nother ideals of reason. A full-grown imagination deals with these\nthings, which do not obey the laws of psychological progression, and\ncannot be described by the methods of soliloquy.\n\nWe thus see that Browning's sphere, though more subtle and complex\nthan Whitman's, was still elementary. It lay far below the spheres of\nsocial and historical reality in which Shakespeare moved; far below\nthe comprehensive and cosmic sphere of every great epic poet. Browning\ndid not even reach the intellectual plane of such contemporary poets\nas Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, who, whatever may be thought of their\npowers, did not study consciousness for itself, but for the sake of\nits meaning and of the objects which it revealed. The best things that\ncome into a man's consciousness are the things that take him out of\nit--the rational things that are independent of his personal perception\nand of his personal existence. These he approaches with his reason,\nand they, in the same measure, endow him with their immortality. But\nprecisely these things--the objects of science and of the constructive\nimagination--Browning always saw askance, in the out-skirts of his\nfield of vision, for his eye was fixed and riveted on the soliloquizing\nSoul. And this Soul being, to his apprehension, irrational, did not\ngive itself over to those permanent objects which might otherwise have\noccupied it, but ruminated on its own accidental emotions, on its\nlove-affairs, and on its hopes of going on so ruminating for ever.\n\nThe pathology of the human mind--for the normal, too, is pathological\nwhen it is not referred to the ideal--the pathology of the human\nmind is a very interesting subject, demanding great gifts and great\ningenuity in its treatment. Browning ministers to this interest, and\npossesses this ingenuity and these gifts. More than any other poet he\nkeeps a kind of speculation alive in the now large body of sentimental,\neager-minded people, who no longer can find in a definite religion a\nform and language for their imaginative life. That this service is\ngreatly appreciated speaks well for the ineradicable tendency in man to\nstudy himself and his destiny. We do not deny the achievement when we\npoint out its nature and limitations. It does not cease to be something\nbecause it is taken to be more than it is.\n\nIn every imaginative sphere the nineteenth century has been an era\nof chaos, as it has been an era of order and growing organization in\nthe spheres of science and of industry. An ancient doctrine of the\nphilosophers asserts that to chaos the world must ultimately return.\nAnd what is perhaps true of the cycles of cosmic change is certainly\ntrue of the revolutions of culture. Nothing lasts for ever: languages,\narts, and religions disintegrate with time. Yet the perfecting of such\nforms is the only criterion of progress; the destruction of them the\nchief evidence of decay. Perhaps fate intends that we should have, in\nour imaginative decadence, the consolation of fancying that we are\nstill progressing, and that the disintegration of religion and the\narts is bringing us nearer to the protoplasm of sensation and passion.\nIf energy and actuality are all that we care for, chaos is as good as\norder, and barbarism as good as discipline--better, perhaps, since\nimpulse is not then restrained within any bounds of reason or beauty.\nBut if the powers of the human mind are at any time adequate to the\ntask of digesting experience, clearness and order inevitably supervene.\nThe moulds of thought are imposed upon Nature, and the conviction of a\ndefinite truth arises together with the vision of a supreme perfection.\nIt is only at such periods that the human animal vindicates his title\nof rational. If such an epoch should return, people will no doubt\nretrace our present gropings with interest and see in them gradual\napproaches to their own achievement. Whitman and Browning might well\nfigure then as representatives of our time. For the merit of being\nrepresentative cannot be denied them. The mind of our age, like theirs,\nis choked with materials, emotional, and inconclusive. They merely\naggravate our characteristics, and their success with us is due partly\nto their own absolute strength and partly to our common weakness. If\nonce, however, this imaginative weakness could be overcome, and a form\nfound for the crude matter of experience, men might look back from the\nheight of a new religion and a new poetry upon the present troubles of\nthe spirit; and perhaps even these things might then be pleasant to\nremember.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nEMERSON\n\n\nThose who knew Emerson, or who stood so near to his time and to his\ncircle that they caught some echo of his personal influence, did\nnot judge him merely as a poet or philosopher, nor identify his\nefficacy with that of his writings. His friends and neighbours, the\ncongregations he preached to in his younger days, the audiences that\nafterward listened to his lectures, all agreed in a veneration for his\nperson which had nothing to do with their understanding or acceptance\nof his opinions. They flocked to him and listened to his word, not\nso much for the sake of its absolute meaning as for the atmosphere\nof candour, purity, and serenity that hung about it, as about a sort\nof sacred music. They felt themselves in the presence of a rare and\nbeautiful spirit, who was in communion with a higher world. More than\nthe truth his teaching might express, they valued the sense it gave\nthem of a truth that was inexpressible. They became aware, if we may\nsay so, of the ultra-violet rays of his spectrum, of the inaudible\nhighest notes of his gamut, too pure and thin for common ears.\n\nThis effect was by no means due to the possession on the part of\nEmerson of the secret of the universe, or even of a definite conception\nof ultimate truth. He was not a prophet who had once for all climbed\nhis Sinai or his Tabor, and having there beheld the transfigured\nreality, descended again to make authoritative report of it to the\nworld. Far from it. At bottom he had no doctrine at all. The deeper he\nwent and the more he tried to grapple with fundamental conceptions,\nthe vaguer and more elusive they became in his hands. Did he know what\nhe meant by Spirit or the \"Over-Soul\"? Could he say what he understood\nby the terms, so constantly on his lips, Nature, Law, God, Benefit, or\nBeauty? He could not, and the consciousness of that incapacity was so\nlively within him that he never attempted to give articulation to his\nphilosophy. His finer instinct kept him from doing that violence to his\ninspiration.\n\nThe source of his power lay not in his doctrine, but in his\ntemperament, and the rare quality of his wisdom was due less to his\nreason than to his imagination. Reality eluded him; he had neither\ndiligence nor constancy enough to master and possess it; but his mind\nwas open to all philosophic influences, from whatever quarter they\nmight blow; the lessons of science and the hints of poetry worked\nthemselves out in him to a free and personal religion. He differed from\nthe plodding many, not in knowing things better, but in having more\nways of knowing them. His grasp was not particularly firm, he was far\nfrom being, like a Plato or an Aristotle, past master in the art and\nthe science of life. But his mind was endowed with unusual plasticity,\nwith unusual spontaneity and liberty of movement--it was a fairyland\nof thoughts and fancies. He was like a young god making experiments in\ncreation: he blotched the work, and always began again on a new and\nbetter plan. Every day he said, \"Let there be light,\" and every day the\nlight was new. His sun, like that of Heraclitus, was different every\nmorning.\n\nWhat seemed, then, to the more earnest and less critical of his\nhearers a revelation from above was in truth rather an insurrection\nfrom beneath, a shaking loose from convention, a disintegration of\nthe normal categories of reason in favour of various imaginative\nprinciples, on which the world might have been built, if it had been\nbuilt differently. This gift of revolutionary thinking allowed new\naspects, hints of wider laws, premonitions of unthought of fundamental\nunities to spring constantly into view. But such visions were\nnecessarily fleeting, because the human mind had long before settled\nits grammar, and discovered, after much groping and many defeats, the\ngeneral forms in which experience will allow itself to be stated. These\ngeneral forms are the principles of common sense and positive science,\nno less imaginative in their origin than those notions which we now\ncall transcendental, but grown prosaic, like the metaphors of common\nspeech, by dint of repetition.\n\nYet authority, even of this rational kind, sat lightly upon Emerson. To\nreject tradition and think as one might have thought if no man had ever\nexisted before was indeed the aspiration of the Transcendentalists, and\nalthough Emerson hardly regarded himself as a member of that school,\nhe largely shared its tendency and passed for its spokesman. Without\nprotesting against tradition, he smilingly eluded it in his thoughts,\nuntamable in their quiet irresponsibility. He fled to his woods or\nto his \"pleached garden,\" to be the creator of his own worlds in\nsolitude and freedom. No wonder that he brought thence to the tightly\nconventional minds of his contemporaries a breath as if from paradise.\nHis simplicity in novelty, his profundity, his ingenuous ardour must\nhave seemed to them something heavenly, and they may be excused if they\nthought they detected inspiration even in his occasional thin paradoxes\nand guileless whims. They were stifled with conscience and he brought\nthem a breath of Nature; they were surfeited with shallow controversies\nand he gave them poetic truth.\n\nImagination, indeed, is his single theme. As a preacher might under\nevery text enforce the same lessons of the gospel, so Emerson traces\nin every sphere the same spiritual laws of experience--compensation,\ncontinuity, the self-expression of the Soul in the forms of Nature\nand of society, until she finally recognizes herself in her own work\nand sees its beneficence and beauty. His constant refrain is the\nomnipotence of imaginative thought; its power first to make the world,\nthen to understand it, and finally to rise above it. All Nature is\nan embodiment of our native fancy, all history a drama in which the\ninnate possibilities of the spirit are enacted and realized. While\nthe conflict of life and the shocks of experience seem to bring us\nface to face with an alien and overwhelming power, reflection can\nhumanize and rationalize that power by conceiving its laws; and with\nthis recognition of the rationality of all things comes the sense of\ntheir beauty and order. The destruction which Nature seems to prepare\nfor our special hopes is thus seen to be the victory of our impersonal\ninterests. To awaken in us this spiritual insight, an elevation of mind\nwhich is at once an act of comprehension and of worship, to substitute\nit for lower passions and more servile forms of intelligence--that\nis Emerson's constant effort. All his resources of illustration,\nobservation, and rhetoric are used to deepen and clarify this sort of\nwisdom.\n\nSuch thought is essentially the same that is found in the German\nromantic or idealistic philosophers, with whom Emerson's affinity\nis remarkable, all the more as he seems to have borrowed little\nor nothing from their works. The critics of human nature, in the\neighteenth century, had shown how much men's ideas depend on their\npredispositions, on the character of their senses and the habits of\ntheir intelligence. Seizing upon this thought and exaggerating it, the\nromantic philosophers attributed to the spirit of man the omnipotence\nwhich had belonged to God, and felt that in this way they were\nreasserting the supremacy of mind over matter and establishing it upon\na safe and rational basis.\n\nThe Germans were great system-makers, and Emerson cannot rival them in\nthe sustained effort of thought by which they sought to reinterpret\nevery sphere of being according to their chosen principles. But he\nsurpassed them in an instinctive sense of what he was doing. He never\nrepresented his poetry as science, nor countenanced the formation of\na new sect that should nurse the sense of a private and mysterious\nillumination, and relight the fagots of passion and prejudice. He\nnever tried to seek out and defend the universal implications of his\nideas, and never wrote the book he had once planned on the law of\ncompensation, foreseeing, we may well believe, the sophistries in which\nhe would have been directly involved. He fortunately preferred a fresh\nstatement on a fresh subject. A suggestion once given, the spirit once\naroused to speculation, a glimpse once gained of some ideal harmony,\nhe chose to descend again to common sense and to touch the earth for a\nmoment before another flight. The faculty of idealization was itself\nwhat he valued. Philosophy for him was rather a moral energy flowering\ninto sprightliness of thought than a body of serious and defensible\ndoctrines. In practising transcendental speculation only in this poetic\nand sporadic fashion, Emerson retained its true value and avoided its\ngreatest danger. He secured the freedom and fertility of his thought\nand did not allow one conception of law or one hint of harmony to\nsterilize the mind and prevent the subsequent birth within it of other\nideas, no less just and imposing than their predecessors. For we are\nnot dealing at all in such a philosophy with matters of fact or with\nsuch verifiable truths as exclude their opposites. We are dealing only\nwith imagination, with the art of conception, and with the various\nforms in which reflection, like a poet, may compose and recompose human\nexperience.\n\nA certain disquiet mingled, however, in the minds of Emerson's\ncontemporaries with the admiration they felt for his purity and\ngenius. They saw that he had forsaken the doctrines of the Church; and\nthey were not sure whether he held quite unequivocally any doctrine\nwhatever. We may not all of us share the concern for orthodoxy which\nusually caused this puzzled alarm: we may understand that it was not\nEmerson's vocation to be definite and dogmatic in religion any more\nthan in philosophy. Yet that disquiet will not, even for us, wholly\ndisappear. It is produced by a defect which naturally accompanies\nimagination in all but the greatest minds. I mean disorganization.\nEmerson not only conceived things in new ways, but he seemed to think\nthe new ways might cancel and supersede the old. His imagination was\nto invalidate the understanding. That inspiration which should come\nto fulfil seemed too often to come to destroy. If he was able so\nconstantly to stimulate us to fresh thoughts, was it not because he\ndemolished the labour of long ages of reflection? Was not the startling\neffect of much of his writing due to its contradiction to tradition and\nto common sense?\n\nSo long as he is a poet and in the enjoyment of his poetic license, we\ncan blame this play of mind only by a misunderstanding. It is possible\nto think otherwise than as common sense thinks; there are other\ncategories beside those of science. When we employ them we enlarge\nour lives. We add to the world of fact any number of worlds of the\nimagination in which human nature and the eternal relations of ideas\nmay be nobly expressed. So far our imaginative fertility is only a\nbenefit: it surrounds us with the congenial and necessary radiation\nof art and religion. It manifests our moral vitality in the bosom of\nNature.\n\nBut sometimes imagination invades the sphere of understanding and seems\nto discredit its indispensable work. Common sense, we are allowed to\ninfer, is a shallow affair: true insight changes all that. When so\napplied, poetic activity is not an unmixed good. It loosens our hold on\nfact and confuses our intelligence, so that we forget that intelligence\nhas itself every prerogative of imagination, and has besides the\nsanction of practical validity. We are made to believe that since the\nunderstanding is something human and conditioned, something which might\nhave been different, as the senses might have been different, and\nwhich we may yet, so to speak, get behind--therefore the understanding\nought to be abandoned. We long for higher faculties, neglecting those\nwe have, we yearn for intuition, closing our eyes upon experience. We\nbecome mystical.\n\nMysticism, as we have said, is the surrender of a category of thought\nbecause we divine its relativity. As every new category, however, must\nshare this reproach, the mystic is obliged in the end to give them all\nup, the poetic and moral categories no less than the physical, so that\nthe end of his purification is the atrophy of his whole nature, the\nemptying of his whole heart and mind to make room, as he thinks, for\nGod. By attacking the authority of the understanding as the organon\nof knowledge, by substituting itself for it as the herald of a deeper\ntruth, the imagination thus prepares its own destruction. For if the\nunderstanding is rejected because it cannot grasp the absolute, the\nimagination and all its works--art, dogma, worship--must presently be\nrejected for the same reason. Common sense and poetry must both go by\nthe board, and conscience must follow after: for all these are human\nand relative. Mysticism will be satisfied only with the absolute, and\nas the absolute, by its very definition, is not representable by any\nspecific faculty, it must be approached through the abandonment of all.\nThe lights of life must be extinguished that the light of the absolute\nmay shine, and the possession of everything in general must be secured\nby the surrender of everything in particular.\n\nThe same diffidence, however, the same constant renewal of sincerity\nwhich kept Emerson's flights of imagination near to experience, kept\nhis mysticism also within bounds. A certain mystical tendency is\npervasive with him, but there are only one or two subjects on which\nhe dwells with enough constancy and energy of attention to make his\nmystical treatment of them pronounced. One of these is the question\nof the unity of all minds in the single soul of the universe, which\nis the same in all creatures; another is the question of evil and\nof its evaporation in the universal harmony of things. Both these\nideas suggest themselves at certain turns in every man's experience,\nand might receive a rational formulation. But they are intricate\nsubjects, obscured by many emotional prejudices, so that the labour,\nimpartiality, and precision which would be needed to elucidate them are\nto be looked for in scholastic rather than in inspired thinkers, and in\nEmerson least of all. Before these problems he is alternately ingenuous\nand rhapsodical, and in both moods equally helpless. Individuals\nno doubt exist, he says to himself. But, ah! Napoleon is in every\nschoolboy. In every squatter in the western prairies we shall find an\nowner--\n\n    \"Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain,\n    Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.\"\n\nBut how? we may ask. Potentially? Is it because any mind, were it\ngiven the right body and the right experience, were it made over, in a\nword, into another mind, would resemble that other mind to the point\nof identity? Or is it that our souls are already so largely similar\nthat we are subject to many kindred promptings and share many ideals\nunrealizable in our particular circumstances? But then we should simply\nbe saying that if what makes men different were removed, men would be\nindistinguishable, or that, in so far as they are now alike, they can\nunderstand one another by summoning up their respective experiences\nin the fancy. There would be no mysticism in that, but at the same\ntime, alas, no eloquence, no paradox, and, if we must say the word, no\nnonsense.\n\nOn the question of evil, Emerson's position is of the same kind. There\nis evil, of course, he tells us. Experience is sad. There is a crack\nin everything that God has made. But, ah! the laws of the universe\nare sacred and beneficent. Without them nothing good could arise. All\nthings, then, are in their right places and the universe is perfect\nabove our querulous tears. Perfect? we may ask. But perfect from what\npoint of view, in reference to what ideal? To its own? To that of a\nman who renouncing himself and all naturally dear to him, ignoring\nthe injustice, suffering, and impotence in the world, allows his will\nand his conscience to be hypnotized by the spectacle of a necessary\nevolution, and lulled into cruelty by the pomp and music of a tragic\nshow? In that case the evil is not explained, it is forgotten; it is\nnot cured, but condoned. We have surrendered the category of the better\nand the worse, the deepest foundation of life and reason; we have\nbecome mystics on the one subject on which, above all others, we ought\nto be men.\n\nTwo forces may be said to have carried Emerson in this mystical\ndirection; one, that freedom of his imagination which we have already\nnoted, and which kept him from the fear of self-contradiction; the\nother the habit of worship inherited from his clerical ancestors and\nenforced by his religious education. The spirit of conformity, the\nunction, the loyalty even unto death inspired by the religion of\nJehovah, were dispositions acquired by too long a discipline and rooted\nin too many forms of speech, of thought, and of worship for a man like\nEmerson, who had felt their full force, ever to be able to lose them.\nThe evolutions of his abstract opinions left that habit unchanged.\nUnless we keep this circumstance in mind, we shall not be able to\nunderstand the kind of elation and sacred joy, so characteristic of\nhis eloquence, with which he propounds laws of Nature and aspects of\nexperience which, viewed in themselves, afford but an equivocal support\nto moral enthusiasm. An optimism so persistent and unclouded as his\nwill seem at variance with the description he himself gives of human\nlife, a description coloured by a poetic idealism, but hardly by an\noptimistic bias.\n\nWe must remember, therefore, that this optimism is a pious tradition,\noriginally justified by the belief in a personal God and in a\nprovidential government of affairs for the ultimate and positive good\nof the elect, and that the habit of worship survived in Emerson as an\ninstinct after those positive beliefs had faded into a recognition\nof \"spiritual laws.\" We must remember that Calvinism had known how\nto combine an awestruck devotion to the Supreme Being with no very\nroseate picture of the destinies of mankind, and for more than two\nhundred years had been breeding in the stock from which Emerson came\na willingness to be, as the phrase is, \"damned for the glory of God.\"\nWhat wonder, then, that when, for the former inexorable dispensation\nof Providence, Emerson substituted his general spiritual and natural\nlaws, he should not have felt the spirit of worship fail within him?\nOn the contrary, his thought moved in the presence of moral harmonies\nwhich seemed to him truer, more beautiful, and more beneficent than\nthose of the old theology. An independent philosopher would not have\nseen in those harmonies an object of worship or a sufficient basis\nfor optimism. But he was not an independent philosopher, in spite\nof his belief in independence. He inherited the problems and the\npreoccupations of the theology from which he started, being in this\nrespect like the German idealists, who, with all their pretence of\nabsolute metaphysics, were in reality only giving elusive and abstract\nforms to traditional theology. Emerson, too, was not primarily a\nphilosopher, but a Puritan mystic with a poetic fancy and a gift for\nobservation and epigram, and he saw in the laws of Nature, idealized by\nhis imagination, only a more intelligible form of the divinity he had\nalways recognized and adored. His was not a philosophy passing into a\nreligion, but a religion expressing itself as a philosophy and veiled,\nas at its setting it descended the heavens, in various tints of poetry\nand science.\n\nIf we ask ourselves what was Emerson's relation to the scientific and\nreligious movements of his time, and what place he may claim in the\nhistory of opinion, we must answer that he belonged very little to the\npast, very little to the present, and almost wholly to that abstract\nsphere into which mystical or philosophic aspiration has carried a few\nmen in all ages. The religious tradition in which he was reared was\nthat of Puritanism, but of a Puritanism which, retaining its moral\nintensity and metaphysical abstraction, had minimized its doctrinal\nexpression and become Unitarian. Emerson was indeed the Psyche of\nPuritanism, \"the latest-born and fairest vision far\" of all that \"faded\nhierarchy.\" A Puritan whose religion was all poetry, a poet whose\nonly pleasure was thought, he showed in his life and personality the\nmeagreness, the constraint, the frigid and conscious consecration which\nbelonged to his clerical ancestors, while his inmost impersonal spirit\nranged abroad over the fields of history and Nature, gathering what\nideas it might, and singing its little snatches of inspired song.\n\nThe traditional element was thus rather an external and unessential\ncontribution to Emerson's mind; he had the professional tinge, the\ndecorum, the distinction of an old-fashioned divine; he had also the\nhabit of writing sermons, and he had the national pride and hope of a\nreligious people that felt itself providentially chosen to establish a\nfree and godly commonwealth in a new world. For the rest, he separated\nhimself from the ancient creed of the community with a sense rather of\nrelief than of regret. A literal belief in Christian doctrines repelled\nhim as unspiritual, as manifesting no understanding of the meaning\nwhich, as allegories, those doctrines might have to a philosophic and\npoetical spirit. Although as a clergy-man he was at first in the habit\nof referring to the Bible and its lessons as to a supreme authority, he\nhad no instinctive sympathy with the inspiration of either the Old or\nthe New Testament; in Hafiz or Plutarch, in Plato or Shakespeare, he\nfound more congenial stuff.\n\nWhile he thus preferred to withdraw, without rancour and without\ncontempt, from the ancient fellowship of the church, he assumed an\nattitude hardly less cool and deprecatory toward the enthusiasms of the\nnew era. The national ideal of democracy and freedom had his entire\nsympathy; he allowed himself to be drawn into the movement against\nslavery; he took a curious and smiling interest in the discoveries of\nnatural science and in the material progress of the age. But he could\ngo no farther. His contemplative nature, his religious training, his\ndispersed reading, made him stand aside from the life of the world,\neven while he studied it with benevolent attention. His heart was fixed\non eternal things, and he was in no sense a prophet for his age or\ncountry. He belonged by nature to that mystical company of devout souls\nthat recognize no particular home and are dispersed throughout history,\nalthough not without intercommunication. He felt his affinity to the\nHindoos and the Persians, to the Platonists and the Stoics. Like them\nhe remains \"a friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit.\"\nIf not a star of the first magnitude, he is certainly a fixed star\nin the firmament of philosophy. Alone as yet among Americans, he may\nbe said to have won a place there, if not by the originality of his\nthought, at least by the originality and beauty of the expression he\ngave to thoughts that are old and imperishable.\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nA RELIGION OF DISILLUSION\n\n\n_Man has henceforth this cause of pride: that he has bethought\nhimself of justice in a universe without justice, and has put justice\nthere_.--JEAN LAHOR.\n\n\nThe break-up of traditional systems and the disappearance of a\nrecognized authority from the religious world have naturally led to\nmany attempts at philosophic reconstruction. Most of these are timid\ncompromises, which leave first principles untouched and contain in a\nveiled form all the old contradictions. Others are advertisements of\nsome personal notion, some fresh discovery, proposed as a panacea and\nas an equivalent for all the heritage of human wisdom. A few thinkers,\nhowever, inspired by more comprehensive sympathies, and at the same\ntime free from preconceptions, have come nearer to the fundamental\nelements of the problem and have given out suggestions which, even if\nnot satisfactory in their actual form, are helpful and interesting in\ntheir tendency. Such a thinker is the contemporary French poet, Jean\nLahor, who, in a volume of thoughts entitled \"La gloire du n\u00e9ant,\" has\ngathered together three philosophical points of view, we might almost\nsay three religions, and combined their issues in a way which may now\nseem again new, but which in reality is as old as wisdom.\n\nThe form is literary and the outcome in a sense negative; there is\nno attempt to put new wine into old bottles, no apologetic tone, no\nunction. Experience is consulted afresh, without preoccupation as to\nthe results of reflection; and if these results are religious, it is\nbecause any reasoned appreciation of life is bound to be a religion,\neven if no conventionally religious elements are imported into the\nproblem. In fact, those prophets who have said that the Sabbath was\nmade for man and who have given moral functions to historical religion,\nas well as those philosophers who have best understood its nature, have\nseemed irreligious to their contemporaries, because they have looked\nupon religion as an interpretation of reality, not as a quasi-reality\nexisting by itself and vouched for merely by tradition and miracle.\nReligion is an imaginative echo of things natural and moral: and if\nthis echo is to be well attuned, our ear must first be attentive to the\nnatural sounds of which, in religion, we are to develop the harmony.\n\nIt is, therefore, not an objection to Jean Lahor's competence to\ngather for us the elements of a religion that he is a poet rather\nthan a theologian and an observer rather than a philosopher, or that\nhe presents his intuitions without technical apparatus in a series of\nhighly coloured epigrams and little pictures. On the contrary such\nsimplicity and directness are an advantage when, as in this case, the\nguiding inspiration is religious. It is religious because, on the one\nhand, it is imaginative; we are asking ourselves everywhere what Nature\nsays to us and what we are to say in reply; and on the other hand,\nbecause it is rational, and these messages and reactions are to be\nunified into a single science and a single morality. The logical scheme\nof the system is not made explicit: there is no argumentation and no\nanswers are offered to the objections that might naturally suggest\nthemselves. But the sayings are so arranged and made so to progress\nin tone and subject that a system of philosophy is clearly implied in\nthem; and the essence of this system is at times briefly expressed.\n\nAll, as it behooves a poet, is the transcript of personal experience.\nWe must not look for the inclusion of elements, however important\nin themselves, which the author has not found in his own life. The\nomissions are in this case as characteristic as the inclusions. We\nlook in vain, for instance, for any appreciation of Christianity or\nof all that side of human nature and experience on which faith in\nChristianity rests; we hear nothing of love and its ideal suggestions,\nnothing of the aspiration to immortality, nothing of the whole\ntranscendental attitude toward experience. These are grave omissions.\nThey may seem to condemn Jean Lahor, if not as a general philosopher,\nat least as a representative of an age in which religious thought has\nso largely centred about these very questions. But our century has\nbeen an age of confusion; and a man who at its end wishes to attain\nsome coherence of life and mind, must begin by letting drop much that\nthe age has held in solution. It is by not being an average that a man\nmay become a guide. Only by manifesting the direction of change and\nembodying that change in his own person can he be a sign of progress.\nIt remains for time to show whether what survives in a given man has\nfortune on its side and contains the inward elements of vitality.\nThe presumption in this case, when we abstract from our personal\nprejudices, will seem to be wholly in favour of our author.\n\nThe three influences to which he has yielded and which have moulded\nhis mind are the pantheism of the Hindoos, our contemporary natural\nscience, and the ideal of Greek civilization. These three elements\nmight at first sight seem incongruous, and the principle of selection\nby which they are preferred above all others might seem as hard\nto find as the principle of union by which they are to be welded\ninto one philosophy. But a little study of these maxims and of the\nautobiographical sketch which precedes them will, I think, enable\nus to discover both the principles we miss. The selection of the\nthree influences in question is due to the poetical temperament and\nscientific tastes of the author, to an individual disposition and to\nstudies which drew him successively to these different sources of\ninstruction. The principle of synthesis, or rather, we should perhaps\nsay, of subordination, by which these various habits of thought are\ncombined in one philosophy, is a moral principle. It is a native power\nto conceive the ideal and a native loyalty to the ideal when once\nconceived. This moral enthusiasm is in no sense vapid or sentimental;\nit hardly comes to the surface in any direct or enthusiastic\nexpression; but it is betrayed and proved to be sincere, now by a\npassionate pessimism about the natural world, now in detailed and\npractical demands for a better state of society. A genial individuality\nand a well-reasoned form of pessimism are, then, the two factors in the\ndevelopment of this interesting thinker, the two keys to the apparently\ncontradictory affinities of his mind.\n\nOur author, as we have said, is a poet, and even if his verses seem\nat times a little thin and rhetorical, they prove abundantly what is\nevident also in his prose, namely, that he has keen sensations, that\nimages impress themselves upon him with force, and that any scene\nwhose elements are gorgeous and picturesque or which is weighted with\ntragic emotion, holds his attention and awakens in him the impulse to\nliterary expression. But this plastic impulse is not powerful, or finds\nin the environment insufficient support. Great art and great creative\nachievements are rare in the world, and come for the most part only\nin those moments and in those places where an unusual concentration\nof mental energy and the friction of many kindred minds allow the\nscattered sparks of inspiration to merge and to leap into flame. We\nneed not wonder, therefore, that the \u00e6sthetic sensibility of our author\nis greater than his artistic success. Of which of our contemporaries\nmight we not say the same thing? Jean Lahor's attention is analytic; he\nis absorbed by his model, he does not absorb it and master it by his\nart. He has not enough vigour and determination of thought to create\neternal forms out of the swift hints of perception. He watches rather\npassively the flight of his ideas, conscious of their vivacity, of\ntheir beauty, but most of all, alas! of their flight. His last word as\nan observer, his message as a poet, is that all things are illusion.\nThey fade, they pass into one another, the place thereof knows them no\nmore. Nothing of them remains, absolutely nothing, save the universal\nindeterminate force that breeds and devours them perpetually.\n\nA mind thus gifted and thus limited would naturally feel its affinity\nto Oriental pantheism as soon as that phase of thought and feeling came\nwithin the radius of its vision. Jean Lahor seems early to have felt an\nattraction toward the speculation of the East, and his prolonged study\nof that literature could of course only intensify the natural bent of\nhis mind, and give his thought a more pronounced pantheistic colouring.\nHad he been wholly absorbed, however, in such mystical contemplation,\nwe should have had little to study in him that was new; only one more\ncase of sensibility and fancy overpowering a timid intellect, one more\ngifted nature arrested at the stage of bewilderment.\n\nBut as Jean Lahor is only a pseudonym for the man, so the sympathy with\nIndia which that name indicates is only one phase of the thinker. Our\npoet pursued the study of medicine; he realized in the concrete the\norderly complexities of natural law and the sordid realities of human\nlife. The vague, sensuous enthusiasm with which he had followed the\nflux of images in his fancy was now sobered by an accurate knowledge\nof the miseries, the defeats, the shames that lie beneath. His poetic\nsense of illusion was deepened into a moral sense of wrong. The same\nkeenness of perception, the same power of graphic expression, which\nhad made him dwell on the luxuriance of Nature now made him paint\nthe irony and brutality of life. There is here and there a touch of\nbitterness and exaggeration in the satire, as if the man of science\nfelt a personal resentment against a world that had so cheated the poet.\n\nYet the two descriptions are far from inconsistent; we have merely\nlearned to understand as a process and to conceive as an inner\nexperience what before we had admired as a spectacle. A scientific\nview has come to give definition and coherence to phenomena which a\npoetical pantheism merely saluted as they passed and disappeared into\nthe primordial darkness, or, if you like, into the primordial light.\nThe two systems differ in tone and in method, but not in result.\nNatural science, like pantheism, presents us with a universal flux, in\nwhich something, we known not what, moves, we know not why, we know\nnot whither. The method of this transformation may be more or less\naccurately described, the general sense of continuity and necessity\nmay find a more or less specific expression in the various fields\nof experience; yet the outcome is still the same whirligig. We find\nourselves in either case confronted by the same _gloire du n\u00e9ant_, by a\nnothing that lives and that is beautiful in its nothingness.\n\nThese two elements in Jean Lahor's philosophy, the Oriental and\nthe scientific, would thus tend alike to represent man with his\nintelligence as the product and the captive of an irrational engine\ncalled the universe. Many a man accepts this solution and reconciles\nhimself as best he can to the truth as it appears to him. What is\nthere, he may say, so dreadful in mutability? What so intolerable in\nultimate ignorance? We know what we need to know, and things last,\nperhaps, as long as they deserve to last. So, once convinced that his\nnaturalistic philosophy is final, a man will silence the demands of\nhis own reason and call them chimerical. There is nothing to which\nmen, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves. They\nwill put up with present suffering, with the certainty of death, with\nsolitude, with shame, with wrong, with the expectation of eternal\ndamnation. In the face of such things, they can not only be happy\nfor the moment, but solemnly thank God for having brought them into\nexistence. Habit is stronger than reason, and the respect for fact\nstronger than the respect for the ideal; nor would the ideal and reason\never prevail did they not make up in persistence what they lack in\nmomentary energy.\n\nIt would have been easy, therefore, for Jean Lahor, as for the rest\nof us, to remain in the naturalistic world, had he had only poetical\nintuition, or only scientific training, or only both. But there was\nalso in him a third and a moral element, an impulse toward ideal\ncreation, a spark of Promethean fire. He felt a genuine admiration\nfor that humane courage which made the Greeks, for all their clear\nconsciousness of fate, hopeful without illusions and independent\nwithout rebellion. In the bosom of the intractable infinite he still\ndistinguished the work of human reason--the cosmos of society,\ncharacter, and art--like a Noah's ark floating in the Deluge. His\nimagination had succumbed to the dream of sense; his art had not\nattempted the task of imposing a meaning or an immortal form upon\nNature: but his conscience and his political instinct had held out\nagainst the fascinations of Maya. The Greek asserted himself here\nagainst the barbarian, the moralist against the naturalist. Nor was\nthis a merely accidental addition or an inconsistency. It was the\nexplicit expression of that creative reason which had all along chafed\nunder the dominion of brute fact and of perpetual illusion. The same\nmoral energy which had made him a pessimist in the presence of Nature\nmade him an idealist at the threshold of life.\n\nFor why should the natural world ever come to be called a world of\nillusion? To call the vivid objects of sense illusory is to compare\nthem to their disadvantage with something else which we conceive as\nmore worthy of the title of reality. This deeper reality must be\nsomething ideal, something permanent, something conceived by the\nintellect, and which only a man having faith in the intellect could\nprefer to the objects of sense or fancy. The Hindoos that our author\nthinks so much akin to himself would hardly understand this rational\nbias of his thought, this foregone dissatisfaction with a world of\ninfinite change and indefinite structure. They would accept as a\nnatural fact that perpetual flux which he emphasizes as a paradox and\nlaments as a calamity. In spite of his studied immersion in sensuous\nillusion, he is still a native of the sphere of intelligible things,\nand it is only the difficulty of finding the permanent beings which he\nis inclined to look for and in the presence of which he could alone\nrest, that makes him linger with tragic self-consciousness in the\nregion of fleeting shadows. Accordingly we need not be surprised by the\nsomewhat forced and pessimistic note of a pantheism which is really\nexotic, and we may be prepared to find the plastic mind asserting\nitself ultimately against that system. So Jean Lahor, after the groups\nof thoughts which he puts under the title of \"L'orient\" and \"Le ciel du\nNord,\" adds another group under the title of \"Cosmos.\"\n\nIt would require a philosophical treatise of greater pretentions than\nthe little book before us to explain fully how this cosmos can arise\nout of the chaos of mechanical forces, and how the life and the work\nof reason can be superposed upon the life of sense and imagination.\nOur author's vision, fixed as it is on concrete images and expressed\nin detached epigrams, does not always extend to the philosophical\nrelations of his thoughts. Yet he offers, perhaps unconsciously, an\nadmirable variation of that revolution of thought which is associated\nwith the name of Kant. He proposes to us as the work of human\nintelligence what is commonly believed to be the work of God. The\nuniverse, apart from us, is a chaos, but it may be made a cosmos by our\nefforts and in our own minds. The laws of events, apart from us, are\ninhuman and irrational, but in the sphere of human activity they may be\ndominated by reason. We are a part of the blind energy behind Nature,\nbut by virtue of that energy we impose our purposes on the part of\nNature which we constitute or control. We can turn from the stupefying\ncontemplation of an alien universe to the building of our own house,\nknowing that, alien as it is, that universe has chanced to blow its\nenergy also into our will and to allow itself to be partially dominated\nby our intelligence. Our mere existence and the modicum of success we\nhave attained in society, science, and art are the living proofs of\nthis human power. The exercise of this power is the task appointed for\nus by the indomitable promptings of our own spirit, a task in which we\nneed not labour without hope.\n\nFor as the various plants and animals have found foothold and room\nto grow, maintaining for long periods the life congenial to them, so\nthe human race may be able to achieve something like its perfection\nand its ideal, maintaining for an indefinite time all that it values,\nnot by virtue of an alleged intentional protection of Providence, but\nby its own watchful art and exceptional good fortune. The ideal is\nitself a function of the reality and cannot therefore be altogether\nout of harmony with the conditions of its own birth and persistence.\nCivilization is precarious, but it need not be short-lived. Its\ninception is already a proof that there exists an equilibrium of forces\nwhich is favourable to its existence; and there is no reason to suppose\nthis equilibrium to be less stable than that which keeps the planets\nrevolving in their orbits. There is no impossibility, therefore, in\nthe hope that the human will may have time to understand itself, and,\nhaving understood itself, to realize the objects of its rational desire.\n\nWe see that the \"Cosmos\" here invoked is not inconsistent with the\n\"Nothingness\" before described. It is a triumph amid illusions, an\norder within chaos, _la gloire du n\u00e9ant_. This hint of a reconciliation\nbetween the practical optimism natural to an active being, and the\nspeculative pessimism inevitable to an intelligent one, is happier\nthan the muddled solutions of the same problem with which current\nphilosophies have made us familiar. The philosophy suggested by Jean\nLahor is that of Spinoza, if we subtract from the latter its mystical\noptimism, and add a broad appreciation of human culture. Man cannot\nattain his happiness by conforming to that which is hostile to himself;\nhe can thus attain only his dissolution. But by using what is hostile\nto himself for his own ends, as far as his energy extends, he can make\nan oasis for himself in Nature, and being at peace with himself, be at\npeace also with her.\n\nSuch a view has some relation to the real conditions of human life and\nprogress. What is called the higher optimism, on the contrary, commonly\nconsists in recounting all the evils of existence with a radiant\ncountenance, and telling us that they are all divine ministers of some\nglorious consummation; but what this consummation is never appears, and\nwe are reduced in practice to a mere glorification of impulse. We are\nsimply invited to accept the conditions of life as they are, and to\nfind in incidental successes a compensation for incidental or--as we\nshould say if we were sincere--for essential failures. Such an optimism\nimpairs by a kind of philosophic Nature-worship that moral loyalty\nwhich consists in giving the highest honour to the highest, not to the\nstrongest, things. It substitutes, as pantheism must, the study of\ntendencies for the study of ends, and the dignity of success for the\ndignity of justice.\n\nThis moral confusion our author avoids by his greater sincerity. He has\nunderstood how fundamentally that man is a dupe who does not begin by\nsettling his accounts with Despair. There is no safety in lies; there\nis no safety even in \"postulates.\" Let the worst of the truth appear,\nand when it has once seen the light, let it not be immediately wrapped\nup again in the swaddling clothes of an equivocal rhetoric. In such a\ndisingenuous course there is both temerity and cowardice: temerity in\nthrowing away the opportunity, always afforded by the recognition of\nfact, of cultivating the real faculties of human nature; cowardice in\nnot being willing to face with patience and dignity the situation in\nwhich fate appears to have put us. That Nature is immense, that her\nlaws are mechanical, that the existence and well-being of man upon\nearth are, from the point of view of the universe, an indifferent\nincident,--all this is in the first place to be clearly recognized. It\nis the lesson which both poetic contemplation and practical science had\ntaught Jean Lahor.\n\nHad he stopped to subject his opinion to metaphysical criticism, he\nwould not, I think, have found reason to change it. To subjectify\nthe universe is not to improve it, much less to dissolve it. The\nspace I call my idea has all the properties of the space I called\nmy environment; it has the same inevitable presence and the same\nfundamental validity. Because it is a law of our intelligence that\ntwo and two make four, and the implications of that law may be traced\nby abstract thought, the world which is subject to that arithmetical\nprinciple is not made more amenable to our higher demands than if it\nhad been arithmetical of its own sweet will. It is not made docile\nby being called our creature. Indeed, what is less docile to us than\nourselves? what less subject to our correction than the foundations of\nour own being? So when the Kantian philosophy teaches us to look upon\nthe enveloping universe as a figment of the understanding and on its\nlaws as results of mental synthesis and inference, we are still pursued\nby the inevitable presence of that figment and confronted involuntarily\nby that result. Nay, the conditions of our thought, like the\npredispositions of our characters, are the most fatal and inexorable of\nour limitations.\n\nWhy the world is as it is, whether of itself or by refraction in the\nmedium of our intellect, is not a question that affects the practical\nmoralist. What concerns him is that the laws of the world, whatever\ntheir origin, are fixed and unchangeable conditions of our happiness.\nWe cannot change the world, even if we boast to have made it; we must\nin any case learn to live with it, whether it be our parent or our\nchild. To veil its character with euphemisms or to supply its defects\nwith superstitious assumptions is a course unworthy of a brave man\nand abhorrent to a prudent one. What we should do is to make a modest\ninventory of our possessions and a just estimate of our powers in\norder to apply both, with what strength we have, to the realization of\nour ideals in society, in art, and in science. These will constitute\nour Cosmos. In building it--for there is none other that builds it\nfor us--we shall be carrying on the work of the only race that has\nyet seriously attempted to live rationally, the race to which we owe\nthe name and the idea of a Cosmos, as well as the beginnings of its\nrealization. We shall then be making that rare advance in wisdom which\nconsists in abandoning our illusions the better to attain our ideals.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\n\nTHE ELEMENTS AND FUNCTION OF POETRY\n\n\nIf a critic, in despair of giving a serious definition of poetry,\nshould be satisfied with saying that poetry is metrical discourse,\nhe would no doubt be giving an inadequate account of the matter, yet\nnot one of which he need be ashamed or which he should regard as\nsuperficial. Although a poem be not made by counting of syllables\nupon the fingers, yet \"numbers\" is the most poetical synonym we have\nfor verse, and \"measure\" the most significant equivalent for beauty,\nfor goodness, and perhaps even for truth. Those early and profound\nphilosophers, the followers of Pythagoras, saw the essence of all\nthings in number, and it was by weight, measure, and number, as we read\nin the Bible, that the Creator first brought Nature out of the void.\nEvery human architect must do likewise with his edifice; he must mould\nhis bricks or hew his stones into symmetrical solids and lay them over\none another in regular strata, like a poet's lines.\n\nMeasure is a condition of perfection, for perfection requires that\norder should be pervasive, that not only the whole before us should\nhave a form, but that every part in turn should have a form of its\nown, and that those parts should be coordinated among themselves as\nthe whole is coordinated with the other parts of some greater cosmos.\nLeibnitz lighted in his speculations upon a conception of organic\nnature which may be false as a fact, but which is excellent as an\nideal; he tells us that the difference between living and dead matter,\nbetween animals and machines, is that the former are composed of parts\nthat are themselves organic, every portion of the body being itself\na machine, and every portion of that machine still a machine, and so\n_ad infinitum_; whereas, in artificial bodies the organization is not\nin this manner infinitely deep. Fine Art, in this as in all things,\nimitates the method of Nature and makes its most beautiful works out of\nmaterials that are themselves beautiful. So that even if the difference\nbetween verse and prose consisted only in measure, that difference\nwould already be analogous to that between jewels and clay.\n\nThe stuff of language is words, and the sensuous material of words\nis sound; if language therefore is to be made perfect, its materials\nmust be made beautiful by being themselves subjected to a measure,\nand endowed with a form. It is true that language is a symbol for\nintelligence rather than a stimulus to sense, and accordingly the\nbeauties of discourse which commonly attract attention are merely the\nbeauties of the objects and ideas signified; yet the symbols have a\nsensible reality of their own, a euphony which appeals to our senses\nif we keep them open. The tongue will choose those forms of utterance\nwhich have a natural grace as mere sound and sensation; the memory will\nretain these catches, and they will pass and repass through the mind\nuntil they become types of instinctive speech and standards of pleasing\nexpression.\n\nThe highest form of such euphony is song; the singing voice gives\nto the sounds it utters the thrill of tonality,--a thrill itself\ndependent, as we know, on the numerical proportions of the vibrations\nthat it includes. But this kind of euphony and sensuous beauty, the\ndeepest that sounds can have, we have almost wholly surrendered in our\nspeech. Our intelligence has become complex, and language, to express\nour thoughts, must commonly be more rapid, copious, and abstract than\nis compatible with singing. Music at the same time has become complex\nalso, and when united with words, at one time disfigures them in the\nelaboration of its melody, and at another overpowers them in the volume\nof its sound. So that the art of singing is now in the same plight as\nthat of sculpture,--an abstract and conventional thing surviving by\nforce of tradition and of an innate but now impotent impulse, which\nunder simpler conditions would work itself out into the proper forms of\nthose arts. The truest kind of euphony is thus denied to our poetry. If\nany verses are still set to music, they are commonly the worst only,\nchosen for the purpose by musicians of specialized sensibility and\ninferior intelligence, who seem to be attracted only by tawdry effects\nof rhetoric and sentiment.\n\nWhen song is given up, there still remains in speech a certain sensuous\nquality, due to the nature and order of the vowels and consonants\nthat compose the sounds. This kind of euphony is not neglected by the\nmore dulcet poets, and is now so studied in some quarters that I have\nheard it maintained by a critic of relative authority that the beauty\nof poetry consists entirely in the frequent utterance of the sound\nof \"j\" and \"sh,\" and the consequent copious flow of saliva in the\nmouth. But even if saliva is not the whole essence of poetry, there\nis an unmistakable and fundamental diversity of effect in the various\nvocalization of different poets, which becomes all the more evident\nwhen we compare those who use different languages. One man's speech, or\none nation's, is compact, crowded with consonants, rugged, broken with\nemphatic beats; another man's, or nation's, is open, tripping, rapid,\nand even. So Byron, mingling in his boyish fashion burlesque with\nexquisite sentiment, contrasts English with Italian speech:--\n\n    \"I love the language, that soft bastard Latin\n     Which melts like kisses from a female mouth\n     And sounds as if it should be writ on satin\n     With syllables which breathe of the sweet South,\n     And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in\n     That not a single accent seems uncouth,\n     Like our harsh Northern whistling, granting guttural\n     Which we're obliged to hiss and spit and sputter all.\"\n\nAnd yet these contrasts, strong when we compare extreme cases, fade\nfrom our consciousness in the actual use of a mother-tongue. The\nfunction makes us unconscious of the instrument, all the more as it\nis an indispensable and almost invariable one. The sense of euphony\naccordingly attaches itself rather to another and more variable\nquality; the tune, or measure, or rhythm of speech. The elementary\nsounds are prescribed by the language we use, and the selection we\nmay make among those sounds is limited; but the arrangement of words\nis still undetermined, and by casting our speech into the moulds of\nmetre and rhyme we can give it a heightened power, apart from its\nsignificance. A tolerable definition of poetry, on its formal side,\nmight be found in this: that poetry is speech in which the instrument\ncounts as well as the meaning--poetry is speech for its own sake and\nfor its own sweetness. As common windows are intended only to admit\nthe light, but painted windows also to dye it, and to be an object\nof attention in themselves as well as a cause of visibility in other\nthings, so, while the purest prose is a mere vehicle of thought, verse,\nlike stained glass, arrests attention in its own intricacies, confuses\nit in its own glories, and is even at times allowed to darken and\npuzzle in the hope of casting over us a supernatural spell.\n\nLong passages in Shelley's \"Revolt of Islam\" and Keats' \"Endymion\"\nare poetical in this sense; the reader gathers, probably, no definite\nmeaning, but is conscious of a poetic medium, of speech euphonious\nand measured, and redolent of a kind of objectless passion which is\nlittle more than the sensation of the movement and sensuous richness\nof the lines. Such poetry is not great; it has, in fact, a tedious\nvacuity, and is unworthy of a mature mind; but it is poetical, and\ncould be produced only by a legitimate child of the Muse. It belongs to\nan apprenticeship, but in this case the apprenticeship of genius. It\nbears that relation to great poems which scales and aimless warblings\nbear to great singing--they test the essential endowment and fineness\nof the organ which is to be employed in the art. Without this sensuous\nbackground and ingrained predisposition to beauty, no art can reach the\ndeepest and most exquisite effects; and even without an intelligible\nsuperstructure these sensuous qualities suffice to give that thrill of\nexaltation, that suggestion of an ideal world, which we feel in the\npresence of any true beauty.\n\nThe sensuous beauty of words and their utterance in measure suffice,\ntherefore, for poetry of one sort--where these are there is something\nunmistakably poetical, although the whole of poetry, or the best of\npoetry, be not yet there. Indeed, in such works as \"The Revolt of\nIslam\" or \"Endymion\" there is already more than mere metre and sound;\nthere is the colour and choice of words, the fanciful, rich, or\nexquisite juxtaposition of phrases. The vocabulary and the texture of\nthe style are precious; affected, perhaps, but at any rate refined.\n\nThis quality, which is that almost exclusively exploited by the\nSymbolist, we may call euphuism--the choice of coloured words and\nrare and elliptical phrases. If great poets are like architects and\nsculptors, the euphuists are like gold-smiths and jewellers; their work\nis filigree in precious metals, encrusted with glowing stones. Now\neuphuism contributes not a little to the poetic effect of the tirades\nof Keats and Shelley; if we wish to see the power of versification\nwithout euphuism we may turn to the tirades of Pope, where metre and\neuphony are displayed alone, and we have the outline or skeleton of\npoetry without the filling.\n\n    \"In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,\n     One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.\"\n\nWe should hesitate to say that such writing was truly poetical; so\nthat some euphuism would seem to be necessary as well as metre, to the\nformal essence of poetry.\n\nAn example of this sort, however, takes us out of the merely verbal\ninto the imaginative region; the reason that Pope is hardly poetical to\nus is not that he is inharmonious,--not a defect of euphony,--but that\nhe is too intellectual and has an excess of mentality. It is easier for\nwords to be poetical without any thought, when they are felt merely\nas sensuous and musical, than for them to remain so when they convey\nan abstract notion,--especially if that notion be a tart and frigid\nsophism, like that of the couplet just quoted. The pyrotechnics of the\nintellect then take the place of the glow of sense, and the artifice\nof thought chills the pleasure we might have taken in the grace of\nexpression.\n\nIf poetry in its higher reaches is more philosophical than history,\nbecause it presents the memorable types of men and things apart from\nunmeaning circumstances, so in its primary substance and texture\npoetry is more philosophical than prose because it is nearer to our\nimmediate experience. Poetry breaks up the trite conceptions designated\nby current words into the sensuous qualities out of which those\nconceptions were originally put together. We name what we conceive and\nbelieve in, not what we see; things, not images; souls, not voices and\nsilhouettes. This naming, with the whole education of the senses which\nit accompanies, subserves the uses of life; in order to thread our way\nthrough the labyrinth of objects which assault us, we must make a great\nselection in our sensuous experience; half of what we see and hear we\nmust pass over as insignificant, while we piece out the other half with\nsuch an ideal complement as is necessary to turn it into a fixed and\nwell-ordered world. This labour of perception and understanding, this\nspelling of the material meaning of experience is enshrined in our\nwork-a-day language and ideas; ideas which are literally poetic in the\nsense that they are \"made\" (for every conception in an adult mind is a\nfiction), but which are at the same time prosaic because they are made\neconomically, by abstraction, and for use.\n\nWhen the child of poetic genius, who has learned this intellectual and\nutilitarian language in the cradle, goes afield and gathers for himself\nthe aspects of Nature, he begins to encumber his mind with the many\nliving impressions which the intellect rejected, and which the language\nof the intellect can hardly convey; he labours with his nameless burden\nof perception, and wastes himself in aimless impulses of emotion and\nrevery, until finally the method of some art offers a vent to his\ninspiration, or to such part of it as can survive the test of time and\nthe discipline of expression.\n\nThe poet retains by nature the innocence of the eye, or recovers it\neasily; he disintegrates the fictions of common perception into their\nsensuous elements, gathers these together again into chance groups as\nthe accidents of his environment or the affinities of his temperament\nmay conjoin them; and this wealth of sensation and this freedom of\nfancy, which make an extraordinary ferment in his ignorant heart,\npresently bubble over into some kind of utterance.\n\nThe fulness and sensuousness of such effusions bring them nearer to\nour actual perceptions than common discourse could come; yet they may\neasily seem remote, overloaded, and obscure to those accustomed to\nthink entirely in symbols, and never to be interrupted in the algebraic\nrapidity of their thinking by a moment's pause and examination of\nheart, nor ever to plunge for a moment into that torrent of sensation\nand imagery over which the bridge of prosaic associations habitually\ncarries us safe and dry to some conventional act. How slight that\nbridge commonly is, how much an affair of trestles and wire, we can\nhardly conceive until we have trained ourselves to an extreme sharpness\nof introspection. But psychologists have discovered, what laymen\ngenerally will confess, that we hurry by the procession of our mental\nimages as we do by the traffic of the street, intent on business,\ngladly forgetting the noise and movement of the scene, and looking\nonly for the corner we would turn or the door we would enter. Yet in\nour alertest moment the depths of the soul are still dreaming; the real\nworld stands drawn in bare outline against a background of chaos and\nunrest. Our logical thoughts dominate experience only as the parallels\nand meridians make a checker-board of the sea. They guide our voyage\nwithout controlling the waves, which toss for ever in spite of our\nability to ride over them to our chosen ends. Sanity is a madness put\nto good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.\n\nOut of the neglected riches of this dream the poet fetches his wares.\nHe dips into the chaos that underlies the rational shell of the world\nand brings up some superfluous image, some emotion dropped by the\nway, and reattaches it to the present object; he reinstates things\nunnecessary, he emphasizes things ignored, he paints in again into\nthe landscape the tints which the intellect has allowed to fade from\nit. If he seems sometimes to obscure a fact, it is only because he is\nrestoring an experience. We may observe this process in the simplest\ncases. When Ossian, mentioning the sun, says it is round as the shield\nof his fathers, the expression is poetical. Why? Because he has added\nto the word sun, in itself sufficient and unequivocal, other words,\nunnecessary for practical clearness, but serving to restore the\nindividuality of his perception and its associations in his mind.\nThere is no square sun with which the sun he is speaking of could be\nconfused; to stop and call it round is a luxury, a halting in the\nsensation for the love of its form. And to go on to tell us, what is\nwholly impertinent, that the shield of his fathers was round also, is\nto invite us to follow the chance wanderings of his fancy, to give us\na little glimpse of the stuffing of his own brain, or, we might almost\nsay, to turn over the pattern of his embroidery and show us the loose\nthreads hanging out on the wrong side. Such an escapade disturbs and\ninterrupts the true vision of the object, and a great poet, rising to\na perfect conception of the sun and forgetting himself, would have\ndisdained to make it; but it has a romantic and pathological interest,\nit restores an experience, and is in that measure poetical. We have\nbeen made to halt at the sensation, and to penetrate for a moment into\nits background of dream.\n\nBut it is not only thoughts or images that the poet draws in this\nway from the store of his experience, to clothe the bare form of\nconventional objects: he often adds to these objects a more subtle\nornament, drawn from the same source. For the first element which the\nintellect rejects in forming its ideas of things is the emotion which\naccompanies the perception; and this emotion is the first thing the\npoet restores. He stops at the image, because he stops to enjoy. He\nwanders into the by-paths of association because the by-paths are\ndelightful. The love of beauty which made him give measure and cadence\nto his words, the love of harmony which made him rhyme them, reappear\nin his imagination and make him select there also the material that\nis itself beautiful, or capable of assuming beautiful forms. The link\nthat binds together the ideas, sometimes so wide apart, which his wit\nassimilates, is most often the link of emotion; they have in common\nsome element of beauty or of horror.\n\nThe poet's art is to a great extent the art of intensifying emotions\nby assembling the scattered objects that naturally arouse them. He\nsees the affinities of things by seeing their common affinities with\npassion. As the guiding principle of practical thinking is some\ninterest, so that only what is pertinent to that interest is selected\nby the attention; as the guiding principle of scientific thinking\nis some connection of things in time or space, or some identity of\nlaw; so in poetic thinking the guiding principle is often a mood or a\nquality of sentiment. By this union of disparate things having a common\novertone of feeling, the feeling is itself evoked in all its strength;\nnay, it is often created for the first time, much as by a new mixture\nof old pigments Perugino could produce the unprecedented limpidity of\nhis colour, or Titian the unprecedented glow of his. Poets can thus\narouse sentiments finer than any which they have known, and in the act\nof composition become discoverers of new realms of delightfulness and\ngrief. Expression is a misleading term which suggests that something\npreviously known is rendered or imitated; whereas the expression is\nitself an original fact, the values of which are then referred to\nthe thing expressed, much as the honours of a Chinese mandarin are\nattributed retroactively to his parents. So the charm which a poet, by\nhis art of combining images and shades of emotion, casts over a scene\nor an action, is attached to the principal actor in it, who gets the\nbenefit of the setting furnished him by a well-stocked mind.\n\nThe poet is himself subject to this illusion, and a great part of what\nis called poetry, although by no means the best part of it, consists\nin this sort of idealization by proxy. We dye the world of our own\ncolour; by a pathetic fallacy, by a false projection of sentiment,\nwe soak Nature with our own feeling, and then celebrate her tender\nsympathy with our moral being. This aberration, as we see in the case\nof Wordsworth, is not inconsistent with a high development of both\nthe faculties which it confuses,--I mean vision and feeling. On the\ncontrary, vision and feeling, when most abundant and original, most\neasily present themselves in this undivided form. There would be need\nof a force of intellect which poets rarely possess to rationalize their\ninspiration without diminishing its volume: and if, as is commonly the\ncase, the energy of the dream and the passion in them is greater than\nthat of the reason, and they cannot attain true propriety and supreme\nbeauty in their works, they can, nevertheless, fill them with lovely\nimages and a fine moral spirit.\n\nThe pouring forth of both perceptive and emotional elements in their\nmixed and indiscriminate form gives to this kind of imagination the\ndirectness and truth which sensuous poetry possesses on a lower level.\nThe outer world bathed in the hues of human feeling, the inner world\nexpressed in the forms of things,--that is the primitive condition of\nboth before intelligence and the prosaic classification of objects have\nabstracted them and assigned them to their respective spheres. Such\nidentifications, on which a certain kind of metaphysics prides itself\nalso, are not discoveries of profound genius; they are exactly like\nthe observation of Ossian that the sun is round and that the shield of\nhis fathers was round too; they are disintegrations of conventional\nobjects, so that the original associates of our perceptions reappear;\nthen the thing and the emotion which chanced to be simultaneous\nare said to be one, and we return, unless a better principle of\norganization is substituted for the principle abandoned, to the\nchaos of a passive animal consciousness, where all is mixed together,\nprojected together, and felt as an unutterable whole.\n\nThe pathetic fallacy is a return to that early habit of thought by\nwhich our ancestors peopled the world with benevolent and malevolent\nspirits; what they felt in the presence of objects they took to be a\npart of the objects themselves. In returning to this natural confusion,\npoetry does us a service in that she recalls and consecrates those\nphases of our experience which, as useless to the understanding of\nmaterial reality, we are in danger of forgetting altogether. Therein\nis her vitality, for she pierces to the quick and shakes us out of our\nservile speech and imaginative poverty; she reminds us of all we have\nfelt, she invites us even to dream a little, to nurse the wonderful\nspontaneous creations which at every waking moment we are snuffing out\nin our brain. And the indulgence is no mere momentary pleasure; much\nof its exuberance clings afterward to our ideas; we see the more and\nfeel the more for that exercise; we are capable of finding greater\nentertainment in the common aspects of Nature and life. When the veil\nof convention is once removed from our eyes by the poet, we are better\nable to dominate any particular experience and, as it were, to change\nits scale, now losing ourselves in its infinitesimal texture, now in\nits infinite ramifications.\n\nIf the function of poetry, however, did not go beyond this recovery\nof sensuous and imaginative freedom, at the expense of disrupting our\nuseful habits of thought, we might be grateful to it for occasionally\nrelieving our numbness, but we should have to admit that it was nothing\nbut a relaxation; that spiritual discipline was not to be gained from\nit in any degree, but must be sought wholly in that intellectual\nsystem that builds the science of Nature with the categories of prose.\nSo conceived, poetry would deserve the judgment passed by Plato on\nall the arts of flattery and entertainment; it might be crowned as\ndelightful, but must be either banished altogether as meretricious\nor at least confined to a few forms and occasions where it might do\nlittle harm. The judgment of Plato has been generally condemned by\nphilosophers, although it is eminently rational, and justified by the\nsimplest principles of morals. It has been adopted instead, although\nunwittingly, by the practical and secular part of mankind, who look\nupon artists and poets as inefficient and brain-sick people under whose\nspell it would be a serious calamity to fall, although they may be\ncalled in on feast days as an ornament and luxury together with the\ncooks, hairdressers, and florists.\n\nSeveral circumstances, however, might suggest to us the possibility\nthat the greatest function of poetry may be still to find. Plato,\nwhile condemning Homer, was a kind of poet himself; his quarrel with\nthe followers of the Muse was not a quarrel with the goddess; and\nthe good people of Philistia, distrustful as they may be of profane\nart, pay undoubting honour to religion, which is a kind of poetry\nas much removed from their sphere as the midnight revels upon Mount\nCitheron, which, to be sure, were also religious in their inspiration.\nWhy, we may ask, these apparent inconsistencies? Why do our practical\nmen make room for religion in the background of their world? Why did\nPlato, after banishing the poets, poetize the universe in his prose?\nBecause the abstraction by which the world of science and of practice\nis drawn out of our experience, is too violent to satisfy even the\nthoughtless and vulgar; the ideality of the machine we call Nature,\nthe conventionality of the drama we call the world, are too glaring\nnot to be somehow perceived by all. Each must sometimes fall back upon\nthe soul; he must challenge this apparition with the thought of death;\nhe must ask himself for the mainspring and value of his life. He will\nthen remember his stifled loves; he will feel that only his illusions\nhave ever given him a sense of reality, only his passions the hope and\nthe vision of peace. He will read himself through and almost gather a\nmeaning from his experience; at least he will half believe that all\nhe has been dealing with was a dream and a symbol, and raise his eyes\ntoward the truth beyond.\n\nThis plastic moment of the mind, when we become aware of the\nartificiality and inadequacy of what common sense perceives, is the\ntrue moment of poetic opportunity,--an opportunity, we may hasten\nto confess, which is generally missed. The strain of attention, the\nconcentration and focussing of thought on the unfamiliar immediacy\nof things, usually brings about nothing but confusion. We are dazed,\nwe are filled with a sense of unutterable things, luminous yet\nindistinguishable, many yet one. Instead of rising to imagination, we\nsink into mysticism.\n\nTo accomplish a mystical disintegration is not the function of any art;\nif any art seems to accomplish it, the effect is only incidental, being\ninvolved, perhaps, in the process of constructing the proper object of\nthat art, as we might cut down trees and dig them up by the roots to\nlay the foundations of a temple. For every art looks to the building\nup of something. And just because the world built up by common sense\nand natural science is an inadequate world (a skeleton which needs the\nfilling of sensation before it can live), therefore the moment when we\nrealize its inadequacy is the moment when the higher arts find their\nopportunity. When the world is shattered to bits they can come and\n\"build it nearer to the heart's desire.\"\n\nThe great function of poetry, which we have not yet directly mentioned,\nis precisely this: to repair to the material of experience, seizing\nhold of the reality of sensation and fancy beneath the surface of\nconventional ideas, and then out of that living but indefinite\nmaterial to build new structures, richer, finer, fitter to the primary\ntendencies of our nature, truer to the ultimate possibilities of the\nsoul. Our descent into the elements of our being is then justified by\nour subsequent freer ascent toward its goal; we revert to sense only to\nfind food for reason; we destroy conventions only to construct ideals.\n\nSuch analysis for the sake of creation is the essence of all great\npoetry. Science and common sense are themselves in their way poets of\nno mean order, since they take the material of experience and make out\nof it a clear, symmetrical, and beautiful world; the very propriety of\nthis art, however, has made it common. Its figures have become mere\nrhetoric and its metaphors prose. Yet, even as it is, a scientific and\nmathematical vision has a higher beauty than the irrational poetry of\nsensation and impulse, which merely tickles the brain, like liquor,\nand plays upon our random, imaginative lusts. The imagination of a\ngreat poet, on the contrary, is as orderly as that of an astronomer,\nand as large; he has the naturalist's patience, the naturalist's love\nof detail and eye trained to see fine gradations and essential lines;\nhe knows no hurry; he has no pose, no sense of originality; he finds\nhis effects in his subject, and his subject in his inevitable world.\nResembling the naturalist in all this, he differs from him in the\nbalance of his interests; the poet has the concreter mind; his visible\nworld wears all its colours and retains its indwelling passion and\nlife. Instead of studying in experience its calculable elements, he\nstudies its moral values, its beauty, the openings it offers to the\nsoul: and the cosmos he constructs is accordingly an ideal theatre for\nthe spirit in which its noblest potential drama is enacted and its\ndestiny resolved.\n\nThis supreme function of poetry is only the consummation of the method\nby which words and imagery are transformed into verse. As verse breaks\nup the prosaic order of syllables and subjects them to a recognizable\nand pleasing measure, so poetry breaks up the whole prosaic picture\nof experience to introduce into it a rhythm more congenial and\nintelligible to the mind. And in both these cases the operation is\nessentially the same as that by which, in an intermediate sphere, the\nimages rejected by practical thought, and the emotions ignored by\nit, are so marshalled as to fill the mind with a truer and intenser\nconsciousness of its memorable experience. The poetry of fancy, of\nobservation, and of passion moves on this intermediate level; the\npoetry of mere sound and virtuosity is confined to the lower sphere;\nand the highest is reserved for the poetry of the creative reason. But\none principle is present throughout,--the principle of Beauty,--the art\nof assimilating phenomena, whether words, images, emotions, or systems\nof ideas, to the deeper innate cravings of the mind.\n\nLet us now dwell a little on this higher function of poetry and try to\ndistinguish some of its phases.\n\nThe creation of characters is what many of us might at first be\ntempted to regard as the supreme triumph of the imagination. If we\nabstract, however, from our personal tastes and look at the matter\nin its human and logical relations, we shall see, I think, that the\nconstruction of characters is not the ultimate task of poetic fiction.\nA character can never be exhaustive of our materials: for it exists\nby its idiosyncrasy, by its contrast with other natures, by its\ndevelopment of one side, and one side only, of our native capacities.\nIt is, therefore, not by characterization as such that the ultimate\nmessage can be rendered. The poet can put only a part of himself into\nany of his heroes, but he must put the whole into his noblest work.\nA character is accordingly only a fragmentary unity; fragmentary in\nrespect to its origin,--since it is conceived by enlargement, so to\nspeak, of a part of our own being to the exclusion of the rest,--and\nfragmentary in respect to the object it presents, since a character\nmust live in an environment and be appreciated by contrast and by the\nsense of derivation. Not the character, but its effects and causes,\nis the truly interesting thing. Thus in master poets, like Homer and\nDante, the characters, although well drawn, are subordinate to the\ntotal movement and meaning of the scene There is indeed something\npitiful, something comic, in any comprehended soul; souls, like other\nthings, are only definable by their limitations. We feel instinctively\nthat it would be insulting to speak of any man to his face as we should\nspeak of him in his absence, even if what we say is in the way of\npraise: for absent he is a character understood, but present he is a\nforce respected.\n\nIn the construction of ideal characters, then, the imagination is busy\nwith material,--particular actions and thoughts,--which suggest their\nunification in persons; but the characters thus conceived can hardly\nbe adequate to the profusion of our observations, nor exhaustive, when\nall personalities are taken together, of the interest of our lives.\nCharacters are initially imbedded in life, as the gods themselves are\noriginally imbedded in Nature. Poetry must, therefore, to render all\nreality, render also the background of its figures, and the events\nthat condition their acts. We must place them in that indispensable\nenvironment which the landscape furnishes to the eye and the social\nmedium to the emotions.\n\nThe visible landscape is not a proper object for poetry. Its\nelements, and especially the emotional stimulation which it gives,\nmay be suggested or expressed in verse; but landscape is not thereby\nrepresented in its proper form; it appears only as an element and\nassociate of moral unities. Painting, architecture, and gardening, with\nthe art of stage setting, have the visible landscape for their object,\nand to those arts we may leave it. But there is a sort of landscape\nlarger than the visible, which escapes the synthesis of the eye; it\nis present to that topographical sense by which we always live in the\nconsciousness that there is a sea, that there are mountains, that the\nsky is above us, even when we do not see it, and that the tribes of\nmen, with their different degrees of blamelessness, are scattered over\nthe broad-backed earth. This cosmic landscape poetry alone can render,\nand it is no small part of the art to awaken the sense of it at the\nright moment, so that the object that occupies the centre of vision\nmay be seen in its true lights, coloured by its wider associations,\nand dignified by its felt affinities to things permanent and great.\nAs the Italian masters were wont not to paint their groups of saints\nabout the Virgin without enlarging the canvas, so as to render a broad\npiece of sky, some mountains and rivers, and nearer, perhaps, some\ndecorative pile; so the poet of larger mind envelops his characters in\nthe atmosphere of Nature and history, and keeps us constantly aware of\nthe world in which they move.\n\nThe distinction of a poet--the dignity and humanity of his thought--can\nbe measured by nothing, perhaps, so well as by the diameter of the\nworld in which he lives; if he is supreme, his vision, like Dante's,\nalways stretches to the stars. And Virgil, a supreme poet sometimes\nunjustly belittled, shows us the same thing in another form; his\nlandscape is the Roman universe, his theme the sacred springs of\nRoman greatness in piety, consistancy, and law. He has not written a\nline in forgetfulness that he was a Roman; he loves country life and\nits labours because he sees in it the origin and bulwark of civic\ngreatness; he honours tradition because it gives perspective and\nmomentum to the history that ensues; he invokes the gods, because they\nare symbols of the physical and moral forces, by which Rome struggled\nto dominion.\n\nAlmost every classic poet has the topographical sense; he swarms\nwith proper names and allusions to history and fable; if an epithet\nis to be thrown in anywhere to fill up the measure of a line, he\nchooses instinctively an appellation of place or family; his wine\nis not red, but Samian; his gorges are not deep, but are the gorges\nof H\u00e6mus; his songs are not sweet, but Pierian. We may deride their\npractice as conventional, but they could far more justly deride ours\nas insignificant. Conventions do not arise without some reason, and\ngenius will know how to rise above them by a fresh appreciation of\ntheir rightness, and will feel no temptation to overturn them in favour\nof personal whimsies. The ancients found poetry not so much in sensible\naccidents as in essential forms and noble associations; and this fact\nmarks very clearly their superior education. They dominated the world\nas we no longer dominate it, and lived, as we are too distracted to\nlive, in the presence of the rational and the important.\n\nA physical and historical background, however, is of little moment\nto the poet in comparison with that other environment of his\ncharacters,--the dramatic situations in which they are involved. The\nsubstance of poetry is, after all, emotion; and if the intellectual\nemotion of comprehension and the mimetic one of impersonation are\nmassive, they are not so intense as the appetites and other transitive\nemotions of life; the passions are the chief basis of all interests,\neven the most ideal, and the passions are seldom brought into play\nexcept by the contact of man with man. The various forms of love and\nhate are only possible in society, and to imagine occasions in which\nthese feelings may manifest all their inward vitality is the poet's\nfunction,--one in which he follows the fancy of every child, who puffs\nhimself out in his day-dreams into an endless variety of heroes and\nlovers. The thrilling adventures which he craves demand an appropriate\ntheatre; the glorious emotions with which he bubbles over must at all\nhazards find or feign their correlative objects.\n\nBut the passions are naturally blind, and the poverty of the\nimagination, when left alone, is absolute. The passions may ferment as\nthey will, they never can breed an idea out of their own energy. This\nidea must be furnished by the senses, by outward experience, else the\nhunger of the soul will gnaw its own emptiness for ever. Where the\nseed of sensation has once fallen, however, the growth, variations,\nand exuberance of fancy may be unlimited. Only we still observe (as in\nthe child, in dreams, and in the poetry of ignorant or mystical poets)\nthat the intensity of inwardly generated visions does not involve\nany real increase in their scope or dignity. The inexperienced mind\nremains a thin mind, no matter how much its vapours may be heated and\nblown about by natural passion. It was a capital error in Fichte and\nSchopenhauer to assign essential fertility to the will in the creation\nof ideas. They mistook, as human nature will do, even when at times\nit professes pessimism, an ideal for a reality: and because they saw\nhow much the will clings to its objects, how it selects and magnifies\nthem, they imagined that it could breed them out of itself. A man who\nthinks clearly will see that such self-determination of a will is\ninconceivable, since what has no external relation and no diversity\nof structure cannot of itself acquire diversity of functions. Such\ninconceivability, of course, need not seem a great objection to a man\nof impassioned inspiration; he may even claim a certain consistency in\npositing, on the strength of his preference, the inconceivable to be a\ntruth.\n\nThe alleged fertility of the will is, however, disproved by\nexperience, from which metaphysics must in the end draw its analogies\nand plausibility. The passions discover, they do not create, their\noccasions; a fact which is patent when we observe how they seize\nupon what objects they find, and how reversible, contingent, and\ntransferable the emotions are in respect to their objects. A doll\nwill be loved instead of a child, a child instead of a lover, God\ninstead of everything. The differentiation of the passions, as far as\nconsciousness is concerned, depends on the variety of the objects of\nexperience,--that is, on the differentiation of the senses and of the\nenvironment which stimulates them.\n\nWhen the \"infinite\" spirit enters the human body, it is determined\nto certain limited forms of life by the organs which it wears; and\nits blank potentiality becomes actual in thought and deed, according\nto the fortunes and relations of its organism. The ripeness of the\npassions may thus precede the information of the mind and lead to\ngroping in by-paths without issue; a phenomenon which appears not only\nin the obscure individual whose abnormalities the world ignores, but\nalso in the starved, half-educated genius that pours the whole fire of\nhis soul into trivial arts or grotesque superstitions. The hysterical\nforms of music and religion are the refuge of an idealism that has\nlost its way; the waste and failures of life flow largely in those\nchannels. The carnal temptations of youth are incidents of the same\nmaladaptation, when passions assert themselves before the conventional\norder of society can allow them physical satisfaction, and long before\nphilosophy or religion can hope to transform them into fuel for its own\nsacrificial flames.\n\nHence flows the greatest opportunity of fiction. We have, in a sense,\nan infinite will; but we have a limited experience, an experience sadly\ninadequate to exercise that will either in its purity or its strength.\nTo give form to our capacities nothing is required but the appropriate\noccasion; this the poet, studying the world, will construct for us out\nof the materials of his observations. He will involve us in scenes\nwhich lie beyond the narrow lane of our daily ploddings; he will place\nus in the presence of important events, that we may feel our spirit\nrise momentarily to the height of his great argument. The possibilities\nof love or glory, of intrigue and perplexity, will be opened up before\nus; if he gives us a good plot, we can readily furnish the characters,\nbecause each of them will be the realization of some stunted potential\nself of our own. It is by the plot, then, that the characters will be\nvivified, because it is by the plot that our own character will be\nexpanded into its latent possibilities.\n\nThe description of an alien character can serve this purpose only very\nimperfectly; but the presentation of the circumstances in which that\ncharacter manifests itself will make description unnecessary, since\nour instinct will supply all that is requisite for the impersonation.\nThus it seems that Aristotle was justified in making the plot the chief\nelement in fiction: for it is by virtue of the plot that the characters\nlive, or, rather, that we live in them, and by virtue of the plot\naccordingly that our soul rises to that imaginative activity by which\nwe tend at once to escape from the personal life and to realize its\nideal. This idealization is, of course, partial and merely relative to\nthe particular adventure in which we imagine ourselves engaged. But in\nsome single direction our will finds self-expression, and understands\nitself; runs through the career which it ignorantly coveted, and\ngathers the fruits and the lesson of that enterprise.\n\nThis is the essence of tragedy: the sense of the finished life, of\nthe will fulfilled and enlightened: that purging of the mind so much\ndebated upon, which relieves us of pent-up energies, transfers our\nfeelings to a greater object, and thus justifies and entertains our\ndumb passions, detaching them at the same time for a moment from their\naccidental occasions in our earthly life. An episode, however lurid,\nis not a tragedy in this nobler sense, because it does not work itself\nout to the end; it pleases without satisfying, or shocks without\nenlightening. This enlightenment, I need hardly say, is not a matter\nof theory or of moral maxims; the enlightenment by which tragedy is\nmade sublime is a glimpse into the ultimate destinies of our will.\nThis discovery need not be an ethical gain--Macbeth and Othello attain\nit as much as Brutus and Hamlet--it may serve to accentuate despair,\nor cruelty, or indifference, or merely to fill the imagination for\na moment without much affecting the permanent tone of the mind. But\nwithout such a glimpse of the goal of a passion the passion has not\nbeen adequately read, and the fiction has served to amuse us without\nreally enlarging the frontiers of our ideal experience. Memory and\nemotion have been played upon, but imagination has not brought anything\nnew to the light.\n\nThe dramatic situation, however, gives us the environment of a single\npassion, of life in one of its particular phases; and although a\npassion, like Romeo's love, may seem to devour the whole soul, and\nits fortunes may seem to be identical with those of the man, yet much\nof the man, and the best part of him, goes by the board in such a\nsimplification. If Leonardo da Vinci, for example, had met in his youth\nwith Romeo's fate, his end would have been no more ideally tragic than\nif he had died at eighteen of a fever; we should be touched rather by\nthe pathos of what he had missed, than by the sublimity of what he had\nexperienced. A passion like Romeo's, compared with the ideal scope of\nhuman thought and emotion, is a thin dream, a pathological crisis.\n\nAccordingly Aristophanes, remembering the original religious and\npolitical functions of tragedy, blushes to see upon the boards a\nwoman in love. And we should readily agree with him, but for two\nreasons,--one, that we abstract too much, in our demands upon art, from\nnobility of mind, and from the thought of totality and proportion;\nthe other, that we have learned to look for a symbolic meaning in\ndetached episodes, and to accept the incidental emotions they cause,\nbecause of their violence and our absorption in them, as in some sense\nsacramental and representative of the whole. Thus the picture of an\nunmeaning passion, of a crime without an issue, does not appear to\nour romantic apprehension as the sorry farce it is, but rather as a\ntrue tragedy. Some have lost even the capacity to conceive of a true\ntragedy, because they have no idea of a cosmic order, of general laws\nof life, or of an impersonal religion. They measure the profundity of\nfeeling by its intensity, not by its justifying relations; and in the\nradical disintegration of their spirit, the more they are devoured the\nmore they fancy themselves fed. But the majority of us retain some\nsense of a meaning in our joys and sorrows, and even if we cannot\npierce to their ultimate object, we feel that what absorbs us here\nand now has a merely borrowed or deputed power; that it is a symbol\nand foretaste of all reality speaking to the whole soul. At the same\ntime our intelligence is too confused to give us any picture of that\nreality, and our will too feeble to marshal our disorganized loves into\na religion consistent with itself and harmonious with the comprehended\nuniverse. A rational ideal eludes us, and we are the more inclined to\nplunge into mysticism.\n\nNevertheless, the function of poetry, like that of science, can only be\nfulfilled by the conception of harmonies that become clearer as they\ngrow richer. As the chance note that comes to be supported by a melody\nbecomes in that melody determinate and necessary, and as the melody,\nwhen woven into a harmony, is explicated in that harmony and fixed\nbeyond recall; so the single emotion, the fortuitous dream, launched\nby the poet into the world of recognizable and immortal forms, looks\nin that world for its ideal supports and affinities. It must find them\nor else be blown back among the ghosts. The highest ideality is the\ncomprehension of the real. Poetry is not at its best when it depicts\na further possible experience, but when it initiates us, by feigning\nsomething which as an experience is impossible, into the meaning of the\nexperience which we have actually had.\n\nThe highest example of this kind of poetry is religion; and although\ndisfigured and misunderstood by the simplicity of men who believe in\nit without being capable of that imaginative interpretation of life\nin which its truth consists, yet this religion is even then often\nbeneficent, because it colours life harmoniously with the ideal.\nReligion may falsely represent the ideal as a reality, but we must\nremember that the ideal, if not so represented, would be despised by\nthe majority of men, who cannot understand that the value of things\nis moral, and who therefore attribute to what is moral a natural\nexistence, thinking thus to vindicate its importance and value. But\nvalue lies in meaning, not in substance; in the ideal which things\napproach, not in the energy which they embody.\n\nThe highest poetry, then, is not that of the versifiers, but that of\nthe prophets, or of such poets as interpret verbally the visions\nwhich the prophets have rendered in action and sentiment rather than\nin adequate words. That the intuitions of religion are poetical, and\nthat in such intuitions poetry has its ultimate function, are truths\nof which both religion and poetry become more conscious the more they\nadvance in refinement and profundity. A crude and superficial theology\nmay confuse God with the thunder, the mountains, the heavenly bodies,\nor the whole universe; but when we pass from these easy identifications\nto a religion that has taken root in history and in the hearts of\nmen, and has come to flower, we find its objects and its dogmas\npurely ideal, transparent expressions of moral experience and perfect\ncounterparts of human needs. The evidence of history or of the senses\nis left far behind and never thought of; the evidence of the heart, the\nvalue of the idea, are alone regarded.\n\nTake, for instance, the doctrine of transubstantiation. A metaphor here\nis the basis of a dogma, because the dogma rises to the same subtle\nregion as the metaphor, and gathers its sap from the same soil of\nemotion. Religion has here rediscovered its affinity with poetry, and\nin insisting on the truth of its mystery it unconsciously vindicates\nthe ideality of its truth. Under the accidents of bread and wine lies,\nsays the dogma, the substance of Christ's body, blood, and divinity.\nWhat is that but to treat facts as an appearance, and their ideal\nimport as a reality? And to do this is the very essence of poetry, for\nwhich everything visible is a sacrament--an outward sign of that inward\ngrace for which the soul is thirsting.\n\nIn this same manner, where poetry rises from its elementary and\ndetached expressions in rhythm, euphuism, characterization, and\nstory-telling, and comes to the consciousness of its highest function,\nthat of portraying the ideals of experience and destiny, then the\npoet becomes aware that he is essentially a prophet, and either\ndevotes himself, like Homer or Dante, to the loving expression of\nthe religion that exists, or like Lucretius or Wordsworth, to the\nheralding of one which he believes to be possible. Such poets are\naware of their highest mission; others, whatever the energy of their\ngenius, have not conceived their ultimate function as poets. They have\nbeen willing to leave their world ugly as a whole, after stuffing it\nwith a sufficient profusion of beauties. Their contemporaries, their\nfellow-countrymen for many generations, may not perceive this defect,\nbecause they are naturally even less able than the poet himself to\nunderstand the necessity of so large a harmony. If he is short-sighted,\nthey are blind, and his poetic world may seem to them sublime in its\nsignificance, because it may suggest some partial lifting of their\ndaily burdens and some partial idealization of their incoherent\nthoughts.\n\nSuch insensibility to the highest poetry is no more extraordinary than\nthe corresponding indifference to the highest religion; nobility and\nexcellence, however, are not dependent on the suffrage of half-baked\nmen, but on the original disposition of the clay and the potter; I mean\non the conditions of the art and the ideal capacities of human nature.\nJust as a note is better than a noise because, its beats being regular,\nthe ear and brain can react with pleasure on that regularity, so all\nthe stages of harmony are better than the confusion out of which they\ncome, because the soul that perceives that harmony welcomes it as the\nfulfilment of her natural ends. The Pythagoreans were therefore right\nwhen they made number the essence of the knowable world, and Plato was\nright when he said harmony was the first condition of the highest good.\nThe good man is a poet whose syllables are deeds and make a harmony in\nNature. The poet is a rebuilder of the imagination, to make a harmony\nin that. And he is not a complete poet if his whole imagination is not\nattuned and his whole experience composed into a single symphony.\n\nFor his complete equipment, then, it is necessary, in the first place,\nthat he sing; that his voice be pure and well pitched, and that his\nnumbers flow; then, at a higher stage, his images must fit with one\nanother; he must be euphuistic, colouring his thoughts with many\nreflected lights of memory and suggestion, so that their harmony may\nbe rich and profound; again, at a higher stage, he must be sensuous and\nfree, that is, he must build up his world with the primary elements of\nexperience, not with the conventions of common sense or intelligence;\nhe must draw the whole soul into his harmonies, even if in doing so\nhe disintegrates the partial systematizations of experience made\nby abstract science in the categories of prose. But finally, this\ndisintegration must not leave the poet weltering in a chaos of sense\nand passion; it must be merely the ploughing of the ground before a\nnew harvest, the kneading of the clay before the modelling of a more\nperfect form. The expression of emotion should be rationalized by\nderivation from character and by reference to the real objects that\narouse it--to Nature, to history, and to the universe of truth; the\nexperience imagined should be conceived as a destiny, governed by\nprinciples, and issuing in the discipline and enlightenment of the\nwill. In this way alone can poetry become an interpretation of life and\nnot merely an irrelevant excursion into the realm of fancy, multiplying\noar images without purpose, and distracting us from our business\nwithout spiritual gain.\n\nIf we may then define poetry, not in the formal sense of giving the\nminimum of what may be called by that name, but in the ideal sense\nof determining the goal which it approaches and the achievement in\nwhich all its principles would be fulfilled, we may say that poetry is\nmetrical and euphuistic discourse, expressing thought which is both\nsensuous and ideal.\n\nSuch is poetry as a literary form; but if we drop the limitation to\nverbal expression, and think of poetry as that subtle fire and inward\nlight which seems at times to shine through the world and to touch the\nimages in our minds with ineffable beauty, then poetry is a momentary\nharmony in the soul amid stagnation or conflict,--a glimpse of the\ndivine and an incitation to a religious life.\n\nReligion is poetry become the guide of life, poetry substituted\nfor science or supervening upon it as an approach to the highest\nreality. Poetry is religion allowed to drift, left without points of\napplication in conduct and without an expression in worship and dogma;\nit is religion without practical efficacy and without metaphysical\nillusion. The ground of this abstractness of poetry, however, is\nusually only its narrow scope; a poet who plays with an idea for half\nan hour, or constructs a character to which he gives no profound\nmoral significance, forgets his own thought, or remembers it only as\na fiction of his leisure, because he has not dug his well deep enough\nto tap the subterraneous springs of his own life. But when the poet\nenlarges his theatre and puts into his rhapsodies the true visions\nof his people and of his soul, his poetry is the consecration of his\ndeepest convictions, and contains the whole truth of his religion. What\nthe religion of the vulgar adds to the poet's is simply the inertia\nof their limited apprehension, which takes literally what he meant\nideally, and degrades into a false extension of this world on its own\nlevel what in his mind was a true interpretation of it upon a moral\nplane.\n\nThis higher plane is the sphere of significant imagination, of relevant\nfiction, of idealism become the interpretation of the reality it\nleaves behind. Poetry raised to its highest power is then identical\nwith religion grasped in its inmost truth; at their point of union\nboth reach their utmost purity and beneficence, for then poetry loses\nits frivolity and ceases to demoralize, while religion surrenders its\nillusions and ceases to deceive.","title":"Interpretations of Poetry and Religion","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":68182}