{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_50235/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_50235","id":"gutenberg_50235","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50235","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778 -- Influence"],"text":"ROUSSEAU AND ROMANTICISM\n\nby\n\nIRVING BABBITT\n\nProfessor of French Literature in Harvard University\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\nBoston and New York\nHoughton Mifflin Company\n\nThe Riverside Press Cambridge\n\n\n\n\n    _L\u2019imagination dispose de tout._\n\n                                   PASCAL\n\n    _Le bon sens est le ma\u00eetre de la vie humaine._\n\n                                                 BOSSUET\n\n    _L\u2019homme est un \u00eatre immense, en quelque sorte, qui peut\n    exister partiellement, mais dont l\u2019existence est d\u2019autant plus\n    d\u00e9licieuse qu\u2019elle est plus enti\u00e8re et plus pleine._\n\n                                                       JOUBERT\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n          INTRODUCTION                        ix\n\n       I. THE TERMS CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC       1\n\n      II. ROMANTIC GENIUS                     32\n\n     III. ROMANTIC IMAGINATION                70\n\n      IV. ROMANTIC MORALITY: THE IDEAL       114\n\n       V. ROMANTIC MORALITY: THE REAL        187\n\n      VI. ROMANTIC LOVE                      220\n\n     VII. ROMANTIC IRONY                     240\n\n    VIII. ROMANTICISM AND NATURE             268\n\n      IX. ROMANTIC MELANCHOLY                306\n\n       X. THE PRESENT OUTLOOK                353\n\n          APPENDIX--CHINESE PRIMITIVISM      395\n\n          BIBLIOGRAPHY                       399\n\n          INDEX                              421\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nMany readers will no doubt be tempted to exclaim on seeing my title:\n\u201cRousseau and no end!\u201d The outpour of books on Rousseau had indeed in\nthe period immediately preceding the war become somewhat portentous.[1]\nThis preoccupation with Rousseau is after all easy to explain. It is\nhis somewhat formidable privilege to represent more fully than any\nother one person a great international movement. To attack Rousseau or\nto defend him is most often only a way of attacking or defending this\nmovement.\n\nIt is from this point of view at all events that the present work is\nconceived. I have not undertaken a systematic study of Rousseau\u2019s life\nand doctrines. The appearance of his name in my title is justified,\nif at all, simply because he comes at a fairly early stage in the\ninternational movement the rise and growth of which I am tracing, and\nhas on the whole supplied me with the most significant illustrations of\nit. I have already put forth certain views regarding this movement in\nthree previous volumes.[2] Though each one of these volumes attempts to\ndo justice to a particular topic, it is at the same time intended to be\na link in a continuous argument. I hope that I may be allowed to speak\nhere with some frankness of the main trend of this argument both on its\nnegative and on its positive, or constructive, side.\n\nPerhaps the best key to both sides of my argument is found in the\nlines of Emerson I have taken as epigraph for \u201cLiterature and the\nAmerican College\u201d:\n\n    There are two laws discrete\n    Not reconciled,--\n    Law for man, and law for thing;\n    The last builds town and fleet,\n    But it runs wild,\n    And doth the man unking.\n\nOn its negative side my argument is directed against this undue\nemphasis on the \u201claw for thing,\u201d against the attempt to erect on\nnaturalistic foundations a complete philosophy of life. I define two\nmain forms of naturalism--on the one hand, utilitarian and scientific\nand, on the other, emotional naturalism. The type of romanticism I am\nstudying is inseparably bound up with emotional naturalism.\n\nThis type of romanticism encouraged by the naturalistic movement is\nonly one of three main types I distinguish and I am dealing for the\nmost part with only one aspect of it. But even when thus circumscribed\nthe subject can scarcely be said to lack importance; for if I am right\nin my conviction as to the unsoundness of a Rousseauistic philosophy of\nlife, it follows that the total tendency of the Occident at present is\naway from rather than towards civilization.\n\nOn the positive side, my argument aims to reassert the \u201claw for man,\u201d\nand its special discipline against the various forms of naturalistic\nexcess. At the very mention of the word discipline I shall be set down\nin certain quarters as reactionary. But does it necessarily follow\nfrom a plea for the human law that one is a reactionary or in general\na traditionalist? An American writer of distinction was once heard to\nremark that he saw in the world to-day but two classes of persons,--the\nmossbacks and the mountebanks, and that for his part he preferred to\nbe a mossback. One should think twice before thus consenting to seem a\nmere relic of the past. The ineffable smartness of our young radicals\nis due to the conviction that, whatever else they may be, they are the\nvery pink of modernity. Before sharing their conviction it might be\nwell to do a little preliminary defining of such terms as modern and\nthe modern spirit. It may then turn out that the true difficulty with\nour young radicals is not that they are too modern but that they are\nnot modern enough. For, though the word modern is often and no doubt\ninevitably used to describe the more recent or the most recent thing,\nthis is not its sole use. It is not in this sense alone that the word\nis used by writers like Goethe and Sainte-Beuve and Renan and Arnold.\nWhat all these writers mean by the modern spirit is the positive and\ncritical spirit, the spirit that refuses to take things on authority.\nThis is what Renan means, for example, when he calls Petrarch the\n\u201cfounder of the modern spirit in literature,\u201d or Arnold when he\nexplains why the Greeks of the great period seem more modern to us than\nthe men of the Middle Ages.[3]\n\nNow what I have myself tried to do is to be thoroughly modern in this\nsense. I hold that one should not only welcome the efforts of the\nman of science at his best to put the natural law on a positive and\ncritical basis, but that one should strive to emulate him in one\u2019s\ndealings with the human law; and so become a complete positivist. My\nmain objection to the movement I am studying is that it has failed to\nproduce complete positivists. Instead of facing honestly the emergency\ncreated by its break with the past the leaders of this movement have\ninclined to deny the duality of human nature, and then sought to\ndissimulate this mutilation of man under a mass of intellectual and\nemotional sophistry. The proper procedure in refuting these incomplete\npositivists is not to appeal to some dogma or outer authority but\nrather to turn against them their own principles. Thus Diderot, a\nnotable example of the incomplete positivist and a chief source of\nnaturalistic tendency, says that \u201ceverything is experimental in man.\u201d\nNow the word experimental has somewhat narrowed in meaning since the\ntime of Diderot. If one takes the saying to mean that everything in man\nis a matter of experience one should accept it unreservedly and then\nplant oneself firmly on the facts of experience that Diderot and other\nincomplete positivists have refused to recognize.\n\nThe man who plants himself, not on outer authority but on experience,\nis an individualist. To be modern in the sense I have defined is not\nonly to be positive and critical, but also--and this from the time of\nPetrarch--to be individualistic. The establishment of a sound type\nof individualism is indeed the specifically modern problem. It is\nright here that the failure of the incomplete positivist, the man who\nis positive only according to the natural law, is most conspicuous.\nWhat prevails in the region of the natural law is endless change and\nrelativity; therefore the naturalistic positivist attacks all the\ntraditional creeds and dogmas for the very reason that they aspire to\nfixity. Now all the ethical values of civilization have been associated\nwith these fixed beliefs; and so it has come to pass that with their\nundermining by naturalism the ethical values themselves are in danger\nof being swept away in the everlasting flux. Because the individual\nwho views life positively must give up unvarying creeds and dogmas\n\u201canterior, exterior, and superior\u201d to himself, it has been assumed\nthat he must also give up standards. For standards imply an element of\noneness somewhere, with reference to which it is possible to measure\nthe mere manifoldness and change. The naturalistic individualist,\nhowever, refuses to recognize any such element of oneness. His own\nprivate and personal self is to be the measure of all things and this\nmeasure itself, he adds, is constantly changing. But to stop at this\nstage is to be satisfied with the most dangerous of half-truths.\nThus Bergson\u2019s assertion that \u201clife is a perpetual gushing forth of\nnovelties\u201d is in itself only a dangerous half-truth of this kind. The\nconstant element in life is, no less than the element of novelty and\nchange, a matter of observation and experience. As the French have it,\nthe more life changes the more it is the same thing.\n\nIf, then, one is to be a sound individualist, an individualist with\nhuman standards--and in an age like this that has cut loose from its\ntraditional moorings, the very survival of civilization would seem to\nhinge on its power to produce such a type of individualist--one must\ngrapple with what Plato terms the problem of the One and the Many.\nMy own solution of this problem, it may be well to point out, is not\npurely Platonic. Because one can perceive immediately an element\nof unity in things, it does not follow that one is justified in\nestablishing a world of essences or entities or \u201cideas\u201d above the flux.\nTo do this is to fall away from a positive and critical into a more\nor less speculative attitude; it is to risk setting up a metaphysic\nof the One. Those who put exclusive emphasis on the element of change\nin things are in no less obvious danger of falling away from the\npositive and critical attitude into a metaphysic of the Many.[4] This\nfor example is the error one finds in the contemporary thinkers who\nseem to have the cry, thinkers like James and Bergson and Dewey and\nCroce. They are very far from satisfying the requirements of a complete\npositivism; they are seeking rather to build up their own intoxication\nwith the element of change into a complete view of life, and so are\nturning their backs on one whole side of experience in a way that often\nreminds one of the ancient Greek sophists. The history of philosophy\nsince the Greeks is to a great extent the history of the clashes of the\nmetaphysicians of the One and the metaphysicians of the Many. In the\neyes of the complete positivist this history therefore reduces itself\nlargely to a monstrous logomachy.\n\nLife does not give here an element of oneness and there an element of\nchange. It gives a _oneness that is always changing_. The oneness and\nthe change are inseparable. Now if what is stable and permanent is felt\nas real, the side of life that is always slipping over into something\nelse or vanishing away entirely is, as every student of psychology\nknows, associated rather with the feeling of illusion. If a man\nattends solely to this side of life he will finally come, like Leconte\nde Lisle, to look upon it as a \u201ctorrent of mobile chimeras,\u201d as an\n\u201cendless whirl of vain appearances.\u201d To admit that the oneness of life\nand the change are inseparable is therefore to admit that such reality\nas man can know positively is inextricably mixed up with illusion.\nMoreover man does not observe the oneness that is always changing from\nthe outside; he is a part of the process, he is himself a oneness that\nis always changing. Though imperceptible at any particular moment, the\ncontinuous change that is going on leads to differences--those, let us\nsay, between a human individual at the age of six weeks and the same\nindividual at the age of seventy--which are sufficiently striking: and\nfinally this human oneness that is always changing seems to vanish\naway entirely. From all this it follows that an enormous element\nof illusion--and this is a truth the East has always accepted more\nreadily than the West--enters into the idea of personality itself. If\nthe critical spirit is once allowed to have its way, it will not rest\ncontent until it has dissolved life into a mist of illusion. Perhaps\nthe most positive and critical account of man in modern literature is\nthat of Shakespeare:\n\n                We are such stuff\n    As dreams are made on, and our little life\n    Is rounded with a sleep.\n\nBut, though strictly considered, life is but a web of illusion and a\ndream within a dream, it is a dream that needs to be managed with the\nutmost discretion, if it is not to turn into a nightmare. In other\nwords, however much life may mock the metaphysician, the problem of\nconduct remains. There is always the unity at the heart of the change;\nit is possible, however, to get at this real and abiding element and\nso at the standards with reference to which the dream of life may be\nrightly managed only through a veil of illusion. The problem of the\nOne and the Many, the ultimate problem of thought, can therefore be\nsolved only by a right use of illusion. In close relation to illusion\nand the questions that arise in connection with it is all that we\nhave come to sum up in the word imagination. The use of this word, at\nleast in anything like its present extension, is, one should note,\ncomparatively recent. Whole nations and periods of the past can\nscarcely be said to have had any word corresponding to imagination in\nthis extended sense. Yet the thinkers of the past have treated, at\ntimes profoundly, under the head of fiction or illusion the questions\nthat we should treat under the head of imagination.[5] In the \u201cMasters\nof Modern French Criticism\u201d I was above all preoccupied with the\nproblem of the One and the Many and the failure of the nineteenth\ncentury to deal with it adequately. My effort in this present work is\nto show that this failure can be retrieved only by a deeper insight\ninto the imagination and its all-important r\u00f4le in both literature\nand life. Man is cut off from immediate contact with anything abiding\nand therefore worthy to be called real, and condemned to live in an\nelement of fiction or illusion, but he may, I have tried to show, lay\nhold with the aid of the imagination on the element of oneness that\nis inextricably blended with the manifoldness and change and to just\nthat extent may build up a sound model for imitation. One tends to\nbe an individualist with true standards, to put the matter somewhat\ndifferently, only in so far as one understands the relation between\nappearance and reality--what the philosophers call the epistemological\nproblem. This problem, though it cannot be solved abstractly and\nmetaphysically, can be solved practically and in terms of actual\nconduct. Inasmuch as modern philosophy has failed to work out any such\nsolution, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that modern philosophy is\nbankrupt, not merely from Kant, but from Descartes.\n\nThe supreme maxim of the ethical positivist is: By their fruits shall\nye know them. If I object to a romantic philosophy it is because I do\nnot like its fruits. I infer from its fruits that this philosophy has\nmade a wrong use of illusion. \u201cAll those who took the romantic promises\nat their face value,\u201d says Bourget, \u201crolled in abysses of despair and\nennui.\u201d[6] If any one still holds, as many of the older romanticists\nheld, that it is a distinguished thing to roll in abysses of despair\nand ennui, he should read me no further. He will have no sympathy with\nmy point of view. If any one, on the other hand, accepts my criterion\nbut denies that Rousseauistic living has such fruits, it has been my\naim so to accumulate evidence that he will be confronted with the task\nof refuting not a set of theories but a body of facts. My whole method,\nlet me repeat, is experimental, or it might be less ambiguous to say if\nthe word were a fortunate one, experiential. The illustrations I have\ngiven of any particular aspect of the movement are usually only a small\nfraction of those I have collected--themselves no doubt only a fraction\nof the illustrations that might be collected from printed sources. M.\nMaigron\u2019s investigation[7] into the fruits of romantic living suggests\nthe large additions that might be made to these printed sources from\nmanuscript material.\n\nMy method indeed is open in one respect to grave misunderstanding.\nFrom the fact that I am constantly citing passages from this or that\nauthor and condemning the tendency for which these passages stand,\nthe reader will perhaps be led to infer a total condemnation of the\nauthors so quoted. But the inference may be very incorrect. I am\nnot trying to give rounded estimates of individuals--delightful and\nlegitimate as that type of criticism is--but to trace main currents as\na part of my search for a set of principles to oppose to naturalism.\nI call attention for example to the Rousseauistic and primitivistic\nelements in Wordsworth but do not assert that this is the whole\ntruth about Wordsworth. One\u2019s views as to the philosophical value\nof Rousseauism must, however, weigh heavily in a total judgment of\nWordsworth. Criticism is such a difficult art because one must not\nonly have principles but must apply them flexibly and intuitively. No\none would accuse criticism at present of lacking flexibility. It has\ngrown so flexible in fact as to become invertebrate. One of my reasons\nfor practicing the present type of criticism, is the conviction that\nbecause of a lack of principles the type of criticism that aims at\nrounded estimates of individuals is rapidly ceasing to have any meaning.\n\nI should add that if I had attempted rounded estimates they would often\nhave been more favorable than might be gathered from my comments here\nand elsewhere on the romantic leaders. One is justified in leaning\ntowards severity in the laying down of principles, but should nearly\nalways incline to indulgence in the application of them. In a sense one\nmay say with Goethe that the excellencies are of the individual, the\ndefects of the age. It is especially needful to recall distinctions\nof this kind in the case of Rousseau himself and my treatment of him.\nM. Lanson has dwelt on the strange duality of Rousseau\u2019s nature.\n\u201cThe writer,\u201d he says, \u201cis a poor dreamy creature who approaches\naction only with alarm and with every manner of precaution, and who\nunderstands the applications of his boldest doctrines in a way to\nreassure conservatives and satisfy opportunists. But the work for its\npart detaches itself from the author, lives its independent life,\nand, heavily charged with revolutionary explosives which neutralize\nthe moderate and conciliatory elements Rousseau has put into it for\nhis own satisfaction, it exasperates and inspires revolt and fires\nenthusiasms and irritates hatreds; it is the mother of violence, the\nsource of all that is uncompromising, it launches the simple souls\nwho give themselves up to its strange virtue upon the desperate quest\nof the absolute, an absolute to be realized now by anarchy and now by\nsocial despotism.\u201d[8] I am inclined to discover in the Rousseau who,\naccording to M. Lanson, is merely timorous, a great deal of shrewdness\nand at times something even better than shrewdness. The question is\nnot perhaps very important, for M. Lanson is surely right in affirming\nthat the Rousseau who has moved the world--and that for reasons I shall\ntry to make plain--is Rousseau the extremist and foe of compromise;\nand so it is to this Rousseau that as a student of main tendencies I\ndevote almost exclusive attention. I am not, however, seeking to make\na scapegoat even of the radical and revolutionary Rousseau. One of\nmy chief objections, indeed, to Rousseauism, as will appear in the\nfollowing pages, is that it encourages the making of scapegoats.\n\nIf I am opposed to Rousseauism because of its fruits in experience, I\ntry to put what I have to offer as a substitute on the same positive\nbasis. Now experience is of many degrees: first of all one\u2019s purely\npersonal experience, an infinitesimal fragment; and then the experience\nof one\u2019s immediate circle, of one\u2019s time and country, of the near past\nand so on in widening circles. The past which as dogma the ethical\npositivist rejects, as experience he not only admits but welcomes. He\ncan no more dispense with it indeed than the naturalistic positivist\ncan dispense with his laboratory. He insists moreover on including\nthe remoter past in his survey. Perhaps the most pernicious of all\nthe conceits fostered by the type of progress we owe to science is\nthe conceit that we have outgrown this older experience. One should\nendeavor, as Goethe says, to oppose to the aberrations of the hour, the\nmasses of universal history. There are special reasons just now why\nthis background to which one appeals should not be merely Occidental.\nAn increasing material contact between the Occident and the Far East\nis certain. We should be enlightened by this time as to the perils\nof material contact between men and bodies of men who have no deeper\nunderstanding. Quite apart from this consideration the experience of\nthe Far East completes and confirms in a most interesting way that of\nthe Occident. We can scarcely afford to neglect it if we hope to work\nout a truly ecumenical wisdom to oppose to the sinister one-sidedness\nof our current naturalism. Now the ethical experience of the Far East\nmay be summed up for practical purposes in the teachings and influence\nof two men, Confucius and Buddha.[9] To know the Buddhistic and\nConfucian teachings in their true spirit is to know what is best and\nmost representative in the ethical experience of about half the human\nrace for over seventy generations.\n\nA study of Buddha and Confucius suggests, as does a study of the great\nteachers of the Occident, that under its bewildering surface variety\nhuman experience falls after all into a few main categories. I myself\nam fond of distinguishing three levels on which a man may experience\nlife--the naturalistic, the humanistic, and the religious. Tested by\nits fruits Buddhism at its best confirms Christianity. Submitted to the\nsame test Confucianism falls in with the teaching of Aristotle and in\ngeneral with that of all those who from the Greeks down have proclaimed\ndecorum and the law of measure. This is so obviously true that\nConfucius has been called the Aristotle of the East. Not only has the\nFar East had in Buddhism a great religious movement and in Confucianism\na great humanistic movement, it has also had in early Taoism[10] a\nmovement that in its attempts to work out naturalistic equivalents of\nhumanistic or religious insight, offers almost startling analogies to\nthe movement I am here studying.\n\nThus both East and West have not only had great religious and\nhumanistic disciplines which when tested by their fruits confirm one\nanother, bearing witness to the element of oneness, the constant\nelement in human experience, but these disciplines have at times\nbeen conceived in a very positive spirit. Confucius indeed, though a\nmoral realist, can scarcely be called a positivist; he aimed rather\nto attach men to the past by links of steel. He reminds us in this as\nin some other ways of the last of the great Tories in the Occident,\nDr. Johnson. Buddha on the other hand was an individualist. He wished\nmen to rest their belief neither on his authority[11] nor on that\nof tradition.[12] No one has ever made a more serious effort to put\nreligion on a positive and critical basis. It is only proper that I\nacknowledge my indebtedness to the great Hindu positivist: my treatment\nof the problem of the One and the Many, for example, is nearer to\nBuddha than to Plato. Yet even if the general thesis be granted that it\nis desirable to put the \u201claw for man\u201d on a positive and critical basis,\nthe question remains whether the more crying need just now is for\npositive and critical humanism or for positive and critical religion.\nI have discussed this delicate and difficult question more fully in my\nlast chapter, but may give at least one reason here for inclining to\nthe humanistic solution. I have been struck in my study of the past\nby the endless self-deception to which man is subject when he tries\nto pass too abruptly from the naturalistic to the religious level.\nThe world, it is hard to avoid concluding, would have been a better\nplace if more persons had made sure they were human before setting\nout to be superhuman; and this consideration would seem to apply with\nspecial force to a generation like the present that is wallowing in\nthe trough of naturalism. After all to be a good humanist is merely to\nbe moderate and sensible and decent. It is much easier for a man to\ndeceive himself and others regarding his supernatural lights than it is\nregarding the degree to which he is moderate and sensible and decent.\n\nThe past is not without examples of a positive and critical humanism. I\nhave already mentioned Aristotle. If by his emphasis on the mediatory\nvirtues he reminds one of Confucius, by his positive method and\nintensely analytical temper he reminds one rather of Buddha. When\nAristotle rises to the religious level and discourses of the \u201clife of\nvision\u201d he is very Buddhistic. When Buddha for his part turns from the\nreligious life to the duties of the layman he is purely Aristotelian.\nAristotle also deals positively with the natural law. He is indeed a\ncomplete positivist, and not, like the man of the nineteenth century,\npositive according to the natural law alone. The Aristotle that\nshould specially concern us, however, is the positive and critical\nhumanist--the Aristotle, let us say, of the \u201cEthics\u201d and \u201cPolitics\u201d and\n\u201cPoetics.\u201d Just as I have called the point of view of the scientific\nand utilitarian naturalist Baconian,[13] and that of the emotional\nnaturalist Rousseauistic, so I would term the point of view that I\nam myself seeking to develop Aristotelian. Aristotle has laid down\nonce for all the principle that should guide the ethical positivist.\n\u201cTruth,\u201d he says, \u201cin matters of moral action is judged from facts and\nfrom actual life. \u2026 So what we should do is to examine the preceding\nstatements [of Solon and other wise men] by referring them to facts\nand to actual life, and when they harmonize with facts we may accept\nthem, when they are at variance with them conceive of them as mere\ntheories.\u201d[14]\n\nIt is in this sense alone that I aspire to be called an Aristotelian;\nfor one risks certain misunderstandings in using the name of\nAristotle.[15] The authority of this great positivist has been invoked\ninnumerable times throughout the ages as a substitute for direct\nobservation. Aristotle was not only the prop and mainstay of dogma\nfor centuries during the Middle Ages, but dogmatic Aristotelianism\nsurvived to no small extent, especially in literature, throughout the\nneo-classical period. It was no doubt natural enough that the champions\nof the modern spirit should have rejected Aristotle along with the\ntraditional order of which he had been made a support. Yet if they had\nbeen more modern they might have seen in him rather a chief precursor.\nThey might have learned from him how to have standards and at the same\ntime not be immured in dogma. As it is, those who call themselves\nmodern have come to adopt a purely exploratory attitude towards life.\n\u201cOn desperate seas long wont to roam,\u201d they have lost more and more\nthe sense of what is normal and central in human experience. But to\nget away from what is normal and central is to get away from wisdom.\nMy whole argument on the negative side, if I may venture on a final\nsumming up, is that the naturalistic movement in the midst of which\nwe are still living had from the start this taint of eccentricity. I\nhave tried to show in detail the nature of the aberration. As for the\nresults, they are being written large in disastrous events. On its\nconstructive side, my argument, if it makes any appeal at all, will\nbe to those for whom the symbols through which the past has received\nits wisdom have become incredible, and who, seeing at the same time\nthat the break with the past that took place in the eighteenth century\nwas on unsound lines, hold that the remedy for the partial positivism\nthat is the source of this unsoundness, is a more complete positivism.\nNothing is more perilous than to be only half critical. This is to\nrisk being the wrong type of individualist--the individualist who has\nrepudiated outer control without achieving inner control. \u201cPeople mean\nnowadays by a philosopher,\u201d says Rivarol, \u201cnot the man who learns the\ngreat art of mastering his passions or adding to his insight, but\nthe man who has cast off prejudices without acquiring virtues.\u201d That\nview of philosophy has not ceased to be popular. The whole modern\nexperiment is threatened with breakdown simply because it has not been\nsufficiently modern. One should therefore not rest content until one\nhas, with the aid of the secular experience of both the East and the\nWest, worked out a point of view so modern that, compared with it, that\nof our young radicals will seem antediluvian.\n\n\n\n\nROUSSEAU AND ROMANTICISM\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE TERMS CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC\n\n\nThe words classic and romantic, we are often told, cannot be defined\nat all, and even if they could be defined, some would add, we should\nnot be much profited. But this inability or unwillingness to define may\nitself turn out to be only one aspect of a movement that from Rousseau\nto Bergson has sought to discredit the analytical intellect--what\nWordsworth calls \u201cthe false secondary power by which we multiply\ndistinctions.\u201d However, those who are with Socrates rather than with\nRousseau or Wordsworth in this matter, will insist on the importance\nof definition, especially in a chaotic era like the present; for\nnothing is more characteristic of such an era than its irresponsible\nuse of general terms. Now to measure up to the Socratic standard, a\ndefinition must not be abstract and metaphysical, but experimental;\nit must not, that is, reflect our opinion of what a word should mean,\nbut what it actually has meant. Mathematicians may be free at times\nto frame their own definitions, but in the case of words like classic\nand romantic, that have been used innumerable times, and used not in\none but in many countries, such a method is inadmissible. One must\nkeep one\u2019s eye on actual usage. One should indeed allow for a certain\namount of freakishness in this usage. Beaumarchais, for example, makes\nclassic synonymous with barbaric.[16] One may disregard an occasional\naberration of this kind, but if one can find only confusion and\ninconsistency in all the main uses of words like classic and romantic,\nthe only procedure for those who speak or write in order to be\nunderstood is to banish the words from their vocabulary.\n\nNow to define in a Socratic way two things are necessary: one must\nlearn to see a common element in things that are apparently different\nand also to discriminate between things that are apparently similar.\nA Newton, to take the familiar instance of the former process, saw a\ncommon element in the fall of an apple and the motion of a planet;\nand one may perhaps without being a literary Newton discover a common\nelement in all the main uses of the word romantic as well as in all\nthe main uses of the word classic; though some of the things to which\nthe word romantic in particular has been applied seem, it must be\nadmitted, at least as far apart as the fall of an apple and the motion\nof a planet. The first step is to perceive the something that connects\ntwo or more of these things apparently so diverse, and then it may be\nfound necessary to refer this unifying trait itself back to something\nstill more general, and so on until we arrive, not indeed at anything\nabsolute--the absolute will always elude us--but at what Goethe calls\nthe original or underlying phenomenon (_Urph\u00e4nomen_). A fruitful source\nof false definition is to take as primary in a more or less closely\nallied group of facts what is actually secondary--for example, to fix\nupon the return to the Middle Ages as the central fact in romanticism,\nwhereas this return is only symptomatic; it is very far from being the\noriginal phenomenon. Confused and incomplete definitions of romanticism\nhave indeed just that origin--they seek to put at the centre something\nthat though romantic is not central but peripheral, and so the whole\nsubject is thrown out of perspective.\n\nMy plan then is to determine to the best of my ability, in connection\nwith a brief historical survey, the common element in the various uses\nof the words classic and romantic; and then, having thus disposed of\nthe similarities, to turn to the second part of the art of defining\nand deal, also historically, with the differences. For my subject is\nnot romanticism in general, but only a particular type of romanticism,\nand this type of romanticism needs to be seen as a recoil, not from\nclassicism in general, but from a particular type of classicism.\n\n\nI\n\nThe word romantic when traced historically is found to go back to\nthe old French _roman_ of which still elder forms are _romans_ and\n_romant_. These and similar formations derive ultimately from the\nmedi\u00e6val Latin adverb _romanice_. _Roman_ and like words meant\noriginally the various vernaculars derived from Latin, just as the\nFrench still speak of these vernaculars as _les langues romanes_;\nand then the word _roman_ came to be applied to tales written in the\nvarious vernaculars, especially in old French. Now with what features\nof these tales were people most struck? The reply to this question is\nfound in a passage of a fifteenth-century Latin manuscript:[17] \u201cFrom\nthe reading of certain romantics, that is, books of poetry composed in\nFrench on military deeds which are for the most part fictitious.\u201d[18]\nHere the term romantic is applied to books that we should still\ncall romantic and for the very same reason, namely, because of the\npredominance in these books of the element of fiction over reality.\n\nIn general a thing is romantic when, as Aristotle would say, it is\nwonderful rather than probable; in other words, when it violates the\nnormal sequence of cause and effect in favor of adventure. Here is\nthe fundamental contrast between the words classic and romantic which\nmeets us at the outset and in some form or other persists in all the\nuses of the word down to the present day. A thing is romantic when it\nis strange, unexpected, intense, superlative, extreme, unique,[19]\netc. A thing is classical, on the other hand, when it is not unique,\nbut representative of a class. In this sense medical men may speak\ncorrectly of a classic case of typhoid fever, or a classic case of\nhysteria. One is even justified in speaking of a classic example of\nromanticism. By an easy extension of meaning a thing is classical when\nit belongs to a high class or to the best class.\n\nThe type of romanticism referred to in the fifteenth-century manuscript\nwas, it will be observed, the spontaneous product of the popular\nimagination of the Middle Ages. We may go further and say that the\nuncultivated human imagination in all times and places is romantic in\nthe same way. It hungers for the thrilling and the marvellous and is,\nin short, incurably melodramatic. All students of the past know how,\nwhen the popular imagination is left free to work on actual historical\ncharacters and events, it quickly introduces into these characters\nand events the themes of universal folk-lore, and makes a ruthless\nsacrifice of reality to the love of melodramatic surprise. For example,\nthe original nucleus of historical fact has almost disappeared in the\nlurid melodramatic tale \u201cLes quatre fils Aymon,\u201d which has continued,\nas presented in the \u201cBiblioth\u00e8que Bleue,\u201d to appeal to the French\npeasant down to our own times. Those who look with alarm on recent\nattacks upon romanticism should therefore be comforted. All children,\nnearly all women and the vast majority of men always have been, are\nand probably always will be romantic. This is true even of a classical\nperiod like the second half of the seventeenth century in France.\nBoileau is supposed to have killed the vogue of the interminable\nromances of the early seventeenth century which themselves continue\nthe spirit of the medi\u00e6val romances. But recent investigations have\nshown that the vogue of these romances continued until well on into the\neighteenth century. They influenced the imagination of Rousseau, the\ngreat modern romancer.\n\nBut to return to the history of the word romantic. The first printed\nexamples of the word in any modern tongue are, it would seem, to be\nfound in English. The Oxford Dictionary cites the following from F.\nGreville\u2019s \u201cLife of Sidney\u201d (written before 1628, published in 1652):\n\u201cDoe not his Arcadian romantics live after him?\u201d--meaning apparently\nideas or features suggestive of romance. Of extreme interest is the\nuse of the word in Evelyn\u2019s \u201cDiary\u201d (3 August, 1654): \u201cWere Sir Guy\u2019s\ngrot improved as it might be, it were capable of being made a most\nromantic and pleasant place.\u201d The word is not only used in a favorable\nsense, but it is applied to nature; and it is this use of the word in\nconnection with outer nature that French and German literatures are\ngoing to derive later from England. Among the early English uses of\nthe word romantic may be noted: \u201cThere happened this extraordinary\ncase--one of the most romantique that ever I heard in my life and could\nnot have believed,\u201d[20] etc. \u201cMost other authors that I ever read\neither have wild romantic tales wherein they strain Love and Honor to\nthat ridiculous height that it becomes burlesque,\u201d[21] etc. The word\nbecomes fairly common by the year 1700 and thousands of examples could\nbe collected from English writers in the eighteenth century. Here are\ntwo early eighteenth-century instances:\n\n    \u201cThe gentleman I am married to made love to me in rapture but\n    it was the rapture of a Christian and a man of Honor, not a\n    romantic hero or a whining coxcomb.\u201d[22]\n\n    Whether the charmer sinner it or saint it\n    If folly grow romantick I must paint it.[23]\n\nThe early French and German uses of the word romantic seem to derive\nfrom England. One important point is to be noted as to France. Before\nusing the word _romantique_ the French used the word _romanesque_ in\nthe sense of wild, unusual, adventurous--especially in matters of\nsentiment, and they have continued to employ _romanesque_ alongside\n_romantique_, which is now practically used only of the romantic\nschool. A great deal of confusion is thus avoided into which we fall\nin English from having only the one word romantic, which must do duty\nfor both _romantique_ and _romanesque_. An example of _romantique_\nis found in French as early as 1675;[24] but the word owed its vogue\npractically to the anglomania that set in about the middle of the\neighteenth century. The first very influential French example of the\nword is appropriately found in Rousseau in the Fifth Promenade (1777):\n\u201cThe shores of the Lake of Bienne are more wild and romantic than those\nof the Lake of Geneva.\u201d The word _romantique_ was fashionable in France\nespecially as applied to scenery from about the year 1785, but without\nany thought as yet of applying it to a literary school.\n\nIn Germany the word _romantisch_ as an equivalent of the French\n_romanesque_ and modern German _romanhaft_, appears at the end of\nthe seventeenth century and plainly as a borrowing from the French.\nHeidigger, a Swiss, used it several times in his \u201cMythoscopia\nromantica,\u201d[25] an attack on romances and the wild and vain imaginings\nthey engender. According to Heidigger the only resource against\nromanticism in this sense is religion. In Germany as in France the\nassociation of romantic with natural scenery comes from England,\nespecially from the imitations and translations of Thomson\u2019s \u201cSeasons.\u201d\n\nIn the second half of the eighteenth century the increasingly favorable\nuse of words like Gothic and enthusiastic as well as the emergence of\nwords like sentimental and picturesque are among the symptoms of a new\nmovement, and the fortunes of the word romantic were more or less bound\nup with this movement. Still, apart from its application to natural\nscenery, the word is as yet far from having acquired a favorable\nconnotation if we are to believe an essay by John Foster on the\n\u201cApplication of the Epithet Romantic\u201d (1805). Foster\u2019s point of view is\nnot unlike that of Heidigger. Romantic, he says, had come to be used\nas a term of vague abuse, whereas it can be used rightly only of the\nascendancy of imagination over judgment, and is therefore synonymous\nwith such words as wild, visionary, extravagant. \u201cA man possessing\nso strong a judgment and so subordinate a fancy as Dean Swift would\nhardly have been made romantic \u2026 if he had studied all the books in Don\nQuixote\u2019s library.\u201d It is not, Foster admits, a sign of high endowment\nfor a youth to be too coldly judicial, too deaf to the blandishments of\nimaginative illusion. Yet in general a man should strive to bring his\nimagination under the control of sound reason. But how is it possible\nthus to prevail against the deceits of fancy? Right knowing, he asserts\nvery un-Socratically, is not enough to ensure right doing. At this\npoint Foster changes from the tone of a literary essay to that of a\nsermon, and, maintaining a thesis somewhat similar to that of Pascal in\nthe seventeenth century and Heidigger in the eighteenth, he concludes\nthat a man\u2019s imagination will run away with his judgment or reason\nunless he have the aid of divine grace.\n\n\nII\n\nWhen Foster wrote his essay there was no question as yet in England\nof a romantic school. Before considering how the word came to be\napplied to a particular movement we need first to bring out more\nfully certain broad conflicts of tendency during the seventeenth and\neighteenth centuries, conflicts that are not sufficiently revealed\nby the occasional uses during this period of the word romantic. In\nthe contrast Foster established between judgment and imagination he\nis merely following a long series of neo-classical critics and this\ncontrast not only seemed to him and these critics, but still seems\nto many, the essential contrast between classicism and romanticism.\nWe shall be helped in understanding how judgment (or reason) and\nimagination came thus to be sharply contrasted if we consider briefly\nthe changes in the meaning of the word wit during the neo-classical\nperiod, and also if we recollect that the contrast between judgment and\nimagination is closely related to the contrast the French are so fond\nof establishing between the general sense (_le sens commun_) and the\nprivate sense or sense of the individual (_le sens propre_).\n\nIn the sixteenth century prime emphasis was put not upon common sense,\nbut upon wit or conceit or ingenuity (in the sense of quickness of\nimagination). The typical Elizabethan strove to excel less by judgment\nthan by invention, by \u201chigh-flying liberty of conceit\u201d; like Falstaff\nhe would have a brain \u201capprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of\nnimble, fiery, and delectable shapes.\u201d Wit at this time, it should\nbe remembered, was synonymous not only with imagination but with\nintellect (in opposition to will). The result of the worship of wit in\nthis twofold sense was a sort of intellectual romanticism. Though its\norigins are no doubt medi\u00e6val, it differs from the ordinary romanticism\nof the Middle Ages to which I have already referred in being thus\nconcerned with thought rather than with action. Towards the end of the\nRenaissance and in the early seventeenth century especially, people\nwere ready to pursue the strange and surprising thought even at the\nrisk of getting too far away from the workings of the normal mind.\nHence the \u201cpoints\u201d and \u201cconceits\u201d that spread, as Lowell put it, like\na \u201ccutaneous eruption\u201d over the face of Europe; hence the Gongorists,\nand Cultists, the Marinists and Euphuists, the _pr\u00e9cieux_ and the\n\u201cmetaphysical\u201d poets. And then came the inevitable swing away from all\nthis fantasticality towards common sense. A demand arose for something\nthat was less rare and \u201cprecious\u201d and more representative.\n\nThis struggle between the general sense and the sense of the individual\nstands out with special clearness in France. A model was gradually\nworked out by aid of the classics, especially the Latin classics, as\nto what man should be. Those who were in the main movement of the time\nelaborated a great convention, that is they _came together_ about\ncertain things. They condemned in the name of their convention those\nwho were too indulgent of their private sense, in other words, too\neccentric in their imaginings. A Th\u00e9ophile, for example, fell into\ndisesteem for refusing to restrain his imagination, for asserting the\ntype of \u201cspontaneity\u201d that would have won him favor in any romantic\nperiod.[26]\n\nThe swing away from intellectual romanticism can also be traced in\nthe changes that took place in the meaning of the word wit in both\nFrance and England. One of the main tasks of the French critics of the\nseventeenth century and of English critics, largely under the lead of\nthe French, was to distinguish between true and false wit. The work\nthat would have been complimented a little earlier as \u201cwitty\u201d and\n\u201cconceited\u201d is now censured as fantastic and far-fetched, as lacking in\njudicial control over the imagination, and therefore in general appeal.\nThe movement away from the sense of the individual towards common sense\ngoes on steadily from the time of Malherbe to that of Boileau. Balzac\nattacks Ronsard for his individualistic excess, especially for his\naudacity in inventing words without reference to usage. Balzac himself\nis attacked by Boileau for his affectation, for his straining to say\nthings differently from other people. In so far his wit was not true\nbut false. La Bruy\u00e8re, in substantial accord with Boileau, defines\nfalse wit as wit which is lacking in good sense and judgment and \u201cin\nwhich the imagination has too large a share.\u201d[27]\n\nWhat the metaphysical poets in England understood by wit, according\nto Dr. Johnson, was the pursuit of their thoughts to their last\nramifications, and in this pursuit of the singular and the novel they\nlost the \u201cgrandeur of generality.\u201d This imaginative quest of rarity\nled to the same recoil as in France, to a demand for common sense and\njudgment. The opposite extreme from the metaphysical excess is reached\nwhen the element of invention is eliminated entirely from wit and it is\nreduced, as it is by Pope, to rendering happily the general sense--\n\n    What oft was thought but ne\u2019er so well expressed.\n\nDr. Johnson says that the decisive change in the meaning of the word\nwit took place about the time of Cowley. Important evidences of this\nchange and also of the new tendency to depreciate the imagination\nis also found in certain passages of Hobbes. Hobbes identifies the\nimagination with the memory of outer images and so looks on it as\n\u201cdecaying sense.\u201d[28] \u201cThey who observe similitudes,\u201d he remarks\nelsewhere, making a distinction that was to be developed by Locke and\naccepted by Addison, \u201cin case they be such as are but rarely observed\nby others are said to have a good wit; by which, in this occasion, is\nmeant a good fancy\u201d (wit has here the older meaning). \u201cBut they who\ndistinguish and observe differences,\u201d he continues, \u201care said to have\na good judgment. Fancy without the help of judgment is not worthy of\ncommendation, whereas judgment is commended for itself without the help\nof fancy. Indeed without steadiness and direction to some end, a great\nfancy is one kind of madness.\u201d \u201cJudgment without fancy,\u201d he concludes,\n\u201cis wit\u201d (this anticipates the extreme neo-classical use of the word\nwit), \u201cbut fancy without judgment, not.\u201d\n\nDryden betrays the influence of Hobbes when he says of the period of\nincubation of his \u201cRival Ladies\u201d: \u201cFancy was yet in its first work,\nmoving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be\ndistinguished and either chosen or rejected by judgment.\u201d Fancy or\nimagination (the words were still synonymous), as conceived by the\nEnglish neo-classicists, often shows a strange vivacity for a faculty\nthat is after all only \u201cdecaying sense.\u201d \u201cFancy without judgment,\u201d\nsays Dryden, \u201cis a hot-mouthed jade without a curb.\u201d \u201cFancy,\u201d writes\nRymer in a similar vein, \u201cleaps and frisks, and away she\u2019s gone; whilst\nreason rattles the chain and follows after.\u201d The following lines of\nMulgrave are typical of the neo-classical notion of the relation\nbetween fancy and judgment:\n\n    As all is dullness when the Fancy\u2019s bad,\n    So without Judgment, Fancy is but mad.\n    Reason is that substantial, useful part\n    Which gains the Head, while t\u2019 other wins the Heart.[29]\n\nThe opposition established by the neo-classicist in passages of this\nkind is too mechanical. Fancy and judgment do not seem to co\u00f6perate\nbut to war with one another. In case of doubt the neo-classicist is\nalways ready to sacrifice fancy to the \u201csubstantial, useful part,\u201d\nand so he seems too negative and cool and prosaic in his reason, and\nthis is because his reason is so largely a protest against a previous\nromantic excess. What had been considered genius in the time of the\n\u201cmetaphysicals\u201d had too often turned out to be only oddity. With this\nwarning before them men kept their eyes fixed very closely on the\nmodel of normal human nature that had been set up, and imitated it\nvery literally and timorously. A man was haunted by the fear that he\nmight be \u201cmonstrous,\u201d and so, as Rymer put it, \u201csatisfy nobody\u2019s maggot\nbut his own.\u201d Correctness thus became a sort of tyranny. We suffer to\nthe present day from this neo-classical failure to work out a sound\nconception of the imagination in its relation to good sense. Because\nthe neo-classicist held the imagination lightly as compared with\ngood sense the romantic rebels, were led to hold good sense lightly\nas compared with imagination. The romantic view in short is too much\nthe neo-classical view turned upside down; and, as Sainte-Beuve says,\nnothing resembles a hollow so much as a swelling.\n\n\nIII\n\nBecause the classicism against which romanticism rebelled was\ninadequate it does not follow that every type of classicism suffers\nfrom a similar inadequacy. The great movement away from imaginative\nunrestraint towards regularity and good sense took place in the main\nunder French auspices. In general the French have been the chief\nexponents of the classic spirit in modern times. They themselves feel\nthis so strongly that a certain group in France has of late years\ninclined to use interchangeably the words classicist and nationalist.\nBut this is a grave confusion, for if the classic spirit is anything\nat all it is in its essence not local and national, but universal\nand human. To be sure, any particular manifestation of classicism\nwill of necessity contain elements that are less universal, elements\nthat reflect merely a certain person or persons, or a certain age and\ncountry. This is a truth that we scarcely need to have preached to us;\nfor with the growth of the historical method we have come to fix our\nattention almost exclusively on these local and relative elements. The\ncomplete critic will accept the historical method but be on his guard\nagainst its excess. He will see an element in man that is set above the\nlocal and the relative; he will learn to detect this abiding element\nthrough all the flux of circumstance; in Platonic language, he will\nperceive the One in the Many.\n\nFormerly, it must be admitted, critics were not historical enough.\nThey took to be of the essence of classicism what was merely its local\ncoloring, especially the coloring it received from the French of the\nseventeenth century. If we wish to distinguish between essence and\naccident in the classic spirit we must get behind the French of the\nseventeenth century, behind the Italians of the sixteenth century who\nlaid the foundations of neo-classical theory, behind the Romans who\nwere the immediate models of most neo-classicists, to the source of\nclassicism in Greece. Even in Greece the classic spirit is very much\nimplicated in the local and the relative, yet in the life of no other\npeople perhaps does what is universal in man shine forth more clearly\nfrom what is only local and relative. We still need, therefore, to\nreturn to Greece, not merely for the best practice, but for the best\ntheory of classicism; for this is still found in spite of all its\nobscurities and incompleteness in the Poetics of Aristotle. If we have\nrecourse to this treatise, however, it must be on condition that we do\nnot, like the critics of the Renaissance, deal with it in an abstract\nand dogmatic way (the form of the treatise it must be confessed gave\nthem no slight encouragement), but in a spirit akin to Aristotle\u2019s own\nas revealed in the total body of his writings--a spirit that is at its\nbest positive and experimental.\n\nAristotle not only deals positively and experimentally with the natural\norder and with man so far as he is a part of this order, but he deals\nin a similar fashion with a side of man that the modern positivist\noften overlooks. Like all the great Greeks Aristotle recognizes that\nman is the creature of two laws: he has an ordinary or natural self\nof impulse and desire and a human self that is known practically as a\npower of control over impulse and desire. If man is to become human he\nmust not let impulse and desire run wild, but must oppose to everything\nexcessive in his ordinary self, whether in thought or deed or emotion,\nthe law of measure. This insistence on restraint and proportion is\nrightly taken to be of the essence not merely of the Greek spirit but\nof the classical spirit in general. The norm or standard that is to set\nbounds to the ordinary self is got at by different types of classicists\nin different ways and described variously: for example, as the human\nlaw, or the better self, or reason (a word to be discussed more fully\nlater), or nature. Thus when Boileau says, \u201cLet nature be your only\nstudy,\u201d he does not mean outer nature, nor again the nature of this or\nthat individual, but representative human nature. Having decided what\nis normal either for man or some particular class of men the classicist\ntakes this normal \u201cnature\u201d for his model and proceeds to imitate it.\nWhatever accords with the model he has thus set up he pronounces\nnatural or probable, whatever on the other hand departs too far from\nwhat he conceives to be the normal type or the normal sequence of cause\nand effect he holds to be \u201cimprobable\u201d and unnatural or even, if it\nattains an extreme of abnormality, \u201cmonstrous.\u201d Whatever in conduct\nor character is duly restrained and proportionate with reference to\nthe model is said to observe decorum. Probability and decorum are\nidentical in some of their aspects and closely related in all.[30]\nTo recapitulate, a general nature, a core of normal experience, is\naffirmed by all classicists. From this central affirmation derives the\ndoctrine of imitation, and from imitation in turn the doctrines of\nprobability and decorum.\n\nBut though all classicists are alike in insisting on nature, imitation,\nprobability and decorum, they differ widely, as I have already\nintimated, in what they understand by these terms. Let us consider\nfirst what Aristotle and the Greeks understand by them. The first point\nto observe is that according to Aristotle one is to get his general\nnature not on authority or second hand, but is to disengage it directly\nfor himself from the jumble of particulars that he has before his eyes.\nHe is not, says Aristotle, to imitate things as they are, but as they\nought to be. Thus conceived imitation is a creative act. Through all\nthe welter of the actual one penetrates to the real and so succeeds\nwithout ceasing to be individual in suggesting the universal. Poetry\nthat is imitative in this sense is, according to Aristotle, more\n\u201cserious\u201d and \u201cphilosophical\u201d than history. History deals merely with\nwhat has happened, whereas poetry deals with what may happen according\nto probability or necessity. Poetry, that is, does not portray life\nliterally but extricates the deeper or ideal truth from the flux of\ncircumstance. One may add with Sydney that if poetry is thus superior\nto history in being more serious and philosophical it resembles history\nand is superior to philosophy in being concrete.\n\nThe One that the great poet or artist perceives in the Many and that\ngives to his work its high seriousness is not a fixed absolute. In\ngeneral the model that the highly serious man (\u1f41 \u03c3\u03c0\u03bf\u03c5\u03b4\u03b1\u1fd6\u03bf\u03c2) imitates\nand that keeps his ordinary self within the bounds of decorum is not\nto be taken as anything finite, as anything that can be formulated\nonce for all. This point is important for on it hinges every right\ndistinction not merely between the classic and the romantic, but\nbetween the classic and the pseudo-classic. Romanticism has claimed\nfor itself a monopoly of imagination and infinitude, but on closer\nexamination, as I hope to show later, this claim, at least so far as\ngenuine classicism is concerned, will be found to be quite unjustified.\nFor the present it is enough to say that true classicism does not\nrest on the observance of rules or the imitation of models but on an\nimmediate insight into the universal. Aristotle is especially admirable\nin the account he gives of this insight and of the way it may manifest\nitself in art and literature. One may be rightly imitative, he says,\nand so have access to a superior truth and give others access to it\nonly by being a master of illusion. Though the great poet \u201cbreathes\nimmortal air,\u201d though he sees behind the shows of sense a world of\nmore abiding relationships, he can convey his vision not directly but\nonly imaginatively. Aristotle, one should observe, does not establish\nany hard and fast opposition between judgment and imagination, an\nopposition that pervades not only the neo-classical movement but also\nthe romantic revolt from it. He simply affirms a supersensuous order\nwhich one can perceive only with the help of fiction. The best art,\nsays Goethe in the true spirit of Aristotle, gives us the \u201cillusion\nof a higher reality.\u201d This has the advantage of being experimental.\nIt is merely a statement of what one feels in the presence of a great\npainting, let us say, or in reading a great poem.\n\n\nIV\n\nAfter this attempt to define briefly with the help of the Greeks the\nclassical spirit in its essence we should be prepared to understand\nmore clearly the way in which this spirit was modified in neo-classical\ntimes, especially in France. The first thing that strikes one about\nthe classicism of this period is that it does not rest on immediate\nperception like that of the Greeks but on outer authority. The merely\ndogmatic and traditional classicist gave a somewhat un-Greek meaning\nto the doctrines of nature and imitation. Why imitate nature directly,\nsaid Scaliger, when we have in Virgil a second nature? Imitation thus\ncame to mean the imitation of certain outer models and the following\nof rules based on these models. Now it is well that one who aims at\nexcellence in any field should begin by a thorough assimilation of the\nachievements of his great predecessors in this field. Unfortunately\nthe neo-classical theorist tended to impose a multitude of precepts\nthat were based on what was external rather than on what was vital\nin the practice of his models. In so far the lesson of form that the\ngreat ancients can always teach any one who approaches them in the\nright spirit degenerated into formalism. This formalistic turn given\nto the doctrine of imitation was felt from the outset to be a menace\nto originality; to be incompatible, and everything hinges at last on\nthis point, with the spontaneity of the imagination. There was an\nimportant reaction headed by men like Boileau, within the neo-classical\nmovement itself, against the oppression of the intuitive side of human\nnature by mere dogma and authority, above all against the notion that\n\u201cregularity\u201d is in itself any guarantee of literary excellence. A\nschool of rules was succeeded by a school of taste. Yet even to the\nend the neo-classicist was too prone to reject as unnatural or even\nmonstrous everything that did not fit into one of the traditional\npigeon-holes. One must grant, indeed, that much noble work was achieved\nunder the neo-classical dispensation, work that shows a genuine insight\ninto the universal, but it is none the less evident that the view of\nthe imagination held during this period has a formalistic taint.\n\nThis taint in neo-classicism is due not merely to its dogmatic and\nmechanical way of dealing with the doctrine of imitation but also to\nthe fact that it had to reconcile classical with Christian dogma; and\nthe two antiquities, classical and Christian, if interpreted vitally\nand in the spirit, were in many respects divergent and in some respects\ncontradictory. The general outcome of the attempts at reconciliation\nmade by the literary casuists of Italy and France was that Christianity\nshould have a monopoly of truth and classicism a monopoly of fiction.\nFor the true classicist, it will be remembered, the two things are\ninseparable--he gets at his truth through a veil of fiction. Many of\nthe neo-classicists came to conceive of art as many romanticists were\nto conceive of it later as a sort of irresponsible game or play, but\nthey were, it must be confessed, very inferior to the romanticists\nin the spontaneity of their fiction. They went for this fiction as\nfor everything else to the models, and this meant in practice that\nthey employed the pagan myths, not as imaginative symbols of a higher\nreality--it is still possible to employ them in that way--but merely in\nBoileau\u2019s phrase as \u201ctraditional ornaments\u201d (_ornements re\u00e7us_). The\nneo-classicist to be sure might so employ his \u201cfiction\u201d as to inculcate\na moral; in that case he is only too likely to give us instead of\nthe living symbol, dead allegory; instead of high seriousness, its\ncaricature, didacticism. The traditional stock of fiction became at\nlast so intolerably trite as to be rejected even by some of the late\nneo-classicists. \u201cThe rejection and contempt of fiction,\u201d said Dr.\nJohnson (who indulged in it himself on occasion) \u201cis rational and\nmanly.\u201d But to reject fiction in the larger sense is to miss the true\ndriving power in human nature--the imagination. Before concluding,\nhowever, that Dr. Johnson had no notion of the r\u00f4le of the imagination\none should read his attack on the theory of the three unities[31] which\nwas later to be turned to account by the romanticists.\n\nNow the three unities may be defended on an entirely legitimate\nground--on the ground namely that they make for concentration, a prime\nvirtue in the drama; but the grounds on which they were actually\nimposed on the drama, especially in connection with the Quarrel of\nthe Cid, illustrate the corruption of another main classical doctrine,\nthat of probability or verisimilitude. In his dealings with probability\nas in his dealings with imitation, the neo-classical formalist did\nnot allow sufficiently for the element of illusion. What he required\nfrom the drama in the name of probability was not the \u201cillusion of a\nhigher reality,\u201d but strict logic or even literal deception. He was\nnot capable of a poetic faith, not willing to suspend his disbelief\non passing from the world of ordinary fact to the world of artistic\ncreation. Goethe was thinking especially of the neo-classical French\nwhen he said: \u201cAs for the French, they will always be arrested by their\nreason. They do not recognize that the imagination has its own laws\nwhich are and always must be problematic for the reason.\u201d\n\nIt was also largely under French influence that the doctrine of\ndecorum, which touches probability at many points, was turned aside\nfrom its true meaning. Decorum is in a way the peculiar doctrine of the\nclassicist, is in Milton\u2019s phrase \u201cthe grand masterpiece to observe.\u201d\nThe doctrines of the universal and the imitation of the universal go\ndeeper indeed than decorum, so much deeper that they are shared by\nclassicism with religion. The man who aspires to live religiously must\nno less than the humanist look to some model set above his ordinary\nself and imitate it. But though the classicist at his best meditates,\nhe does not, like the seeker after religious perfection, see in\nmeditation an end in itself but rather a support for the mediatory\nvirtues, the virtues of the man who would live to the best advantage\nin this world rather than renounce it; and these virtues may be said\nto be summed up in decorum. For the best type of Greek humanist,\na Sophocles let us say, decorum was a vital and immediate thing.\nBut there enters into decorum even from the time of the Alexandrian\nGreeks, and still more into French neo-classical decorum, a marked\nelement of artificiality. The all-roundness and fine symmetry, the\npoise and dignity that come from working within the bounds of the\nhuman law, were taken to be the privilege not of man in general but of\na special social class. Take for instance verbal decorum: the French\nneo-classicists assumed that if the speech of poetry is to be noble and\nhighly serious it must coincide with the speech of the aristocracy. As\nNisard puts it, they confused nobility of language with the language of\nthe nobility. Decorum was thus more or less merged with etiquette, so\nthat the standards of the stage and of literature in general came to\ncoincide, as Rousseau complains, with those of the drawing-room. More\nthan anything else this narrowing of decorum marks the decline from the\nclassic to the pseudo-classic, from form to formalism.\n\nWhile condemning pseudo-decorum one should remember that even a\nGreek would have seen something paradoxical in a poem like Goethe\u2019s\n\u201cHermann und Dorothea\u201d and its attempt to invest with epic grandeur the\naffairs of villagers and peasants. After all, dignity and elevation\nand especially the opportunity for important action, which is the\npoint on which the classicist puts prime emphasis, are normally\nthough not invariably associated with a high rather than with a mean\nsocial estate. In general one should insist that the decorum worked\nout under French auspices was far from being merely artificial. The\nFrench gentleman (_honn\u00eate homme_) of the seventeenth century often\nshowed a moderation and freedom from over-emphasis, an exquisite tact\nand urbanity that did not fall too far short of his immediate model,\nHorace, and related him to the all-round man of the Greeks (\u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u1f78\u03c2\n\u03ba\u1f00\u03b3\u03b1\u03b8\u03cc\u03c2). To be sure an ascetic Christian like Pascal sees in decorum\na disguise of one\u2019s ordinary self rather than a real curb upon it, and\nfeels that the gap is not sufficiently wide between even the best type\nof the man of the world and the mere worldling. One needs, however, to\nbe very austere to disdain the art of living that has been fostered\nby decorum from the Greeks down. Something of this art of living\nsurvives even in a Chesterfield, who falls far short of the best type\nof French gentleman and reminds one very remotely indeed of a Pericles.\nChesterfield\u2019s half-jesting definition of decorum as the art of\ncombining the useful appearances of virtue with the solid satisfactions\nof vice points the way to its ultimate corruption. Talleyrand, who\nmarks perhaps this last stage, was defined by Napoleon as \u201ca silk\nstocking filled with mud.\u201d In some of its late exemplars decorum had\nactually become, as Rousseau complains, the \u201cmask of hypocrisy\u201d and the\n\u201cvarnish of vice.\u201d\n\nOne should not however, like Rousseau and the romanticists, judge of\ndecorum by what it degenerated into. Every doctrine of genuine worth is\ndisciplinary and men in the mass do not desire discipline. \u201cMost men,\u201d\nsays Aristotle, \u201cwould rather live in a disorderly than in a sober\nmanner.\u201d But most men do not admit any such preference--that would be\ncrude and inartistic. They incline rather to substitute for the reality\nof discipline some art of going through the motions. Every great\ndoctrine is thus in constant peril of passing over into some hollow\nsemblance or even, it may be, into some mere caricature of itself. When\none wishes therefore to determine the nature of decorum one should\nthink of a Milton, let us say, and not of a Talleyrand or even of a\nChesterfield.\n\nMilton imitated the models, like any other neo-classicist, but his\nimitation was not, in Joubert\u2019s phrase, that of one book by another\nbook, but of one soul by another soul. His decorum is therefore\nimaginative; and it is the privilege of the imagination to give\nthe sense of spaciousness and infinitude. On the other hand, the\nunimaginative way in which many of the neo-classicists held their\nmain tenets--nature, imitation, probability, decorum--narrowed unduly\nthe scope of the human spirit and appeared to close the gates of\nthe future. \u201cArt and diligence have now done their best,\u201d says Dr.\nJohnson of the versification of Pope, \u201cand what shall be added will be\nthe effort of tedious toil and needless curiosity.\u201d Nothing is more\nperilous than thus to seem to confine man in some pinfold; there is\nsomething in him that refuses to acquiesce in any position as final;\nhe is in Nietzsche\u2019s phrase the being who must always surpass himself.\nThe attempt to oppose external and mechanical barriers to the freedom\nof the spirit will create in the long run an atmosphere of stuffiness\nand smugness, and nothing is more intolerable than smugness. Men were\nguillotined in the French Revolution, as Bagehot suggests, simply\nbecause either they or their ancestors had been smug. Inert acceptance\nof tradition and routine will be met sooner or later by the cry of\nFaust: _Hinaus ins Freie!_\n\nBefore considering the value of the method chosen by Rousseau and\nthe romanticists for breaking up the \u201ctiresome old heavens\u201d and\nescaping from smugness and stuffiness, one should note that the lack\nof originality and genius which they lamented in the eighteenth\ncentury--especially in that part of it known as the Enlightenment--was\nnot due entirely to pseudo-classic formalism. At least two other main\ncurrents entered into the Enlightenment: first the empirical and\nutilitarian current that goes back to Francis Bacon, and some would\nsay to Roger Bacon; and secondly the rationalistic current that goes\nback to Descartes. English empiricism gained international vogue in\nthe philosophy of Locke, and Locke denies any supersensuous element\nin human nature to which one may have access with the aid of the\nimagination or in any other way. Locke\u2019s method of precise naturalistic\nobservation is in itself legitimate; for man is plainly subject to\nthe natural law. What is not truly empirical is to bring the whole\nof human nature under this law. One can do this only by piecing out\nprecise observation and experiment with dogmatic rationalism. One side\nof Locke may therefore be properly associated with the father of modern\nrationalists, Descartes. The attempt of the rationalist to lock up\nlife in some set of formul\u00e6 produces in the imaginative man a feeling\nof oppression. He gasps for light and air. The very tracing of cause\nand effect and in general the use of the analytical faculties--and\nthis is to fly to the opposite extreme--came to be condemned by the\nromanticists as inimical to the imagination. Not only do they make\nendless attacks on Locke, but at times they assail even Newton for\nhaving mechanized life, though Newton\u2019s comparison of himself to a\nchild picking up pebbles on the seashore would seem to show that he had\nexperienced \u201cthe feeling infinite.\u201d\n\nThe elaboration of science into a closed system with the aid of logic\nand pure mathematics is as a matter of fact to be associated with\nDescartes rather than with Newton. Neither Newton nor Descartes, one\nscarcely needs add, wished to subject man entirely to the natural law\nand the nexus of physical causes; they were not in short determinists.\nYet the superficial rationalism of the Enlightenment was in the main\nof Cartesian origin. This Cartesian influence ramifies in so many\ndirections and is related at so many points to the literary movement,\nand there has been so much confusion about this relationship, that we\nneed to pause here to make a few distinctions.\n\nPerhaps what most strikes one in the philosophy of Descartes is its\nfaith in logic and abstract reasoning and the closely allied processes\nof mathematical demonstration. Anything that is not susceptible of\nclear proof in this logical and almost mathematical sense is to\nbe rejected. Now this Cartesian notion of clearness is fatal to a\ntrue classicism. The higher reality, the true classicist maintains,\ncannot be thus demonstrated; it can only be grasped, and then never\ncompletely, through a veil of imaginative illusion. Boileau is reported\nto have said that Descartes had cut the throat of poetry; and this\ncharge is justified in so far as the Cartesian requires from poetry\na merely logical clearness. This conception of clearness was also\na menace to the classicism of the seventeenth century which rested\nin the final analysis not on logic but on tradition. This appeared\nvery clearly in the early phases of the quarrel between ancients and\nmoderns when literary Cartesians like Perrault and Fontenelle attacked\nclassical dogma in the name of reason. In fact one may ask if any\ndoctrine has ever appeared so fatal to every form of tradition--not\nmerely literary but also religious and political--as Cartesianism.\nThe rationalist of the eighteenth century was for dismissing as\n\u201cprejudice\u201d everything that could not give a clear account of itself\nin the Cartesian sense. This riot of abstract reasoning (_la raison\nraisonnante_) that prepared the way for the Revolution has been\nidentified by Taine and others with the classic spirit. A more vicious\nconfusion has seldom gained currency in criticism. It is true that\nthe French have mixed a great deal of logic with their conception of\nthe classic spirit, but that is because they have mixed a great deal\nof logic with everything. I have already mentioned their tendency to\nsubstitute a logical for an imaginative verisimilitude; and strenuously\nlogical classicists may be found in France from Chapelain to\nBruneti\u00e8re. Yet the distinction that should keep us from confusing mere\nlogic with the classic spirit was made by a Frenchman who was himself\nviolently logical and also a great geometrician--Pascal. One should\nkeep distinct, says Pascal, the _esprit de g\u00e9om\u00e9trie_ and the _esprit\nde finesse_. The _esprit de finesse_ is not, like the _esprit de\ng\u00e9om\u00e9trie_, abstract, but very concrete.[32] So far as a man possesses\nthe _esprit de finesse_ he is enabled to judge correctly of the\nordinary facts of life and of the relationships between man and man.\nBut these judgments rest upon such a multitude of delicate perceptions\nthat he is frequently unable to account for them logically. It is to\nintuitive good sense and not to the _esprit de g\u00e9om\u00e9trie_ that the\ngentleman (_honn\u00eate homme_) of the neo-classical period owed his fine\ntact. Pascal himself finally took a stand against reason as understood\nboth by the Cartesian and by the man of the world. Unaided reason\nhe held is unable to prevail against the deceits of the imagination;\nit needs the support of intuition--an intuition that he identifies\nwith grace, thus making it inseparable from the most austere form of\nChristianity. The \u201cheart,\u201d he says, and this is the name he gives to\nintuition, \u201chas reasons of which the reason knows nothing.\u201d A Plato or\nan Aristotle would not have understood this divorce between reason and\nintuition.[33]\n\nPascal seems to get his insight only by flouting ordinary good sense.\nHe identifies this insight with a type of theological dogma of which\ngood sense was determined to be rid; and so it tended to get rid of\nthe insight along with the dogma. Classical dogma also seemed at times\nto be in opposition to the intuitive good sense of the man of the\nworld. The man of the world therefore often inclined to assail both\nthe classical and the Christian tradition in the name of good sense,\njust as the Cartesian inclined to assail these traditions in the name\nof abstract reason. Perhaps the best exponent of anti-traditional good\nsense in the seventeenth century was Moli\u00e8re. He vindicated nature,\nand by nature he still meant in the main normal human nature, from\narbitrary constraints of every kind whether imposed by an ascetic\nChristianity or by a narrow and pedantic classicism. Unfortunately\nMoli\u00e8re is too much on the side of the opposition. He does not seem\nto put his good sense into the service of some positive insight of\nhis own. Good sense may be of many degrees according to the order of\nfacts of which it has a correct perception. The order of facts in human\nnature that Moli\u00e8re\u2019s good sense perceived is not the highest and so\nthis good sense appears at times too ready to justify the bourgeois\nagainst the man who has less timid and conventional views. So at\nleast Rousseau thought when he made his famous attack on Moli\u00e8re.[34]\nRousseau assailed Moli\u00e8re in the name of instinct as Pascal would have\nassailed him in the name of insight, and fought sense with sensibility.\nThe hostility of Rousseau to Moli\u00e8re, according to M. Faguet, is that\nof a romantic Bohemian to a philistine of genius.[35] One hesitates to\ncall Moli\u00e8re a philistine, but one may at least grant M. Faguet that\nMoli\u00e8re\u2019s good sense is not always sufficiently inspired.\n\nI have been trying to build up a background that will make clear\nwhy the reason of the eighteenth century (whether we understand\nby reason logic or good sense) had come to be superficial and\ntherefore oppressive to the imagination. It is only with reference\nto this \u201creason\u201d that one can understand the romantic revolt. But\nneo-classical reason itself can be understood only with reference to\nits background--as a recoil namely from a previous romantic excess.\nThis excess was manifested not only in the intellectual romanticism of\nwhich I have already spoken, but in the cult of the romantic deed that\nhad flourished in the Middle Ages. This cult and the literature that\nreflected it continued to appeal, even to the cultivated, well on into\nthe neo-classical period. It was therefore felt necessary to frame a\ndefinition of reason that should be a rebuke to the extravagance and\nimprobability of the medi\u00e6val romances. When men became conscious\nin the eighteenth century of the neo-classical meagerness on the\nimaginative side they began to look back with a certain envy to the\nfree efflorescence of fiction in the Middle Ages. They began to ask\nthemselves with Hurd whether the reason and correctness they had won\nwere worth the sacrifice of a \u201cworld of fine fabling.\u201d[36] We must not,\nhowever, like Heine and many others, look on the romantic movement as\nmerely a return to the Middle Ages. We have seen that the men of the\nMiddle Ages themselves understood by romance not simply their own kind\nof speech and writing in contrast with what was written in Latin, but\na kind of writing in which the pursuit of strangeness and adventure\npredominated. This pursuit of strangeness and adventure will be found\nto predominate in all types of romanticism. The type of romanticism,\nhowever, which came in towards the end of the eighteenth century\ndid not, even when professedly medi\u00e6val, simply revert to the older\ntypes. It was primarily not a romanticism of thought or of action,\nthe types we have encountered thus far, but a romanticism of feeling.\nThe beginnings of this emotional romanticism antedate considerably\nthe application of the word romantic to a particular literary school.\nBefore considering how the word came to be thus applied we shall need\nto take a glance at eighteenth-century sentimentalism, especially at\nthe plea for genius and originality that, from about the middle of the\ncentury on, were opposed to the tameness and servile imitation of the\nneo-classicists.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nROMANTIC GENIUS\n\n\nRomanticism, it has been remarked, is all that is not Voltaire. The\nclash between Rousseau and Voltaire is indeed not merely the clash\nbetween two men, it is the clash between two incompatible views of\nlife. Voltaire is the end of the old world, as Goethe has put it,\nRousseau the beginning of the new.\n\nOne is not to suppose, however, that Voltaire was a consistent champion\nof the past. He is indeed with all his superficial clearness one of the\nmost incoherent of writers. At the same time that he defended classical\ntradition he attacked Christian tradition, spreading abroad a spirit of\nmockery and irreverence that tended to make every traditional belief\nimpossible. The \u201creason\u201d to which he appeals has all the shallowness\nthat I have noticed in the \u201creason\u201d of the eighteenth century. Though\nhe does not fall into the Cartesian excess of abstract reasoning, and\nthough the good sense that he most often understands by reason is\nadmirably shrewd within certain bounds, he nevertheless falls very\nfar short of the standards of a true classicism. He delights in the\nphilosophy of Locke and has little sense for Greek philosophy or for\nthe higher aspects of Greek literature. He is quite lacking in the\nquality of imagination that is needful if one is to communicate with\nwhat is above the ordinary rational level. So far from being capable of\nhigh seriousness, he is scarcely capable of ordinary seriousness. And\nso the nobility, elegance, imitation, and decorum that he is constantly\npreaching have about them a taint of formalism. Perhaps this taint\nappears most conspicuously in his conception of decorum. A man may be\nwilling to impose restrictions on his ordinary self--and every type of\ndecorum is restrictive--if he is asked to do so for some adequate end.\nThe end of the decorum that an Aristotle, for example, would impose is\nthat one may become more human and therefore, as he endeavors to show\nin a highly positive fashion, happier. The only art and literature that\nwill please a man who has thus become human through the observance of\ntrue decorum is an art and literature that are themselves human and\ndecorous. Voltaire for his part wishes to subject art and literature\nto an elaborate set of restrictions in the name of decorum, but these\nrestrictions are not joined to any adequate end. The only reward he\nholds out to those who observe all these restrictions is \u201cthe merit\nof difficulty overcome.\u201d At bottom, like so many of the Jesuits from\nwhom he received his education, he looks upon art as a game--a very\ningenious and complicated game. The French muse he compares to a\nperson executing a difficult clog dance on a tight rope, and he argues\nfrom this comparison, not that the French muse should assume a less\nconstrained posture, but that she should on the contrary be exemplary\nto the nations. No wonder the romanticists and even Dr. Johnson\ndemurred at Voltaire\u2019s condemnation of Shakespeare in the name of this\ntype of decorum.\n\nVoltaire is therefore, in spite of all his dazzling gifts, one of\nthe most compromising advocates of classicism. Pope also had eminent\nmerits, but from the truly classical point of view he is about as\ninadequate as Voltaire; and this is important to remember because\nEnglish romanticism tends to be all that is not Pope. The English\nromanticists revolted especially from the poetic diction of which Pope\nwas one of the chief sources, and poetic diction, with its failure\nto distinguish between nobility of language and the language of the\nnobility, is only an aspect of artificial decorum. However, the revolt\nfrom poetic diction and decorum in general is not the central aspect of\nthe great movement that resulted in the eclipse of the wit and man of\nthe world and in the emergence of the original genius. What the genius\nwanted was spontaneity, and spontaneity, as he understood it, involves\na denial, not merely of decorum, but of something that, as I have said,\ngoes deeper than decorum--namely the doctrine of imitation. According\nto Voltaire genius is only judicious imitation. According to Rousseau\nthe prime mark of genius is refusal to imitate. The movement away from\nimitation, however, had already got well started before it thus came\nto a picturesque head in the clash between Rousseau and Voltaire, and\nif we wish to understand this movement we need to take a glance at its\nbeginnings--especially in England.\n\nThere are reasons why this supposed opposition between imitation and\ngenius should have been felt in England more keenly than elsewhere. The\ndoctrine of imitation in its neo-classical form did not get established\nthere until about the time of Dryden. In the meanwhile England had had\na great creative literature in which the freedom and spontaneity of the\nimagination had not been cramped by a too strict imitation of models.\nDryden himself, though he was doing more than any one else to promote\nthe new correctness that was coming in from France, felt that this\ncorrectness was no equivalent for the Elizabethan inspiration. The\nstructure that he and his contemporaries were erecting might be more\nregular, but lacked the boldness and originality of that reared by the\n\u201cgiant race before the flood\u201d:\n\n    Our age was cultivated thus at length;\n    But what we gained in skill we lost in strength.\n    Our builders were with want of genius cursed;\n    The second temple was not like the first.[37]\n\nThis contrast between the imitator and the inspired original was\ndeveloped by Addison in a paper (\u201cSpectator,\u201d 160) that was destined\nto be used against the very school to which he himself belonged.\nFor Addison was in his general outlook a somewhat tame Augustan.\nNevertheless he exalts the \u201cnatural geniuses\u201d who have something\n\u201cnobly wild and extravagant\u201d in them above the geniuses who have been\n\u201crefined by conversation, reflection and the reading of the most polite\nauthors\u201d; who have \u201cformed themselves by rules and submitted the\ngreatness of their natural talents to the corrections and restraints of\nart.\u201d \u201cThe great danger in these latter kind of geniuses, is lest they\ncramp their own abilities too much by imitation, and form themselves\naltogether upon models, without giving full play to their own natural\nparts. An imitation of the best authors is not to compare with a good\noriginal; and I believe we may observe that very few writers make an\nextraordinary figure in the world, who have not something in their way\nof thinking or expressing themselves that is peculiar to them, and\nentirely their own.\u201d\n\nAnother main influence that was making against the doctrine of\nimitation was also largely of English origin. This was the idea of\nprogress through scientific observation and experiment. As a result\nof this type of positivism, discovery was being added to discovery.\nScience was kindling man\u2019s imagination and opening up before him what\nhe really craves, the vista of an endless advance. Why should not\nliterature likewise do something new and original instead of sticking\nforever in the same rut of imitation? In its Greek form the doctrine\nof imitation was, as I have tried to show, not only flexible and\nprogressive, but in its own way, positive and experimental. But in\nmodern times the two main forms of imitation, the classical and the\nChristian, have worked within the limits imposed by tradition and\ntraditional models. The imitation of models, the Christian imitation\nof Christ, let us say, or the classical imitation of Horace, may\nindeed be a very vital thing, the imitation of one soul by another\nsoul; but when carried out in this vital way, the two main forms of\nimitation tend to clash, and the compromise between them, as I have\nalready said, resulted in a good deal of formalism. By its positive\nand critical method science was undermining every traditional belief.\nBoth the Christian and the classical formalists would have been the\nfirst to deny that the truths of imitation for which they stood could\nbe divorced from tradition and likewise put on a positive and critical\nbasis. The fact is indubitable in any case that the discrediting of\ntradition has resulted in a progressive lapse from the religious and\nthe humanistic to the naturalistic level. An equally indubitable fact\nis that scientific or rationalistic naturalism tended from the early\neighteenth century to produce emotional naturalism, and that both forms\nof naturalism were hostile to the doctrine of imitation.\n\nThe trend away from the doctrine of imitation towards emotional\nnaturalism finds revolutionary expression in the literary field in such\na work as Young\u2019s \u201cConjectures on Original Composition\u201d (1759). Addison\nhad asserted, as we have seen, the superiority of what is original in\na man, of what comes to him spontaneously, over what he acquires by\nconscious effort and culture. Young, a personal friend of Addison\u2019s,\ndevelops this contrast between the \u201cnatural\u201d and the \u201cartificial\u201d to\nits extreme consequences. \u201cModern writers,\u201d he says, \u201chave a choice\nto make. \u2026 They may soar in the regions of liberty, or move in the\nsoft fetters of easy imitation.\u201d \u201cAn original may be said to be of a\nvegetable nature; it rises spontaneously from the vital root of genius;\nit grows, it is not made; imitations are often a sort of manufacture,\nwrought up by those mechanics, art and labor, out of pre\u00ebxistent\nmaterials not their own.\u201d \u201cWe may as well grow good by another\u2019s\nvirtue, or fat by another\u2019s food, as famous by another\u2019s thought.\u201d\nOne evidence that we are still living in the movement of which Young\nis one of the initiators is that his treatise will not only seem to\nmost of us a very spirited piece of writing--that it certainly is--but\ndoctrinally sound. And yet it is only one of those documents very\nfrequent in literary history which lack intrinsic soundness, but which\ncan be explained if not justified as a recoil from an opposite extreme.\nThe unsoundness of Young\u2019s work comes out clearly if one compares\nit with the treatise on the \u201cSublime\u201d attributed to Longinus which\nis not a mere protest against a previous excess, but a permanently\nacceptable treatment of the same problem of genius and inspiration.\nLonginus exalts genius, but is at the same time regardful of culture\nand tradition, and even emphasizes the relation between inspiration and\nthe imitation of models. Young insinuates, on the contrary, that one\nis aided in becoming a genius by being brainless and ignorant. \u201cSome\nare pupils of nature only, nor go further to school.\u201d \u201cMany a genius\nprobably there has been which could neither write nor read.\u201d It follows\nalmost inevitably from these premises that genius flourishes most in\nthe primitive ages of society before originality has been crushed\nbeneath the superincumbent weight of culture and critics have begun\ntheir pernicious activities. Young did not take this step himself, but\nit was promptly taken by others on the publication of the Ossianic\npoems (1762). Ossian is at once added to the list of great originals\nalready enumerated by Addison--Homer, Pindar, the patriarchs of the\nOld Testament and Shakespeare (whom Young like the later romanticists\nopposes to Pope). \u201cPoetry,\u201d says Diderot, summing up a whole movement,\n\u201ccalls for something enormous, barbaric and savage.\u201d\n\nThis exaltation of the virtues of the primitive ages is simply\nthe projection into a mythical past of a need that the man of the\neighteenth century feels in the present--the need to let himself\ngo. This is what he understands by his \u201creturn to nature.\u201d A whole\nrevolution is implied in this reinterpretation of the word nature.\nTo follow nature in the classical sense is to imitate what is normal\nand representative in man and so to become decorous. To be natural in\nthe new sense one must begin by getting rid of imitation and decorum.\nMoreover, for the classicist, nature and reason are synonymous. The\nprimitivist, on the other hand, means by nature the spontaneous play\nof impulse and temperament, and inasmuch as this liberty is hindered\nrather than helped by reason, he inclines to look on reason, not as the\nequivalent but as the opposite of nature.\n\nIf one is to understand this development, one should note carefully\nhow certain uses of the word reason, not merely by the neo-classicists\nbut by the anti-traditionalists, especially in religion, tended to\nproduce this denial of reason. It is a curious fact that some of those\nwho were attacking the Christian religion in the name of reason, were\nthemselves aware that mere reason, whether one understood by the word\nabstract reasoning or uninspired good sense, does not satisfy, that\nin the long run man is driven either to rise higher or to sink lower\nthan reason. St. Evremond, for example, prays nature to deliver man\nfrom the doubtful middle state in which she has placed him--either\nto \u201clift him up to angelic radiance,\u201d or else to \u201csink him to the\ninstinct of simple animals.\u201d[38] Since the ascending path, the path\nthat led to angelic radiance, seemed to involve the acceptance of\na mass of obsolete dogma, man gradually inclined to sink below the\nrational level and to seek to recover the \u201cinstinct of simple animals.\u201d\nAnother and still more fundamental fact that some of the rationalists\nperceived and that militated against their own position, is that the\ndominant element in man is not reason, but imagination, or if one\nprefers, the element of illusion. \u201cIllusion,\u201d said Voltaire himself,\n\u201cis the queen of the human heart.\u201d The great achievement of tradition\nat its best was to be at once a limit and a support to both reason\nand imagination and so to unite them in a common allegiance. In the\nnew movement, at the same time that reason was being encouraged by\nscientific method to rise up in revolt against tradition, imagination\nwas being fascinated and drawn to the naturalistic level by scientific\ndiscovery and the vista of an endless advance that it opened up. A main\nproblem, therefore, for the student of this movement is to determine\nwhat forms of imaginative activity are possible on the naturalistic\nlevel. A sort of understanding was reached on this point by different\ntypes of naturalists in the course of the eighteenth century. One\nform of imagination, it was agreed, should be displayed in science,\nanother form in art and literature.[39] The scientific imagination\nshould be controlled by judgment and work in strict subordination to\nthe facts. In art and literature, on the other hand, the imagination\nshould be free. Genius and originality are indeed in strict ratio to\nthis freedom. \u201cIn the fairy land of fancy,\u201d says Young, \u201cgenius may\nwander wild; there it has a creative power, and may reign arbitrarily\nover its own empire of chimeras.\u201d (The empire of chimeras was later to\nbecome the tower of ivory.) This sheer indiscipline of the literary\nimagination might seem in contrast with the discipline of the\nscientific imagination an inferiority; but such was not the view of the\npartisans of original genius. Kant, indeed, who was strongly influenced\nin his \u201cCritique of \u00c6sthetic Judgment\u201d by these English theorists,[40]\ninclined to deny genius to the man of science for the very reason that\nhis imagination is so strictly controlled. The fact would seem to be\nthat a great scientist, a Newton let us say, has as much right to be\naccounted a genius as Shakespeare. The inferiority of the genius of a\nNewton compared with that of a Shakespeare lies in a certain coldness.\nScientific genius is thus cold because it operates in a region less\nrelevant to man than poetic genius; it is, in Bagehot\u2019s phrase, more\nremote from the \u201chearth of the soul.\u201d\n\nThe scientific and the literary imagination are indeed not quite so\nsharply contrasted by most of the theorists as might be inferred\nfrom what I have said; most of them do not admit that the literary\nimagination should be entirely free to wander in its own \u201cempire of\nchimeras.\u201d Even literary imagination, they maintain, should in some\nmeasure be under the surveillance of judgment or taste. One should\nobserve, however, that the judgment or taste that is supposed to\ncontrol or restrict genius is not associated with the imagination.\nOn the contrary, imagination is associated entirely with the element\nof novelty in things, which means, in the literary domain, with the\nexpansive eagerness of a man to get his own uniqueness uttered. The\ngenius for the Greek, let us remind ourselves, was not the man who was\nin this sense unique, but the man who perceived the universal; and as\nthe universal can be perceived only with the aid of the imagination,\nit follows that genius may be defined as imaginative perception of the\nuniversal. The universal thus conceived not only gives a centre and\npurpose to the activity of the imagination, but sets bounds to the free\nexpansion of temperament and impulse, to what came to be known in the\neighteenth century as nature.\n\nKant, who denies genius to the man of science on grounds I have already\nmentioned, is unable to associate genius in art or literature with this\nstrict discipline of the imagination to a purpose. The imagination\nmust be free and must, he holds, show this freedom not by working\nbut by playing. At the same time Kant had the cool temper of a man\nof the Enlightenment, and looked with the utmost disapproval on the\naberrations that had marked in Germany the age of original genius (_die\nGeniezeit_). He was not in the new sense of the word nor indeed in any\nsense, an enthusiast. And so he wished the reason, or judgment, to\nkeep control over the imagination without disturbing its free play;\nart is to have a purpose which is at the same time not a purpose. The\ndistinctions by which he works out the supposed relationship between\njudgment and imagination are at once difficult and unreal. One can\nindeed put one\u2019s finger here more readily perhaps than elsewhere on the\ncentral impotence of the whole Kantian system. Once discredit tradition\nand outer authority and then set up as a substitute a reason that is\ndivorced from the imagination and so lacks the support of supersensuous\ninsight, and reason will prove unable to maintain its hegemony. When\nthe imagination has ceased to pull in accord with the reason in the\nservice of a reality that is set above them both, it is sure to become\nthe accomplice of expansive impulse, and mere reason is not strong\nenough to prevail over this union of imagination and desire. Reason\nneeds some driving power behind it, a driving power that, when working\nin alliance with the imagination, it gets from insight. To suppose\nthat man will long rest content with mere naked reason as his guide\nis to forget that \u201cillusion is the queen of the human heart\u201d; it is\nto revive the stoical error. Schiller, himself a Kantian, felt this\nrationalistic rigor and coldness of his master, and so sought, while\nretaining the play theory of art, to put behind the cold reason of\nKant the driving power it lacked; for this driving power he looked not\nto a supersensuous reality, not to insight in short, but to emotion.\nHe takes appropriately the motto for his \u201c\u00c6sthetic Letters\u201d from\nRousseau: _Si c\u2019est la raison qui fait l\u2019homme, c\u2019est le sentiment qui\nle conduit_. He retains Kant\u2019s play theory of art without even so much\noffset to this play as is implied in Kant\u2019s \u201cpurposiveness without\npurpose.\u201d The nobility of Schiller\u2019s intentions is beyond question.\nAt the same time, by encouraging the notion that it is possible to\nescape from neo-classical didacticism only by eliminating masculine\npurpose from art, he opens the way for the worst perversions of the\n\u00e6sthete, above all for the divorce of art from ethical reality. In art,\naccording to Schiller, both imagination and feeling should be free and\nspontaneous, and the result of all this freedom, as he sees it, will be\nperfectly \u201cideal.\u201d His suspicion of a purpose is invincible. As soon as\nanything has a purpose it ceases to be \u00e6sthetic and in the same measure\nsuffers a loss of dignity. Thus the \u00e6sthetic moment of the lion, he\nsays, is when he roars not with any definite design, but out of sheer\nlustiness, and for the pure pleasure of roaring.\n\nOne may assume safely the \u00e6sthetic attitude, or what amounts to the\nsame thing, allow one\u2019s self to be guided by feeling, only on the\nassumption that feeling is worthy of trust. As appears in the very\nmotto he took for his \u201c\u00c6sthetic Letters\u201d Schiller was helped to this\nfaith in man\u2019s native goodness by Rousseau. We need to pause for a\nmoment at this point and consider the background of this belief which\nfinds not only in Schiller but in Rousseau himself, with whom it is\nusually associated, a rather late expression. The movement that took\nits rise in the eighteenth century involves, we should recollect, a\nbreak not with one but with two traditions--the classical and the\nChristian. If the plea for genius and originality is to be largely\nexplained as a protest against the mechanical imitation and artificial\ndecorum of a certain type of classicist, the assertion of man\u2019s natural\ngoodness is to be understood rather as a rebound from the doctrine of\ntotal depravity that was held by the more austere type of Christian.\nThis doctrine had even in the early centuries of the faith awakened\ncertain protests like that of Pelagius, but for an understanding of\nthe Rousseauistic protest one does not need to go behind the great\ndeistic movement of the early eighteenth century. God, instead of\nbeing opposed to nature, is conceived by the deist as a power that\nexpresses his goodness and loveliness through nature. The oppressive\nweight of fear that the older theology had laid upon the human spirit\nis thus gradually lifted. Man begins to discover harmonies instead\nof discords in himself and outer nature. He not only sees virtue\nin instinct but inclines to turn virtue itself into a \u201csense,\u201d or\ninstinct. And this means in practice to put emotional expansion in the\nplace of spiritual concentration at the basis of life and morals. In\nstudying this drift towards an \u00e6sthetic or sentimental morality one\nmay most conveniently take one\u2019s point of departure in certain English\nwriters of deistic tendency, especially in Shaftesbury and his disciple\nHutcheson. Considered purely as an initiator, Shaftesbury is probably\nmore important than Rousseau. His influence ramifies out in every\ndirection, notably into Germany.\n\nThe central achievement of Shaftesbury from a purely psychological\npoint of view may be said to be his transformation of conscience from\nan inner check into an expansive emotion. He is thus enabled to set\nup an \u00e6sthetic substitute not merely for traditional religion but for\ntraditional humanism. He undermines insidiously decorum, the central\ndoctrine of the classicist, at the very time that he seems to be\ndefending it. For decorum also implies a control upon the expansive\ninstincts of human nature, and Shaftesbury is actually engaged in\nrehabilitating \u201cnature,\u201d and insinuating that it does not need any\ncontrol. He attains this expansiveness by putting \u00e6sthetic in the\nplace of spiritual perception, and so merging more or less completely\nthe good and the true with the beautiful. He thus points the way very\ndirectly to Rousseau\u2019s rejection of both inner and outer control\nin the name of man\u2019s natural goodness. Once accept Shaftesbury\u2019s\ntransformation of conscience and one is led almost inevitably to look\non everything that is expansive as natural or vital and on everything\nthat restricts expansion as conventional or artificial. Villers wrote\nto Madame de Sta\u00ebl (4 May, 1803): \u201cThe fundamental and creative idea\nof all your work has been to show primitive, incorruptible, na\u00efve,\npassionate nature in conflict with the barriers and shackles of\nconventional life. \u2026 Note that this is also the guiding idea of the\nauthor of \u2018Werther.\u2019\u201d This contrast between nature and convention is\nindeed almost the whole of Rousseauism. In permitting his expansive\nimpulses to be disciplined by either humanism or religion man has\nfallen away from nature much as in the old theology he has fallen\naway from God, and the famous \u201creturn to nature\u201d means in practice\nthe emancipation of the ordinary or temperamental self that had been\nthus artificially controlled. This throwing off of the yoke of both\nChristian and classical discipline in the name of temperament is the\nessential aspect of the movement in favor of original genius. The\ngenius does not look to any pattern that is set above his ordinary\nspontaneous ego and imitate it. On the contrary, he attains to the\nself-expression that other men, intimidated by convention, weakly\nforego.\n\nIn thus taking a stand for self-expression, the original genius is in\na sense on firm ground--at least so far as the mere rationalist or\nthe late and degenerate classicist is concerned. No conventions are\nfinal, no rules can set arbitrary limits to creation. Reality cannot be\nlocked up in any set of formul\u00e6. The element of change and novelty in\nthings, as the romanticists are never tired of repeating, is at once\nvital and inexhaustible. Wherever we turn, we encounter, as a romantic\nauthority, Jacob Boehme, declares, \u201cabysmal, unsearchable and infinite\nmultiplicity.\u201d Perhaps not since the beginning of the world have two\nmen or indeed two leaves or two blades of grass been exactly alike.\nOut of a thousand men shaving, as Dr. Johnson himself remarked, no\ntwo will shave in just the same way. A person carries his uniqueness\neven into his thumbprint--as a certain class in the community has\nlearned to its cost. But though all things are ineffably different\nthey are at the same time ineffably alike. And this oneness in things\nis, no less than the otherwiseness, a matter of immediate perception.\nThis universal implication of the one in the many is found even more\nmarked than elsewhere in the heart of the individual. Each man has\nhis idiosyncrasy (literally his \u201cprivate mixture\u201d). But in addition\nto his complexion, his temperamental or private self, every man has\na self that he possesses in common with other men. Even the man who\nis most filled with his own uniqueness, or \u201cgenius,\u201d a Rousseau, for\nexample, assumes this universal self in every word he utters. \u201cJove\nnods to Jove behind us as we talk.\u201d The word character, one may note,\nis ambiguous, inasmuch as it may refer either to the idiosyncratic or\nto the universal human element in a man\u2019s dual nature. For example, an\noriginal genius like William Blake not only uses the word character\nin a different sense from Aristotle--he cannot even understand the\nAristotelian usage. \u201cAristotle,\u201d he complains, \u201csays characters are\neither good or bad; now Goodness or Badness has nothing to do with\nCharacter. An apple tree, a pear tree, a horse, a lion are Characters;\nbut a good apple tree or a bad is an apple tree still, etc.\u201d But\ncharacter as Aristotle uses the word implies something that man\npossesses and that a horse or tree does not possess--the power namely\nto deliberate and choose. A man has a good or bad character, he is\nethical or unethical, as one may say from the Greek word for character\nin this sense (\u1f26\u03b8\u03bf\u03c2), according to the quality of his choice as it\nappears in what he actually does. This distinction between a man\u2019s\nprivate, peculiar character (\u03c7\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03ba\u03c4\u03ae\u03c1) and the character he possesses\nwhen judged with reference to something more general than his own\ncomplexion is very similar to the French distinction between the _sens\npropre_ and the _sens commun_.\n\nThe general sense or norm that is opposed to mere temperament and\nimpulse may rest upon the ethos of a particular time and country--the\ntraditional habits and customs that the Rousseauist is wont to dismiss\nas \u201cartificial\u201d--or it may rest in varying degrees upon immediate\nperception. For example, the Ismene and Antigone of Sophocles are\nboth ethical; but Ismene would abide by the law of the state, whereas\nAntigone opposes to this law something still more universal--the\n\u201cunwritten laws of heaven.\u201d This insight of Antigone into a moral order\nthat is set not only above her ordinary self but above the convention\nof her time and country is something very immediate, something\nachieved, as I shall try to show more fully later, with the aid of the\nimagination.\n\nIt is scarcely necessary to add that such a perfect example of the\nethical imagination as one finds in Antigone--the imagination that\nworks concentric with the human law--is rare. In actual life for\none Antigone who obeys the \u201cunwritten laws of heaven\u201d there will\nbe a thousand Ismenes who will be guided in their moral choices by\nthe law of the community. This law, the convention of a particular\nplace and time, is always but a very imperfect image, a mere shadow\nindeed of the unwritten law which being above the ordinary rational\nlevel is, in a sense to be explained later, infinite and incapable\nof final formulation. And yet men are forced if only on practical\ngrounds to work out some approximation to this law as a barrier to the\nunchained appetites of the individual. The elements that enter into\nany particular attempt to circumscribe the individual in the interests\nof the community are very mixed and in no small measure relative. Yet\nthe things that any group of men have come together about--their\nconventions in the literal meaning of the word--even the tabus of a\nsavage tribe, are sure to reflect, however inadequately, the element\nof oneness in man, the element which is opposed to expansive impulse,\nand which is no less real, no less a matter of immediate experience,\nthan the element of irreducible difference. The general sense therefore\nshould never be sacrificed lightly to the sense of the individual.\nTabu, however inferior it may be to insight, deserves to rank higher\nafter all than mere temperament.[41]\n\nThe original genius proceeds upon the opposite assumption. Everything\nthat limits temperamental expansion is dismissed as either artificial\nor mechanical; everything on the contrary that makes for the\nemancipation of temperament, and so for variety and difference, he\nwelcomes as vital, dynamic, creative. Now, speaking not metaphysically\nbut practically and experimentally, man may, as I have said, follow two\nmain paths: he may develop his ethical self--the self that lays hold\nof unity--or he may put his main emphasis on the element within him\nand without him that is associated with novelty and change. In direct\nproportion as he turns his attention to the infinite manifoldness of\nthings he experiences wonder; if on the other hand he attends to the\nunity that underlies the manifoldness and that likewise transcends him,\nhe experiences awe. As a man grows religious, awe comes more and more\nto take the place in him of wonder. The humanist is less averse from\nthe natural order and its perpetual gushing forth of novelties than the\nman who is religious, yet even the humanist refuses to put his final\nemphasis on wonder (his motto is rather _nil admirari_). To illustrate\nconcretely, Dr. Johnson can scarcely conceal his disdain for the\nwonderful, but being a genuinely religious spirit, is very capable of\nawe. Commenting on Yalden\u2019s line\n\n    Awhile th\u2019 Almighty wondering stood,\n\nDr. Johnson remarks: \u201cHe ought to have remembered that Infinite\nKnowledge can never wonder. All wonder is the effect of novelty upon\nIgnorance.\u201d Granted the justness of the remark, Johnson seems inclined\nat times to forget how wide is the gap in this respect between us\nand the Almighty and therefore to be unduly hostile to the element\nof wonder. To take the opposite case, it is not easy to discover in\neither the personality or writings of Poe an atom of awe or reverence.\nOn the other hand he both experiences wonder and seeks in his art\nto be a pure wondersmith. It is especially important to determine a\nman\u2019s attitude towards himself in this matter of awe and wonder, in\nother words to determine whether he is taken up first of all with that\nelement in his own nature which makes him incomprehensibly like other\nmen or with that element which makes him incomprehensibly different\nfrom them. A man, the wise have always insisted, should look with\nreverence but not with wonder on himself. Rousseau boasts that if not\nbetter than other men, he is at least different. By this gloating\nsense of his own otherwiseness he may be said to have set the tone for\na whole epoch. Chateaubriand, for instance, is quite overcome by his\nown uniqueness and wonderfulness. At the most ordinary happenings he\nexclaims, as Sainte-Beuve points out, that such things happen only to\nhim. Hugo again is positively stupefied at the immensity of his own\ngenius. The theatricality that one feels in so much of the art of this\nperiod arises from the eagerness of the genius to communicate to others\nsomething of the amazement that he feels at himself. Ren\u00e9\u2019s first\nconcern is to inspire wonder even in the women who love him. \u201cC\u00e9luta\nfelt that she was going to fall upon the bosom of this man as one falls\ninto an abyss.\u201d\n\nIn thus putting such an exclusive emphasis on wonder the Rousseauistic\nmovement takes on a regressive character. For if life begins in\nwonder it culminates in awe. To put \u201cthe budding rose above the rose\nfull-blown\u201d may do very well for a mood, but as an habitual attitude\nit implies that one is more interested in origins than in ends; and\nthis means in practice to look backward and downward instead of forward\nand up. The conscious analysis that is needed if one is to establish\norderly sequences and relationships and so work out a kingdom of ends\nis repudiated by the Rousseauist because it diminishes wonder, because\nit interferes with the creative impulse of genius as it gushes up\nspontaneously from the depths of the unconscious. The whole movement is\nfilled with the praise of ignorance and of those who still enjoy its\ninappreciable advantages--the savage, the peasant and above all the\nchild. The Rousseauist may indeed be said to have discovered the poetry\nof childhood of which only traces can be found in the past, but at what\nwould seem at times a rather heavy sacrifice of rationality. Rather\nthan consent to have the bloom taken off things by analysis one should,\nas Coleridge tells us, _sink back_ to the devout state of childlike\nwonder. However, to grow ethically is not to sink back but to struggle\npainfully forward. To affirm the contrary is to set up the things that\nare below the ordinary rational level as a substitute for the things\nthat are above it, and at the same time to proclaim one\u2019s inability to\nmature. The romanticist, it is true, is wont to oppose to the demand\nfor maturity Christ\u2019s praise of the child. But Christ evidently praises\nthe child not because of his capacity for wonder but because of his\nfreedom from sin, and it is of the essence of Rousseauism to deny the\nvery existence of sin--at least in the Christian sense of the word.\nOne may also read in the New Testament that when one has ceased to be\na child one should give up childish things, and this is a saying that\nno primitivist, so far as I am aware, has ever quoted. On the contrary,\nhe is ready to assert that what comes to the child spontaneously is\nsuperior to the deliberate moral effort of the mature man. The speeches\nof all the sages are, according to Maeterlinck, outweighed by the\nunconscious wisdom of the passing child. Wordsworth hails a child of\nsix as \u201cMighty Prophet! Seer blest!\u201d (It is only fair to Coleridge\nto say that he refused to follow Wordsworth into this final abyss of\nabsurdity.[42]) In much the same way Hugo pushes his adoration of\nthe child to the verge of what has been termed \u201csolemn silliness\u201d\n(_niaiserie solennelle_).\n\nTo set up the spontaneity of the child as a substitute for insight,\nto identify wonder with awe, romance with religion, is to confuse the\nvery planes of being. There would appear to be a confusion of this kind\nin what Carlyle takes to be his own chief discovery, in his \u201cnatural\nsupernaturalism.\u201d[43] The natural order we must grant Carlyle is\nunfathomable, but it is not therefore awful, only wonderful. A movement\nof charity belongs as Pascal says to an entirely different order.[44]\n\nThe spiritual order to which Pascal refers lifts a man so far as he\nperceives it out of his ordinary self and draws him to an ethical\ncentre. But the Rousseauist tends, as I have said, to repudiate\nthe very idea of an ethical centre along with the special forms in\nwhich it had got itself embedded. Every attempt, whether humanistic\nor religious, to set up some such centre, to oppose a unifying and\ncentralizing principle to expansive impulse, seems to him arbitrary\nand artificial. He does not discriminate between the ethical norm or\ncentre that a Sophocles grasps intuitively and the centrality that the\npseudo-classicist hopes to achieve by mechanical imitation. He argues\nfrom his underlying assumption that the principle of variation is alone\nvital, that one\u2019s genius and originality are in pretty direct ratio\nto one\u2019s eccentricity in the literal meaning of the word; and he is\ntherefore ready to affirm his singularity or difference in the face of\nwhatever happens to be established. This attitude, it is worth noting,\nis quite unlike that of the humorist in the old English sense of the\nword, who indulges his bent and is at the same time quite unconcerned\nwith any central model that he should imitate and with reference to\nwhich he should discipline his oddities. The idiosyncrasy of the\nRousseauist is not, like that of the humorist, genial, but defiant.\nHe is strangely self-conscious in his return to the unconscious. In\neverything, from his vocabulary to the details of his dress, he is\neager to emphasize his departure from the norm. Hence the persistent\npose and theatricality in so many of the leaders of this movement, in\nRousseau himself, for instance, or in Chateaubriand and Byron. As for\nthe lesser figures in the movement their \u201cgenius\u201d is often chiefly\ndisplayed in their devices for calling attention to themselves as the\nlatest and most marvellous births of time; it is only one aspect in\nshort of an art in which the past century, whatever its achievement in\nthe other arts, has easily surpassed all its predecessors--the art of\nadvertising.\n\nOne needs always to return, however, if one is to understand the\nromantic notion of genius, to a consideration of the pseudo-classic\ndecorum against which it is a protest. The gentleman or man of the\nworld (_honn\u00eate homme_) was not, like the original genius, anxious\nto advertise himself, to call attention to his own special note\nof originality, since his primary concern was with an entirely\ndifferent problem, with the problem, namely, not of expressing but\nof humanizing himself; and he could humanize himself, he felt, only\nby constant reference to the accepted standard of what the normal\nman should be. He refused to \u201cpride himself on anything\u201d; he was\nfearful of over-emphasis, because the first of virtues in his eyes\nwas a sense of proportion. The total symmetry of life to which the\nbest type of classicist refers back his every impulse, he apprehends\nintuitively with the aid of his imagination. The symmetry to which the\npseudo-classicist refers back his impulses has ceased to be imaginative\nand has become a mere conformity to an outer code or even to the rules\nof etiquette; and so, instead of a deep imaginative insight, he gets\nmere elegance or polish. The unity that a purely external decorum of\nthis kind imposes on life degenerates into a tiresome sameness. It\nseems an unwarranted denial of the element of wonder and surprise.\n\u201cBoredom was born one day of uniformity,\u201d said La Motte Houdard, who\nwas himself a pseudo-classicist; whereas variety as everybody knows\nis the spice of life. The romanticist would break up the smooth and\ntiresome surface of artificial decorum by the pursuit of strangeness.\nIf he can only get his thrill he cares little whether it is probable,\nwhether it bears any relation, that is, to normal human experience.\nThis sacrifice of the probable to the surprising appears, as I said\nat the outset, in all types of romanticism--whether of action or\nthought or feeling. The genuine classicist always puts his main\nstress on design or structure; whereas the main quest of every type\nof romanticist is rather for the intense and vivid and arresting\ndetail. Take, for instance, the intellectual romanticism that prevailed\nespecially in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In\nthe \u201cwitty and conceited\u201d poets of this period the intellect is engaged\nin a more or less irresponsible vagabondage with the imagination as its\nfree accomplice. The conceits by which a poet of this type displays his\n\u201cingenuity\u201d (genius) are not structural, are not, that is, referred\nback to any centre. They stand forth each separately and sharply from\nthe surface of the style (hence known to the French as \u201cpoints\u201d), and\nso arrest the reader by their novelty. Their rareness and preciousness,\nhowever, are intended to startle the intellect alone. They do not\nhave and are not intended to have any power of sensuous suggestion.\nThe Rousseauistic romanticist, on the other hand, so far from being\n\u201cmetaphysical,\u201d strives to be concrete even at the risk of a certain\nmaterialism of style, of turning his metaphors into mere images. Like\nthe intellectual romanticist, though in a different way, he wishes to\nbreak up the smooth and monotonous surface of life and style, and so he\nsets up the cult of the picturesque. To understand this cult one needs\nto remember the opposite extreme of artificial symmetry. One needs to\nrecall, for example, the neo-classicist who complained of the stars\nin heaven because they were not arranged in symmetrical patterns, or\nvarious other neo-classicists who attacked mountains because of their\nrough and irregular shapes, because of their refusal to submit to the\nrule and compass. When beauty is conceived in so mechanical a fashion\nsome one is almost certain to wish to \u201cadd strangeness\u201d to it.\n\nThe cult of the picturesque is closely associated with the cult of\nlocal color. Here as elsewhere romantic genius is, in contradistinction\nto classical genius which aims at the \u201cgrandeur of generality,\u201d the\ngenius of wonder and surprise. According to Buffon, who offers the\nrare spectacle of a man of science who is at the same time a theorist\nof the grand manner, genius is shown in the architectonic gift--in\nthe power so to unify a subject as to keep its every detail in proper\nsubordination to the whole. Any mere wantoning of the imagination\nin the pursuit of either the precious or the picturesque is to be\nseverely repressed if one is to attain to the grandeur of generality.\nBuffon is truly classic in relating genius to design. Unfortunately\nhe verges towards the pseudo-classic in his distrust of color, of the\nprecise word and the vivid descriptive epithet. The growing verbal\nsqueamishness that so strikes one towards the end of the neo-classic\nperiod is one outcome of artificial decorum, of confusing nobility of\nlanguage with the language of the nobility. There was an increasing\nfear of the trivial word that might destroy the illusion of the grand\nmanner, and also of the technical term that should be too suggestive\nof specialization. All terms were to be avoided that were not readily\nintelligible to a lady or gentleman in the drawing-room. And so it\ncame to pass that by the end of the eighteenth century the grand\nmanner, or elevated style, had come to be largely an art of ingenious\ncircumlocution, and Buffon gives some countenance to this conception of\nclassic dignity and representativeness when he declares that one should\ndescribe objects \u201conly by the most general terms.\u201d At all events the\nreply of the romantic genius to this doctrine is the demand for local\ncolor, for the concrete and picturesque phrase. The general truth at\nwhich the classicist aims the Rousseauist dismisses as identical with\nthe gray and the academic, and bends all his efforts to the rendering\nof the vivid and unique detail. Of the readiness of the romantic genius\nto show (or one is tempted to say) to advertise his originality by\ntrampling verbal decorum under foot along with every other kind of\ndecorum, I shall have more to say later. He is ready to employ not only\nthe homely and familiar word that the pseudo-classicist had eschewed\nas \u201clow,\u201d but words so local and technical as to be unintelligible to\nordinary readers. Chateaubriand deals so specifically with the North\nAmerican Indian and his environment that the result, according to\nSainte-Beuve, is a sort of \u201ctattooing\u201d of his style. Hugo bestows a\nwhole dictionary of architectural terms upon the reader in his \u201cN\u00f4tre\nDame,\u201d and of nautical terms in his \u201cToilers of the Sea.\u201d In order to\nfollow some of the passages in Balzac\u2019s \u201cC\u00e9sar Birotteau,\u201d one needs\nto be a lawyer or a professional accountant, and it has been said that\nin order to do justice to a certain description in Zola one would need\nto be a pork-butcher. In this movement towards a highly specialized\nvocabulary one should note a co\u00f6peration, as so often elsewhere,\nbetween the two wings of the naturalistic movement--the scientific and\nthe emotional. The Rousseauist is, like the scientist, a specialist--he\nspecializes in his own sensations. He goes in quest of emotional\nthrills for their own sake, just as Napoleon\u2019s generals, according to\nSainte-Beuve, waged war without any ulterior aim but for the sheer lust\nof conquest. The vivid images and picturesque details are therefore\nnot sufficiently structural; each one tends to thrust itself forward\nwithout reference to the whole and to demand attention for its own sake.\n\nThe pursuit of the unrelated thrill without reference to its\nmotivation or probability leads in the romantic movement to a sort of\ndescent--often, it is true, a rapturous and lyrical descent--from the\ndramatic to the melodramatic. It is possible to trace this one-sided\nemphasis on wonder not merely in vocabulary but in the increasing\nresort to the principle of contrast. One suspects, for example, that\nRousseau exaggerates the grotesqueness of his youthful failure as a\nmusical composer at Lausanne in order that his success in the same\nr\u00f4le before the king and all the ladies of the court at Versailles may\n\u201cstick more fiery off.\u201d The contrast that Chateaubriand establishes\nbetween the two banks of the Mississippi at the beginning of his\n\u201cAtala\u201d is so complete as to put some strain on verisimilitude. One\nmay note in this same description, as a somewhat different way of\nsacrificing the probable to the picturesque, the bears drunk on wild\ngrapes and reeling on the branches of the elms. To prove that it was\npossible on some particular occasion to look down the vista of a forest\nglade on the lower Mississippi and see it closed by a drunken bear does\nnot meet the difficulty at all. For art has to do, as was remarked long\nago, not with the possible but the probable; and a bear in this posture\nis a possible but scarcely a probable bear.\n\nTo return to the principle of contrast: Hugo dilates upon his puniness\nas an infant (\u201cabandoned by everybody, even by his mother\u201d) in order\nto make his later achievement seem still more stupendous.[45] The\nuse of the antithesis as the auxiliary of surprise, the abrupt and\nthrilling passage from light to shade or the contrary, finds perhaps\nits culminating expression in Hugo. A study of this one figure as it\nappears in his words and ideas, in his characters and situations and\nsubjects, would show that he is the most melodramatic genius for whom\nhigh rank has ever been claimed in literature. The suddenness of Jean\nValjean\u2019s transformation from a convict into a saint may serve as a\nsingle instance of Hugo\u2019s readiness to sacrifice verisimilitude to\nsurprise in his treatment of character.\n\nClosely allied to the desire to break up the monotonous surface of\n\u201cgood form\u201d by the pointed and picturesque style in writing is the rise\nof the pointed and picturesque style in dress. A man may advertise\nhis genius and originality (in the romantic sense of these terms) by\ndeparting from the accepted modes of costume as well as from the\naccepted modes of speech. Gautier\u2019s scarlet waistcoat at the first\nperformance of Hernani is of the same order as his flamboyant epithets,\nhis riot of local color, and was at least as effective in achieving\nthe main end of his life--to be, in his own phrase, the \u201cterror of the\nsleek, baldheaded bourgeois.\u201d In assuming the Armenian garb to the\nastonishment of the rustics of Motiers-Travers, Rousseau anticipates\nnot merely Gautier but innumerable other violators of conventional\ncorrectness: here as elsewhere he deserves to rank as the classic\ninstance, one is tempted to say, of romantic eccentricity. La Bruy\u00e8re,\nan exponent of the traditional good-breeding against which Rousseauism\nis a protest, says that the gentleman allows himself to be dressed by\nhis tailor. He wishes to be neither ahead of the mode nor behind it,\nbeing reluctant as he is in all things to oppose his private sense to\nthe general sense. His point of view in the matter of dress is not so\nvery remote from that of a genuine classicism, whereas the enthusiast\nwho recently went about the streets of New York (until taken in by\nthe police) garbed as a contemporary of Pericles is no less plainly a\nproduct of Rousseauistic revolt.\n\nChateaubriand\u2019s relation to Rousseauism in this matter calls for\nspecial comment. He encouraged, and to some extent held, the belief\nthat to show genius and originality one must be irregular and\ntempestuous in all things, even in the arrangement of one\u2019s hair. At\nthe same time he preached reason. His heart, in short, was romantic,\nhis head classical. Both as a classicist and a romanticist he was ready\nto repudiate on the one hand his master Rousseau, and on the other\nhis own disciples. As a romantic genius he wished to regard himself\nas unique and so unrelated to Rousseau. At the same time he also\nlooked upon it as a sort of insolence for any of his own followers to\naspire to such a lonely pre\u00ebminence in grief as Ren\u00e9. As a classicist\nhe saw that great art aims at the normal and the representative, and\nthat it is therefore absurd for people to pattern themselves on such\nmorbid and exceptional characters as Ren\u00e9 and Childe Harold. Most\nof the romanticists indeed showed themselves very imitative even in\ntheir attempts at uniqueness, and the result was a second or third\nhand, or as one is tempted to say, a stale eccentricity. In their mere\nfollowing of the mode many of the French romanticists of 1830 were\nready to impose a painful discipline upon themselves[46] in order to\nappear abnormal, in order, for instance, to acquire a livid Byronic\ncomplexion. Some of those who wished to seem elegiac like Lamartine\nrather than to emulate the violent and histrionic revolt of the Conrads\nand Laras actually succeeded, we are told, in giving themselves\nconsumption (hence the epithet _\u00e9cole poitrinaire_).\n\nIn outer and visible freakishness the French romanticists of 1830\nprobably bore away the palm, though in inner and spiritual remoteness\nfrom normal human experience they can scarcely vie with the early\nGerman romanticists. And this is doubtless due to the fact that in\nFrance there was a more definite outer standard from which to advertise\ntheir departure, and also to the fact that the revolt against this\nstandard was so largely participated in by the painters and by writers\nlike Gautier who were also interested in painting. Chateaubriand\nwrites of the romantic painters (and the passage will also serve to\nillustrate his attitude towards his own disciples): \u201c[These artists]\nrig themselves up as comic sketches, as grotesques, as caricatures.\nSome of them wear frightful mustaches, one would suppose that they\nare going forth to conquer the world--their brushes are halberds,\ntheir paint-scratchers sabres; others have enormous beards and hair\nthat puffs out or hangs down their shoulders; they smoke a cigar\nvolcanically. These cousins of the rainbow, to use a phrase of our old\nR\u00e9gnier, have their heads filled with deluges, seas, rivers, forests,\ncataracts, tempests, or it may be with slaughters, tortures and\nscaffolds. One finds among them human skulls, foils, mandolins, helmets\nand dolmans. \u2026 They aim to form a separate species between the ape and\nthe satyr; they give you to understand that the secrecy of the studio\nhas its dangers and that there is no safety for the models.\u201d\n\nThese purely personal eccentricities that so marked the early stages in\nthe warfare between the Bohemian and the philistine have as a matter\nof fact diminished in our own time. Nowadays a man of the distinction\nof Disraeli or even of Bulwer-Lytton[47] would scarcely affect, as\nthey did, the flamboyant style in dress. But the underlying failure\nto discriminate between the odd and the original has persisted and has\nworked out into even extremer consequences. One may note, as I have\nsaid, even in the early figures in the movement a tendency to play to\nthe gallery, a something that suggests the approach of the era of the\nlime-light and the big headline. Rousseau himself has been called the\nfather of yellow journalists. There is an unbroken development from\nthe early exponents of original genius down to cubists, futurists and\npost-impressionists and the corresponding schools in literature. The\npartisans of expression as opposed to form in the eighteenth century\nled to the fanatics of expression in the nineteenth and these have\nled to the maniacs of expression of the twentieth. The extremists in\npainting have got so far beyond C\u00e9zanne, who was regarded not long ago\nas one of the wildest of innovators, that C\u00e9zanne is, we are told, \u201cin\na fair way to achieve the unhappy fate of becoming a classic.\u201d Poe\nwas fond of quoting a saying of Bacon\u2019s that \u201cthere is no excellent\nbeauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.\u201d This saying\nbecame known in France through Baudelaire\u2019s rendering of Poe and was\noften ascribed to Poe himself. It was taken to mean that the stranger\none became the nearer one was getting to perfect beauty. And if we\ngrant this view of beauty we must admit that some of the decadents\nsucceeded in becoming very beautiful indeed. But the more the element\nof proportion in beauty is sacrificed to strangeness the more the\nresult will seem to the normal man to be, not beauty at all, but rather\nan esoteric cult of ugliness. The romantic genius therefore denounces\nthe normal man as a philistine and at the same time, since he cannot\nplease him, seeks at least to shock him and so capture his attention\nby the very violence of eccentricity.\n\nThe saying I have quoted from Bacon is perhaps an early example of the\ninner alliance between things that superficially often seem remote--the\nscientific spirit and the spirit of romance. Scientific discovery has\ngiven a tremendous stimulus to wonder and curiosity, has encouraged a\npurely exploratory attitude towards life and raised an overwhelming\nprepossession in favor of the new as compared with the old. Baconian\nand Rousseauist evidently come together by their primary emphasis on\nnovelty. The movement towards a more and more eccentric conception\nof art and literature has been closely allied in practice with the\ndoctrine of progress--and that from the very dawn of the so-called\nQuarrel of Ancients and Moderns. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate\nthe havoc that has been wrought by the transfer of the belief that\nthe latest thing is the best--a belief that is approximately true\nof automobiles--from the material order to an entirely different\nrealm.[48] The very heart of the classical message, one cannot repeat\ntoo often, is that one should aim first of all not to be original,\nbut to be human, and that to be human one needs to look up to a sound\nmodel and imitate it. The imposition of form and proportion upon one\u2019s\nexpansive impulses which results from this process of imitation is,\nin the true sense of that much abused word, culture. Genuine culture\nis difficult and disciplinary. The mediation that it involves between\nthe conflicting claims of form and expression requires the utmost\ncontention of spirit. We have here a clue to the boundless success\nof the Rousseauistic doctrine of spontaneity, of the assertion that\ngenius resides in the region of the primitive and unconscious and is\nhindered rather than helped by culture. It is easier to be a genius\non Rousseauistic lines than to be a man on the terms imposed by the\nclassicist. There is a fatal facility about creation when its quality\nis not tested by some standard set above the creator\u2019s temperament;\nand the same fatal facility appears in criticism when the critic does\nnot test creation by some standard set above both his own temperament\nand that of the creator. The romantic critic as a matter of fact\nconfines his ambition to receiving so keen an impression from genius,\nconceived as something purely temperamental, that when this creative\nexpression is passed through his temperament it will issue forth as a\nfresh expression. Taste, he holds, will thus tend to become one with\ngenius, and criticism, instead of being cold and negative like that of\nthe neo-classicist, will itself grow creative.[49] But the critic who\ndoes not get beyond this stage will have gusto, zest, relish, what you\nwill, he will not have taste. For taste involves a difficult mediation\nbetween the element of uniqueness in both critic and creator and that\nwhich is representative and human. Once eliminate this human standard\nthat is set above the temperament of the creator and make of the critic\nin turn a mere pander to \u201cgenius\u201d and it is hard to see what measure\nof a man\u2019s excellence is left save his intoxication with himself; and\nthis measure would scarcely seem to be trustworthy. \u201cEvery ass that\u2019s\nromantic,\u201d says Wolseley in his Preface to \u201cValentinian\u201d (1686)\n\u201cbelieves he\u2019s inspired.\u201d\n\nAn important aspect of the romantic theory of genius remains to be\nconsidered. This theory is closely associated in its rise and growth\nwith the theory of the master faculty or ruling passion. A man can\ndo that for which he has a genius without effort, whereas no amount\nof effort can avail to give a man that for which he has no native\naptitude.[50] Buffon affirmed in opposition to this view that genius is\nonly a capacity for taking pains or, as an American recently put it, is\nten per cent inspiration and ninety per cent perspiration. This notion\nof genius not only risks running counter to the observed facts as to\nthe importance of the native gift but it does not bring out as clearly\nas it might the real point at issue. Even though genius were shown\nto be ninety per cent inspiration a man should still, the classicist\nwould insist, fix his attention on the fraction that is within his\npower. Thus Boileau says in substance at the outset of his \u201cArt of\nPoetry\u201d that a poet needs to be born under a propitious star. Genius\nis indispensable, and not merely genius in general but genius for the\nspecial kind of poetry in which he is to excel. Yet granting all this,\nhe says to the poetical aspirant, bestir yourself! The mystery of grace\nwill always be recognized in any view of life that gets at all beneath\nthe surface. Yet it is still the better part to turn to the feasibility\nof works. The view of genius as merely a temperamental overflow is as\na matter of fact only a caricature of the doctrine of grace. It suits\nthe spiritual indolence of the creator who seeks to evade the more\ndifficult half of his problem--which is not merely to create but to\nhumanize his creation. Hawthorne, for example, is according to Mr.\nBrownell, too prone (except in the \u201cScarlet Letter\u201d) to get away from\nthe clear sunlight of normal human experience into a region of somewhat\ncrepuscular symbolism, and this is because he yielded too complacently\nand fatalistically to what he conceived to be his genius. The theory\nof genius is perhaps the chief inheritance of the New England\ntranscendentalists from romanticism. Hawthorne was more on his guard\nagainst the extreme implications of the theory than most other members\nof this group. It remains to be seen how much the exaltation of genius\nand depreciation of culture that marks one whole side of Emerson will\nin the long run tell against his reputation. The lesser New England men\nshowed a rare incapacity to distinguish between originality and mere\nfreakishness either in themselves or in others.\n\nIt is fair to say that in lieu of the discipline of culture the\nromantic genius has often insisted on the discipline of technique;\nand this has been especially true in a country like France with its\npersistent tradition of careful workmanship. Gautier, for example,\nwould have one\u2019s \u201cfloating dream sealed\u201d[51] in the hardest and most\nresisting material, that can only be mastered by the perfect craftsman;\nand he himself, falling into a confusion of the arts, tries to display\nsuch a craftsmanship by painting and carving with words. Flaubert,\nagain, refines upon the technique of writing to a point where it\nbecomes not merely a discipline but a torture. But if a man is to\nbe a romantic genius in the fullest sense he must, it should seem,\nrepudiate even the discipline of technique as well as the discipline of\nculture in favor of an artless spontaneity. For after all the genius\nis only the man who retains the virtues of the child, and technical\nproficiency is scarcely to be numbered among these virtues. The German\nromanticists already prefer the early Italian painters because of their\nna\u00efvet\u00e9 and divine awkwardness to the later artiste who had a more\nconscious mastery of their material. The whole Pre-Raphaelite movement\nis therefore only one aspect of Rousseau\u2019s return to nature. To later\nprimitivists the early Italians themselves seem far too deliberate.\nThey would recover the spontaneity displayed in the markings on\nAlaskan totem poles or in the scratchings of the caveman on the\nflint. A prerequisite to pure genius, if we are to judge by their own\nproductions, is an inability to draw. The futurists in their endeavor\nto convey symbolically their own \u201csoul\u201d or \u201cvision\u201d--a vision be it\nnoted of pure flux and motion--deny the very conditions of time and\nspace that determine the special technique of painting; and inasmuch\nas to express one\u2019s \u201csoul\u201d means for these moderns, as it did for the\n\u201cgenius\u201d of the eighteenth century, to express the ineffable difference\nbetween themselves and others, the symbolizing of this soul to which\nthey have sacrificed both culture and technique remains a dark mystery.\n\nAn eccentricity so extreme as to be almost or quite indistinguishable\nfrom madness is then the final outcome of the revolt of the original\ngenius from the regularity of the eighteenth century. The eighteenth\ncentury had, one must confess, become too much like the Happy Valley\nfrom which Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, sought an egress. It was fair\nto the eye and satisfied all man\u2019s ordinary needs, but it seemed at the\nsame time to hem him in oppressively, and limit unduly his horizons.\nFor the modern man, as for the prince in Johnson\u2019s tale, a regular\nround of assured felicities has counted for nought as compared with the\npassion for the open; though now that he has tasted strange adventures,\nthe modern man will scarcely decide at the end, like the prince, to\n\u201creturn to Abyssinia.\u201d I have already spoken of the rationalistic and\npseudo-classic elements in the eighteenth century that the romantic\nrebels found so intolerable. It is impossible to follow \u201creason,\u201d they\nsaid in substance, and also to slake one\u2019s thirst for the \u201cinfinite\u201d;\nit is impossible to conform and imitate and at the same time to be free\nand original and spontaneous. Above all it is impossible to submit\nto the yoke of either reason or imitation and at the same time to be\nimaginative. This last assertion will always be the main point at issue\nin any genuine debate between classicist and romanticist. The supreme\nthing in life, the romanticist declares, is the creative imagination,\nand it can be restored to its rights only by repudiating imitation. The\nimagination is supreme the classicist grants but adds that to imitate\nrightly is to make the highest use of the imagination. To understand\nall that is implied in this central divergence between classicist\nand romanticist we shall need to study in more detail the kind of\nimaginative activity that has been encouraged in the whole movement\nextending from the rise of the original genius in the eighteenth\ncentury to the present day.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nROMANTIC IMAGINATION\n\n\nI have already spoken of the contrast established by the theorists of\noriginal genius in the eighteenth century between the different types\nof imagination--especially between the literary and the scientific\nimagination. According to these theorists, it will be remembered, the\nscientific imagination should be strictly subordinated to judgment,\nwhereas the literary imagination, freed from the shackles of imitation,\nshould be at liberty to wander wild in its own empire of chimeras,\nor, at all events, should be far less sharply checked by judgment.\nIt is easy to follow the extension of these English views of genius\nand imagination into the France of Rousseau and Diderot, and then\nthe elaboration of these same views, under the combined influence of\nboth France and England, in Germany. I have tried to show that Kant,\nespecially in his \u201cCritique of Judgment,\u201d and Schiller in his \u201c\u00c6sthetic\nLetters\u201d (1795) prepare the way for the conception of the creative\nimagination that is at the very heart of the romantic movement.\nAccording to this romantic conception, as we have seen, the imagination\nis to be free, not merely from outer formalistic constraint, but from\nall constraint whatever. This extreme romantic emancipation of the\nimagination was accompanied by an equally extreme emancipation of the\nemotions. Both kinds of emancipation are, as I have tried to show,\na recoil partly from neo-classical judgment--a type of judgment\nwhich seemed to oppress all that is creative and spontaneous in man\nunder a weight of outer convention; partly, from the reason of the\nEnlightenment, a type of reason that was so logical and abstract that\nit seemed to mechanize the human spirit, and to be a denial of all\nthat is immediate and intuitive. The neo-classical judgment, with its\nundue unfriendliness to the imagination, is itself a recoil, let us\nremember, from the imaginative extravagance of the \u201cmetaphysicals,\u201d the\nintellectual romanticists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,\nand also, if we take a sufficiently wide view, from the Quixotic type\nof romanticism, the romanticism of action, that we associate with the\nMiddle Ages.\n\nNow not only are men governed by their imaginations (the imagination,\nas Pascal says, disposes of everything), but the type of imagination\nby which most men are governed may be defined in the widest sense\nof the word as romantic. Nearly every man cherishes his dream, his\nconceit of himself as he would like to be, a sort of \u201cideal\u201d projection\nof his own desires, in comparison with which his actual life seems\na hard and cramping routine. \u201cMan must conceive himself what he is\nnot,\u201d as Dr. Johnson says, \u201cfor who is pleased with what he is?\u201d The\nample habitation that a man rears for his fictitious or \u201cideal\u201d self\noften has some slight foundation in fact, but the higher he rears\nit the more insecure it becomes, until finally, like Perrette in\nthe fable, he brings the whole structure down about his ears by the\nvery gesture of his dream. \u201cWe all of us,\u201d La Fontaine concludes in\nperhaps the most delightful account of the romantic imagination in\nliterature, \u201cwise as well as foolish, indulge in daydreams. There is\nnothing sweeter. A flattering illusion carries away our spirits. All\nthe wealth in the world is ours, all honors and all women,\u201d[52] etc.\nWhen Johnson descants on the \u201cdangerous prevalence of imagination,\u201d[53]\nand warns us to stick to \u201csober probability,\u201d what he means is the\ndangerous prevalence of day-dreaming. The retreat of the Rousseauist\ninto some \u201cland of chimeras\u201d or tower of ivory assumes forms almost\nincredibly complex and subtle, but at bottom the ivory tower is only\none form of man\u2019s ineradicable longing to escape from the oppression\nof the actual into some land of heart\u2019s desire, some golden age of\nfancy. As a matter of fact, Rousseau\u2019s imaginative activity often\napproaches very closely to the delights of day-dreaming as described\nby La Fontaine. He was never more imaginative, he tells us, than\nwhen on a walking-trip--especially when the trip had no definite\ngoal, or at least when he could take his time in reaching it. The\n_Wanderlust_ of body and spirit could then be satisfied together.\nActual vagabondage seemed to be an aid to the imagination in its escape\nfrom verisimilitude. One should note especially Rousseau\u2019s account of\nhis early wandering from Lyons to Paris and the airy structures that\nhe raised on his anticipations of what he might find there. Inasmuch\nas he was to be attached at Paris to the Swiss Colonel Godard, he\nalready traced for himself in fancy, in spite of his short-sightedness,\na career of military glory. \u201cI had read that Marshal Schomberg was\nshort-sighted, why shouldn\u2019t Marshal Rousseau be so too?\u201d In the\nmeanwhile, touched by the sight of the groves and brooks, \u201cI felt in\nthe midst of my glory that my heart was not made for so much turmoil,\nand soon without knowing how, I found myself once more among my beloved\npastorals, renouncing forever the toils of Mars.\u201d\n\nThus alongside the real world and in more or less sharp opposition to\nit, Rousseau builds up a fictitious world, that _pays des chim\u00e8res_,\nwhich is alone, as he tells us, worthy of habitation. To study his\nimaginative activity is simply to study the new forms that he gives\nto what I have called man\u2019s ineradicable longing for some Arcadia,\nsome land of heart\u2019s desire. Goethe compares the illusions that man\nnourishes in his breast to the population of statues in ancient Rome\nwhich were almost as numerous as the population of living men. The\nimportant thing from the point of view of sanity is that a man should\nnot blur the boundaries between the two populations, that he should not\ncease to discriminate between his fact and his fiction. If he confuses\nwhat he dreams himself to be with what he actually is, he has already\nentered upon the pathway of madness. It was, for example, natural\nfor a youth like Rousseau who was at once romantic and musical, to\ndream that he was a great composer; but actually to set up as a great\ncomposer and to give the concert at Lausanne, shows an unwillingness to\ndiscriminate between his fictitious and his real world that is plainly\npathological. If not already a megalomaniac, he was even then on the\nway to megalomania.\n\nTo wander through the world as though it were an Arcadia or enchanted\nvision contrived for one\u2019s especial benefit is an attitude of\nchildhood--especially of imaginative childhood. \u201cWherever children\nare,\u201d says Novalis, \u201cthere is the golden age.\u201d As the child grows and\nmatures there is a more or less painful process of adjustment between\nhis \u201cvision\u201d and the particular reality in which he is placed. A little\nsense gets knocked into his head, and often, it must be confessed, a\ngood deal of the imagination gets knocked out. As Wordsworth complains,\nthe vision fades into the light of common day. The striking fact about\nRousseau is that, far more than Wordsworth, he held fast to his vision.\nHe refused to adjust it to an unpalatable reality. During the very\nyears when the ordinary youth is forced to subordinate his luxurious\nimaginings to some definite discipline he fell under the influence of\nMadame de Warens who encouraged rather than thwarted his Arcadian bent.\nLater, when almost incurably confirmed in his penchant for revery, he\ncame into contact with the refined society of Paris, an environment\nrequiring so difficult an adjustment that no one we are told could\naccomplish the feat unless he had been disciplined into the appropriate\nhabits from the age of six. He is indeed the supreme example of the\nunadjusted man, of the original genius whose imagination has never\nsuffered either inner or outer constraint, who is more of an Arcadian\ndreamer at sixty perhaps than he was at sixteen. He writes to the\nBailli de Mirabeau (31 January, 1767):\n\n    \u201cThe fatigue of thinking becomes every day more painful to me.\n    I love to dream, but freely, allowing my mind to wander without\n    enslaving myself to any subject. \u2026 This idle and contemplative\n    life which you do not approve and which I do not excuse,\n    becomes to me daily more delicious; to wander alone endlessly\n    and ceaselessly among the trees and rocks about my dwelling,\n    to muse or rather to be as irresponsible as I please, and as\n    you say, to go wool-gathering; \u2026 finally to give myself up\n    unconstrainedly to my fantasies which, thank heaven, are all\n    within my power: that, sir, is for me the supreme enjoyment,\n    than which I can imagine nothing superior in this world for a\n    man at my age and in my condition.\u201d\n\nRousseau, then, owes his significance not only to the fact that he was\nsupremely imaginative in an age that was disposed to deny the supremacy\nof the imagination, but to the fact that he was imaginative in a\nparticular way. A great multitude since his time must be reckoned among\nhis followers, not because they have held certain ideas but because\nthey have exhibited a similar quality of imagination. In seeking to\ndefine this quality of imagination we are therefore at the very heart\nof our subject.\n\nIt is clear from what has already been said that Rousseau\u2019s imagination\nwas in a general way Arcadian, and this, if not the highest, is perhaps\nthe most prevalent type of imagination. In surveying the literature of\nthe world one is struck not only by the universality of the pastoral\nor idyllic element, but by the number of forms it has assumed--forms\nranging from the extreme of artificiality and conventionalism to the\npurest poetry. The very society against the artificiality of which\nRousseau\u2019s whole work is a protest is itself in no small degree a\npastoral creation. Various elements indeed entered into the life of\nthe drawing-room as it came to be conceived towards the beginning\nof the seventeenth century. The Marquise de Rambouillet and others\nwho set out at this time to live in the grand manner were in so\nfar governed either by genuine or by artificial decorum. But at the\nsame time that the creators of _le grand monde_ were aiming to be\nmore \u201cdecent\u201d than the men and women of the sixteenth century, they\nwere patterning themselves upon the shepherds and shepherdesses of\nD\u2019Urf\u00e9\u2019s interminable pastoral \u201cl\u2019Astr\u00e9e.\u201d They were seeking to create\na sort of enchanted world from which the harsh cares of ordinary life\nwere banished and where they might be free, like true Arcadians, to\ndiscourse of love. This discourse of love was associated with what\nI have defined as intellectual romanticism. In spite of the attacks\nby the exponents of humanistic good sense (Moli\u00e8re, Boileau, etc.)\non this drawing-room affectation, it lingered on and still led in\nthe eighteenth century, as Rousseau complained, to \u201cinconceivable\nrefinements.\u201d[54] At the same time we should recollect that there is\na secret bond between all forms of Arcadian dreaming. Not only was\nRousseau fascinated, like the early _pr\u00e9cieux_ and _pr\u00e9cieuses_, by\nD\u2019Urf\u00e9\u2019s pastoral, but he himself appealed by his renewal of the main\npastoral theme of love to the descendants of these former Arcadians\nin the polite society of his time. The love of Rousseau is associated\nnot like that of the _pr\u00e9cieux_, with the intellect, but with the\nemotions, and so he substitutes for a \u201cwire-drawn and super-subtilized\ngallantry,\u201d the ground-swell of elemental passion.[55] Moreover, the\ndefinitely primitivistic coloring that he gave to his imaginative\nrenewal of the pastoral dream appealed to an age that was reaching the\nlast stages of over-refinement. Primitivism is, strictly speaking,\nnothing new in the world. It always tends to appear in periods of\ncomplex civilization. The charms of the simple life and of a return\nto nature were celebrated especially during the Alexandrian period\nof Greek literature for the special delectation no doubt of the most\nsophisticated members of this very sophisticated society. \u201cNothing,\u201d as\nDr. Santayana says, \u201cis farther from the common people than the corrupt\ndesire to be primitive.\u201d Primitivistic dreaming was also popular\nin ancient Rome at its most artificial moment. The great ancients,\nhowever, though enjoying the poetry of the primitivistic dream, were\nnot the dupes of this dream. Horace, for example, lived at the most\nartificial moment of Rome when primitivistic dreaming was popular as\nit had been at Alexandria. He descants on the joys of the simple life\nin a well-known ode. One should not therefore hail him, like Schiller,\nas the founder of the sentimental school \u201cof which he has remained the\nunsurpassed model.\u201d[56] For the person who plans to return to nature\nin Horace\u2019s poem is the old usurer Alfius, who changes his mind at\nthe last moment and puts out his mortgages again. In short, the final\nattitude of the urbane Horace towards the primitivistic dream--it could\nhardly be otherwise--is ironical.\n\nRousseau seems destined to remain the supreme example, at least in the\nOccident, of the man who takes the primitivistic dream seriously, who\nattempts to set up primitivism as a philosophy and even as a religion.\nRousseau\u2019s account of his sudden illumination on the road from Paris\nto Vincennes is famous: the scales, he tells us, fell from his eyes\neven as they had from the eyes of Paul on the road to Damascus, and\nhe saw how man had fallen from the felicity of his primitive estate;\nhow the blissful ignorance in which he had lived at one with himself\nand harmless to his fellows had been broken by the rise of intellectual\nself-consciousness and the resulting progress in the sciences and\narts. Modern students of Rousseau have, under the influence of James,\ntaken this experience on the road to Vincennes to be an authentic\ncase of conversion,[57] but this is merely one instance of our modern\ntendency to confound the subrational with the superrational. What one\nfinds in this alleged conversion when one looks into it, is a sort of\n\u201csubliminal uprush\u201d of the Arcadian memories of his youth, especially\nof his life at Annecy and Les Charmettes, and at the same time the\ncontrast between these Arcadian memories and the hateful constraints\nhe had suffered at Paris in his attempts to adjust himself to an\nuncongenial environment.\n\nWe can trace even more clearly perhaps the process by which the\nArcadian dreamer comes to set up as a seer, in Rousseau\u2019s relation of\nthe circumstances under which he came to compose his \u201cDiscourse on the\nOrigins of Inequality.\u201d He goes off on a sort of picnic with Th\u00e9r\u00e8se\ninto the forest of St. Germain and gives himself up to imagining the\nstate of primitive man. \u201cPlunged in the forest,\u201d he says, \u201cI sought\nand found there the image of primitive times of which I proudly\ndrew the history; I swooped down on the little falsehoods of men; I\nventured to lay bare their nature, to follow the progress of time and\nof circumstances which have disfigured it, and comparing artificial\nman (_l\u2019homme de l\u2019homme_) with natural man, to show in his alleged\nimprovement the true source of his miseries. My soul, exalted by these\nsublime contemplations, rose into the presence of the Divinity. Seeing\nfrom this vantage point that the blind pathway of prejudices followed\nby my fellows was also that of their errors, misfortunes and crimes, I\ncried out to them in a feeble voice that they could not hear: Madmen,\nwho are always complaining of nature, know that all your evils come\nfrom yourselves alone.\u201d\n\nThe golden age for which the human heart has an ineradicable longing\nis here presented not as poetical, which it certainly is, but as a\n\u201cstate of nature\u201d from which man has actually fallen. The more or less\ninnocent Arcadian dreamer is being transformed into the dangerous\nUtopist. He puts the blame of the conflict and division of which he is\nconscious in himself upon the social conventions that set bounds to\nhis temperament and impulses; once get rid of these purely artificial\nrestrictions and he feels that he will again be at one with himself and\n\u201cnature.\u201d With such a vision of nature as this it is not surprising\nthat every constraint is unendurable to Rousseau, that he likes, as\nBerlioz was to say of himself later, to \u201cmake all barriers crack.\u201d\nHe is ready to shatter all the forms of civilized life in favor of\nsomething that never existed, of a state of nature that is only the\nprojection of his own temperament and its dominant desires upon the\nvoid. His programme amounts in practice to the indulgence of infinite\nindeterminate desire, to an endless and aimless vagabondage of the\nemotions with the imagination as their free accomplice.\n\nThis longing of the highly sophisticated person to get back to the\nprimitive and na\u00efve and unconscious, or what amounts to the same\nthing, to shake off the trammels of tradition and reason in favor of\nfree and passionate self-expression, underlies, as I have pointed out,\nthe conception of original genius which itself underlies the whole\nmodern movement. A book reflecting the primitivistic trend of the\neighteenth century, and at the same time pointing the way, as we shall\nsee presently, to the working out of the fundamental primitivistic\ncontrast between the natural and the artificial in the romanticism\nof the early nineteenth century, is Schiller\u2019s \u201cEssay on Simple and\nSentimental Poetry.\u201d The poetry that does not \u201clook before or after,\u201d\nthat is free from self-questioning and self-consciousness, and has a\nchildlike spontaneity, Schiller calls simple or na\u00efve. The poet, on the\nother hand, who is conscious of his fall from nature and who, from the\nmidst of his sophistication, longs to be back once more at his mother\u2019s\nbosom, is sentimental. Homer and his heroes, for example, are na\u00efve;\nWerther, who yearns in a drawing-room for the Homeric simplicity, is\nsentimental. The longing of the modern man for nature, says Schiller,\nis that of the sick man for health. It is hard to see in Schiller\u2019s\n\u201cnature\u201d anything more than a development of Rousseau\u2019s primitivistic\nArcadia. To be sure, Schiller warns us that, in order to recover the\nchildlike and primitive virtues still visible in the man of genius,\nwe must not renounce culture. We must not seek to revert lazily to\nan Arcadia, but must struggle forward to an Elysium. Unfortunately\nSchiller\u2019s Elysium has a strange likeness to Rousseau\u2019s Arcadia; and\nthat is because Schiller\u2019s own conception of life is, in the last\nanalysis, overwhelmingly sentimental. His most Elysian conception,\nthat of a purely \u00e6sthetic Greece, a wonderland of unalloyed beauty, is\nalso a bit of Arcadian sentimentalizing. Inasmuch as Rousseau\u2019s state\nof nature never existed outside of dreamland, the Greek who is simple\nor na\u00efve in this sense is likewise a myth. He has no real counterpart\neither in the Homeric age or any other age of Greece. It is hard to\nsay which is more absurd, to make the Greeks na\u00efve, or to turn Horace\ninto a sentimentalist. One should note how this romantic perversion\nof the Greeks for which Schiller is largely responsible is related\nto his general view of the imagination. We have seen that in the\n\u201c\u00c6sthetic Letters\u201d he maintains that if the imagination is to conceive\nthe ideal it must be free; and that to be free it must be emancipated\nfrom purpose and engage in a sort of play. If the imagination has to\nsubordinate itself to a real object it ceases in so far to be free.\nHence the more ideal the imagination the farther it gets away from a\nreal object. By his theory of the imagination, Schiller thus encourages\nthat opposition between the ideal and the real which figures so largely\nin romantic psychology. A man may consent to adjust a mere dream to\nthe requirements of the real, but when his dream is promoted to the\ndignity of an ideal it is plain that he will be less ready to make\nthe sacrifice. Schiller\u2019s Greece is very ideal in the sense I have\njust defined. It hovers before the imagination as a sort of Golden\nAge of pure beauty, a land of chimeras that is alone worthy of the\n\u00e6sthete\u2019s habitation. As an extreme type of the romantic Hellenist,\none may take H\u00f6lderlin, who was a disciple at once of Schiller and of\nRousseau. He begins by urging emancipation from every form of outer\nand traditional control in the name of spontaneity. \u201cBoldly forget,\u201d\nhe cries in the very accents of Rousseau, \u201cwhat you have inherited and\nwon--all laws and customs--and like new-born babes lift up your eyes\nto godlike nature.\u201d H\u00f6lderlin has been called a \u201cHellenizing Werther,\u201d\nand Werther, one should recollect, is only a German Saint-Preux, who is\nin turn, according to Rousseau\u2019s own avowal, only an idealized image\nof Rousseau. The nature that H\u00f6lderlin worships and which is, like the\nnature of Rousseau, only an Arcadian intoxication of the imagination,\nhe associates with a Greece which is, like the Greece of Schiller,\na dreamland of pure beauty. He longs to escape into this dreamland\nfrom an actual world that seems to him intolerably artificial. The\ncontrast between his \u201cideal\u201d Greece and reality is so acute as to make\nall attempt at adjustment out of the question. As a result of this\nmaladjustment his whole being finally gave way and he lingered on for\nmany years in madness.\n\nThe acuteness of the opposition between the ideal and the real in\nH\u00f6lderlin recalls Shelley, who was also a romantic Hellenist, and at\nthe same time perhaps the most purely Rousseauistic of the English\nromantic poets. But Shelley was also a political dreamer, and here one\nshould note two distinct phases in his dream: a first phase that is\nfilled with the hope of transforming the real world into an Arcadia[58]\nthrough revolutionary reform; and then a phase of elegiac disillusion\nwhen the gap between reality and his ideal refuses to be bridged.[59]\nSomething of the same radiant political hope and the same disillusion\nis found in Wordsworth. In the first flush of his revolutionary\nenthusiasm, France seemed to him to be \u201cstanding on the top of golden\nhours\u201d and pointing the way to a new birth of human nature:\n\n    Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,\n    But to be young was very heaven! O times,\n    In which the meagre stale forbidding ways\n    Of custom, law and statute, took at once\n    The attraction of a country in romance!\n\nWhen it became evident that the actual world and Utopia did not\ncoincide after all, when the hard sequences of cause and effect that\nbind the present inexorably to the past refused to yield to the\ncreations of the romantic imagination, what ensued in Wordsworth\nwas not so much an awakening to true wisdom as a transformation of\nthe pastoral dream. The English Lake Country became for him in some\nmeasure as it was later to be for Ruskin, the ivory tower into which\nhe retreated from the oppression of the real. He still continued to\nsee, if not the general order of society, at least the denizens of his\nchosen retreat through the Arcadian mist, and contrasted their pastoral\nfelicity with the misery of men \u201cbarricadoed in the walls of cities.\u201d I\ndo not mean to disparage the poetry of humble life or to deny that many\npassages may be cited from Wordsworth that justify his reputation as an\ninspired teacher: I wish merely to point out here and elsewhere what is\nspecifically romantic in the quality of his imagination.\n\nAfter all it is to Rousseau himself even more than to his German or\nEnglish followers that one needs to turn for the best examples of\nthe all-pervasive conflict between the ideal and the actual. The\npsychology of this conflict is revealed with special clearness in the\nfour letters that he wrote to M. de Malesherbes, and into which he has\nperhaps put more of himself than into any other similar amount of his\nwriting. His natural indolence and impatience at the obligations and\nconstraints of life were, he avows to M. de Malesherbes, increased\nby his early reading. At the age of eight he already knew Plutarch\nby heart and had read \u201call novels\u201d and shed tears over them, he adds\n\u201cby the pailful.\u201d Hence was formed his \u201cheroic and romantic taste\u201d\nwhich filled him with aversion for everything that did not resemble\nhis dreams. He had hoped at first to find the equivalent of these\ndreams among actual men, but after painful disillusions he had come\nto look with disdain on his age and his contemporaries. \u201cI withdrew\nmore and more from human society and created for myself a society\nin my imagination, a society that charmed me all the more in that I\ncould cultivate it without peril or effort and that it was always at\nmy call and such as I required it.\u201d He associated this dream society\nwith the forms of outer nature. The long walks in particular that he\ntook during his stay at the Hermitage were, he tells us, filled with\na \u201ccontinual delirium\u201d of this kind. \u201cI peopled nature with beings\naccording to my heart. \u2026 I created for myself a golden age to suit my\nfancy.\u201d It is not unusual for a man thus to console himself for his\npoverty in the real relations of life by accumulating a huge hoard of\nfairy gold. Where the Rousseauist goes beyond the ordinary dreamer is\nin his proneness to regard his retirement into some land of chimeras as\na proof of his nobility and distinction. Poetry and life he feels are\nirreconcilably opposed to each other, and he for his part is on the\nside of poetry and the \u201cideal.\u201d Goethe symbolized the hopelessness of\nthis conflict in the suicide of the young Werther. But though Werther\ndied, his creator continued to live, and more perhaps than any other\nfigure in the whole Rousseauistic movement perceived the peril of this\nconception of poetry and the ideal. He saw phantasts all about him who\nrefused to be reconciled to the gap between the infinitude of their\nlonging and the platitude of their actual lot. Perhaps no country and\ntime ever produced more such phantasts than Germany of the Storm and\nStress and romantic periods--partly no doubt because it did not offer\nany proper outlet for the activity of generous youths. Goethe himself\nhad been a phantast, and so it was natural in works like his \u201cTasso\u201d\nthat he should show himself specially preoccupied with the problem\nof the poet and his adjustment to life. About the time that he wrote\nthis play, he was, as he tells us, very much taken up with thoughts of\n\u201cRousseau and his hypochondriac misery.\u201d Rousseau for his part felt\na kinship between himself and Tasso, and Goethe\u2019s Tasso certainly\nreminds us very strongly of Rousseau. Carried away by his Arcadian\nimaginings, Tasso violates the decorum that separates him from the\nprincess with whom he has fallen in love. As a result of the rebuffs\nthat follow, his dream changes into a nightmare, until he finally falls\nlike Rousseau into wild and random suspicion and looks on himself as\nthe victim of a conspiracy. In opposition to Tasso is the figure of\nAntonio, the man of the world, whose imagination does not run away with\nhis sense of fact, and who is therefore equal to the \u201cdemands of the\nday.\u201d The final reconciliation between Tasso and Antonio, if not very\nconvincing dramatically, symbolizes at least what Goethe achieved in\nsome measure in his own life. There were moments, he declares, when\nhe might properly look upon himself as mad, like Rousseau. He escaped\nfrom this world of morbid brooding, this giddy downward gazing into\nthe bottomless pit of the romantic heart against which he utters a\nwarning in Tasso, by his activity at the court of Weimar, by classical\nculture, by scientific research. Goethe carries the same problem of\nreconciling the ideal to the real a stage further in his \u201cWilhelm\nMeister.\u201d The more or less irresponsible and Bohemian youth that we\nsee at the beginning learns by renunciation and self-limitation to\nfit into a life of wholesome activity. Goethe saw that the remedy for\nromantic dreaming is work, though he is open to grave criticism, as I\nshall try to show elsewhere, for his unduly naturalistic conception of\nwork. But the romanticists as a rule did not wish work in any sense and\nso, attracted as they were by the free artistic life of Meister at the\nbeginning, they looked upon his final adjustment to the real as a base\ncapitulation to philistinism. Novalis described the book as a \u201cCandide\ndirected against poetry,\u201d and set out to write a counterblast in\n\u201cHeinrich von Ofterdingen.\u201d This apotheosis of pure poetry, as he meant\nit to be, is above all an apotheosis of the wildest vagabondage of the\nimagination. Novalis did not, however, as a result of the conflict\nbetween the ideal and the real, show any signs of going mad like\nH\u00f6lderlin, or of simply fading from life like his friend Wackenroder.\nLike E. T. A. Hoffmann and a certain number of other phantasts he had\na distinct gift for leading a dual life--for dividing himself into\na prosaic self which went one way, and a poetical self which went\nanother.\n\nThis necessary and fatal opposition between poetry and prose the\nromanticist saw typified in \u201cDon Quixote,\u201d and of course he sided with\nthe idealism of the knight against the philistine good sense of Sancho\nPanza; and so for the early romanticists as well as for those who were\nof their spiritual posterity,--Heine, for example, and Flaubert,--\u201cDon\nQuixote\u201d was a book to evoke not laughter but tears.\n\nTo the romantic conception of the ideal can be traced the increasing\nlack of understanding between the poet, or in general the creator, and\nthe public during the past century. Many neo-classical writers may,\nlike Boileau, have shown an undue reverence for what they conceived to\nbe the general sense of their time, but to measure one\u2019s inspiration\nby one\u2019s remoteness from this general sense is surely a far more\ndangerous error; and yet one was encouraged to do this very thing by\nthe views of original genius that were held in the eighteenth century.\nCertain late neo-classicists lacked imagination and were at the same\ntime always harping on good sense. It was therefore assumed that to\ninsist on good sense was necessarily proof of a lack of imagination.\nBecause the attempt to achieve the universal had led to a stale and\nlifeless imitation it was assumed that a man\u2019s genius consists in\nhis uniqueness, in his unlikeness to other men. Now nothing is more\nprivate and distinctive in a man than his feelings, so that to be\nunique meant practically for Rousseau and his followers to be unique\nin feeling. Feeling alone they held was vital and immediate. As a\nmatter of fact the element in a man\u2019s nature that he possesses in\ncommon with other men is also something that he _senses_, something\nthat is in short intuitive and immediate. But good sense the genius\nidentifies with lifeless convention and so measures his originality by\nthe distance of his emotional and imaginative recoil from it. Of this\nwarfare between sense and sensibility that begins in the eighteenth\ncentury, the romantic war between the poet and the philistine is only\nthe continuation. This war has been bad for both artist and public. If\nthe artist has become more and more eccentric, it must be confessed\nthat the good sense of the public against which he has protested\nhas been too flatly utilitarian. The poet who reduces poetry to the\nimaginative quest of strange emotional adventure, and the plain\ncitizen who does not aspire beyond a reality that is too literal and\nprosaic, both suffer; but the \u00e6sthete suffers the more severely--so\nmuch so that I shall need to revert to this conception of poetry in\nmy treatment of romantic melancholy. It leads at last to a contrast\nbetween the ideal and the real such as is described by Anatole France\nin his account of Villiers de l\u2019Isle Adam. \u201cFor thirty years,\u201d says M.\nFrance, \u201cVilliers wandered around in caf\u00e9s at night, fading away like\na shadow at the first glimmer of dawn. \u2026 His poverty, the frightful\npoverty of cities, had so put its stamp on him and fashioned him so\nthoroughly that he resembled those vagabonds, who, dressed in black,\nsleep on park benches. He had the livid complexion with red blotches,\nthe glassy eye, the bowed back of the poor; and yet I am not sure we\nshould call him unhappy, for he lived in a perpetual dream and that\ndream was radiantly golden. \u2026 His dull eyes contemplated within himself\ndazzling spectacles. He passed through the world like a somnambulist\nseeing nothing of what we see and seeing things that it is not given\nus to behold. Out of the commonplace spectacle of life he succeeded in\ncreating an ever fresh ecstasy. On those ignoble caf\u00e9 tables in the\nmidst of the odor of beer and tobacco, he poured forth floods of purple\nand gold.\u201d\n\nThis notion that literal failure is ideal success, and conversely, has\nbeen developed in a somewhat different form by Rostand in his \u201cCyrano\nde Bergerac.\u201d By his refusal to compromise or adjust himself to things\nas they are, Cyrano\u2019s real life has become a series of defeats. He is\nfinally forced from life by a league of all the mediocrities whom his\nidealism affronts. His discomfiture is taken to show, not that he is\na Quixotic extremist, but that he is the superior of the successful\nGuise, the man who has stooped to compromise, the French equivalent\nof the Antonio whom Goethe finally came to prefer to Tasso. Rostand\u2019s\n\u201cChanticleer\u201d is also an interesting study of romantic idealism and\nof the two main stages through which it passes--the first stage when\none relates one\u2019s ideal to the real; the second, when one discovers\nthat the ideal and the real are more or less hopelessly dissevered.\nChanticleer still maintains his idealistic pose even after he has\ndiscovered that the sun is not actually made to rise by his crowing.\nIn this hugging of his illusion in defiance of reality Chanticleer\nis at the opposite pole from Johnson\u2019s astronomer in \u201cRasselas\u201d who\nthinks that he has control of the weather, but when disillusioned is\nhumbly thankful at having escaped from this \u201cdangerous prevalence\nof imagination,\u201d and entered once more into the domain of \u201csober\nprobability.\u201d\n\nThe problem, then, of the genius or the artist versus the philistine\nhas persisted without essential modification from the eighteenth\ncentury to the present day--from the suicide of Chatterton, let us\nsay, to the suicide of John Davidson. The man of imagination spurns\nin the name of his \u201cideal\u201d the limits imposed upon it by a dull\nrespectability, and then his ideal turns out only too often to lack\npositive content and to amount in practice to the expansion of infinite\nindeterminate desire. What the idealist opposes to the real is not only\nsomething that does not exist, but something that never can exist. The\nArcadian revery which should be allowed at most as an occasional solace\nfrom the serious business of living is set up as a substitute for\nliving. The imaginative and emotional dalliance of the Rousseauistic\nromanticist may assume a bewildering variety of forms. We have already\nseen in the case of H\u00f6lderlin how easily Rousseau\u2019s dream of a state\nof nature passes over--and that in spite of Rousseau\u2019s attacks on\nthe arts--into the dream of a paradise of pure beauty. The momentous\nmatter is not that a man\u2019s imagination and emotions go out towards\nthis or that particular haven of refuge in the future or in the past,\nin the East or in the West, but that his primary demand on life is for\nsome haven of refuge; that he longs to be away from the here and now\nand their positive demands on his character and will. Poe may sing of\n\u201cthe glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,\u201d but he\nis not therefore a classicist. With the same wistfulness innumerable\nromanticists have looked towards the Middle Ages. So C. E. Norton\nsays that Ruskin was a white-winged anachronism,[60] that he should\nhave been born in the thirteenth century. But one may surmise that a\nman with Ruskin\u2019s special quality of imagination would have failed\nto adjust himself to the actual life of the thirteenth or any other\ncentury. Those who put their Arcadia in the Middle Ages or some other\nperiod of the past have at least this advantage over those who put it\nin the present, they are better protected against disillusion. The man\nwhose Arcadia is distant from him merely in space may decide to go and\nsee for himself, and the results of this overtaking of one\u2019s dream are\nsomewhat uncertain. The Austrian poet Lenau, for example, actually\ntook a trip to his primitive paradise that he had imagined somewhere\nin the neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Perhaps it is not surprising that\nhe finally died mad. The disenchantment of Chateaubriand in his quest\nfor a Rousseauistic Arcadia in America and for Arcadian savages I\ndescribe later. In his journey into the wilderness Chateaubriand\nreveals himself as a spiritual lotos-eater no less surely than the man\nwho takes flight into what is superficially most remote from the virgin\nforest--into some palace of art. His attitude towards America does not\ndiffer psychically from that of many early romanticists towards Italy.\nItaly was their land of heart\u2019s desire, the land that filled them with\nineffable longing (_Sehnsucht nach Italien_), a palace of art that,\nlike the Latin Quarter of later Bohemians, had some points of contact\nwith Mohammed\u2019s paradise. A man may even develop a romantic longing for\nthe very period against which romanticism was originally a protest and\nbe ready to \u201cfling his cap for polish and for Pope.\u201d One should add\nthat the romantic Eldorado is not necessarily rural. Lamb\u2019s attitude\ntowards London is almost as romantic as that of Wordsworth towards the\ncountry. Dr. Johnson cherished urban life because of its centrality.\nLamb\u2019s imaginative dalliance, on the other hand, is stimulated by the\nsheer variety and wonder of the London streets as another\u2019s might be\nby the mountains or the sea.[61] Lamb could also find an Elysium of\nunmixed \u00e6sthetic solace in the literature of the past--especially in\nRestoration Comedy.\n\nThe essence of the mood is always the straining of the imagination away\nfrom the here and now, from an actuality that seems paltry and faded\ncompared to the radiant hues of one\u2019s dream. The classicist, according\nto A. W. Schlegel,[62] is for making the most of the present, whereas\nthe romanticist hovers between recollection and hope. In Shelleyan\nphrase he \u201clooks before and after and pines for what is not.\u201d He\ninclines like the Byronic dandy, Barbey d\u2019Aurevilly, to take for his\nmottoes the words \u201cToo late\u201d and \u201cNevermore.\u201d\n\nNostalgia, the term that has come to be applied to the infinite\nindeterminate longing of the romanticist--his never-ending quest\nafter the ever-fleeting object of desire--is not, from the point of\nview of strict etymology, well-chosen. Romantic nostalgia is not\n\u201chomesickness,\u201d accurately speaking, but desire to get away from\nhome. Odysseus in Homer suffers from true nostalgia. The Ulysses of\nTennyson, on the other hand, is nostalgic in the romantic sense when he\nleaves home \u201cto sail beyond the sunset.\u201d Ovid, as Goethe points out,\nis highly classical even in his melancholy. The longing from which\nhe suffers in his exile is very determinate: he longs to get back to\nRome, the centre of the world. Ovid indeed sums up the classic point\nof view when he says that one cannot desire the unknown (_ignoti\nnulla cupido_).[63] The essence of nostalgia is the desire for the\nunknown. \u201cI was burning with desire,\u201d says Rousseau, \u201cwithout any\ndefinite object.\u201d One is filled with a desire to fly one knows not\nwhither, to be off on a journey into the blue distance.[64] Music is\nexalted by the romanticists above all other arts because it is the\nmost nostalgic, the art that is most suggestive of the hopeless gap\nbetween the \u201cideal\u201d and the \u201creal.\u201d \u201cMusic,\u201d in Emerson\u2019s phrase,\n\u201cpours on mortals its beautiful disdain.\u201d \u201cAway! away!\u201d cries Jean Paul\nto Music. \u201cThou speakest of things which throughout my endless life I\nhave found not, and shall not find.\u201d In musical and other nostalgia,\nthe feelings receive a sort of infinitude from the co\u00f6peration of the\nimagination; and this infinitude, this quest of something that must\never elude one, is at the same time taken to be the measure of one\u2019s\nidealism. The symmetry and form that the classicist gains from working\nwithin bounds are no doubt excellent, but then the willingness to work\nwithin bounds betokens a lack of aspiration. If the primitivist is\nready, as some one has complained, to turn his back on the bright forms\nof Olympus and return to the ancient gods of chaos and of night, the\nexplanation is to be sought in this idea of the infinite. It finally\nbecomes a sort of Moloch to which he is prepared to sacrifice most\nof the values of civilized life. The chief fear of the classicist is\nto be thought monstrous. The primitivist on the contrary is inclined\nto see a proof of superior amplitude of spirit in mere grotesqueness\nand disproportion. The creation of monsters is, as Hugo says, a\n\u201csatisfaction due to the infinite.\u201d[65]\n\nThe breaking down by the emotional romanticist of the barriers that\nseparate not merely the different literary genres but the different\narts is only another aspect of his readiness to follow the lure\nof the infinite. The title of a recent bit of French decadent\nverse--\u201cNostalgia in Blue Minor\u201d--would already have been perfectly\nintelligible to a Tieck or a Novalis. The Rousseauist--and that from a\nvery early stage in the movement--does not hesitate to pursue his ever\nreceding dream across all frontiers, not merely those that separate art\nfrom art, but those that divide flesh from spirit and even good from\nevil, until finally he arrives like Blake at a sort of \u201cMarriage of\nHeaven and Hell.\u201d When he is not breaking down barriers in the name of\nthe freedom of the imagination he is doing so in the name of what he is\npleased to term love.\n\n    \u201cThe ancient art and poetry,\u201d says A. W. Schlegel, \u201crigorously\n    separate things which are dissimilar; the romantic delights\n    in indissoluble mixtures. All contrarieties: nature and art,\n    poetry and prose, seriousness and mirth, recollection and\n    anticipation, spirituality and sensuality, terrestrial and\n    celestial, life and death, are by it blended together in the\n    most intimate combination. As the oldest lawgivers delivered\n    their mandatory instructions and prescriptions in measured\n    melodies; as this is fabulously ascribed to Orpheus, the first\n    softener of the yet untamed race of mortals; in like manner\n    the whole of the ancient poetry and art is, as it were a\n    _rhythmical nomos_ (law), an harmonious promulgation of the\n    permanently established legislation of a world submitted to a\n    beautiful order, and reflecting in itself the eternal images of\n    things. Romantic poetry, on the other hand, is the expression\n    of the secret attraction to a chaos which lies concealed in\n    the very bosom of the ordered universe, and is perpetually\n    striving after new and marvellous births; the life-giving\n    spirit of primal love broods here anew on the face of the\n    waters. The former is more simple, clear, and like to nature in\n    the self-existent perfection of her separate works; the latter,\n    notwithstanding its fragmentary appearance, approaches more to\n    the secret of the universe. For Conception can only comprise\n    each object separately, but nothing in truth can ever exist\n    separately and by itself; Feeling perceives all in all at one\n    and the same time.\u201d[66]\n\nNote the assumption here that the clear-cut distinctions of classicism\nare merely abstract and intellectual, and that the only true unity is\nthe unity of feeling.\n\nIn passages of this kind A. W. Schlegel is little more than the\npopularizer of the ideas of his brother Friedrich. Perhaps no one in\nthe whole romantic movement showed a greater genius for confusion than\nFriedrich Schlegel; no one, in Nietzsche\u2019s phrase, had a more intimate\nknowledge of all the bypaths to chaos. Now it is from the German group\nof which Friedrich Schlegel was the chief theorist that romanticism\nas a distinct and separate movement takes its rise. We may therefore\npause appropriately at this point to consider briefly how the epithet\nromantic of which I have already sketched the early history came to\nbe applied to a distinct school. In the latter part of the eighteenth\ncentury, it will be remembered, romantic had become a fairly frequent\nword in English and also (under English influence) a less frequent,\nthough not rare word, in French and German; it was often used favorably\nin all these countries as applied to nature, and usually indeed in\nthis sense in France and Germany; but in England, when applied to\nhuman nature and as the equivalent of the French _romanesque_, it had\nordinarily an unfavorable connotation; it signified the \u201cdangerous\nprevalence of imagination\u201d over \u201csober probability,\u201d as may be seen\nin Foster\u2019s essay \u201cOn the Epithet Romantic.\u201d One may best preface a\ndiscussion of the next step--the transference of the word to a distinct\nmovement--by a quotation from Goethe\u2019s Conversations with Eckermann (21\nMarch, 1830):\n\n    \u201cThis division of poetry into classic and romantic,\u201d says\n    Goethe, \u201cwhich is to-day diffused throughout the whole world\n    and has caused so much argument and discord, comes originally\n    from Schiller and me. It was my principle in poetry always to\n    work objectively. Schiller on the contrary wrote nothing that\n    was not subjective; he thought his manner good, and to defend\n    it he wrote his article on na\u00efve and sentimental poetry. \u2026 The\n    Schlegels got hold of this idea, developed it and little by\n    little it has spread throughout the whole world. Everybody is\n    talking of romanticism and classicism. Fifty years ago nobody\n    gave the matter a thought.\u201d\n\nOne statement in this passage of Goethe\u2019s is perhaps open to\nquestion--that concerning the obligation of the Schlegels, or rather\nFriedrich Schlegel, to Schiller\u2019s treatise. A comparison of the date\nof publication of the treatise on \u201cNa\u00efve and Sentimental Poetry\u201d with\nthe date of composition of Schlegel\u2019s early writings would seem to\nshow that some of Schlegel\u2019s distinctions, though closely related to\nthose of Schiller, do not derive from them so immediately as Goethe\nseems to imply.[67] Both sets of views grow rather inevitably out\nof a primitivistic or Rousseauistic conception of \u201cnature\u201d that had\nbeen epidemic in Germany ever since the Age of Genius. We need also\nto keep in mind certain personal traits of Schlegel if we are to\nunderstand the development of his theories about literature and art.\nHe was romantic, not only by his genius for confusion, but also one\nshould add, by his tendency to oscillate violently between extremes.\nFor him as for Rousseau there was \u201cno intermediary term between\neverything and nothing.\u201d One should note here another meaning that\ncertain romanticists give to the word \u201cideal\u201d--Hazlitt, for example,\nwhen he says that the \u201cideal is always to be found in extremes.\u201d\nEvery imaginable extreme, the extreme of reaction as well as the\nextreme of radicalism, goes with romanticism; every genuine mediation\nbetween extremes is just as surely unromantic. Schlegel then was very\nidealistic in the sense I have just defined. Having begun as an extreme\npartisan of the Greeks, conceived in Schiller\u2019s fashion as a people\nthat was at once harmonious and instinctive, he passes over abruptly to\nthe extreme of revolt against every form of classicism, and then after\nhaving posed in works like his \u201cLucinde\u201d as a heaven-storming Titan\nwho does not shrink at the wildest excess of emotional unrestraint,\nhe passes over no less abruptly to Catholicism and its rigid outer\ndiscipline. This last phase of Schlegel has at least this much in\ncommon with his phase of revolt, that it carried with it a cult of the\nMiddle Ages. The delicate point to determine about Friedrich Schlegel\nand many other romanticists is why they finally came to place their\nland of heart\u2019s desire in the Middle Ages rather than in Greece. In\ntreating this question one needs to take at least a glance at the\nmodification that Herder (whose influence on German romanticism is very\ngreat) gave to the primitivism of Rousseau. Cultivate your genius,\nRousseau said in substance, your ineffable difference from other men,\nand look back with longing to the ideal moment of this genius--the age\nof childhood, when your spontaneous self was not as yet cramped by\nconventions or \u201csicklied o\u2019er by the pale cast of thought.\u201d Cultivate\nyour national genius, Herder said in substance, and look back wistfully\nat the golden beginnings of your nationality when it was still na\u00efve\nand \u201cnatural,\u201d when poetry instead of being concocted painfully by\nindividuals was still the unconscious emanation of the folk. Herder\nindeed expands primitivism along these lines into a whole philosophy\nof history. The romantic notion of the origin of the epic springs\nout of this soil, a notion that is probably at least as remote from\nthe facts as the neo-classical notion--and that is saying a great\ndeal. Any German who followed Herder in the extension that he gave\nto Rousseau\u2019s views about genius and spontaneity could not only see\nthe folk soul mirrored at least as na\u00efvely in the \u201cNibelungenlied\u201d as\nin the \u201cIliad,\u201d but by becoming a medi\u00e6val enthusiast he could have\nthe superadded pleasure of indulging not merely personal but racial\nand national idiosyncrasy. Primitivistic medi\u00e6valism is therefore an\nimportant ingredient, especially in the case of Germany, in romantic\nnationalism--the type that has flourished beyond all measure during\nthe past century. Again, though one might, like H\u00f6lderlin, cherish an\ninfinite longing for the Greeks, the Greeks themselves, at least the\nGreeks of Schiller, did not experience longing; but this fact came\nto be felt more and more by F. Schlegel and other romanticists as an\ninferiority, showing as it did that they were content with the finite.\nAs for the neo-classicists who were supposed to be the followers of\nthe Greeks, their case was even worse; they not only lacked aspiration\nand infinitude, but were sunk in artificiality, and had moreover become\nso analytical that they must perforce see things in \u201cdisconnection\ndead and spiritless.\u201d The men of the Middle Ages, on the other hand,\nas F. Schlegel saw them, were superior to the neo-classicists in being\nna\u00efve; their spontaneity and unity of feeling had not yet suffered\nfrom artificiality, or been disintegrated by analysis.[68] At the same\ntime they were superior to the Greeks in having aspiration and the\nsense of the infinite. The very irregularity of their art testified to\nthis infinitude. It is not uncommon in the romantic movement thus to\nassume that because one has very little form one must therefore have\na great deal of \u201csoul.\u201d F. Schlegel so extended his definition of the\nmedi\u00e6val spirit as to make it include writers like Shakespeare and\nCervantes, who seemed to him to be vital and free from formalism. The\nnew nationalism was also made to turn to the profit of the Middle Ages.\nEach nation in shaking off the yoke of classical imitation and getting\nback to its medi\u00e6val past, was recovering what was primitive in its own\ngenius, was substituting what was indigenous for what was alien to it.\n\nThe person who did more than any one else to give international\ncurrency to the views of the Schlegels about classic and romantic and\nto their primitivistic medi\u00e6valism was Madame de Sta\u00ebl in her book\non Germany. It was with special reference to Madame de Sta\u00ebl and her\ninfluence that Daunou wrote the following passage in his introduction\nto La Harpe, a passage that gives curious evidence of the early\nattitude of French literary conservatives towards the new school:\n\n    \u201cOne of the services that he [La Harpe] should render nowadays\n    is to fortify young people against vain and gothic doctrines\n    which would reduce the fine arts to childhood if they could\n    ever gain credit in the land of Racine and Voltaire. La Harpe\n    uttered a warning against these doctrines when he discovered\n    the first germs of them in the books of Diderot, Mercier and\n    some other innovators. Yet these writers were far from having\n    professed fully the barbaric or childish system which has been\n    taught and developed among us for a few years past; it is of\n    foreign origin; it had no name in our language and the name\n    that has been given to it is susceptible in fact of no precise\n    meaning. Romanticism, for thus it is called, was imported\n    into our midst along with Kantism, with mysticism and other\n    doctrines of the same stamp which collectively might be named\n    obscurantism. These are words which La Harpe was happy enough\n    not to hear. He was accustomed to too much clearness in his\n    ideas and expression to use such words or even to understand\n    them. He did not distinguish two literatures. The literature\n    that nature and society have created for us and which for three\n    thousand years past has been established and preserved and\n    reproduced by masterpieces appeared to him alone worthy of a\n    Frenchman of the eighteenth century. He did not foresee that it\n    would be reduced some day to being only a particular kind of\n    literature, tolerated or reproved under the name of classic,\n    and that its noblest productions would be put on the same level\n    as the formless sketches of uncultivated genius and untried\n    talents. Yet more than once decadence has thus been taken for\n    an advance, and a retrograde movement for progress. Art is so\n    difficult. It is quicker to abandon it and to owe everything to\n    your genius. \u2026 Because perfection calls for austere toil you\n    maintain that it is contrary to nature. This is a system that\n    suits at once indolence and vanity. Is anything more needed to\n    make it popular, especially when it has as auxiliary an obscure\n    philosophy which is termed transcendent or transcendental? That\n    is just the way sound literature fell into decline beginning\n    with the end of the first century of the Christian era. It\n    became extinct only to revive after a long period of darkness\n    and barbarism; and that is how it will fall into decline again\n    if great examples and sage lessons should ever lose their\n    authority.\u201d\n\nThe general public in England became at least vaguely aware of the new\nmovement with the translation of Madame de Sta\u00ebl\u2019s \u201cGermany\u201d (1813)\nand A. W. Schlegel\u2019s \u201cDramatic Art and Literature\u201d (1815). Byron wrote\nin his reply to Bowles (1821): \u201cSchlegel and Madame de Sta\u00ebl have\nendeavored to reduce poetry to _two_ systems, classical and romantic.\nThe effect is only beginning.\u201d\n\nThe distinction between classic and romantic worked out by the\nSchlegels and spread abroad by Madame de Sta\u00ebl was, then, largely\nassociated with a certain type of medi\u00e6valism. Nevertheless one cannot\ninsist too strongly that the new school deserved to be called romantic,\nnot because it was medi\u00e6val, but because it displayed a certain quality\nof imagination in its medi\u00e6valism. The longing for the Middle Ages is\nmerely a very frequent form of nostalgia, and nostalgia I have defined\nas the pursuit of pure illusion. No doubt a man may be medi\u00e6val in\nhis leanings and yet very free from nostalgia. He may, for example,\nprefer St. Thomas Aquinas to any modern philosopher on grounds that are\nthe very reverse of romantic; and in the attitude of any particular\nperson towards the Middle Ages, romantic and unromantic elements may\nbe mingled in almost any conceivable proportion; and the same may be\nsaid of any past epoch that one prefers to the present. Goethe, for\ninstance, as has been remarked, took flight from his own reality,\nbut he did not, like the romanticists, take flight from all reality.\nThe classical world in which Goethe dwelt in imagination during his\nlatter years, in the midst of a very unclassical environment, was to\nsome extent at least real, though one can discern even in the case of\nGoethe the danger of a classicism that is too aloof from the here\nand now. But the medi\u00e6valist, in so far as he is romantic, does not\nturn to a medi\u00e6val reality from a real but distasteful present. Here\nas elsewhere his first requirement is not that his \u201cvision\u201d should be\ntrue, but that it should be rich and radiant; and the more \u201cideal\u201d the\nvision becomes in this sense, the wider the gap that opens between\npoetry and life.\n\nWe are thus brought back to the problem of the romantic imagination or,\none may term it, the eccentric imagination. The classical imagination,\nI have said, is not free thus to fly off at a tangent, to wander wild\nin some empire of chimeras. It has a centre, it is at work in the\nservice of reality. With reference to this real centre, it is seeking\nto disengage what is normal and representative from the welter of the\nactual. It does not evade the actual, but does select from it and seek\nto impose upon it something of the proportion and symmetry of the\nmodel to which it is looking up and which it is imitating. To say that\nthe classicist (and I am speaking of the classicist at his best) gets\nat his reality with the aid of the imagination is but another way of\nsaying that he perceives his reality only through a veil of illusion.\nThe creator of this type achieves work in which illusion and reality\nare inseparably blended, work which gives the \u201cillusion of a higher\nreality.\u201d\n\nProportionate and decorous in this sense \u00e6sthetic romanticism can in\nno wise be, but it does not follow that the only art of which the\nRousseauist is capable is an art of idyllic dreaming. Schiller makes a\nremark about Rousseau that goes very nearly to the heart of the matter:\nhe is either, says Schiller, dwelling on the delights of nature or\nelse avenging her. He is either, that is, idyllic or satirical. Now\nRousseau himself says that he was not inclined to satire and in a sense\nthis is true. He would have been incapable of lampooning Voltaire in\nthe same way that Voltaire lampooned him, though one might indeed wish\nto be lampooned by Voltaire rather than to be presented as Rousseau\nhas presented certain persons in his \u201cConfessions.\u201d In all that large\nportion of Rousseau\u2019s writing, however, in which he portrays the\npolite society of his time and shows how colorless and corrupt it is\ncompared with his pastoral dream (for his \u201cnature,\u201d as I have said, is\nonly a pastoral dream) he is highly satirical. In general, he is not\nrestrained, at least in the \u201cConfessions,\u201d from the trivial and even\nthe ignoble detail by any weak regard for decorum. At best decorum\nseems to him a hollow convention, at worst the \u201cvarnish of vice\u201d and\nthe \u201cmask of hypocrisy.\u201d Every reader of the \u201cConfessions\u201d must be\nstruck by the presence, occasionally on the same page, of passages\nthat look forward to Lamartine, and of other passages that seem an\nanticipation rather of Zola. The passage in which Rousseau relates\nhow he was abruptly brought to earth from his \u201cangelic loves\u201d[69] is\ntypical. In short Rousseau oscillates between an Arcadian vision that\nis radiant but unreal, and a photographic and literal and often sordid\nreality. He does not so use his imagination as to disengage the real\nfrom the welter of the actual and so achieve something that strikes one\nstill as nature but a selected and ennobled nature.[70] \u201cIt is a very\nodd circumstance,\u201d says Rousseau, \u201cthat my imagination is never more\nagreeably active than when my outer conditions are the least agreeable,\nand that, on the contrary, it is less cheerful when everything is\ncheerful about me. My poor head cannot subordinate itself to things. It\ncannot embellish, it wishes to create. Real objects are reflected in\nit at best such as they are; it can adorn only imaginary objects. If I\nwish to paint the springtime I must be in winter,\u201d etc.\n\nThis passage may be said to foreshadow the two types of art and\nliterature that have been prevalent since Rousseau--romantic art and\nthe so-called realistic art that tended to supplant it towards the\nmiddle of the nineteenth century.[71] This so-called realism does not\nrepresent any fundamental change of direction as compared with the\nearlier romanticism; it is simply, as some one has put it, romanticism\ngoing on all fours. The extreme of romantic unreality has always tended\nto produce a sharp recoil. As the result of the wandering of the\nimagination in its own realm of chimeras, one finally comes to feel\nthe need of refreshing one\u2019s sense of fact; and the more trivial the\nfact, the more certain one is that one\u2019s feet are once more planted\non _terra firma_. Don Quixote is working for the triumph of Sancho\nPanza. Besides this tendency of one extreme to produce the other,\nthere are special reasons that I shall point out more fully later for\nthe close relationship of the romanticism and the so-called realism\nof the nineteenth century. They are both merely different aspects of\nnaturalism. What binds together realism and romanticism is their\ncommon repudiation of decorum as something external and artificial.\nOnce get rid of decorum, or what amounts to the same thing, the\nwhole body of \u201cartificial\u201d conventions, and what will result is,\naccording to the romanticist, Arcadia. But what actually emerges with\nthe progressive weakening of the principle of restraint is _la b\u00eate\nhumaine_. The Rousseauist begins by walking through the world as though\nit were an enchanted garden, and then with the inevitable clash between\nhis ideal and the real he becomes morose and embittered. Since men\nhave turned out not to be indiscriminately good he inclines to look\nupon them as indiscriminately bad and to portray them as such. At\nthe bottom of much so-called realism therefore is a special type of\nsatire, a satire that is the product of violent emotional disillusion.\nThe collapse of the Revolution of 1848 produced a plentiful crop of\ndisillusion of this kind. No men had ever been more convinced of the\nloftiness of their idealism than the Utopists of this period, or failed\nmore ignominiously when put to the test. All that remained, many\nargued, was to turn from an ideal that had proved so disappointing\nto the real, and instead of dreaming about human nature to observe\nmen as coolly, in Flaubert\u2019s phrase, as though they were mastodons or\ncrocodiles. But what lurks most often behind this pretence to a cold\nscientific impassiveness in observing human nature is a soured and\ncynical emotionalism and a distinctly romantic type of imagination. The\nimagination is still idealistic, still straining, that is, away from\nthe real, only its idealism has undergone a strange inversion; instead\nof exaggerating the loveliness it exaggerates the ugliness of human\nnature; it finds a sort of morose satisfaction in building for itself\nnot castles but dungeons in Spain. What I am saying applies especially\nto the French realists who are more logical in their disillusion than\nthe men of other nations. They often establish the material environment\nof their heroes with photographic literalness, but in their dealings\nwith what should be the specifically human side of these characters\nthey often resemble Rousseau at his worst: they put pure logic into the\nservice of pure emotion, and this is a way of achieving, not the real,\nbut a maximum of unreality. The so-called realistic writers abound in\nextreme examples of the romantic imagination. The peasants of Zola\nare not real, they are an hallucination. If a man is thus to let his\nimagination run riot, he might, as Lema\u00eetre complains, have imagined\nsomething more agreeable.\n\nThe same kinship between realism and romanticism might be brought out\nin a writer whom Zola claimed as his master--Balzac. I do not refer\nto the side of Balzac that is related to what the French call _le\nbas romantisme_--his lapses into the weird and the melodramatic, his\noccasional suggestions of the claptrap of Anne Radcliffe and the Gothic\nromance--but to his general thesis and his handling of it. Balzac\u2019s\nattitude towards the society of his time is, like the attitude of\nRousseau towards the society of his time, satirical, but on entirely\ndifferent grounds: he would show the havoc wrought in this society\nby its revolutionary emancipation from central control of the kind\nthat had been provided traditionally by the monarchy and the Catholic\nChurch, and the consequent disruption of the family by the violent and\negoistic expansion of the individual along the lines of his ruling\npassion. But Balzac\u2019s imagination is not on the side of his thesis;\nnot, that is, on the side of the principle of control; on the contrary,\nit revels in its vision of a world in which men are overstepping all\nethical bounds in their quest of power and pleasure, of a purely\nnaturalistic world that is governed solely by the law of cunning and\nthe law of force. His imagination is so fascinated by this vision that,\nlike the imagination of Rousseau, though in an entirely different way,\nhe simply parts company with reality. Judged by the ultimate quality of\nhis imagination, and this, let me repeat, is always the chief thing to\nconsider in a creative artist, Balzac is a sort of inverted idealist.\nCompared with the black fictions he conjures up in his painting of\nParis, the actual Paris seems pale and insipid. His Paris is not real\nin short, but an hallucination--a lurid land of heart\u2019s desire. As\nLeslie Stephen puts it, for Balzac Paris is hell, but then hell is the\nonly place worth living in. The empire of chimeras over which he holds\nsway is about as far on one side of reality as George Sand\u2019s kingdom of\ndreams is on the other. George Sand, more perhaps than any other writer\nof her time, continues Rousseau in his purely idyllic manner. Her\nidealized peasants are not any further from the truth and are certainly\nmore agreeable than the peasants of Balzac, who foreshadow the peasants\nof Zola.\n\nThe writer, however, who shows the conflict between the romantic\nimagination and the real better than either Balzac or Zola, better\nthan any other writer perhaps of the modern French movement, is\nFlaubert. The fondness of this founder of realism for reality may be\ninferred from a passage in one of his letters to George Sand: \u201cI\nhad in my very youth a complete presentiment of life. It was like a\nsickly kitchen smell escaping from a basement window.\u201d In his attitude\ntowards the society of his time, he is, in the same sense, but in\na far greater degree than Rousseau, satirical. The stupidity and\nmediocrity of the bourgeois are his target, just as Rousseau\u2019s target\nis the artificiality of the drawing-room. At the same time that he\nshrinks back with nausea from this reality, Flaubert is like Gautier\n\u201cfull of nostalgias,\u201d even the nostalgia of the Middle Ages. \u201cI am a\nCatholic,\u201d he exclaims, \u201cI have in my heart something of the green\nooze of the Norman Cathedrals.\u201d Yet he cannot acquiesce in a medi\u00e6val\nor any other dream. Even Rousseau says that he was \u201ctormented at times\nby the nothingness of his chimeras.\u201d Flaubert was tormented far more\nby the nothingness of his. Perhaps indeed the predominant flavor in\nFlaubert\u2019s writing as a whole is that of an acrid disillusion. He\nportrays satirically the real and at the same time mocks at the ideal\nthat he craves emotionally and imaginatively (this is only one of the\ninnumerable forms assumed by the Rousseauistic warfare between the head\nand the heart). He oscillates rapidly between the pole of realism as\nhe conceives it, and the pole of romance, and so far as any serious\nphilosophy is concerned, is left suspended in the void. Madame Bovary\nis the very type of the Rousseauistic idealist, misunderstood in virtue\nof her exquisite faculty of feeling. She aspires to a \u201clove beyond\nall loves,\u201d an infinite satisfaction that her commonplace husband and\nenvironment quite deny her. At bottom Flaubert\u2019s heart is with Madame\nBovary. \u201cI am Madame Bovary,\u201d he exclaims. Yet he exposes pitilessly\nthe \u201cnothingness of her chimeras,\u201d and pursues her to the very dregs\nof her disillusion. I have already mentioned Flaubert\u2019s cult for\n\u201cDon Quixote.\u201d His intellectual origins were all there, he says; he\nhad known it by heart even when a boy. It has been said that \u201cMadame\nBovary\u201d bears the same relationship to \u00e6sthetic romanticism that \u201cDon\nQuixote\u201d does to the romanticism of actual adventure of the Middle\nAges. Yet \u201cDon Quixote\u201d is the most genial, \u201cMadame Bovary\u201d the least\ngenial of masterpieces. This difference comes out no less clearly in\na comparison of M. Homais with Sancho Panza than in a comparison of\nMadame Bovary with the Knight, and is so fundamental as to throw doubt\non the soundness of the whole analogy.\n\nIn M. Homais and like figures Flaubert simply means to symbolize\ncontemporary life and the immeasurable abyss of platitude in which\nit is losing itself through its lack of imagination and ideal. Yet\nthis same platitude exercises on him a horrid fascination. For his\nexecration of the philistine is the nearest approach in his idealism to\na positive content, to an escape from sheer emptiness and unreality.\nThis execration must therefore be cherished if he is to remain\nconvinced of his own superiority. \u201cIf it were not for my indignation,\u201d\nhe confesses in one place, \u201cI should fall flat.\u201d Unfortunately we come\nto resemble what we habitually contemplate. \u201cBy dint of railing at\nidiots,\u201d says Flaubert, \u201cone runs the risk of becoming idiotic one\u2019s\nself.\u201d\n\nIn his discourse on the \u201cImmortality of the Soul\u201d (1659) Henry More\nspeaks of \u201cthat imagination which is most free, such as we use in\nromantic inventions.\u201d The price that the romantic imagination pays\nfor its freedom should by this time be obvious: the freer it becomes\nthe farther it gets away from reality. We have seen that the special\nform of unreality encouraged by the \u00e6sthetic romanticism of Rousseau\nis the dream of the simple life, the return to a nature that never\nexisted, and that this dream made its special appeal to an age that\nwas suffering from an excess of artificiality and conventionalism.\nBefore entering upon the next stage of our subject it might be well to\nconsider for a moment wherein the facts of primitive life, so far as\nwe can ascertain them, differ from Rousseau\u2019s dream of primitive life;\nwhy we are justified in assuming that the noble savage of Rousseau, or\nthe Greek of Schiller, or H\u00f6lderlin, or the man of the Middle Ages of\nNovalis never had any equivalent in reality. More or less primitive men\nhave existed and still exist and have been carefully studied. Some of\nthem actually recall by various traits, their gentleness, for example,\nRousseau\u2019s aboriginal man, and the natural pity that is supposed to\nguide him. Why then will any one familiar with the facts of aboriginal\nlife smile when Rousseau speaks of the savage \u201cattached to no place,\nhaving no prescribed task, obeying no one, having no other law than his\nown will,\u201d[72] and therefore displaying independence and initiative?\nThe answer is of course that genuine savages are, with the possible\nexception of children, the most conventional and imitative of beings.\nWhat one takes to be natural in them is often the result of a long and,\nin the Rousseauistic sense, artificial discipline. The tendency to\ntake for pure and unspoiled nature what is in fact a highly modified\nnature is one that assumes many forms. \u201cWhen you see,\u201d says Rousseau,\n\u201cin the happiest people in the world bands of peasants regulate the\naffairs of state under an oak-tree and always behave sensibly, can\nyou keep from despising the refinements of other nations which make\nthemselves illustrious and miserable with so much art and mystery?\u201d\nRousseau is viewing these peasants through the Arcadian glamour. In\nmuch the same way Emerson saw a proof of the consonance of democracy\nwith human nature in the working of the New England town-meeting. But\nboth Rousseau\u2019s Swiss and Emerson\u2019s New Englanders had been moulded by\ngenerations of austere religious discipline and so throw little light\non the relation of democracy to human nature in itself.\n\nA somewhat similar illusion is that of the man who journeys into a\nfar country and enjoys in the highest degree the sense of romantic\nstrangeness. He has escaped from the convention of his own society and\nis inclined to look on the men and women he meets in the foreign land\nas Arcadian apparitions. But these men and women have not escaped from\n_their_ convention. On the contrary, what most delights him in them\n(for example, what most delighted Lafcadio Hearn in the Japanese) may\nbe the result of an extraordinarily minute and tyrannical discipline\nimposed in the name of the general sense upon the impulses of the\nindividual.\n\nThe relation of convention to primitive life is so well understood\nnowadays that the Rousseauist has reversed his argument. Since\nprimitive folk (let us say the Bushmen of Australia) are more\nconventional than the Parisian and Londoner we may infer that at some\ntime in the future when the ideal is at last achieved upon earth,\nconventions will have disappeared entirely. But this is simply to\ntransfer the Golden Age from the past to the future, and also to miss\nthe real problem: for there is a real problem--perhaps indeed the\ngravest of all problems--involved in the relation of the individual to\nconvention. If we are to grasp the nature of this problem we should\nperceive first of all that the significant contrast is not that between\nconditions more or less primitive and civilization, but that between a\ncivilization that does not question its conventions and a civilization\nthat has on the contrary grown self-conscious and critical. Thus the\nHomeric Greeks, set up by Schiller as exemplars of the simple life,\nwere plainly subject to the conventions of an advanced civilization.\nThe Periclean Greeks were also highly civilized, but unlike the Homeric\nGreeks, were becoming self-conscious and critical. In the same way\nthe European thirteenth century, in some respects the most civilized\nthat the world has seen, was governed by a great convention that\nimposed very strict limits upon the liberty of the individual. The\ncritical spirit was already awake and tugging at the leashes of the\nouter authority that confined it, but it did not actually break them.\nDante and St. Thomas Aquinas did not, for example, inquire into the\nbasis of the medi\u00e6val convention in the same way that Socrates and the\nsophists inquired into the traditional opinions of Greece. But in the\neighteenth century, especially in France, and from that time down to\nthe present day, the revolt against convention has assumed proportions\nquite comparable to anything that took place in ancient Greece. Perhaps\nno other age has witnessed so many individuals who were, like Berlioz,\neager to make all traditional barriers crack in the interest of their\n\u201cgenius\u201d and its full expression. The state of nature in the name of\nwhich Rousseau himself assailed convention, though in itself only a\nchimera, a mere Arcadian projection upon the void, did indeed tend in a\nrationalistic pseudo-classic age, to new forms of imaginative activity.\nIn the form that concerns us especially the imagination is free to give\nits magic and glamour and infinitude to the emancipated emotions. This\ntype of romanticism did not result in any recovery of the supposed\nprimitive virtues, but it did bring about a revaluation of the received\nnotions of morality that can scarcely be studied too carefully.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nROMANTIC MORALITY: THE IDEAL\n\n\nThe period that began in the late eighteenth century and in the midst\nof which we are still living has witnessed an almost unparalleled\ntriumph, as I have just said, of the sense of the individual (_sens\npropre_) over the general sense of mankind (_sens commun_). Even\nthe collectivistic schemes that have been opposed to individualism\nduring this period are themselves, judged by traditional standards,\nviolently individualistic. Now the word individualism needs as much\nas any other general term to be treated Socratically: we need in the\ninterests of our present subject to discriminate between different\nvarieties of individualism. Perhaps as good a working classification\nas any is to distinguish three main varieties: a man may wish to act,\nor think, or feel, differently from other men, and those who are\nindividualistic in any one of these three main ways may have very\nlittle in common with one another. To illustrate concretely, Milton\u2019s\nplea in his \u201cAreopagitica\u201d for freedom of conscience makes above all\nfor individualism of action. (_La foi qui n\u2019agit pas est-ce une foi\nsinc\u00e8re?_) Pierre Bayle, on the other hand, pleads in his Dictionary\nand elsewhere for tolerance, not so much because he wishes to act or\nfeel in his own way as because he wishes to think his own thoughts.\nRousseau is no less obviously ready to subordinate both thought and\naction to sensibility. His message is summed up once for all in the\nexclamation of Faust, \u201cFeeling is all.\u201d He urges war on the general\nsense only because of the restrictions it imposes on the free expansion\nof his emotions and the enhancing of these emotions by his imagination.\n\nNow the warfare that Rousseau and the individualists of feeling have\nwaged on the general sense has meant in practice a warfare on two great\ntraditions, the classical and the Christian. I have already pointed out\nthat these two traditions, though both holding the idea of imitation,\nwere not entirely in accord with one another, that the imitation of\nHorace differs widely from the imitation of Christ. Yet their diverging\nfrom one another is as nothing compared with their divergence from\nthe individualism of the primitivist. For the man who imitates Christ\nin any traditional sense this world is not an Arcadian dream but a\nplace of trial and probation. \u201cTake up your cross and follow me.\u201d The\nfollowing of this great exemplar required that the instinctive self,\nwhich Rousseau would indulge, should be either sternly rebuked or else\nmortified utterly. So far from Nature and God being one, the natural\nman is so corrupt, according to the more austere Christian, that the\ngap between him and the divine can be traversed only by a miracle of\ngrace. He should therefore live in fear and trembling as befits a being\nupon whom rests the weight of the divine displeasure. \u201cIt is an humble\nthing to be a man.\u201d Humility indeed is, in the phrase of Jeremy Taylor,\nthe special ornament and jewel of the Christian religion, and one is\ntempted to add, of all religion in so far as it is genuine. Genuine\nreligion must always have in some form the sense of a deep inner cleft\nbetween man\u2019s ordinary self and the divine. But some Christians were\nmore inclined from the start, as we can see in the extreme forms of\nthe doctrine of grace, to push their humility to an utter despair of\nhuman nature. The historical explanation of this despair is obvious:\nit is a sharp rebound from the pagan riot; an excessive immersion in\nthis world led to an excess of otherworldliness. At the same time\nthe conviction as to man\u2019s helplessness was instilled into those,\nwho, like St. Augustine, had witnessed in some of its phases the slow\ndisintegration of the Roman Empire. Human nature had gone bankrupt;\nand for centuries it needed to be administered, if I may continue the\nmetaphor, in receivership. The doctrine of grace was admirably adapted\nto this end.\n\nThe pagan riot from which the church reacted so sharply, was not,\nhowever, the whole of the ancient civilization. I have already said\nthat there was at the heart of this civilization at its best a great\nidea--the idea of proportionateness. The ancients were in short\nnot merely naturalistic but humanistic, and the idea of proportion\nis just as fundamental in humanism as is humility in religion.\nChristianity, one scarcely need add, incorporated within itself,\nhowever disdainfully, many humanistic elements from Greek and Roman\nculture. Yet it is none the less true that in his horror at the pagan\nworldliness the Christian tended to fly into the opposite extreme of\nunworldliness, and in this clash between naturalism and supernaturalism\nthe purely human virtues of mediation were thrust more or less into the\nbackground. Yet by its very defect on the humanistic side the doctrine\nof grace was perhaps all the better fitted for the administration of\nhuman nature in receivership. For thus to make man entirely distrustful\nof himself and entirely dependent on God, meant in practice to make\nhim entirely dependent on the Church. Man became ignorant and fanatical\nin the early Christian centuries, but he also became humble, and\nin the situation then existing that was after all the main thing.\nThe Church as receiver for human nature was thus enabled to rescue\ncivilization from the wreck of pagan antiquity and the welter of the\nbarbarian invasions. But by the very fact that the bases of life in\nthis world gradually grew more secure man became less otherworldly.\nHe gradually recovered some degree of confidence in himself. He gave\nincreasing attention to that side of himself that the ascetic Christian\nhad repressed. The achievements of the thirteenth century which mark\nperhaps the culmination of Christian civilization were very splendid\nnot only from a religious but also from a humanistic point of view. But\nalthough the critical spirit was already beginning to awake, it did\nnot at that time, as I have already said, actually break away from the\ntutelage of the Church.\n\nThis emancipation of human nature from theological restraint took place\nin far greater measure at the Renaissance. Human nature showed itself\ntired of being treated as a bankrupt, of being governed from without\nand from above. It aspired to become autonomous. There was in so far\na strong trend in many quarters towards individualism. This rupture\nwith external authority meant very diverse things in practice. For\nsome who, in Lionardo\u2019s phrase, had caught a glimpse of the antique\nsymmetry it meant a revival of genuine humanism; for others it meant\nrather a revival of the pagan and naturalistic side of antiquity. Thus\nRabelais, in his extreme opposition to the monkish ideal, already\nproclaims, like Rousseau, the intrinsic excellence of man, while\nCalvin and others attempted to revive the primitive austerity of\nChristianity that had been corrupted by the formalism of Rome. In\nshort, naturalistic, humanistic, and religious elements are mingled in\nalmost every conceivable proportion in the vast and complex movement\nknown as the Renaissance; all these elements indeed are often mingled\nin the same individual. The later Renaissance finally arrived at what\none is tempted to call the Jesuitical compromise. There was a general\nrevamping of dogma and outer authority, helped forward by a society\nthat had taken alarm at the excesses of the emancipated individual.\nIf the individual consented to surrender his moral autonomy, the\nChurch for its part consented to make religion comparatively easy and\npleasant for him, to adapt it by casuistry and other devices to a human\nnature that was determined once for all to take a less severe and\nascetic view of life. One might thus live inwardly to a great extent\non the naturalistic level while outwardly going through the motions\nof a profound piety. There is an unmistakable analogy between the\nhollowness of a religion of this type and the hollowness that one feels\nin so much neo-classical decorum. There is also a formalistic taint\nin the educational system worked out by the Jesuits--a system in all\nrespects so ingenious and in some respects so admirable. The Greek and\nespecially the Latin classics are taught in such a way as to become\nliterary playthings rather than the basis of a philosophy of life; a\nhumanism is thus encouraged that is external and rhetorical rather than\nvital, and this humanism is combined with a religion that tends to\nstress submission to outer authority at the expense of inwardness and\nindividuality. The reproach has been brought against this system that\nit is equally unfitted to form a pagan hero or a Christian saint. The\nreply to it was Rousseau\u2019s educational naturalism--his exaltation of\nthe spontaneity and genius of the child.\n\nVoltaire says that every Protestant is a Pope when he has his Bible\nin his hand. But in practice Protestantism has been very far from\nencouraging so complete a subordination of the general sense to the\nsense of the individual. In the period that elapsed between the first\nforward push of individualism in the Renaissance and the second forward\npush in the eighteenth century, each important Protestant group worked\nout its creed or convention and knew how to make it very uncomfortable\nfor any one of its members who rebelled against its authority.\nProtestant education was also, like that of the Jesuits, an attempt to\nharmonize Christian and classical elements.\n\nI have already spoken elsewhere of what was menacing all these\nattempts, Protestant as well as Catholic, to revive the principle\nof authority, to put the general sense once more on a traditional\nand dogmatic basis and impose it on the sense of the individual. The\nspirit of free scientific enquiry in the Renaissance had inspired great\nnaturalists like Kepler and Galileo, and had had its prophet in Bacon.\nSo far from suffering any setback in the seventeenth century, science\nhad been adding conquest to conquest. The inordinate self-confidence\nof the modern man would seem to be in large measure an outcome of this\nsteady advance of scientific discovery, just as surely as the opposite,\nthe extreme humility that appears in the doctrine of grace, reflects\nthe despair of those who had witnessed the disintegration of the\nRoman Empire. The word humility, if used at all nowadays, means that\none has a mean opinion of one\u2019s self in comparison with other men, and\nnot that one perceives the weakness and nothingness of human nature in\nitself in comparison with what is above it. But it is not merely the\nself-confidence inspired by science that has undermined the traditional\ndisciplines, humanistic and religious, and the attempts to mediate\nbetween them on a traditional basis; it is not merely that science\nhas fascinated man\u2019s imagination, stimulated his wonder and curiosity\nbeyond all bounds and drawn him away from the study of his own nature\nand its special problems to the study of the physical realm. What has\nbeen even more decisive in the overthrow of the traditional disciplines\nis that science has won its triumphs not by accepting dogma and\ntradition but by repudiating them, by dealing with the natural law, not\non a traditional but on a positive and critical basis. The next step\nthat might logically have been taken, one might suppose, would have\nbeen to put the human law likewise on a positive and critical basis. On\nthe contrary the very notion that man is subject to two laws has been\nobscured. The truths of humanism and religion, being very much bound\nup with certain traditional forms, have been rejected along with these\nforms as obsolescent prejudice, and the attempt has been made to treat\nman as entirely the creature of the natural law. This means in practice\nthat instead of dying to his ordinary self, as the austere Christian\ndemands, or instead of imposing a law of decorum upon his ordinary\nself, as the humanist demands, man has only to develop his ordinary\nself freely.\n\nAt the beginning, then, of the slow process that I have been tracing\ndown in briefest outline from medi\u00e6val Christianity, we find a pure\nsupernaturalism; at the end, a pure naturalism. If we are to understand\nthe relationship of this naturalism to the rise of a romantic morality,\nwe need to go back, as we have done in our study of original genius,\nto the England of the early eighteenth century. Perhaps the most\nimportant intermediary stage in the passage from a pure supernaturalism\nto a pure naturalism is the great deistic movement which flourished\nespecially in the England of this period. Deism indeed is no new\nthing. Deistic elements may be found even in the philosophy of the\nMiddle Ages. But for practical purposes one does not need in one\u2019s\nstudy of deism to go behind English thinkers like Shaftesbury and his\nfollower Hutcheson. Shaftesbury is a singularly significant figure.\nHe is not only the authentic precursor of innumerable naturalistic\nmoralists in England, France, and Germany, but one may also trace\nin his writings the connection between modern naturalistic morality\nand ancient naturalistic morality in its two main forms--Stoic and\nEpicurean. The strict Christian supernaturalist had maintained that the\ndivine can be known to man only by the outer miracle of revelation,\nsupplemented by the inner miracle of grace. The deist maintains, on\nthe contrary, that God reveals himself also through outer nature which\nhe has fitted exquisitely to the needs of man, and that inwardly man\nmay be guided aright by his unaided thoughts and feelings (according\nto the predominance of thought or feeling the deist is rationalistic\nor sentimental). Man, in short, is naturally good and nature herself\nis beneficent and beautiful. The deist finally pushes this harmony in\nGod and man and nature so far that the three are practically merged.\nAt a still more advanced stage God disappears, leaving only nature\nand man as a modification of nature, and the deist gives way to the\npantheist who may also be either rationalistic or emotional. The\npantheist differs above all from the deist in that he would dethrone\nman from his privileged place in creation, which means in practice that\nhe denies final causes. He no longer believes, for example, like that\nsentimental deist and disciple of Rousseau, Bernardin de St. Pierre,\nthat Providence has arranged everything in nature with an immediate eye\nto man\u2019s welfare; that the markings on the melon, for instance, \u201cseem\nto show that it is destined for the family table.\u201d[73]\n\nRousseau himself, though eschewing this crude appeal to final causes,\nscarcely got in theory at least beyond the stage of emotional deism.\nThe process I have been describing is illustrated better in some\naspects by Diderot who began as a translator of Shaftesbury and who\nlater got so far beyond mere deism that he anticipates the main ideas\nof the modern evolutionist and determinist. Diderot is at once an\navowed disciple of Bacon, a scientific utilitarian in short, and also\na believer in the emancipation of the emotions. Rousseau\u2019s attack\non science is profoundly significant for other reasons, but it is\nunfortunate in that it obscures the connection that is so visible in\nDiderot between the two sides of the naturalistic movement. If men had\nnot been so heartened by scientific progress they would have been less\nready, we may be sure, to listen to Rousseau when he affirmed that they\nwere naturally good. There was another reason why men were eager to\nbe told that they were naturally good and that they could therefore\ntrust the spontaneous overflow of their emotions. This reason is to be\nsought in the inevitable recoil from the opposite doctrine of total\ndepravity and the mortal constraint that it had put on the instincts of\nthe natural man. I have said that many churchmen, notably the Jesuits,\nsought to dissimulate the full austerity of Christian doctrine and\nthus retain their authority over a world that was moving away from\nausterity and so threatening to escape them. But other Catholics,\nnotably the Jansenists, as well as Protestants like the Calvinists,\nwere for insisting to the full on man\u2019s corruption and for seeking to\nmaintain on this basis what one is tempted to call a theological reign\nof terror. One whole side of Rousseau\u2019s religion can be understood\nonly as a protest against the type of Christianity that is found in a\nPascal or a Jonathan Edwards. The legend of the abyss that Pascal saw\nalways yawning at his side has at least a symbolical value. It is the\nwont of man to oscillate violently between extremes, and each extreme\nis not only bad in itself but even worse by the opposite extreme that\nit engenders. From a God who is altogether fearful, men are ready to\nflee to a God who is altogether loving, or it might be more correct to\nsay altogether lovely. \u201cListen, my children,\u201d said Mother Ang\u00e9lique of\nPort-Royal to her nuns a few hours before her death, \u201clisten well to\nwhat I say. Most people do not know what death is, and never give the\nmatter a thought. But my worst forebodings were as nothing compared\nwith the terrors now upon me.\u201d In deliberate opposition to such\nexpressions of the theological terror, Rousseau imagined the elaborate\ncomplacency and self-satisfaction of the dying Julie, whose end was\nnot only calm but \u00e6sthetic (_le dernier jour de sa vie en fut aussi le\nplus charmant_).\n\nA sensible member of Edwards\u2019s congregation at Northampton might\nconceivably have voted with the majority to dismiss him, not only\nbecause he objected to this spiritual terrorism in itself, but\nalso because he saw the opposite extreme that it would help to\nprecipitate--the boundless sycophancy of human nature from which we are\nnow suffering.\n\nThe effusiveness, then, that began to appear in the eighteenth century\nis one sign of the progress of naturalism, which is itself due to\nthe new confidence inspired in man by scientific discovery coupled\nwith a revulsion from the austerity of Christian dogma. This new\neffusiveness is also no less palpably a revulsion from the excess of\nartificial decorum and this revulsion was in turn greatly promoted by\nthe rapid increase in power and influence at this time of the middle\nclass. Reserve is traditionally aristocratic. The plebeian is no less\ntraditionally expansive. It cannot be said that the decorous reserve\nof the French aristocracy that had been more or less imitated by other\nEuropean aristocracies was in all respects commendable. According to\nthis decorum a man should not love his wife, or if he did, should be\ncareful not to betray the fact in public. It was also good \u201cform\u201d\nto live apart from one\u2019s children and bad form to display one\u2019s\naffection for them. The protest against a decorum that repressed even\nthe domestic emotions may perhaps best be followed in the rise of the\nmiddle class drama. According to strict neo-classic decorum only the\naristocracy had the right to appear in tragedy, whereas the man of the\nmiddle class was relegated to comedy and the man of the people to\nfarce. The intermediate types of play that multiply in the eighteenth\ncentury (_drame bourgeois_, _com\u00e9die larmoyante_, etc.) are the reply\nof the plebeian to this classification. He is beginning to insist that\nhis emotions too shall be taken seriously. But at the same time he is,\nunder the influence of the new naturalistic philosophy, so bent on\naffirming his own goodness that in getting rid of artificial decorum\nhe gets rid of true decorum likewise and so strikes at the very root\nof the drama. For true drama in contradistinction to mere melodrama\nrequires in the background a scale of ethical values, or what amounts\nto the same thing, a sense of what is normal and representative and\ndecorous, and the quality of the characters is revealed by their\nresponsible choices good or bad with reference to some ethical scale,\nchoices that the characters reveal by their actions and not by any\nexplicit moralizing. But in the middle class drama there is little\naction in this sense: no one _wills_ either his goodness or badness,\nbut appears more or less as the creature of accident or fate (in a very\nun-Greek sense), or of a defective social order; and so instead of\ntrue dramatic conflict and proper motivation one tends to get domestic\ntableaux in which the characters weep in unison. For it is understood\nnot only that man (especially the bourgeois) is good but that the\northodox way for this goodness to manifest itself is to overflow\nthrough the eyes. Perhaps never before or since have tears been shed\nwith such a strange facility. At no other time have there been so many\npersons who, with streaming eyes, called upon heaven and earth to bear\nwitness to their innate excellence. A man would be ashamed, says La\nBruy\u00e8re, speaking from the point of view of _l\u2019honn\u00eate homme_ and\nhis decorum, to display his emotions at the theatre. By the time of\nDiderot he would have been ashamed not to display them. It had become\nalmost a requirement of good manners to weep and sob in public. At the\nperformance of the \u201cP\u00e8re de Famille\u201d in 1769 we are told that every\nhandkerchief was in use. The Revolution seems to have raised doubts as\nto the necessary connection between tearfulness and goodness. The \u201cP\u00e8re\nde Famille\u201d was hissed from the stage in 1811. Geoffroy commented in\nhis feuilleton: \u201cWe have learned by a fatal experience that forty years\nof declamation and fustian about sensibility, humanity and benevolence,\nhave served only to prepare men\u2019s hearts for the last excesses of\nbarbarism.\u201d\n\nThe romanticist indulged in the luxury of grief and was not incapable\nof striking an attitude. But as a rule he disdained the facile\nlachrymosity of the man of feeling as still too imitative and\nconventional. For his part, he has that within which passes show. To\nestimate a play solely by its power to draw tears is, as Coleridge\nobserves, to measure it by a virtue that it possesses in common with\nthe onion; and Chateaubriand makes a similar observation. Yet one\nshould not forget that the romantic emotionalist derives directly from\nthe man of feeling. One may indeed study the transition from the one\nto the other in Chateaubriand himself. For example, in his early work\nthe \u201cNatchez\u201d he introduces a tribe of Sioux Indians who are still\ngoverned by the natural pity of Rousseau, as they prove by weeping on\nthe slightest occasion. Lamartine again is close to Rousseau when he\nexpatiates on the \u201cgenius\u201d that is to be found in a tear; and Musset\nis not far from Diderot when he exclaims, \u201cLong live the melodrama at\nwhich Margot wept\u201d (_Vive le m\u00e9lodrame o\u00f9 Margot a pleur\u00e9_).\n\nThough it is usual to associate this effusiveness with Rousseau it\nshould be clear from my brief sketch of the rise of the forces that\nwere destined to overthrow the two great traditions--the Christian\ntradition with its prime emphasis on humility and the classical with\nits prime emphasis on decorum--that Rousseau had many forerunners. It\nwould be easy enough, for example, to cite from English literature\nof the early eighteenth-century domestic tableaux[74] that look\nforward equally to the middle class drama and to Rousseau\u2019s picture\nof the virtues of Julie as wife and mother. Yet Rousseau, after all,\ndeserves his pre\u00ebminent position as the arch-sentimentalist by the\nvery audacity of his revolt in the name of feeling from both humility\nand decorum. Never before and probably never since has a man of such\nundoubted genius shown himself so lacking in humility and decency\n(to use the old-fashioned synonym for decorum) as Rousseau in the\n\u201cConfessions.\u201d Rousseau feels himself so good that he is ready as he\ndeclares to appear before the Almighty at the sound of the trump of\nthe last judgment, with the book of his \u201cConfessions\u201d in his hand,\nand there to issue a challenge to the whole human race: \u201cLet a single\none assert to Thee if he dare: I am better than that man.\u201d As Horace\nWalpole complains he meditates a gasconade for the end of the world.\nIt is possible to maintain with M. Lema\u00eetre that Rousseau\u2019s character\nunderwent a certain purification as he grew older, but never at any\ntime, either at the beginning or at the end, is it possible, as M.\nLema\u00eetre admits, to detect an atom of humility--an essential lack that\nhad already been noted by Burke.\n\nThe affront then that Rousseau puts upon humility at the very opening\nof his \u201cConfessions\u201d has like so much else in his life and writings\na symbolical value. He also declares war in the same passage in the\nname of what he conceives to be his true self--that is his emotional\nself--against decorum or decency. I have already spoken of one of\nthe main objections to decorum: it keeps one tame and conventional\nand interferes with the explosion of original genius. Another and\nclosely allied grievance against decorum is implied in Rousseau\u2019s\nopening assertion in the Confessions that his aim is to show a man\nin all the truth of his nature, and human nature can be known in\nits truth only, it should seem, when stripped of its last shred of\nreticence. Rousseau therefore already goes on the principle recently\nproclaimed by the Irish Bohemian George Moore, that the only thing a\nman should be ashamed of is of being ashamed. If the first objection to\ndecorum--that it represses original genius--was urged especially by the\nromanticists, the second objection--that decorum interferes with truth\nto nature--was urged especially by the so-called realists of the later\nnineteenth century (and realism of this type is, as has been said, only\nromanticism going on all fours). Between the Rousseauistic conception\nof nature and that of the humanist the gap is especially wide. The\nhumanist maintains that man attains to the truth of his nature only by\nimposing decorum upon his ordinary self. The Rousseauist maintains that\nman attains to this truth only by the free expansion of his ordinary\nself. The humanist fears to let his ordinary self unfold freely at the\nexpense of decorum lest he merit some such comment as that made on\nthe \u201cConfessions\u201d by Madame de Boufflers who had been infatuated with\nRousseau during his lifetime: that it was the work not of a man but of\nan unclean animal.[75]\n\nThe passages of the \u201cConfessions\u201d that deserve this verdict do not, it\nis hardly necessary to add, reflect directly Rousseau\u2019s moral ideal.\nIn his dealings with morality as elsewhere he is, to come back to\nSchiller\u2019s distinction, partly idyllic and partly satirical. He is\nsatiric in his attitude towards the existing forms--forms based upon\nthe Christian tradition that man is naturally sinful and that he needs\ntherefore the discipline of fear and humility, or else forms based upon\nthe classical tradition that man is naturally one-sided and that he\nneeds therefore to be disciplined into decorum and proportionateness.\nHe is idyllic in the substitutes that he would offer for these\ntraditional forms. The substitutes are particularly striking in their\nrefusal to allow any place for fear. Fear, according to Ovid, created\nthe first Gods, and religion has been defined by an old English poet\nas the \u201cmother of form and fear.\u201d Rousseau would put in the place of\nform a fluid emotionalism, and as for fear, he would simply cast it\nout entirely, a revulsion, as I have pointed out, from the excessive\nemphasis on fear in the more austere forms of Christianity. Be\n\u201cnatural,\u201d Rousseau says, and eschew priests and doctors, and you will\nbe emancipated from fear.\n\nRousseau\u2019s expedient for getting rid of man\u2019s sense of his own\nsinfulness on which fear and humility ultimately rest is well known.\nEvil, says Rousseau, foreign to man\u2019s constitution, is introduced into\nit from without. The burden of guilt is thus conveniently shifted upon\nsociety. Instead of the old dualism between good and evil in the breast\nof the individual, a new dualism is thus set up between an artificial\nand corrupt society and \u201cnature.\u201d For man, let me repeat, has,\naccording to Rousseau, fallen from nature in somewhat the same way as\nin the old theology he fell from God, and it is here that the idyllic\nelement comes in, for, let us remind ourselves once more, Rousseau\u2019s\nnature from which man has fallen is only an Arcadian dream.\n\nThe assertion of man\u2019s natural goodness is plainly something very\nfundamental in Rousseau, but there is something still more fundamental,\nand that is the shifting of dualism itself, the virtual denial of a\nstruggle between good and evil in the breast of the individual. That\ndeep inner cleft in man\u2019s being on which religion has always put so\nmuch emphasis is not genuine. Only get away from an artificial society\nand back to nature and the inner conflict which is but a part of the\nartificiality will give way to beauty and harmony. In a passage in his\n\u201cSuppl\u00e9ment au voyage de Bougainville,\u201d Diderot puts the underlying\nthesis of the new morality almost more clearly than Rousseau: \u201cDo\nyou wish to know in brief the tale of almost all our woe? There once\nexisted a natural man; there has been introduced within this man an\nartificial man and there has arisen in the cave a civil war which lasts\nthroughout life.\u201d\n\nThe denial of the reality of the \u201ccivil war in the cave\u201d involves an\nentire transformation of the conscience. The conscience ceases to be\na power that sits in judgment on the ordinary self and inhibits its\nimpulses. It tends so far as it is recognized at all, to become itself\nan instinct and an emotion. Students of the history of ethics scarcely\nneed to be told that this transformation of the conscience was led up\nto by the English deists, especially by Shaftesbury and his disciple\nHutcheson.[76] Shaftesbury and Hutcheson are already \u00e6sthetic in all\nsenses of the word; \u00e6sthetic in that they tend to base conduct upon\nfeeling, and \u00e6sthetic in that they incline to identify the good and\nthe beautiful. Conscience is ceasing for both of them to be an inner\ncheck on the impulses of the individual and becoming a moral _sense_, a\nsort of expansive instinct for doing good to others. Altruism, as thus\nconceived, is opposed by them to the egoism of Hobbes and his followers.\n\nBut for the full implications of this transformation of conscience\nand for \u00e6sthetic morality in general one needs to turn to Rousseau.\nMost men according to Rousseau are perverted by society, but there\nare a few in whom the voice of \u201cnature\u201d is still strong and who, to\nbe good and at the same time beautiful, have only to let themselves\ngo. These, to use a term that came to have in the eighteenth century\nan almost technical meaning, are the \u201cbeautiful souls.\u201d The _belle\n\u00e2me_ is practically indistinguishable from the _\u00e2me sensible_ and has\nmany points in common with the original genius. Those whose souls are\nbeautiful are a small transfigured band in the midst of a philistine\nmultitude. They are not to be judged by the same rules as those of\nless exquisite sensibility. \u201cThere are unfortunates too privileged to\nfollow the common pathway.\u201d[77] The beautiful soul is unintelligible\nto those of coarser feelings. His very superiority, his preternatural\nfineness of sensation, thus predestines him to suffering. We are here\nat the root of romantic melancholy as will appear more fully later.\n\nThe most important aspect of the whole conception is, however, the\nstrictly ethical--the notion that the beautiful soul has only to be\ninstinctive and temperamental to merit the praise that has in the past\nbeen awarded only to the purest spirituality. \u201cAs for Julie,\u201d says\nRousseau, \u201cwho never had any other guide but her heart and could have\nno surer guide, she gives herself up to it without scruple, and to do\nright, has only to do all that it asks of her.\u201d[78] Virtue indeed,\naccording to Rousseau, is not merely an instinct but a passion and\neven a voluptuous passion, moving in the same direction as other\npassions, only superior to them in vehemence. \u201cCold reason has never\ndone anything illustrious; and you can triumph over the passions only\nby opposing them to one another. When the passion of virtue arises, it\ndominates everything and holds everything in equipoise.\u201d[79]\n\nThis notion of the soul that is spontaneously beautiful and therefore\ngood made an especial appeal to the Germans and indeed is often\nassociated with Germany more than with any other land.[80] But examples\nof moral \u00e6stheticism are scarcely less frequent elsewhere from\nRousseau to the present. No one, for example, was ever more convinced\nof the beauty of his own soul than Renan. \u201cMorality,\u201d says Renan, \u201chas\nbeen conceived up to the present in a very narrow spirit, as obedience\nto a law, as an inner struggle between opposite laws. As for me, I\ndeclare that when I do good I obey no one, I fight no battle and win no\nvictory. The cultivated man has only to follow the delicious incline of\nhis inner impulses.\u201d[81] Therefore, as he says elsewhere, \u201cBe beautiful\nand then do at each moment whatever your heart may inspire you to do.\nThis is the whole of morality.\u201d[82]\n\nThe doctrine of the beautiful soul is at once a denial and a parody\nof the doctrine of grace; a denial because it rejects original sin;\na parody because it holds that the beautiful soul acts aright, not\nthrough any effort of its own but because nature acts in it and through\nit even as a man in a state of grace acts aright not through any merit\nof his own but because God acts in him and through him. The man who\nsaw everything from the angle of grace was, like the beautiful soul or\nthe original genius, inclined to look upon himself as exceptional and\nsuperlative. Bunyan entitles the story of his own inner life \u201cGrace\nabounding to the chief of sinners.\u201d But Bunyan flatters himself. It\nis not easy to be chief in such a lively competition. Humility and\npride were evidently in a sort of grapple with one another in the\nbreast of the Jansenist who declared that God had killed three men\nin order to compass his salvation. In the case of the beautiful soul\nthe humility disappears, but the pride remains. He still looks upon\nhimself as superlative but superlative in goodness. If all men were\nlike himself, Renan declares, it would be appropriate to say of them:\nYe are Gods and sons of the most high.[83] The partisan of grace holds\nthat works are of no avail compared with the gratuitous and unmerited\nillumination from above. The beautiful soul clings to his belief in\nhis own innate excellence, no matter how flagrant the contradiction\nmay be between this belief and his deeds. One should not fail to note\nsome approximation to the point of view of the beautiful soul in those\nforms of Christianity in which the sense of sin is somewhat relaxed\nand the inner light very much emphasized--for example among the German\npietists and the quietists of Catholic countries.[84] We even hear of\npersons claiming to be Christians who as the result of debauchery have\nexperienced a spiritual awakening (_Dans la brute assoupie, un ange se\nr\u00e9veille_). But such doctrines are mere excrescences and eccentricities\nin the total history of Christianity. Even in its extreme insistence\non grace, Christianity has always tended to supplement rather than\ncontradict the supreme maxim of humanistic morality as enunciated by\nCicero: \u201cThe whole praise of virtue is in action.\u201d The usual result\nof the doctrine of grace when sincerely held is to make a man feel\ndesperately sinful at the same time that he is less open to reproach\nthan other men in his actual behavior. The beautiful soul on the\nother hand can always take refuge in his feelings from his real\ndelinquencies. According to Joubert, Chateaubriand was not disturbed\nby actual lapses in his conduct because of his persuasion of his own\ninnate rectitude.[85] \u201cHer conduct was reprehensible,\u201d says Rousseau\nof Madame de Warens, \u201cbut her heart was pure.\u201d It does not matter\nwhat you do if only through it all you preserve the sense of your own\nloveliness. Indeed the more dubious the act the more copious would\nseem to be the overflow of fine sentiments to which it stimulates\nthe beautiful soul. Rousseau dilates on his \u201cwarmth of heart,\u201d his\n\u201ckeenness of sensibility,\u201d his \u201cinnate benevolence for his fellow\ncreatures,\u201d his \u201cardent love for the great, the true, the beautiful,\nthe just,\u201d on the \u201cmelting feeling, the lively and sweet emotion that\nhe experiences at the sight of everything that is virtuous, generous\nand lovely,\u201d and concludes: \u201cAnd so my third child was put into the\nfoundling hospital.\u201d\n\nIf we wish to see the psychology of Rousseau writ large we should turn\nto the French Revolution. That period abounds in persons whose goodness\nis in theory so superlative that it overflows in a love for all men,\nbut who in practice are filled like Rousseau in his later years with\nuniversal suspicion. There was indeed a moment in the Revolution when\nthe madness of Rousseau became epidemic, when suspicion was pushed\nto such a point that men became \u201csuspect of being suspect.\u201d One of\nthe last persons to see Rousseau alive at Ermenonville was Maximilien\nRobespierre. He was probably a more thoroughgoing Rousseauist than\nany other of the Revolutionary leaders. Perhaps no passage that could\nbe cited illustrates with more terrible clearness the tendency of the\nnew morality to convert righteousness into self-righteousness than\nthe following from his last speech before the Convention at the very\nheight of the Reign of Terror. Himself devoured by suspicion, he is\nrepelling the suspicion that he wishes to erect his own power on the\nruins of the monarchy. The idea, he says, that \u201che can descend to the\ninfamy of the throne will appear probable only to those perverse beings\nwho have not even the right to believe in virtue. But why speak of\nvirtue? Doubtless virtue is a natural passion. But how could they be\nfamiliar with it, these venal spirits who never yielded access to aught\nsave cowardly and ferocious passions? \u2026 Yet virtue exists as you can\ntestify, feeling and pure souls; it exists, that tender, irresistible,\nimperious passion, torment and delight of magnanimous hearts, that\nprofound horror of tyranny, that compassionate zeal for the oppressed,\nthat sacred love for one\u2019s country, that still more sublime and\nsacred love for humanity, without which a great revolution is only a\nglittering crime that destroys another crime; it exists, that generous\nambition to found on earth the first Republic of the world; that egoism\nof undegenerate men who find a celestial voluptuousness in the calm of\na pure conscience and the ravishing spectacle of public happiness(!).\nYou feel it at this moment burning in your souls. I feel it in mine.\nBut how could our vile calumniators have any notion of it?\u201d etc.\n\nIn Robespierre and other revolutionary leaders one may study the\nimplications of the new morality--the attempt to transform virtue into\na natural passion--not merely for the individual but for society. M.\nRod entitled his play on Rousseau \u201cThe Reformer.\u201d Both Rousseau and his\ndisciple Robespierre were reformers in the modern sense,--that is they\nare concerned not with reforming themselves, but other men. Inasmuch\nas there is no conflict between good and evil in the breast of the\nbeautiful soul he is free to devote all his efforts to the improvement\nof mankind, and he proposes to achieve this great end by diffusing the\nspirit of brotherhood. All the traditional forms that stand in the way\nof this free emotional expansion he denounces as mere \u201cprejudices,\u201d\nand inclines to look on those who administer these forms as a gang of\nconspirators who are imposing an arbitrary and artificial restraint on\nthe natural goodness of man and so keeping it from manifesting itself.\nWith the final disappearance of the prejudices of the past and those\nwho base their usurped authority upon them, the Golden Age will be\nushered in at last; everybody will be boundlessly self-assertive and\nat the same time temper this self-assertion by an equally boundless\nsympathy for others, whose sympathy and self-assertion likewise know no\nbounds. The world of Walt Whitman will be realized, a world in which\nthere is neither inferior nor superior but only comrades. This vision\n(such for example as appears at the end of Shelley\u2019s \u201cPrometheus\u201d) of\na humanity released from all evil artificially imposed from without,\na humanity \u201cwhere all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea\u201d and\n\u201cwhose nature is its own divine control,\u201d is the true religion of the\nRousseauist. It is this image of a humanity glorified through love\nthat he sets up for worship in the sanctuary left vacant by \u201cthe great\nabsence of God.\u201d\n\nThis transformation of the Arcadian dreamer into the Utopist is due\nin part, as I have already suggested, to the intoxication produced\nin the human spirit by the conquests of science. One can discern the\nco\u00f6peration of Baconian and Rousseauist from a very early stage of the\ngreat humanitarian movement in the midst of which we are still living.\nBoth Baconian and Rousseauist are interested not in the struggle\nbetween good and evil in the breast of the individual, but in the\nprogress of mankind as a whole. If the Rousseauist hopes to promote\nthe progress of society by diffusing the spirit of brotherhood the\nBaconian or utilitarian hopes to achieve the same end by perfecting\nits machinery. It is scarcely necessary to add that these two main\ntypes of humanitarianism may be contained in almost any proportion in\nany particular person. By his worship of man in his future material\nadvance, the Baconian betrays no less surely than the Rousseauist his\nfaith in man\u2019s natural goodness. This lack of humility is especially\nconspicuous in those who have sought to develop the positive\nobservations of science into a closed system with the aid of logic and\npure mathematics. Pascal already remarked sarcastically of Descartes\nthat he had no need of God except to give an initial fillip to his\nmechanism. Later the mechanist no longer grants the need of the initial\nfillip. According to the familiar anecdote, La Place when asked by\nNapoleon in the course of an explanation of his \u201cCelestial Mechanics\u201d\nwhere God came in, replied that he had no need of a God in his system.\nAs illustrating the extreme of humanitarian arrogance one may take\nthe following from the physicist and mathematician, W. K. Clifford:\n\u201cThe dim and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly from\nbefore us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive\nwith greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and\nnobler figure--of Him who made all gods and shall unmake them. From\nthe dim dawn of history and from the inmost depths of every soul the\nface of our father Man looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth\nin his eyes and says, \u2018Before Jehovah was, I am.\u2019\u201d The fire, one is\ntempted to say, of eternal lust! Clifford is reported to have once hung\nby his toes from the cross-bar of a weathercock on a church-tower. As\na bit of intellectual acrobatics the passage I have just quoted has\nsome analogy with this posture. Further than this, man\u2019s intoxication\nwith himself is not likely to go. The attitude of Clifford is even more\nextreme in its way than that of Jonathan Edwards in his. However, there\nare already signs that the man of science is becoming, if not humble,\nat least a trifle less arrogant.\n\nOne can imagine the Rousseauist interrupting at this point to remark\nthat one of his chief protests has always been against the mechanical\nand utilitarian and in general the scientific attitude towards life.\nThis is true. Something has already been said about this protest and\nit will be necessary to say more about it later. Yet Rousseauist and\nBaconian agree, as I have said, in turning away from the \u201ccivil war in\nthe cave\u201d to humanity in the lump. They agree in being more or less\nrebellious towards the traditional forms that put prime emphasis on\nthe \u201ccivil war in the cave\u201d--whether the Christian tradition with its\nhumility or the classical with its decorum. No wonder Prometheus was\nthe great romantic hero. Prometheus was at once a rebel, a lover of man\nand a promoter of man\u2019s material progress. We have been living for over\na century in what may be termed an age of Promethean individualism.\n\nThe Rousseauist especially feels an inner kinship with Prometheus and\nother Titans. He is fascinated by every form of insurgency. Cain and\nSatan are both romantic heroes. To meet the full romantic requirement,\nhowever, the insurgent must also be tender-hearted. He must show an\nelemental energy in his explosion against the established order and\nat the same time a boundless sympathy for the victims of it. One of\nHugo\u2019s poems tells of a Mexican volcano, that in sheer disgust at\nthe cruelty of the members of the Inquisition, spits lava upon them.\nThis compassionate volcano symbolizes in both of its main aspects\nthe romantic ideal. Hence the enormous international popularity\nof Schiller\u2019s \u201cRobbers.\u201d One may find innumerable variants of the\nbrigand Karl Moor who uses his plunder \u201cto support meritorious young\nmen at college.\u201d The world into which we enter from the very dawn of\nromanticism is one of \u201cglorious rascals,\u201d and \u201cbeloved vagabonds.\u201d\n\n    \u201cSublime convicts,\u201d says M. Lasserre, \u201cidlers of genius,\n    angelic female poisoners, monsters inspired by God, sincere\n    comedians, virtuous courtesans, metaphysical mountebanks,\n    faithful adulterers, form only one half--the sympathetic half\n    of humanity according to romanticism. The other half, the\n    wicked half, is manufactured by the same intellectual process\n    under the suggestion of the same revolutionary instinct.\n    It comprises all those who hold or stand for a portion of\n    any discipline whatsoever, political, religious, moral or\n    intellectual--kings, ministers, priests, judges, soldiers,\n    policemen, husbands and critics.\u201d[86]\n\nThe Rousseauist is ever ready to discover beauty of soul in any one\nwho is under the reprobation of society. The figure of the courtesan\nrehabilitated through love that has enjoyed such popularity during the\npast hundred years goes back to Rousseau himself.[87] The underlying\nassumption of romantic morality is that the personal virtues, the\nvirtues that imply self-control, count as naught compared with the\nfraternal spirit and the readiness to sacrifice one\u2019s self for\nothers. This is the ordinary theme of the Russian novel in which\none finds, as Lema\u00eetre remarks, \u201cthe Kalmuck exaggerations of our\nFrench romantic ideas.\u201d For example Sonia in \u201cCrime and Punishment\u201d\nis glorified because she prostitutes herself to procure a livelihood\nfor her family. One does not however need to go to Russia for what is\nscarcely less the assumption of contemporary America. If it can only\nbe shown that a person is sympathetic we are inclined to pardon him\nhis sins of unrestraint, his lack, for example, of common honesty.\nAs an offset to the damaging facts brought out at the investigation\nof the sugar trust, the defense sought to establish that the late H.\nO. Havemeyer was a beautiful soul. It was testified that he could\nnever hear little children sing without tears coming into his eyes.\nHis favorite song, some one was unkind enough to suggest, was \u201clittle\ndrops of water, little grains of sand.\u201d The newspapers again reported\nnot long ago that a notorious Pittsburg grafter had petitioned for\nhis release from the penitentiary on the grounds that he wished to\ncontinue his philanthropic activities among the poor. Another paragraph\nthat appeared recently in the daily press related that a burglar while\nengaged professionally in a house at Los Angeles discovered that the\nlady of the house had a child suffering from croup, and at once came to\nher aid, explaining that he had six children of his own. No one could\nreally think amiss of this authentic descendant of Schiller\u2019s Karl\nMoor. For love, according to the Rousseauist, is not the fulfillment\nof the law but a substitute for it. In \u201cLes Mis\u00e9rables\u201d Hugo contrasts\nJavert who stands for the old order based on obedience to the law\nwith the convict Jean Valjean who stands for the new regeneration of\nman through love and self-sacrifice. When Javert awakens to the full\nignominy of his r\u00f4le he does the only decent thing--he commits suicide.\nHugo indeed has perhaps carried the new evangel of sympathy as a\nsubstitute for all the other virtues further than any one else and with\nfewer weak concessions to common sense. Sultan Murad, Hugo narrates,\nwas \u201csublime.\u201d He had his eight brothers strangled, caused his uncle to\nbe sawn in two between two planks, opened one after the other twelve\nchildren to find a stolen apple, shed an ocean of blood and \u201csabred the\nworld.\u201d One day while passing in front of a butcher-shop he saw a pig\nbleeding to death, tormented by flies and with the sun beating upon\nits wound. Touched by pity, the Sultan pushes the pig into the shade\nwith his foot and with an \u201cenormous and superhuman gesture\u201d drives away\nthe flies. When Murad dies the pig appears before the Almighty and,\npleading for him against the accusing host of his victims, wins his\npardon. Moral: \u201cA succored pig outweighs a world oppressed\u201d[88] (_Un\npourceau secouru vaut un monde \u00e9gorg\u00e9_).\n\nThis subordination of all the other values of life to sympathy is\nachieved only at the expense of the great humanistic virtue--decorum\nor a sense of proportion. Now not to possess a sense of proportion is,\nhowever this lack may be manifested, to be a pedant; and, if there is\never a humanistic reaction, Hugo, one of the chief products of the age\nof original genius, will scarcely escape the charge of pedantry. But\ntrue religion also insists on a hierarchy of the virtues. Burke speaks\nat least as much from a religious as from a humanistic point of view\nwhen he writes:\n\n    \u201cThe greatest crimes do not arise so much from a want of\n    feeling for others as from an over-sensibility for ourselves\n    and an over-indulgence to our own desires. \u2026 They [the\n    \u2018philosophes\u2019] explode or render odious or contemptible that\n    class of virtues which restrain the appetite. These are at\n    least nine out of ten of the virtues. In the place of all\n    this they substitute a virtue which they call humanity or\n    benevolence. By these means their morality has no idea in it\n    of restraint or indeed of a distinct and settled principle of\n    any kind. When their disciples are thus left free and guided\n    only by present feeling, they are no longer to be depended\n    on for good and evil. The men who to-day snatch the worst\n    criminals from justice will murder the most innocent persons\n    to-morrow.\u201d[89]\n\nThe person who seeks to get rid of ninety per cent of the virtues in\nfavor of an indiscriminate sympathy does not simply lose his scale of\nvalues. He arrives at an inverted scale of values. For the higher the\nobject for which one feels sympathy the more the idea of obligation\nis likely to intrude--the very thing the Rousseauist is seeking to\nescape. One is more irresponsible and therefore more spontaneous in the\nRousseauistic sense in lavishing one\u2019s pity on a dying pig. Medical\nmen have given a learned name to the malady of those who neglect the\nmembers of their own family and gush over animals (zo\u00f6philpsychosis).\nBut Rousseau already exhibits this \u201cpsychosis.\u201d He abandoned his five\nchildren one after the other, but had we are told an unspeakable\naffection for his dog.[90]\n\nRousseau\u2019s contemporary, Sterne, is supposed to have lavished a\nsomewhat disproportionate emotion upon an ass. But the ass does\nnot really come into his own until a later stage of the movement.\nNietzsche has depicted the leaders of the nineteenth century as\nengaged in a veritable onolatry or ass-worship. The opposition between\nneo-classicist and Rousseauist is indeed symbolized in a fashion by\ntheir respective attitude towards the ass. Neo-classical decorum\nwas, it should be remembered, an all-pervading principle. It imposed\na severe hierarchy, not only upon objects, but upon the words that\nexpress these objects. The first concern of the decorous person was to\navoid lowness, and the ass he looked upon as hopelessly low--so low\nas to be incapable of ennoblement even by a resort to periphrasis.\nHomer therefore was deemed by Vida to have been guilty of outrageous\nindecorum in comparing Ajax to an ass. The partisans of Homer sought\nindeed to prove that the ass was in the time of Homer a \u201cnoble\u201d animal\nor at least that the word ass was \u201cnoble.\u201d But the stigma put upon\nHomer by Vida--reinforced as it was by the similar attacks of Scaliger\nand others--remained.\n\nThe rehabilitation of the ass by the Rousseauist is at once a protest\nagainst an unduly squeamish decorum, and a way of proclaiming the new\nprinciple of unbounded expansive sympathy. In dealing with both words\nand what they express, one should show a democratic inclusiveness.\nSomething has already been said of the war the romanticist waged in\nthe name of local color against the impoverishment of vocabulary by\nthe neo-classicists. But the romantic warfare against the aristocratic\nsqueamishness of the neo-classic vocabulary goes perhaps even deeper.\nTake, for instance, Wordsworth\u2019s view as to the proper language of\npoetry. Poetical decorum had become by the end of the eighteenth\ncentury a mere varnish of conventional elegance. Why should mere\npolite prejudice, so Wordsworth reasoned, and the \u201cgaudiness and inane\nphraseology\u201d in which it resulted be allowed to interfere with the\n\u201cspontaneous overflow of powerful emotion\u201d? And so he proceeds to set\nup a view of poetry that is only the neo-classical view turned upside\ndown. For the proper subjects and speech of poetry he would turn from\nthe highest class of society to the lowest, from the aristocrat to\nthe peasant. The peasant is more poetical than the aristocrat because\nhe is closer to nature, for Wordsworth as he himself avows, is less\ninterested in the peasant for his own sake than because he sees in him\na sort of emanation of the landscape.[91]\n\nOne needs to keep all this background in mind if one wishes to\nunderstand the full significance of a poem like \u201cPeter Bell.\u201d\nScaliger blames Homer because he stoops to mention in his description\nof Zeus something so trivial as the eyebrows. Wordsworth seeks to\nbestow poetical dignity and seriousness on the \u201clong left ear\u201d of an\nass.[92] The ass is thus exalted one scarcely need add, because of\nhis compassionateness. The hard heart of Peter Bell is at last melted\nby the sight of so much goodness. He aspires to be like the ass and\nfinally achieves his wish.\n\nThe French romanticists, Hugo, for instance, make an attack on decorum\nsomewhat similar to that of Wordsworth. Words formerly lived, says\nHugo, divided up into castes. Some had the privilege of mounting into\nthe king\u2019s coaches at Versailles, whereas others were relegated to\nthe rabble. I came along and clapped a red liberty cap on the old\ndictionary. I brought about a literary \u201993,[93] etc. Hugo\u2019s attack\non decorum is also combined with an even more violent assertion than\nWordsworth\u2019s of the ideal of romantic morality--the supremacy of pity.\nHe declares in the \u201cLegend of the Ages\u201d that an ass that takes a step\naside to avoid crushing a toad is \u201cholier than Socrates and greater\nthan Plato.\u201d[94] For this and similar utterances Hugo deserves to be\nplaced very nearly if not quite at the head of romantic onolaters.\n\nWe have said that the tremendous burden put upon sympathy in romantic\nmorality is a result of the assumption that the \u201ccivil war in the cave\u201d\nis artificial and that therefore the restraining virtues (according\nto Burke ninety per cent of the virtues) which imply this warfare\nare likewise artificial. If the civil war in the cave should turn\nout to be not artificial but a fact of the gravest import, the whole\nspiritual landscape would change immediately. Romantic morality would\nin that case be not a reality but a mirage. We need at all events to\ngrasp the central issue firmly. Humanism and religion have always\nasserted in some form or other the dualism of the human spirit. A man\u2019s\nspirituality is in inverse ratio to his immersion in temperament. The\nwhole movement from Rousseau to Bergson is, on the other hand, filled\nwith the glorification of instinct. To become spiritual the beautiful\nsoul needs only to expand along the lines of temperament and with this\nprocess the cult of pity or sympathy does not interfere. The romantic\nmoralist tends to favor expansion on the ground that it is vital,\ncreative, infinite, and to dismiss whatever seems to set bounds to\nexpansion as something inert, mechanical, finite. In its onslaughts on\nthe veto power whether within or without the breast of the individual\nit is plain that no age has ever approached the age of original\ngenius in the midst of which we are still living. Goethe defines the\ndevil as the spirit that always says no, and Carlyle celebrates his\npassage from darkness to light as an escape from the Everlasting Nay\nto the Everlasting Yea. We rarely pause to consider what a reversal\nof traditional wisdom is implied in such conceptions. In the past,\nthe spirit that says no has been associated rather with the divine.\nSocrates tells us that the counsels of his \u201cvoice\u201d were always\nnegative, never positive.[95] According to the ancient Hindu again the\ndivine is the \u201cinner check.\u201d God, according to Aristotle, is pure Form.\nIn opposition to all this emphasis on the restricting and limiting\npower, the naturalist, whether scientific or emotional, sets up a\nprogram of formless, fearless expansion; which means in practice that\nhe recognizes no bounds either to intellectual or emotional curiosity.\n\nI have said that it is a part of the psychology of the original genius\nto offer the element of wonder and surprise awakened by the perpetual\nnovelty, the infinite otherwiseness of things, as a substitute for\nthe awe that is associated with their infinite oneness; or rather to\nrefuse to discriminate between these two infinitudes and so to confound\nthe two main directions of the human spirit, its religious East, as\none may say, with its West of wonder and romance. This confusion may\nbe illustrated by the romantic attitude towards what is perhaps the\nmost Eastern of all Eastern lands,--India. The materials for the study\nof India in the Occident were accumulated by Englishmen towards the\nend of the eighteenth century, but the actual interpretation of this\nmaterial is due largely to German romanticists, notably to Friedrich\nSchlegel.[96] Alongside the romantic Hellenist and the romantic\nmedi\u00e6valist we find the romantic Indianist. It is to India even more\nthan to Spain that one needs to turn, says Friedrich Schlegel, for the\nsupremely romantic[97]--that is, the wildest and most unrestrained\nluxuriance of imagination. Now in a country so vast and so ancient as\nIndia you can find in some place or at some period or other almost\nanything you like. If, for example, W. B. Yeats waxes enthusiastic\nover Tagore we may be sure that there is in the work of Tagore\nsomething akin to \u00e6sthetic romanticism. But if we take India at the top\nof her achievement in the early Buddhistic movement, let us say, we\nshall find something very different. The early Buddhistic movement in\nits essential aspects is at the extreme opposite pole from romanticism.\nThe point is worth making because certain misinterpretations that\nstill persist both of Buddhism and other movements in India can\nbe traced ultimately to the bad twist that was given to the whole\nsubject by romanticists like the Schlegels. The educated Frenchman,\nfor instance, gets his ideas of India largely from certain poems of\nLeconte de Lisle who reflects the German influence. But the sense of\nuniversal and meaningless flux that pervades these poems without any\ncountervailing sense of a reality behind the shows of nature is a\nproduct of romanticism, working in co\u00f6peration with science, and is\ntherefore antipodal to the absorption of the true Hindu in the oneness\nof things. We are told, again, that Schopenhauer was a Buddhist. Did\nhe not have an image of Buddha in his bedroom? But no doctrine perhaps\nis more remote from the genuine doctrine of Buddha than that of this\nsoured and disillusioned romanticist. The nature of true Buddhism and\nits opposition to all forms of romanticism is worth dwelling on for\na moment. Buddha not only asserted the human law with unusual power\nbut he also did what, in the estimation of some, needs doing in our\nown day--he put this law, not on a traditional, but on a positive and\ncritical basis. This spiritual positivism of Buddha is, reduced to its\nsimplest terms, a psychology of desire. Not only is the world outside\nof man in a constant state of flux and change, but there is an element\nwithin man that is in constant flux and change also and makes itself\nfelt practically as an element of expansive desire. What is unstable in\nhim longs for what is unstable in the outer world. But he may escape\nfrom the element of flux and change, nay he must aspire to do so, if\nhe wishes to be released from sorrow. This is to substitute the noble\nfor the ignoble craving. The permanent or ethical element in himself\ntowards which he should strive to move is known to him practically as a\npower of inhibition or inner check upon expansive desire. Vital impulse\n(_\u00e9lan vital_) may be subjected to vital control (_frein vital_). Here\nis the Buddhist equivalent of the \u201ccivil war in the cave\u201d that the\nromanticist denies. Buddha does not admit a soul in man in the sense\nthat is often given to the word, but on this opposition between vital\nimpulse and vital control as a psychological fact he puts his supreme\nemphasis. The man who drifts supinely with the current of desire is\nguilty according to Buddha of the gravest of all vices--spiritual or\nmoral indolence (_pam\u0101da_). He on the contrary who curbs or reins in\nhis expansive desires is displaying the chief of all the virtues,\nspiritual vigilance or strenuousness (_appam\u0101da_). The man who is\nspiritually strenuous has entered upon the \u201cpath.\u201d The end of this\npath and the goal of being cannot be formulated in terms of the finite\nintellect, any more than the ocean can be put into a cup. But progress\non the path may be known by its fruits--negatively by the extinction of\nthe expansive desires (the literal meaning of Nirv\u00e2na), positively by\nan increase in peace, poise, centrality.\n\nA man\u2019s rank in the scale of being is, then, according to the Buddhist\ndetermined by the quality of his desires; and it is within his power to\ndetermine whether he shall let them run wild or else control them to\nsome worthy end. We hear of the fatalistic East, but no doctrine was\never less fatalistic than that of Buddha. No one ever put so squarely\nupon the individual what the individual is ever seeking to evade--the\nburden of moral responsibility. \u201cSelf is the lord of self. Who else\ncan be the lord? \u2026 You yourself must make the effort. The Buddhas are\nonly teachers.\u201d[98] But does not all this emphasis on self, one may\nask, tend to hardness and indifference towards others, towards the\nundermining of that compassion to which the romantic moralist is ready\nto sacrifice all the other virtues? Buddha may be allowed to speak for\nhimself: \u201cEven as a mother cherishes her child, her only child, so let\na man cultivate a boundless love towards all beings.\u201d[99] Buddha thus\nseems to fulfil Pascal\u2019s requirement for a great man: he unites in\nhimself opposite virtues and occupies all the space between them.\n\nEnough has been said to make plain that the infinite indeterminate\ndesire of the romanticist and the Buddhist repression of desire are the\nmost different things conceivable. Chateaubriand it has been said was\nan \u201cinvincibly restless soul,\u201d a soul of desire (_une \u00e2me de d\u00e9sir_),\nbut these phrases are scarcely more applicable to him than to many\nother great romanticists. They are fitly symbolized by the figures that\npace to and fro in the Hall of Eblis and whose hearts are seen through\ntheir transparent bosoms to be lapped in the flames of unquenchable\nlonging. The romanticist indeed bases, as I have said, on the very\nintensity of his longing his claims to be an idealist and even a\nmystic. William Blake, for example, has been proclaimed a true mystic.\nThe same term has also been applied to Buddha. Without pretending to\nhave fathomed completely so unfathomable a being as Buddha or even the\nfar less unfathomable William Blake, one may nevertheless assert with\nconfidence that Buddha and Blake stand for utterly incompatible views\nof life. If Blake is a mystic then Buddha must be something else. To\nbe assured on this point one needs only to compare the \u201cMarriage of\nHeaven and Hell\u201d with the \u201cDhammapada,\u201d an anthology of some of the\nmost authentic and authoritative material in early Buddhism. \u201cHe who\ndesires but acts not, breeds pestilence. \u2026 The road of excess leads\nto the palace of wisdom,\u201d says Blake. \u201cEven in heavenly pleasures he\nfinds no satisfaction; the disciple who is fully awakened delights\nonly in the destruction of all desires. \u2026 Good is restraint in all\nthings,\u201d says Buddha. Buddha would evidently have dismissed Blake as\na madman, whereas Blake would have looked on Buddhism as the ultimate\nabomination. My own conviction is that Buddha was a genuine sage well\nworthy of the homage rendered him by multitudes of men for more than\ntwenty-four centuries, whereas Blake was only a romantic \u00e6sthete who\nwas moving in his imaginative activity towards madness and seems at the\nend actually to have reached the goal.\n\nI have been going thus far afield to ancient India and to Buddha, not\nthat I might, like a recent student of Buddhism, enjoy \u201cthe strangeness\nof the intellectual landscape,\u201d but on the contrary that I might\nsuggest that there is a centre of normal human experience and that\nBuddhism, at least in its ethical aspects, is nearer to this centre\nthan \u00e6sthetic romanticism. Buddha might perhaps marvel with more\nreason at our strangeness than we at his. Buddha\u2019s assertion of man\u2019s\ninnate moral laziness in particular accords more closely with what\nmost of us have experienced than Rousseau\u2019s assertion of man\u2019s natural\ngoodness. This conception of the innate laziness of man seems to me\nindeed so central that I am going to put it at the basis of the point\nof view I am myself seeking to develop, though this point of view is\nnot primarily Buddhistic. This conception has the advantage of being\npositive rather than dogmatic. It works out in practice very much like\nthe original sin of the Christian theologian. The advantage of starting\nwith indolence rather than sin is that many men will admit that they\nare morally indolent who will not admit that they are sinful. For\ntheological implications still cluster thickly about the word sin, and\nthese persons are still engaged more or less consciously in the great\nnaturalistic revolt against theology.\n\nThe spiritual positivist then will start from a fact of immediate\nperception--from the presence namely in the breast of the individual\nof a principle of vital control (_frein vital_), and he will measure\nhis spiritual strenuousness or spiritual sloth by the degree to which\nhe exercises or fails to exercise this power. In accordance with the\nkeenness of a man\u2019s perception of a specially human order that is\nknown practically as a curb upon his ordinary self, he may be said to\npossess insight. The important thing is that the insight should not\nbe sophisticated, that a man should not fall away from it into some\nphantasmagoria of the intellect or emotions. A man sometimes builds up\na whole system of metaphysics as a sort of screen between himself and\nhis obligations either to himself or others. Mrs. Barbauld suspected\nthat Coleridge\u2019s philosophy was only a mask for indolence. Carlyle\u2019s\nphrase for Coleridge was even harsher: \u201cputrescent indolence,\u201d a phrase\nthat might be applied with more justice perhaps to Rousseau. One may\nlearn from Rousseau the art of sinking to the region of instinct that\nis below the rational level instead of struggling forward to the\nregion of insight that is above it, and at the same time passing for a\nsublime enthusiast; the art of looking backwards and downwards, and at\nthe same time enjoying the honor that belongs only to those who look\nforwards and up. We need not wonder at the warm welcome that this new\nart received. I have said that that man has always been accounted a\nbenefactor who has substituted for the reality of spiritual discipline\nsome ingenious art of going through the motions and that the decorum of\nthe neo-classical period had largely sunk to this level. Even in the\nmost decorous of modern ages, that of Louis XIV, it was very common, as\nevery student of the period knows, for men to set up as personages in\nthe grand manner and at the same time behind the fa\u00e7ade of conventional\ndignity to let their appetites run riot. It would have been perfectly\nlegitimate at the end of the eighteenth century to attack in the name\nof true decorum a decorum that had become the \u201cvarnish of vice\u201d and\n\u201cmask of hypocrisy.\u201d What Rousseau actually opposed to pseudo-decorum\nwas perhaps the most alluring form of sham spirituality that the\nworld has ever seen--a method not merely of masking but of glorifying\none\u2019s spiritual indolence. \u201cYou wish to have the pleasures of vice\nand the honor of virtue,\u201d wrote Julie to Saint-Preux in a moment of\nunusual candor. The Rousseauist may indulge in the extreme of psychic\nunrestraint and at the same time pose as a perfect idealist or even, if\none is a Chateaubriand, as a champion of religion. Chateaubriand\u2019s life\naccording to Lema\u00eetre was a \u201cmagnificent series of attitudes.\u201d\n\nI do not mean to assert that the Rousseauist is always guilty of the\npose and theatricality of which there is more than a suggestion in\nChateaubriand. There is, however, much in the Rousseauistic view of\nlife that militates against a complete moral honesty. \u201cOf all the men I\nhave known,\u201d says Rousseau, \u201che whose character derives most completely\nfrom his temperament alone is Jean-Jacques.\u201d[100] The ugly things that\nhave a way of happening when impulse is thus left uncontrolled do\nnot, as we have seen, disturb the beautiful soul in his complacency.\nHe can always point an accusing finger at something or somebody else.\nThe faith in one\u2019s natural goodness is a constant encouragement to\nevade moral responsibility. To accept responsibility is to follow the\nline of maximum effort, whereas man\u2019s secret desire is to follow, if\nnot the line of least, at all events the line of lesser resistance.\nThe endless twisting and dodging and proneness to look for scapegoats\nthat results is surely the least reputable aspect of human nature.\nRousseau writes to Madame de Francueil (20 April, 1751) that it was\nher class, the class of the rich, that was responsible for his having\nhad to abandon his children. With responsibility thus shifted from\none\u2019s self to the rich, the next step is inevitable, namely to start a\ncrusade against the members of a class which, without any warrant from\n\u201cNature,\u201d oppresses its brothers, the members of other classes, and\nforces them into transgression. A man may thus dodge his duties as a\nfather, and at the same time pose as a paladin of humanity. Rousseau is\nvery close here to our most recent agitators. If a working girl falls\nfrom chastity, for example, do not blame her, blame her employer. She\nwould have remained a model of purity if he had only added a dollar or\ntwo a week to her wage. With the progress of the new morality every\none has become familiar with the type of the perfect idealist who is\nready to pass laws for the regulation of everybody and everything\nexcept himself, and who knows how to envelop in a mist of radiant words\nschemes the true driving power of which is the desire to confiscate\nproperty.\n\nThe tendency to make of society the universal scapegoat is not, one\nscarcely needs add, to be ascribed entirely to the romantic moralist.\nIt is only one aspect of the denial of the human law, of the assumption\nthat because man is partly subject to the natural law he is entirely\nsubject to it; and in this dehumanizing of man the rationalist has\nbeen at least as guilty as the emotionalist. If the Rousseauist hopes\nto find a substitute for all the restraining virtues in sympathy, the\nrationalistic naturalist, who is as a rule utilitarian with a greater\nor smaller dash of pseudo-science, hopes to find a substitute for these\nsame virtues in some form of machinery. The legislative mill to which\nour \u201cuplifters\u201d are so ready to resort, is a familiar example. If our\nmodern society continues to listen to those who are seeking to persuade\nit that it is possible to find mechanical or emotional equivalents for\nself-control, it is likely, as Rousseau said of himself, to show a\n\u201cgreat tendency to degenerate.\u201d\n\nThe fact on which the moral positivist would rest his effort to\nrehabilitate self-control is, as I have said, the presence in man of\na restraining, informing and centralizing power that is anterior to\nboth intellect and emotion. Such a power, it must be freely granted, is\nnot present equally in all persons; in some it seems scarcely to exist\nat all. When released from outer control, they are simply unchained\ntemperaments; whereas in others this superrational perception seems to\nbe singularly vivid and distinct. This is the psychological fact that\nunderlies what the theologian would term the mystery of grace.\n\nRousseau himself was not quite so temperamental as might be inferred\nfrom what has been said about his evasion of ethical effort. There were\nmoments when the dualism of the spirit came home to him, moments when\nhe perceived that the conscience is not itself an expansive emotion\nbut rather a judgment and a check upon expansive emotion. Yet his\ngeneral readiness to subordinate his ethical self to his sensibility is\nindubitable. Hence the absence in his personality and writing of the\nnote of masculinity. There is indeed much in his make-up that reminds\none less of a man than of a high-strung impressionable woman. Woman,\nmost observers would agree, is more natural in Rousseau\u2019s sense, that\nis, more temperamental, than man. One should indeed always temper\nthese perilous comparisons of the sexes with the remark of La Fontaine\nthat in this matter he knew a great many men who were women. Now to be\ntemperamental is to be extreme, and it is in this sense perhaps that\nthe female of the species may be said to be \u201cfiercer than the male.\u201d\nRousseau\u2019s failure to find \u201cany intermediary term between everything\nand nothing\u201d would seem to be a feminine rather than a masculine\ntrait. Decorum in the case of women, even more perhaps than in the\ncase of men, tends to be a mere conformity to what is established\nrather than the immediate perception of a law of measure and proportion\nthat sets bounds to the expansive desires. \u201cWomen believe innocent\neverything that they dare,\u201d says Joubert, whom no one will accuse of\nbeing a misogynist. Those who are thus temperamental have more need\nthan others of outer guidance. \u201cHis feminine nature,\u201d says C. E. Norton\nof Ruskin, \u201cneeded support such as it never got.\u201d[101]\n\nIf women are more temperamental than men it is only fair to add that\nthey have a greater fineness of temperament. Women, says Joubert again,\nare richer in native virtues, men in acquired virtues. At times when\nmen are slack in acquiring virtues in the truly ethical sense--and\nsome might maintain that the present is such a time--the women may\nbe not only men\u2019s equals but their superiors. Rousseau had this\nfeminine fineness of temperament. He speaks rightly of his \u201cexquisite\nfaculties.\u201d He also had no inconsiderable amount of feminine charm. The\nnumerous members of the French aristocracy whom he fascinated may be\naccepted as competent witnesses on this point. The mingling of sense\nand spirit that pervades Rousseau, his pseudo-Platonism as I have\ncalled it elsewhere, is also a feminine rather than a masculine trait.\n\nThere is likewise something feminine in Rousseau\u2019s preference for\nillusion. Illusion is the element in which woman even more than man\nwould seem to live and move and have her being. It is feminine and\nalso romantic to prefer to a world of sharp definition a world of magic\nand suggestiveness. W. Bagehot (it will be observed that in discussing\nthis delicate topic I am prone to take refuge behind authorities)\nattributes the triumph of an art of shifting illusion over an art\nof clear and firm outlines to the growing influence of women.[102]\nWoman\u2019s being is to that of man, we are told, as is moonlight unto\nsunlight--and the moon is the romantic orb. The whole of German romance\nin particular is bathed in moonshine.[103]\n\nThe objection of the classicist to the so-called enlightenment of the\neighteenth century is that it did not have in it sufficient light. The\nprimitivists on the contrary felt that it had too much light--that the\nlight needed to be tempered by darkness. Even the moon is too effulgent\nfor the author of \u201cHymns to the Night.\u201d No movement has ever avowed\nmore openly its partiality for the dim and the crepuscular. The German\nromanticists have been termed \u201ctwilight men.\u201d What many of them admire\nin woman as in children and plants, is her unconsciousness and freedom\nfrom analysis--an admiration that is also a tribute in its way to the\n\u201cnight side\u201d of nature.[104]\n\nDiscussions of the kind in which I have been indulging regarding the\nunlikeness of woman and man are very dreary unless one puts at least\nequal emphasis on their fundamental likeness. Woman, before being\nwoman, is a human being and so subject to the same law as man. So far\nas men and women both take on the yoke of this law, they move towards\na common centre. So far as they throw it off and live temperamentally,\nthere tends to arise the most odious of all forms of warfare--that\nbetween the sexes. The dictates of the human law are only too likely\nto yield in the case of both men and women to the rush of outer\nimpressions and the tumult of the desires within. This is what La\nRochefoucauld means when he says that \u201cthe head is always the dupe of\nthe heart.\u201d Nevertheless feeling is even more likely to prevail over\njudgment in woman than it is in man. To be judicial indeed to the\npoint of hardness and sternness has always been held to be unfeminine.\nIt is almost woman\u2019s prerogative to err on the side of sympathy.\nBut even woman cannot be allowed to substitute sympathy for true\nconscience--that is for the principle of control. In basing conduct\non feeling Rousseau may be said to have founded a new sophistry.\nThe ancient sophist at least made man the measure of all things. By\nsubordinating judgment to sensibility Rousseau may be said to have made\nwoman the measure of all things.\n\nThe affirmation of a human law must ultimately rest on the perception\nof a something that is set above the flux upon which the flux itself\ndepends--on what Aristotle terms an unmoved mover. Otherwise conscience\nbecomes a part of the very flux and element of change it is supposed\nto control. In proportion as he escapes from outer control man must\nbe conscious of some such unmoved mover if he is to oppose a definite\naim or purpose to the indefinite expansion of his desires. Having some\nsuch firm centre he may hope to carry through to a fortunate conclusion\nthe \u201ccivil war in the cave.\u201d He may, as the wise are wont to express\nit, build himself an island in the midst of the flood. The romantic\nmoralist, on the other hand, instead of building himself an island is\nsimply drifting with the stream. For feeling not only shifts from man\nto man, it is continually shifting in the same man; so that morality\nbecomes a matter of mood, and romanticism here as elsewhere might be\ndefined as the despotism of mood. At the time of doing anything, says\nMrs. Shelley, Shelley deemed himself right; and Rousseau says that\nin the act of abandoning his own children he felt \u201clike a member of\nPlato\u2019s republic.\u201d\n\nThe man who makes self-expression and not self-control his primary\nendeavor becomes subject to every influence, \u201cthe very slave of\ncircumstance and impulse borne by every breath.\u201d[105] This is what it\nmeans in practice no longer to keep a firm hand on the rudder of one\u2019s\npersonality, but to turn one\u2019s self over to \u201cnature.\u201d The partisan\nof expression becomes the thrall of his impressions so that the whole\nRousseauistic conception may be termed indifferently impressionistic or\nexpressionistic. For the beautiful soul in order to express himself has\nto indulge his emotions instead of hardening and bracing them against\nthe shock of circumstance. The very refinement of sensibility which\nconstitutes in his own eyes his superiority to the philistine makes him\nquiver responsive to every outer influence; he finally becomes subject\nto changes in the weather, or in Rousseau\u2019s own phrase, the \u201cvile\nplaything of the atmosphere and seasons.\u201d\n\nThis rapid shifting of mood in the romanticist, in response to\ninner impulse or outer impression, is almost too familiar to need\nillustration. Here is an example that may serve for a thousand from\nthat life-long devotee of the great god Whim--Hector Berlioz. When at\nFlorence, Berlioz relates in his Memoirs, he received a letter from\nthe mother of Camille, the woman he loved, informing him of Camille\u2019s\nmarriage to another. \u201cIn two minutes my plans were laid. I must hurry\nto Paris to kill two guilty women and one innocent man; for, this act\nof justice done, I too must die.\u201d Accordingly he loads his pistols,\nsupplies himself with a disguise as a lady\u2019s maid, so as to be able\nto penetrate into the guilty household, and puts into his pockets\n\u201ctwo little bottles, one of strychnine, the other of laudanum.\u201d\nWhile awaiting the departure of the diligence he \u201crages up and down\nthe streets of Florence like a mad dog.\u201d Later, as the diligence is\ntraversing a wild mountain road, he suddenly lets out a \u201c\u2018Ha\u2019! so\nhoarse, so savage, so diabolic that the startled driver bounded aside\nas if he had indeed a demon for his fellow-traveller.\u201d But on reaching\nNice he is so enchanted by the climate and environment that he not\nonly forgets his errand, but spends there \u201cthe twenty happiest days\u201d of\nhis life! There are times, one must admit, when it is an advantage to\nbe temperamental.\n\nIn this exaltation of environmental influences one should note\nagain the co\u00f6peration of Rousseauist and Baconian, of emotional and\nscientific naturalist. Both are prone to look upon man as being made by\nnatural forces and not as making himself. To deal with the substitutes\nthat Rousseauist and Baconian have proposed for traditional morality,\nis in fact to make a study of the varieties--and they are numerous--of\nnaturalistic fatalism. The upshot of the whole movement is to discredit\nmoral effort on the part of the individual. Why should a man believe\nin the efficacy of this effort, why should he struggle to acquire\ncharacter if he is convinced that he is being moulded like putty by\ninfluences beyond his control--the influence of climate, for example?\nBoth science and romanticism have vied with one another in making of\nman a mere stop on which Nature may play what tune she will. The \u00c6olian\nharp enjoyed an extraordinary popularity as a romantic symbol. The man\nof science for his part is ready to draw up statistical tables showing\nwhat season of the year is most productive of suicide and what type of\nweather impels bank-cashiers most irresistibly to embezzlement. A man\non a mountain top, according to Rousseau, enjoys not only physical but\nspiritual elevation, and when he descends to the plain the altitude\nof his mind declines with that of his body. Ruskin\u2019s soul, says C. E.\nNorton, \u201cwas like an \u00c6olian harp, its strings quivering musically in\nserene days under the touch of the soft air, but as the clouds gathered\nand the winds arose, vibrating in the blast with a tension that might\nbreak the sounding board itself.\u201d It is not surprising Ruskin makes\nother men as subject to \u201cskyey influences\u201d as himself. \u201cThe mountains\nof the earth are,\u201d he says, \u201cits natural cathedrals. True religion can\nscarcely be achieved away from them. The curate or hermit of the field\nand fen, however simple his life or painful his lodging, does not often\nattain the spirit of the hill pastor or recluse: we may find in him a\ndecent virtue or a contented ignorance, rarely the _prophetic vision or\nthe martyr\u2019s passion_.\u201d The corruptions of Romanism \u201care traceable for\nthe most part to lowland prelacy.\u201d[106]\n\nIs then the Rousseauist totally unable to regulate his impressions?\nIt is plain that he cannot control them from within because the whole\nidea of a vital control of this kind is, as we have seen, foreign to\nthe psychology of the beautiful soul. Yet it is, according to Rousseau,\npossible to base morality on the senses--on outer perception that\nis--and at the same time get the equivalent of a free-will based on\ninner perception. He was so much interested in this subject that he\nhad planned to devote to it a whole treatise to be entitled \u201cSensitive\nmorality or the materialism of the sage.\u201d A man cannot resist an outer\nimpression but he may at least get out of its way and put himself in\nthe way of another impression that will impel him to the desired course\nof conduct. \u201cThe soul may then be put or maintained in the state most\nfavorable to virtue.\u201d \u201cClimates, seasons, sounds, colors, darkness,\nlight, the elements, food, noise, silence, movement, rest, everything,\nacts on our physical frame.\u201d By a proper adjustment of all these outer\nelements we may govern in their origins the feelings by which we allow\nourselves to be dominated.[107]\n\nRousseau\u2019s ideas about sensitive morality are at once highly chimerical\nand highly significant. Here as elsewhere one may say with Amiel\nthat nothing of Rousseau has been lost. His point of view has an\ninner kinship with that of the man of science who asserts that man is\nnecessarily the product of natural forces, but that one may at least\nmodify the natural forces. For example, moral effort on the part of\nthe individual cannot overcome heredity. It is possible, however, by\nschemes of eugenics to regulate heredity. The uneasy burden of moral\nresponsibility is thus lifted from the individual, and the moralist\nin the old-fashioned sense is invited to abdicate in favor of the\nbiologist. It would be easy enough to trace similar assumptions in the\nvarious forms of socialism and other \u201cisms\u201d almost innumerable of the\npresent hour.\n\nPerhaps the problem to which I have already alluded may as well be\nfaced here. How does it happen that Rousseau who attacked both science\nand literature as the chief sources of human degeneracy should be an\narch-\u00e6sthete, the authentic ancestor of the school of art for art\u2019s\nsake and at the same time by his sensitive (or \u00e6sthetic) morality play\ninto the hands of the scientific determinist? If one is to enter deeply\ninto the modern movement one needs to consider both wherein scientific\nand emotional naturalists clash and wherein they agree. The two types\nof naturalists agree in their virtual denial of a superrational realm.\nThey clash above all in their attitude towards what is on the rational\nlevel. The scientific naturalist is assiduously analytical. Rousseau,\non the other hand, or rather one whole side of Rousseau, is hostile\nto analysis. The arts and sciences are attacked because they are the\nproduct of reflection. \u201cThe man who reflects is a depraved animal,\u201d\nbecause he has fallen away from the primitive spontaneous unity of\nhis being. Rousseau is the first of the great anti-intellectualists.\nBy assailing both rationalism and pseudo-classic decorum in the name\nof instinct and emotion he appealed to men\u2019s longing to get away\nfrom the secondary and the derivative to the immediate. True decorum\nsatisfies the craving for immediacy because it contains within itself\nan element of superrational perception. The \u201creason\u201d of a Plato or an\nAristotle also satisfies the craving for immediacy because it likewise\ncontains within itself an element of superrational perception. A reason\nor a decorum of this kind ministers to another deep need of human\nnature--the need to lose itself in a larger whole. Once eliminate the\nsuperrational perception and reason sinks to the level of rationalism,\nconsciousness becomes mere self-consciousness. It is difficult, as\nSt. Evremond said, for man to remain in the long run in this doubtful\nmiddle state. Having lost the unity of insight, he will long for the\nunity of instinct. Hence the paradox that this most self-conscious\nof all movements is filled with the praise of the unconscious. It\nabounds in persons who, like Walt Whitman, would turn and live with the\nanimals, or who, like Novalis, would fain strike root into the earth\nwith the plant. Animals[108] and plants are not engaged in any moral\nstruggle, they are not inwardly divided against themselves.\n\nHere is the source of the opposition between the abstract and\nanalytical head, deadly to the sense of unity, and the warm immediate\nheart that unifies life with the aid of the imagination--an opposition\nthat assumes so many forms from Rousseau to Bergson. The Rousseauist\nalways betrays himself by arraigning in some form or other, \u201cthe false\nsecondary power by which we multiply distinctions.\u201d One should indeed\nremember that there were obscurantists before Rousseau. Pascal also\narrays the heart against the head; but his heart is at the farthest\nremove from that of Rousseau; it stands for a superrational perception.\nChristians like Pascal may indulge with comparative impunity in a\ncertain amount of obscurantism. For they have submitted to a tradition\nthat supplies them with distinctions between good and evil and at the\nsame time controls their imagination. But for the individualist who\nhas broken with tradition to deny his head in the name of his heart is\na deadly peril. He above all persons should insist that the power by\nwhich we multiply distinctions, though secondary, is not false--that\nthe intellect, of however little avail in itself, is invaluable when\nworking in co\u00f6peration with the imagination in the service of either\ninner or outer perception. It is only through the analytical head and\nits keen discriminations that the individualist can determine whether\nthe unity and infinitude towards which his imagination is reaching (and\nit is only through the imagination that one can have the sense of unity\nand infinitude) is real or merely chimerical. Need I add that in making\nthese distinctions between imagination, intellect, feeling, etc.,\nI am not attempting to divide man up into more or less watertight\ncompartments, into hard and fast \u201cfaculties,\u201d but merely to express,\nhowever imperfectly, certain obscure and profound facts of experience?\n\nThe varieties of what one may term the rationalistic error, of the\nendeavor of the intellect to emancipate itself from perception and\nset up as an independent power, are numerous. The variety that was\nperhaps formerly most familiar was that of the theologian who sought\nto formulate intellectually what must ever transcend formulation. The\nforms of the rationalistic error that concern our present subject can\nbe traced back for the most part to Descartes, the father of modern\nphilosophy, and are indeed implicit in his famous identification\nof thought and being (_Je pense, donc je suis_). The dogmatic and\narrogant rationalism that denies both what is above and what is below\nitself, both the realm of awe and the realm of wonder, which prevailed\namong the Cartesians of the Enlightenment, combined, as I have said,\nwith pseudo-classic decorum to produce that sense of confinement and\nsmugness against which the original genius protested. Man will always\ncrave a view of life to which perception lends immediacy and the\nimagination infinitude. A view of life like that of the eighteenth\ncentury that reduces unduly the r\u00f4le of both imagination and perception\nwill always seem to him unvital and mechanical. \u201cThe Bounded,\u201d says\nBlake, \u201cis loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a\nUniverse would soon become a Mill with complicated wheels.\u201d\n\nThe mechanizing of life against which the romanticist protested may\nas I said be largely associated with the influence of Descartes. It\nis not however the whole truth about Descartes to say that he forgot\nthe purely instrumental r\u00f4le of the intellect and encouraged it to\nset up as an independent power. As a matter of fact he also used the\nintellect as an instrument in the service of outer perception. Taking\nas his point of departure the precise observations that science was\naccumulating, he sought to formulate mathematically the natural law.\nNow the more one reduces nature to a problem of space and movement,\nthe more one is enabled to measure nature; and the method of exact\nmeasurement may be justified, if not on metaphysical, at least on\npractical grounds. It helps one, if not to understand natural forces,\nat least to control them. It thereby increases man\u2019s power and\nministers to utility. In a word, the intellect when thus pressed into\nthe service of outer perception makes for material efficiency. In a\nsense science becomes scientific only in proportion as it neglects\nthe qualitative differences between phenomena, e.g. between light and\nsound, and treats them solely from the point of view of quantity. But\nthe penalty that science pays for this quantitative method is a heavy\none. The farther it gets away from the warm immediacy of perception\nthe less real it becomes; for that only is real to a man that he\nimmediately perceives. Perfectly pure science tends to become a series\nof abstract mathematical formul\u00e6 without any real content. By his\nresort to such a method, the man of science is in constant danger of\nbecoming a mere rationalist. At bottom he is ignorant of the reality\nthat lies behind natural phenomena; he must even be ignorant of it,\nfor it lays hold upon the infinite, and so must elude a finite being\nlike man. But the desire to conceal his own ignorance from himself and\nothers, the secret push for power and prestige that lies deep down in\nthe breast of the man of science as in that of every other man, impels\nhim to attach an independent value to the operations of the intellect\nthat have only an instrumental value in the service of outer perception\nand to conceive that he has locked up physical nature in his formul\u00e6.\nThe man of science thus falls victim to a special form of metaphysical\nillusion. The gravity of the error of the scientific intellectualist is\nmultiplied tenfold when he conceives that his formul\u00e6 cover not merely\nthe natural law but the human law as well, when he strives, like Taine,\nto convert man himself into a \u201cwalking theorem,\u201d a \u201cliving geometry.\u201d\nThis denial of every form of spontaneity was rightly felt by the\nromanticists to be intolerable.\n\nGoethe contrasts the smug satisfaction of Wagner in his dead formul\u00e6\nthat give only what is external and secondary, with Faust\u2019s fierce\ncraving for immediacy and therefore his impatience with an analysis\nthat gives only the dry bones from which the vital breath has departed.\nWagner is a philistine because he is not tormented by the thirst for\nthe infinite. Faust, on the other hand, reaches out beyond the mere\nintellect towards the spirit that is behind the shows of nature, but\nthis spirit appears to him and reduces him to despair by declaring that\nhe is trying to grasp something that is not only infinite but alien to\nhim. Instead of turning from this alien spirit to the spirit that is\nrelevant to man, a spirit that sets bounds to every inordinate craving,\nincluding the inordinate craving for knowledge (_libido sciendi_),\nFaust gives himself to the devil in what was, in the time of the\nyouthful Goethe, the newest fashion: he becomes a Rousseauist. Instead\nof striking into the ascending path of insight, he descends to the\nlevel of impulse. Seen from this level the power by which we multiply\ndistinctions seems to him, as it was to seem later to Wordsworth, not\nmerely secondary but false, and so definition yields to indiscriminate\nfeeling (_Gef\u00fchl ist alles_). In general the Rousseauistic reply to the\nCartesian attempt to identify thought and being is the identification\nof being with emotion (_je sens donc je suis_).\n\nThe Mephistopheles of Goethe has often been taken as a symbol of\nthe iconoclastic and Voltairian side of the eighteenth century. The\nrationalists assailed the traditional forms that imply a superrational\nrealm as mere \u201cprejudice,\u201d and, failing to find in insight a substitute\nfor these discarded forms, they succumbed in turn to the emotionalists.\nA \u201creason\u201d that is not grounded in insight will always seem to men\nintolerably cold and negative and will prove unable to withstand the\nassault of the primary passions. The reason of a Plato or an Aristotle\nis on a different footing altogether because, as I have said, it\nincludes an element of inner perception. One may note here that the\ndifficulties of the present subject arise in no small degree from the\nambiguities that cluster about the word reason. It may not only mean\nthe imaginative insight[109] of a Plato and the abstract reasoning\nof a Descartes but is often employed by the classicist himself as\na synonym of good sense. Good sense may be defined as a correct\nperception of the ordinary facts of life and of their relation to one\nanother. It may be of very many grades, corresponding to the infinite\ndiversity of the facts to be perceived. A man may evidently have good\nsense in dealing with one order of facts, and quite lack it in dealing\nwith some different order of facts. As the result of long observation\nand experience of a multitude of minute relationships, of the facts\nthat ordinarily follow one another or coexist in some particular field,\na man\u2019s knowledge of this field becomes at last, as it were, automatic\nand unconscious. A sea captain for example acquires at last an\nintuitive knowledge of the weather, the broker, an intuitive knowledge\nof stocks. The good sense or practical judgment of the sea captain in\nhis particular calling and of the broker in his is likely to be greater\nthan that of less experienced persons. One cannot, however, assert that\na man\u2019s good sense is always in strict ratio to his experience. Some\npersons seem to have an innate gift for seeing things as they are,\nothers a gift equally innate for seeing things as they are not.\n\nAgain the field in which one displays one\u2019s good sense or practical\njudgment may fall primarily under either the human law or the natural\nlaw, may belong in Aristotelian phrase to the domain either of the\nprobable or of the necessary. To take a homely illustration, a\nman is free to choose the temperature of his bath, but only within\nthe limits of natural necessity--in this case the temperature at\nwhich water freezes and that at which water boils. He will show his\npractical judgment by choosing water that is neither too hot nor too\ncold and this so far as he is concerned will be the golden mean. Here\nas elsewhere the golden mean is nothing mechanical, but may vary\nnot only from individual to individual but in the same individual\naccording to his age, the state of his health, etc. In determining what\nconforms to the golden mean or law of measure there must always be a\nmediation between the particular instance and the general principle,\nand it is here that intuition is indispensable. But even so there is\na centre of normal human experience, and the person who is too far\nremoved from it ceases to be probable. Aged persons may exist who find\nbathing in ice-water beneficial, but they are not representative.\nNow creative art, in distinct ratio to its dignity, deals not with\nwhat may happen in isolated cases but with what happens according to\nprobability or necessity. It is this preoccupation with the universal\nthat as Aristotle says makes poetry a more serious and philosophical\nthing than history. There enters indeed into true art an element of\nvital novelty and surprise. But the more cultivated the audience to\nwhich the creator addresses himself the more will it insist that the\nsurprise be not won at the expense of motivation. It will demand that\ncharacters and incidents be not freakish, not too remote from the\nfacts that normally follow one another or coexist, whether in nature\nor human nature. One needs, in short, to deal with both art and life\nfrom some ethical centre. The centre with reference to which one has\ngood sense may be only the ethos of one\u2019s time and country, but if\none\u2019s good sense has, as in the case of the great poets, the support\nof the imagination, it may pass beyond to something more abiding. \u201cOf\nPope\u2019s intellectual character,\u201d says Dr. Johnson, \u201cthe constituent and\nfundamental principle was good sense, a prompt and intuitive perception\nof consonance and propriety. He saw immediately of his own conceptions\nwhat was to be chosen, and what to be rejected.\u201d One may grant all this\nand at the same time feel the difference between the \u201creason\u201d of a Pope\nand the reason of a Sophocles.\n\nGood sense of the kind Dr. Johnson describes and decorum are not\nstrictly speaking synonymous. To be decorous not only must one have\na correct perception of what to do, but one must actually be able to\ndo it; and this often requires a long and difficult training. We have\nseen that Rousseau\u2019s spite against eighteenth-century Paris was largely\ndue to the fact that he had not acquired young enough the habits that\nwould have made it possible for him to conform to its convention.\n\u201cI affected,\u201d says Rousseau with singular candor, \u201cto despise the\npoliteness I did not know how to practice.\u201d As a matter of fact he had\nnever adjusted himself to the decorum and good sense of any community.\nHis attitude towards life was fundamentally Bohemian. But a person who\nwas sensible and decorous according to the standards of some other\ncountry might have emphasized the differences between his good sense\nand decorum and the good sense and decorum of eighteenth-century Paris.\nThe opponents of the traditional order in the eighteenth century\nwere fond of introducing some Persian or Chinese to whom this order\nseemed no true order at all but only \u201cprejudice\u201d or \u201cabuse.\u201d The\nconclusion would seem to be that because the good sense and decorum\nof one time and country do not coincide exactly with those of another\ntime and country, therefore good sense and decorum themselves have\nin them no universal element, and are entirely implicated in the\nshifting circumstances of time and place. But behind the ethos of\nany particular country, that of Greece, for instance, there are, as\nAntigone perceived, the \u201cunwritten laws of heaven,\u201d and something of\nthis permanent order is sure to shine through even the most imperfect\nconvention. Though no convention is final, though man and all he\nestablishes are subject to the law of change, it is therefore an\ninfinitely delicate and perilous task to break with convention. One\ncan make this break only in favor of insight; which is much as if one\nshould say that the only thing that may safely be opposed to common\nsense is a commoner sense, or if one prefers, a common sense that is\nbecoming more and more imaginative. Even so, the wiser the man, one\nmay surmise, the less likely he will be to indulge in a violent and\ntheatrical rupture with his age, after the fashion of Rousseau. He will\nlike Socrates remember the counsel of the Delphian oracle to follow\nthe \u201cusage of the city,\u201d[110] and while striving to gain a firmer hold\nupon the human law and to impose a more strenuous discipline upon his\nordinary self, he will so far as possible conform to what he finds\nestablished. A student of the past cannot help being struck by the fact\nthat men are found scattered through different times and countries and\nliving under very different conventions who are nevertheless in virtue\nof their insight plainly moving towards a common centre. So much so\nthat the best books of the world seem to have been written, as Emerson\nputs it, by one all-wise, all-seeing gentleman. A curious circumstance\nis that the writers who are most universal in virtue of their\nimaginative reason or inspired good sense, are likewise as a rule the\nwriters who realized most intensely the life of their own age. No other\nSpanish writer, for example, has so much human appeal as Cervantes,\nand at the same time no other brings us so close to the heart of\nsixteenth-century Spain. In the writings attributed to Confucius one\nencounters, mixed up with much that is almost inconceivably remote from\nus, maxims that have not lost their validity to-day; maxims that are\nsure to be reaffirmed wherever and whenever men attain to the level of\nhumanistic insight. In the oldest Buddhist documents again one finds\nalong with a great deal that is very expressive of ancient India, and\nthus quite foreign to our idiosyncrasy, a good sense which is even more\nimaginative and inspired, and therefore more universal, than that of\nConfucius, and which is manifested, moreover, on the religious rather\nthan on the humanistic level. We are dealing here with indubitable\nfacts, and should plant ourselves firmly upon them as against those who\nwould exaggerate either the constant or the variable elements in human\nnature.\n\nEnough has been said to show the ambiguities involved in the word\nreason. Reason may mean the abstract and geometrical reason of a\nDescartes, it may mean simply good sense, which may itself exist in\nvery many grades ranging from an intuitive mastery of some particular\nfield to the intuitive mastery of the ethos of a whole age, like the\nreason of a Pope. Finally reason may be imaginative and be thereby\nenabled to go beyond the convention of a particular time and country,\nand lay hold in varying degrees on \u201cthe unwritten laws of heaven.\u201d I\nhave already traced in some measure the process by which reason in\nthe eighteenth century had come to mean abstract and geometrical (or\nas one may say Cartesian) reason or else unimaginative good sense.\nCartesian reason was on the one hand being pressed into the service\nof science and its special order of perceptions; on the other hand it\nwas being used frequently in co\u00f6peration with an unimaginative good\nsense to attack the traditional forms that imply a realm of insight\nwhich is above both abstract reason and ordinary good sense. Men were\nemboldened to use reason in this way because they were flushed not\nonly by the increasing mastery of man over nature through science,\nbut by the positive and anti-traditional method through which this\nmastery had been won. Both those who proclaimed and those who denied a\nsuperrational realm were at least agreed in holding that the faith in\nany such realm was inseparable from certain traditional forms. Pascal,\nfor example, held not only that insight in religion is annexed to\nthe acceptance of certain dogmas--and this offended the new critical\nspirit--but furthermore that insight could exist even in the orthodox\nonly by a special divine gift or grace, and this offended man\u2019s\nreviving confidence in himself. People were ready to applaud when a\nVoltaire declared it was time to \u201ctake the side of human nature against\nthis sublime misanthropist.\u201d The insight into the law of decorum on\nwhich classicism must ultimately rest was in much the same way held\nto be inseparable from the Gr\u00e6co-Roman tradition; and so the nature\nof classical insight as a thing apart from any tradition tended to\nbe obscured in the endless bickerings of ancients and moderns. The\nclassical traditionalists, however, were less prone than the Christian\ntraditionalists (Jansenists, Jesuits and Protestants) to weaken their\ncause still further by wrangling among themselves.\n\nInasmuch as both Christians and humanists failed to plant themselves\non the fact of insight, the insight came more and more to be\nrejected along with the special forms from which it was deemed to be\ninseparable. As a result of this rejection \u201creason\u201d was left to cope\nunaided with man\u2019s impulses and expansive desires. Now Pascal saw\nrightly that the balance of power in such a conflict between reason\nand impulse was held by the imagination, and that if reason lacked\nthe support of insight the imagination would side with the expansive\ndesires and reason would succumb. Moreover the superrational insight,\nor \u201cheart\u201d as Pascal calls it, that can alone keep man from being\nthus overwhelmed, comes, as he holds, not through reason but through\ngrace and is at times actually opposed to reason. (\u201cThe heart,\u201d he\nsays, \u201chas reasons of which the reason knows nothing.\u201d) Instead of\nprotesting against the asceticism of this view as the true positivist\nwould do, instead of insisting that reason and imagination may pull\ntogether harmoniously in the service of insight, the romantic moralist\nopposed to the superrational \u201cheart\u201d of the austere Christian a\nsubrational \u201cheart,\u201d and this involved an attempt to base morality\non the very element in human nature it is designed to restrain. The\npositivist will plant himself first of all on the fact of insight and\nwill define it as the immediate perception of a something anterior\nto both thought and feeling, that is known practically as a power of\ncontrol over both. The beautiful soul, as we have seen, has no place\nfor any such power in his scheme of things, but hopes to satisfy all\nethical elements simply by letting himself go. Rousseau (following\nShaftesbury and Hutcheson) transforms conscience itself from an inner\ncheck into an expansive emotion. While thus corrupting conscience\nin its very essence he does not deny conscience. On the contrary he\ngrows positively rhapsodic over conscience and other similar words.\n\u201cRousseau took wisdom from men\u2019s souls,\u201d says Joubert, \u201cby talking to\nthem of virtue.\u201d In short, Rousseau displays the usual dexterity of the\nsophist in juggling with ill-defined general terms. If one calls for\nsharp definition one is at once dismissed as a mere rationalist who\nis retreating into a false secondary power from a warm immediacy. The\ntraditional distinctions regarding good and bad were thus discarded\nat the same time that discredit was cast on the keen analysis with\nwhich it would have been possible to build up new distinctions--all\nin favor of an indiscriminate emotionalism. This discomfiture of both\ntradition and analysis in the field of the human law would not have\nbeen so easy if at the same time man\u2019s active attention and effort had\nnot been concentrated more and more on the field of the natural law.\nIn that field imagination and the analytical intellect were actually\npulling together in the service of perception with the result that man\nwas constantly gaining in power and utility. Emotional romanticists and\nscientific utilitarians have thus, in spite of their surface clashes,\ncooperated during the past century in the dehumanizing of man.\n\nIt is not enough to say of the representatives of both sides of this\ngreat naturalistic movement that they eliminate the veto power from\nhuman nature while continuing to use the old words, like virtue and\nconscience, that imply a veto power. We have seen that they actually\nattack the veto power as synonymous with evil. The devil is conceived\nas the spirit that always says no. A purely affirmative morality\nis almost necessarily an emotional morality. If there is no region\nof insight above the reason which is felt by the natural man as an\nelement of vital control, and if cold reason, reason unsupported by\ninsight, never has done anything illustrious, as Rousseau truly says,\nit follows that the only way to put driving power behind reason is to\nturn virtue into a passion,--a passion that differs from other passions\nmerely in its greater imperiousness. For the beautiful soul virtue,\nas we have seen in the case of Robespierre, is not only a tender,\nimperious and voluptuous passion but even an intoxication. \u201cI was,\nif not virtuous,\u201d says Rousseau, \u201cat least intoxicated with virtue.\u201d\nIn its extreme manifestations romantic morality is indeed only one\naspect, and surely the most singular aspect, of the romantic cult of\nintoxication. No student of romanticism can fail to be struck by its\npursuit of delirium, vertigo and intoxication for their own sake. It\nis important to see how all these things are closely related to one\nanother and how they all derive from the attempt to put life on an\nemotional basis. To rest conscience, for example, on emotion is to rest\nit on what is always changing, not only from man to man but from moment\nto moment in the same man. \u201cIf,\u201d as Shelley says, \u201cnought is, but that\nit feels itself to be,\u201d it will feel itself to be very different things\nat different times. No part of man is exempt from the region of flux\nand change. There is, as James himself points out, a kinship between\nsuch a philosophy of pure motion and vertigo. Faust after all is only\nconsistent when having identified the spirit that says no, which is\nthe true voice of conscience, with the devil, he proceeds to dedicate\nhimself to vertigo (_dem Taumel weih\u2019 ich mich_). Rousseau also, as\nreaders of the \u201cConfessions\u201d will remember, deliberately courted\ngiddiness by gazing down on a waterfall from the brink of a precipice\n(making sure first that the railing on which he leaned was good and\nstrong). This naturalistic dizziness became epidemic among the Greeks\nat the critical moment of their break with traditional standards.\n\u201cWhirl is King,\u201d cried Aristophanes, \u201chaving driven out Zeus.\u201d The\nmodern sophist is even more a votary of the god Whirl than the Greek,\nfor he has added to the mobility of an intellect that has no support in\neither tradition or insight the mobility of feeling. Many Rousseauists\nwere, like Hazlitt, attracted to the French Revolution by its \u201cgrand\nwhirling movements.\u201d\n\nEven more significant than the cult of vertigo is the closely allied\ncult of intoxication. \u201cMan being reasonable,\u201d says Byron, with true\nRousseauistic logic, \u201cmust therefore get drunk. The best of life is\nbut intoxication.\u201d The subrational and impulsive self of the man who\nhas got drunk is not only released from the surveillance of reason\nin any sense of the word, but his imagination is at the same tune\nset free from the limitations of the real. If many Rousseauists have\nbeen rightly accused of being \u201clovers of delirium,\u201d that is because\nin delirium the fancy is especially free to wander wild in its own\nempire of chimeras. To compose a poem, as Coleridge is supposed to have\ncomposed \u201cKubla Khan,\u201d in an opium dream without any participation of\nhis rational self is a triumph of romantic art. \u201cI should have taken\nmore opium when I wrote it,\u201d said Friedrich Schlegel in explanation of\nthe failure of his play \u201cAlarcos.\u201d What more specially concerns our\npresent topic is the carrying over of this subrational \u201centhusiasm\u201d\ninto the field of ethical values, and this calls for certain careful\ndistinctions. Genuine religion--whether genuine Christianity or genuine\nBuddhism--is plainly unfriendly in the highest degree to every form of\nintoxication. Buddhism, for example, not only prohibits the actual use\nof intoxicants but it pursues implacably all the subtler intoxications\nof the spirit. The attitude of the humanist towards intoxication is\nsomewhat more complex. He recognizes how deep in man\u2019s nature is the\ncraving for some blunting of the sharp edge of his consciousness and\nat least a partial escape from reason and reality; and so he often\nmakes a place on the recreative side of life for such moments of escape\neven if attained with the aid of wine. _Dulce est desipere in loco._\nPindar, who displays so often in his verse the high seriousness of the\nethical imagination, is simply observing the decorum of the occasion\nwhen he celebrates in a song for the end of a feast \u201cthe time when the\nwearisome cares of men have vanished from their reasons and on a wide\nsea of golden wealth we are all alike voyaging to some visionary shore.\nHe that is penniless is then rich, and even they that are wealthy find\ntheir hearts expanding, when they are smitten by the arrows of the\nvine.\u201d The true Greek, one scarcely needs add, put his final emphasis,\nas befitted a child of Apollo, not on intoxication but on the law of\nmeasure and sobriety--on preserving the integrity of his mind, to\nrender literally the Greek word for the virtue that he perhaps prized\nthe most.[111] One must indeed remember that alongside the Apollonian\nelement in Greek life is the orgiastic or Dyonisiac element. But when\nEuripides sides imaginatively with the frenzy of Dionysus, as he does\nin his \u201cBacchae,\u201d though ostensibly preaching moderation, we may affirm\nthat he is falling away from what is best in the spirit of Hellas and\nrevealing a kinship with the votaries of the god Whirl. The cult of\nintoxication has as a matter of fact appeared in all times and places\nwhere men have sought to get the equivalent of religious vision and the\nsense of oneness that it brings without rising above the naturalistic\nlevel. True religious vision is a process of concentration, the result\nof the imposition of the veto power upon the expansive desires of the\nordinary self. The various naturalistic simulations of this vision\nare, on the contrary, expansive, the result of a more or less complete\nescape from the veto power, whether won with the aid of intoxicants or\nnot. The emotional romanticists from Rousseau down have left no doubt\nas to the type of vision they represented. Rousseau dilates with a sort\nof fellow feeling on the deep potations that went on in the taverns\nof patriarchal Geneva.[112] Renan looks with disfavor on those who\nare trying to diminish drunkenness among the common people. He merely\nasks that this drunkenness \u201cbe gentle, amiable, accompanied by moral\nsentiments.\u201d Perhaps this side of the movement is best summed up in the\nfollowing passage of William James: \u201cThe sway of alcohol over mankind\nis unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties\nof human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry\ncriticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates and\nsays no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is, in fact, the\ngreat exciter of the _Yes_ function in man. It brings its votary from\nthe chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the\nmoment one with truth.\u201d[113]\n\nThe American distiller who named one of his brands \u201cGolden Dream\nWhiskey\u201d was evidently too modest. If an adept in the new psychology he\nmight have set up as a pure idealist, as the opener up of an especially\nradiant pathway to the \u201ctruth.\u201d\n\nThe primitivist then attacks sober discrimination as an obstacle both\nto warm immediacy of feeling and to unity. He tends to associate the\nemotional unity that he gains through intoxication with the unity of\ninstinct which he so admires in the world of the subrational. \u201cThe\nromantic character,\u201d says Ricarda Huch, \u201cis more exposed to waste\nitself in debaucheries than any other; for only in intoxication,\nwhether of love or wine, when the one half of its being, consciousness,\nis lulled to sleep, can it enjoy the bliss for which it envies every\nbeast--the bliss of feeling itself one.\u201d[114] The desires of the\nanimal, however, work within certain definite limits. They are not,\nlike those of the primitivist, inordinate, the explanation being that\nthey are less stimulated than the desires of the primitivist by the\nimagination. Even if he gets rid of intellect and moral effort, the\nprimitivist cannot attain the unity of instinct because he remains too\nimaginative; at the same time he proclaims and proclaims rightly that\nthe imagination is the great unifying power--the power that can alone\nsave us from viewing things in \u201cdisconnection dead and spiritless.\u201d\nWe should attend carefully at this point for we are coming to the\nheart of the great romantic sophism. The Rousseauist does not attain\nto the unity of the man whose impulses and desires are controlled and\ndisciplined to some ethical centre. He does not, in spite of all his\npraise of the unconscious and of the \u201csublime animals,\u201d attain to the\nunity of instinct. In what sense then may he be said to attain unity?\nThe obvious reply is that he attains unity only in dreamland. For\nthe nature to which he would return, one cannot repeat too often, is\nnothing real, but a mere nostalgic straining of the imagination away\nfrom the real. It is only in dreamland that one can rest unity on the\nexpansive forces of personality that actually divide not only one\nindividual from another but the same individual from himself. It is\nonly in dreamland that, in the absence of both inner and outer control,\n\u201call things\u201d will \u201cflow to all, as rivers to the sea.\u201d Such a unity\nwill be no more than a dream unity, even though one term it the ideal\nand sophisticate in its favor all the traditional terms of religion and\nmorality. A question that forces itself at every stage upon the student\nof this movement is: _What is the value of unity without reality?_\nFor two things are equally indubitable: first, that romanticism on\nthe philosophical side, is a protest in the name of unity against the\ndisintegrating analysis of the eighteenth-century rationalist; second,\nthat what the primitivist wants in exchange for analysis is not reality\nbut illusion. Rousseau who inclines like other \u00e6sthetes to identify the\ntrue with the beautiful was, we are told, wont to exclaim: \u201cThere is\nnothing beautiful save that which is not\u201d; a saying to be matched with\nthat of \u201cLa Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse\u201d: \u201cThe land of chimeras is alone worthy\nof habitation.\u201d Similar utterances might be multiplied from French,\nEnglish, and German romanticists.[115] To be sure, the word \u201creality\u201d\nis perhaps the most slippery of all general terms. Certain recent\nvotaries of the god Whirl, notably Bergson, have promised us that if\nwe surrender to the flux we shall have a \u201cvision\u201d not only of unity\nbut also of reality; and so they have transferred to the cult of their\ndivinity all the traditional language of religion.\n\nWe do not, however, need for the present to enter into a discussion as\nto the nature of reality, but simply to stick to strict psychological\nobservation. From this point of view it is not hard to see that the\nprimitivist makes his primary appeal not to man\u2019s need for unity and\nreality but to a very different need. Byron has told us what this need\nis in his tale (\u201cThe Island\u201d) of a ship\u2019s crew that overpowered its\nofficers and then set sail for Otaheite; what impelled these Arcadian\nmutineers was not the desire for a genuine return to aboriginal life\nwith its rigid conventions, but\n\n    The wish--which ages have not yet subdued\n    In man--to have no master save his mood.\n\nNow to have no master save one\u2019s mood is to be wholly temperamental.\nIn Arcadia--the ideal of romantic morality--those who are wholly\ntemperamental unite in sympathy and brotherly love. It remains to\nconsider more fully what this triumph of temperament means in the real\nworld.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nROMANTIC MORALITY: THE REAL\n\n\nThe fundamental thing in Rousseauistic morality is not, as we have\nseen, the assertion that man is naturally good, but the denial of\nthe \u201ccivil war in the cave.\u201d Though this denial is not complete in\nRousseau himself, nothing is more certain than that his whole tendency\nis away from this form of dualism. The beautiful soul does the right\nthing not as a result of effort, but spontaneously, unconsciously and\nalmost inevitably. In fact the beautiful soul can scarcely be said to\nbe a voluntary agent at all. \u201cNature\u201d acts in him and for him. This\nminimizing of moral struggle and deliberation and choice, this drift\ntowards a naturalistic fatalism, as it may be termed, is a far more\nsignificant thing in Rousseau than his optimism. One may as a matter\nof fact eliminate dualism in favor of nature and at the same time look\non nature as evil. This is precisely what one is likely to do if one\nsees no alternative to temperamental living, while judging those who\nlive temperamentally not by their \u201cideal,\u201d that is by their feeling of\ntheir own loveliness, but by what they actually do. One will become\na realist in the sense that came to be attached to this word during\nthe latter part of the nineteenth century. Rousseau himself is often\nrealistic in this sense when he interrupts his Arcadian visions to\ntell us what actually occurred. In the \u201cConfessions,\u201d as I have said,\npassages that recall Lamartine alternate with passages that recall\nZola, and the transition from one type of passage to the other is\noften disconcertingly sudden. In reading these realistic passages of\nRousseau we are led to reflect that his \u201cnature\u201d is not, in practice,\nso remote from Taine\u2019s nature as might at first appear. \u201cWhat we\ncall _nature_,\u201d says Taine, \u201cis this brood of secret passions, often\nmaleficent, generally vulgar, always blind, which tremble and fret\nwithin us, ill-covered by the cloak of decency and reason under which\nwe try to disguise them; we think we lead them and they lead us; we\nthink our actions our own, they are theirs.\u201d[116]\n\nThe transition from an optimistic to a pessimistic naturalism can be\nfollowed with special clearness in the stages by which the sentimental\ndrama of the eighteenth century passes over into the realistic drama of\na later period. Petit de Julleville contrasts the beginning and the end\nof this development as follows: \u201c[In the eighteenth century] to please\nthe public you had to say to it: \u2018You are all at least at bottom good,\nvirtuous, full of feeling. Let yourselves go, follow your instincts;\nlisten to nature and you will do the right thing spontaneously.\u2019 How\nchanged times are! Nowadays[117] any one who wishes to please, to be\nread and petted and admired, to pass for great and become very rich,\nshould address men as follows: \u2018You are a vile pack of rogues, and\nprofligates, you have neither faith nor law; you are impelled by your\ninstincts alone and these instincts are ignoble. Do not try though to\nmend matters, that would be of no use at all.\u2019\u201d[118]\n\nThe connecting link between these different forms of the drama is\nnaturalistic fatalism, the suppression of moral responsibility for\neither man\u2019s goodness or badness. Strictly speaking, the intrusion of\nthe naturalistic element into the realm of ethical values and the\nsubversion by it of deliberation and choice and of the normal sequence\nof moral cause and effect is felt from the human point of view not as\nfate at all, but as chance. Emotional romanticism joins at this point\nwith other forms of romanticism, which all show a proclivity to prefer\nto strict motivation, to probability in the Aristotelian sense, what is\nfortuitous and therefore wonderful. This is only another way of saying\nthat the romanticist is moving away from the genuinely dramatic towards\nmelodrama. Nothing is easier than to establish the connection between\nemotional romanticism and the prodigious efflorescence of melodrama,\nthe irresponsible quest for thrills, that has marked the past century.\nWhat perhaps distinguishes this movement from any previous one is the\nattempt to invest what is at bottom a melodramatic view of life with\nphilosophic and even religious significance. By suppressing the \u201ccivil\nwar in the cave\u201d one strikes at the very root of true drama. It does\nnot then much matter from the dramatic point of view whether the burden\nof responsibility for good or evil of which you have relieved the\nindividual is shifted upon \u201cnature\u201d or society. Shelley, for example,\nputs the blame for evil on society. \u201cPrometheus Unbound,\u201d in which he\nhas developed his conception, is, judged as a play, only an ethereal\nmelodrama. The unaccountable collapse of Zeus, a monster of unalloyed\nand unmotivated badness, is followed by the gushing forth in man of\nan equally unalloyed and unmotivated goodness. The whole genius of\nHugo, again, as I have said in speaking of his use of antithesis, is\nmelodramatic. His plays may be described as parvenu melodramas. They\nabound in every variety of startling contrast and strange happening,\nthe whole pressed into the service of \u201cproblems\u201d manifold and even of a\nphilosophy of history. At the same time the poverty of ethical insight\nand true dramatic motivation is dissimulated under profuse lyrical\noutpourings and purple patches of local color. His Hernani actually\nglories in not being a responsible agent, but an \u201cunchained and fatal\nforce,\u201d[119] and so more capable of striking astonishment into himself\nand others. Yet the admirers of Hugo would not only promote him to the\nfirst rank of poets, but would have us share his own belief that he is\na seer and a prophet.\n\nIt may be objected that the great dramatists of the past exalt this\npower of fate and thus diminish moral responsibility. But the very\nsharpest distinction must be drawn between the subrational fate of the\nemotional romanticist and the superrational fate of Greek tragedy.\nThe fate of \u00c6schylean tragedy, for instance, so far from undermining\nmoral responsibility rather reinforces it. It is felt to be the\nrevelation of a moral order of which man\u2019s experience at any particular\nmoment is only an infinitesimal fragment. It does not seem, like the\nsubrational fate of the emotional romanticist, the intrusion into the\nhuman realm of an alien power whether friendly or unfriendly. This\npoint might be established by a study of the so-called fate drama in\nGermany (_Schicksaltrag\u00f6die_), which, though blackly pessimistic, is\nclosely related to the optimistic sentimental drama of the eighteenth\ncentury.[120] The German fate drama is in its essence ignoble because\nits characters are specimens of sensitive morality--incapable, that is,\nof opposing a firm human purpose to inner impulse or outer impression.\nThe fate that thus wells up from the depths of nature and overwhelms\ntheir wills is not only malign and ironical, but as Grillparzer says,\nmakes human deeds seem only \u201cthrows of the dice in the blind night of\nchance.\u201d[121] It would be easy to follow similar conceptions of fate\ndown through later literature at least to the novels of Thomas Hardy.\n\nSome of the earlier exponents of the sentimental drama, like Diderot,\nwere not so certain as one might expect that the discarding of\ntraditional decorum in favor of \u201cnature\u201d would result practically in a\nreign of pure loveliness. At one moment Diderot urges men to get rid\nof the civil war in the cave in order that they may be Arcadian, like\nthe savages of the South Sea, but at other moments--as in \u201cRameau\u2019s\nNephew\u201d--he shows a somewhat closer grip on the problem of what will\nactually come to pass when a man throws off the conventions of a highly\norganized civilization and sets out to live temperamentally. Diderot\nsees clearly that he will be that least primitive of all beings, the\nBohemian. Rameau\u2019s nephew, in his irresponsibility and emotional\ninstability, in the kaleidoscopic shiftings of his mood, anticipates\nall the romantic Bohemians and persons of \u201cartistic temperament\u201d who\nwere to afflict the nineteenth century. But he is more than a mere\n\u00e6sthete. At moments we can discern in him the first lineaments of the\nsuperman, who knows no law save the law of might. One should recollect\nthat the actual influence of Diderot in France fell in the second\nrather than in the first half of the nineteenth century--was upon the\nrealists rather than upon the romanticists. The same men that had a\ncult for Diderot admired the Vautrins and the Rastignacs of Balzac and\nthe Julien Sorel of Stendhal. These characters are little Napoleons.\nThey live temperamentally in the midst of a highly organized society,\nbut they set aside its conventions of right and wrong in favor, not of\n\u00e6sthetic enjoyment, but of power.\n\nThe ideal of romantic morality, as was seen in the last chapter,\nis altruism. The real, it should be clear from the examples I have\nbeen citing, is always egoism. But egoism may assume very different\nforms. As to the main forms of egoism in men who have repudiated\nouter control without acquiring self-control we may perhaps revive\nprofitably the old Christian classification of the three lusts--the\nlust of knowledge, the lust of sensation, and the lust of power.\nGoethe indeed may be said to have treated these three main ways of\nbeing temperamental in three of his early characters--the lust of\nknowledge in \u201cFaust,\u201d the lust of sensation in \u201cWerther,\u201d and the\nlust of power in \u201cG\u00f6tz.\u201d If we view life solely from the naturalistic\nlevel and concern ourselves solely with the world of action, we are\njustified in neglecting, like Hobbes, the other lusts and putting\nsupreme emphasis on the lust for power.[122] Professor F.J. Mather,\nJr., has distinguished between \u201chard\u201d and \u201csoft\u201d sentimentalists.[123]\nHis distinction might perhaps be brought more closely into line with\nmy own distinctions if I ventured to coin a word and to speak of hard\nand soft temperamentalists. The soft temperamentalist will prove unable\nto cope in the actual world with the hard temperamentalist, and is\nvery likely to become his tool. Balzac has very appropriately made\nLucien de Rubempr\u00e9, the romantic poet and a perfect type of a soft\ntemperamentalism, the tool of Vautrin, the superman.\n\nHere indeed is the supreme opposition between the ideal and the real\nin romantic morality. The ideal to which Rousseau invites us is either\nthe primitivistic anarchy of the \u201cSecond Discourse,\u201d in which egoism is\ntempered by \u201cnatural pity,\u201d or else a state such as is depicted in the\n\u201cSocial Contract,\u201d in which egoism is held in check by a disinterested\n\u201cgeneral will.\u201d The preliminary to achieving either of these ideals is\nthat the traditional checks on human nature should be removed. But in\nexact proportion as this programme of emancipation is carried out what\nemerges in the real world is not the mythical will to brotherhood, but\nthe ego and its fundamental will to power. Give a bootblack half the\nuniverse, according to Carlyle, and he will soon be quarreling with\nthe owner of the other half. He will if he is a very temperamental\nbootblack. Perhaps indeed all other evils in life may be reduced to the\nfailure to check that something in man that is reaching out for more\nand ever for more. In a society in which the traditional inhibitions\nare constantly growing weaker, the conflict I have just sketched\nbetween the ideal and the real is becoming more and more acute. The\nsoft temperamentalists are overflowing with beautiful professions\nof brotherly love, and at the same time the hard temperamentalists\nare reaching out for everything in sight; and inasmuch as the hard\ntemperamentalists operate not in dreamland, but in the real world,\nthey are only too plainly setting the tone. Very often, of course,\nthe same temperamentalist has his hard and his soft side. The triumph\nof egoism over altruism in the relations between man and man is even\nmore evident in the relations between nation and nation. The egoism\nthat results from the inbreeding of temperament on a national scale\nruns in the case of the strong nations into imperialism.[124] We have\nnot reflected sufficiently on the fact that the soft temperamentalist\nRousseau is more than any other one person the father of _Kultur_;[125]\nand that the exponents of Kultur in our own day have been revealed as\nthe hardest of hard temperamentalists.\n\nTo understand the particular craving that is met by Rousseauistic\nidealism one would need to go with some care into the psychology of\nthe half-educated man. The half-educated man may be defined as the man\nwho has acquired a degree of critical self-consciousness sufficient\nto detach him from the standards of his time and place, but not\nsufficient to acquire the new standards that come with a more thorough\ncultivation. It was pointed out long ago that the characteristic of the\nhalf-educated man is that he is incurably restless; that he is filled\nwith every manner of desire. In contrast with him the uncultivated man,\nthe peasant, let us say, and the man of high cultivation have few and\nsimple desires. Thus Socrates had fewer and simpler desires than the\naverage Athenian. But what is most noteworthy about the half-educated\nman is not simply that he harbors many desires and is therefore\nincurably restless, but that these desires are so often incompatible.\nHe craves various good things, but is not willing to pay the price--not\nwilling to make the necessary renunciations. He pushes to an extreme\nwhat is after all a universal human proclivity--the wish to have one\u2019s\ncake and eat it too. Thus, while remaining on the naturalistic level,\nhe wishes to have blessings that accrue only to those who rise to the\nhumanistic or religious levels. He wishes to live in \u201ca universe with\nthe lid off,\u201d to borrow a happy phrase from the pragmatist, and at the\nsame time to enjoy the peace and brotherhood that are the fruits of\nrestraint. The moral indolence of the Rousseauist is such that he is\nunwilling to adjust himself to the truth of the human law; and though\nliving naturalistically, he is loath to recognize that what actually\nprevails on the naturalistic level is the law of cunning and the law\nof force. He thus misses the reality of both the human and the natural\nlaw and in the pursuit of a vague Arcadian longing falls into sheer\nunreality. I am indeed overstating the case so far as Rousseau is\nconcerned. He makes plain in the \u201cEmile\u201d that the true law of nature\nis not the law of love but the law of force. Emile is to be released\nfrom the discipline of the human law and given over to the discipline\nof nature; and this means in practice that he will have \u201cto bow his\nneck beneath the hard yoke of physical necessity.\u201d In so far the\n\u201cnature\u201d of Emile is no Arcadian dream. Where the Arcadian dreaming\nbegins is when Rousseau assumes that an Emile who has learned the\nlesson of force from Nature herself, will not pass along this lesson\nto others, whether citizens of his own or some other country, but will\nrather display in his dealings with them an ideal fraternity. In the\nearly stages of the naturalistic movement, in Hobbes and Shaftesbury,\nfor example, egoism and altruism, the idea of power and the idea of\nsympathy, are more sharply contrasted than they are in Rousseau and the\nlater romanticists. Shaftesbury assumes in human nature an altruistic\nimpulse or will to brotherhood that will be able to cope successfully\nwith the will to power that Hobbes declares to be fundamental. Many of\nthe romanticists, as we have seen, combine the cult of power with the\ncult of brotherhood. Hercules, as in Shelley\u2019s poem, is to bow down\nbefore Prometheus, the lover of mankind. The extreme example, however,\nis probably William Blake. He proclaims himself of the devil\u2019s party,\nhe glorifies a free expansion of energy, he looks upon everything that\nrestricts this expansion as synonymous with evil. At the same time he\npushes his exaltation of sympathy to the verge of the grotesque.[126]\n\nSuch indeed is the jumble of incompatibles in Blake that he would\nrest an illimitable compassion on the psychology of the superman. For\nnothing is more certain than that the \u201cMarriage of Heaven and Hell\u201d\nis among other things a fairly complete anticipation of Nietzsche.\nThe reasons are worth considering why the idea of power and the idea\nof sympathy which Blake and so many other romanticists hoped to unite\nhave once more come to seem antipodal, why in the late stages of the\nmovement one finds a Nietzsche and a Tolstoy, just as in its early\nstages one finds a Hobbes and a Shaftesbury. It is plain, first of\nall, that what brought the two cults together for a time was their\ncommon hatred of the past. With the triumph over the past fairly\ncomplete, the incompatibility of power and sympathy became increasingly\nmanifest. Nietzsche\u2019s attitude is that of a Prometheus whose sympathy\nfor mankind has changed to disgust on seeing the use that they are\nactually making of their emancipation. Humanitarian sympathy seemed\nto him to be tending not merely to a subversion, but to an inversion\nof values, to a positive preference for the trivial and the ignoble.\nHe looked with special loathing on that side of the movement that is\nsymbolized in its homage to the ass. The inevitable flying apart of\npower and sympathy was further hastened in Nietzsche and others by\nthe progress of evolution. Darwinism was dissipating the Arcadian\nmist through which nature had been viewed by Rousseau and his early\nfollowers. The gap is wide between Tennyson\u2019s nature \u201cred in tooth and\nclaw\u201d and the tender and pitiful nature of Wordsworth.[127] Nietzsche\u2019s\npreaching of ruthlessness is therefore a protest against the sheer\nunreality of those who wish to be natural and at the same time\nsympathetic. But how are we to get a real scale of values to oppose to\nan indiscriminate sympathy? It is here that Nietzsche shows that he\nis caught in the same fatal coil of naturalism as the humanitarian.\nHe accepts the naturalistic corruption of conscience which underlies\nall other naturalistic corruptions. \u201cThe will to overcome an emotion,\u201d\nhe says, \u201cis ultimately only the will of another or of several other\nemotions.\u201d[128] All he can do with this conception of conscience is\nto set over against the humanitarian suppression of values a scale\nof values based on force and not a true scale of values based on the\ndegree to which one imposes or fails to impose on one\u2019s temperamental\nself a human law of vital control. The opposition between a Nietzsche\nand a Tolstoy is therefore not specially significant; it is only that\nbetween the hard and the soft temperamentalist. To be sure Nietzsche\ncan on occasion speak very shrewdly about the evils that have resulted\nfrom temperamentalism--especially from the passion for an untrammeled\nself-expression. But the superman himself is a most authentic\ndescendant of the original genius in whom we first saw this passion\ndominant. The imagination of the superman, spurning every centre of\ncontrol, traditional or otherwise, so co\u00f6perates with his impulses\nand desires as to give them \u201cinfinitude,\u201d that is so as to make\nthem reach out for more and ever for more. The result is a frenzied\nromanticism.[129]\n\n\u201cProportionateness is strange to us, let us confess it to ourselves,\u201d\nsays Nietzsche. \u201cOur itching is really the itching for the infinite,\nthe immeasurable.\u201d How the humanitarian loses proportionateness is\nplain; it is by his readiness to sacrifice to sympathy the ninety\nper cent or so of the virtues that imply self-control. The superman\nwould scarcely seem to redress the balance by getting rid of the same\nrestraining virtues in favor of power. He simply oscillates wildly\nfrom the excess of which he is conscious in others or in himself into\nthe opposite excess, at imminent peril in either case to the ethical\nbasis of civilization. The patterns or models that the past had set\nup for imitation and with reference to which one might rein in his\nlusts and impose upon them proportionateness are rejected by every\ntype of romantic expansionist, not only as Nietzsche says, because\nthey do not satisfy the yearning for the infinite, but also, as we\nhave seen, because they do not satisfy the yearning for unity and\nimmediacy. Now so far as the forms of the eighteenth century were\nconcerned the romantic expansionist had legitimate grounds for protest.\nBut because the rationalism and artificial decorum of that period\nfailed to satisfy, he goes on to attack the analytical intellect\nand decorum in general and this attack is entirely illegitimate. It\nmay be affirmed on the contrary that the power by which we multiply\ndistinctions is never so necessary as in an individualistic age, an age\nthat has broken with tradition on the ground that it wishes to be more\nimaginative and immediate. There are various ways of being imaginative\nand immediate, and analysis is needed, not to build up some abstract\nsystem but to discriminate between the actual data of experience and\nso to determine which one of these ways it is expedient to follow if\none wishes to become wise and happy. It is precisely at such moments\nof individualistic break with the past that the sophist stands ready\nto juggle with general terms, and the only protection against such\njuggling is to define these terms with the aid of the most unflinching\nanalysis. Thus Bergson would have us believe that there are in France\ntwo main types of philosophy, a rationalistic type that goes back to\nDescartes and an intuitive type that goes back to Pascal,[130] and\ngives us to understand that, inasmuch as he is an intuitionist, he\nis in the line of descent from Pascal. Monstrous sophistries lurk in\nthis simple assertion, sophistries which if they go uncorrected are\nenough to wreck civilization. The only remedy is to define the word\nintuition, to discriminate practically and by their fruits between\nsubrational and superrational intuition. When analyzed and defined in\nthis way subrational intuition will be found to be associated with\nvital impulse (_\u00e9lan vital_) and superrational intuition with a power\nof vital control (_frein vital_) over this impulse; and furthermore\nit will be clear that this control must be exercised if men are to\nbe drawn towards a common centre, not in dreamland, but in the real\nworld. So far then from its being true that the man who analyzes must\nneeds see things in disconnection dead and spiritless, it is only by\nanalysis that he is, in an individualistic age, put on the pathway of\ntrue unity, and also of the r\u00f4le of the imagination in achieving this\nunity. For there is need to discriminate between the different types\nof imagination no less than between the different types of intuition.\nOne will find through such analysis that the centre of normal human\nexperience that is to serve as a check on impulse (so far at least as\nit is something distinct from the mere convention of one\u2019s age and\ntime) can be apprehended only with the aid of the imagination. This is\nonly another way of saying that the reality that is set above one\u2019s\nordinary self is not a fixed absolute but can be glimpsed, if at all,\nonly through a veil of illusion and is indeed inseparable from the\nillusion. This realm of insight cannot be finally formulated for the\nsimple reason that it is anterior to formul\u00e6. It must therefore from\nthe point of view of an intellect it transcends seem infinite though in\na very different sense from the outer infinite of expansive desire.\n\nThis inner or human infinite, so far from being incompatible with\ndecorum, is the source of true decorum. True decorum is only the\npulling back and disciplining of impulse to the proportionateness that\nhas been perceived with the aid of what one may term the ethical or\ngeneralizing imagination. To dismiss like the romantic expansionist\neverything that limits or restricts the lust of knowledge or of power\nor of sensation as arbitrary and artificial is to miss true decorum and\nat the same time to sink, as a Greek would say, from ethos to pathos.\nIf one is to avoid this error one must, as Hamlet counsels, \u201cin the\nvery torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of passion, acquire\nand beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.\u201d This is probably\nthe best of all modern definitions of decorum simply because it is the\nmost experimental. In general all that has been said about the ethical\nimagination is not to be taken as a fine-spun theory, but as an attempt\nhowever imperfect to give an account of actual experience.\n\nOne may report from observation another trait of truly ethical art, art\nwhich is at once imaginative and decorous. It is not merely intense,\nas art that is imaginative at the expense of decorum may very well\nbe,[131] it has a restrained and humanized intensity--intensity on a\nbackground of calm. The presence of the ethical imagination whether in\nart or life[132] is always known as an element of calm.\n\nIn art that has the ethical quality, and I am again not setting up a\nmetaphysical theory but reporting from observation, the calm that comes\nfrom imaginative insight into the universal is inextricably blended\nwith an element of uniqueness--with a something that belongs to a\nparticular time and place and individual. The truth to the universal,\nas Aristotle would say, gives the work verisimilitude and the truth\nto the particular satisfies man\u2019s deep-seated craving for novelty;\nso that the best art unites the probable with the wonderful. But\nthe probable, one cannot insist too often, is won no less than the\nwonderful with the aid of the imagination and so is of the very soul\nof art. The romanticist who is ready to sacrifice the probable to the\nwonderful and to look on the whole demand for verisimilitude as an\nacademic superstition is prone to assume that he has a monopoly of\nsoul and imagination. But the word soul is at least in as much need\nof Socratic definition as the word intuition. It is possible, for\nexample, with the aid of the ethical imagination so to partake of the\nultimate element of calm as to rise to the religious level. The man who\nhas risen to this level has a soul, but it is a soul of peace. Both\nsoul and imagination are also needed to achieve the fine adjustment\nand mediation of the humanist. It is not enough, however, to have a\nreligious or a humanistic soul if one is to be a creator or even a\nfully equipped critic of art. For art rests primarily not on ethical\nbut \u00e6sthetic perception. This perception itself varies widely according\nto the art involved. One may, for instance, be musically perceptive and\nat the same time lack poetic perception. To be a creator in any art\none must possess furthermore the technique of this art--something that\nis more or less separable from its \u201csoul\u201d in any sense of the word. It\nis possible to put a wildly romantic soul into art, as has often been\ndone in the Far East, and at the same time to be highly conventional\nor traditional in one\u2019s technique. Writers like M\u00e9rim\u00e9e, Renan, and\nMaupassant again are faithful in the main to the technique of French\nprose that was worked out during the classical period, but combine with\nthis technique an utterly unclassical \u201csoul.\u201d\n\nRules, especially perhaps rules as to what to avoid, may be of aid in\nacquiring technique, but are out of place in dealing with the soul of\nart. There one passes from rules to principles. The only rule, if we\nare to achieve art that has an ethical soul, is to view life with some\ndegree of imaginative wholeness. Art that has technique without soul\nin either the classical or romantic sense, and so fails either to\ninspire elevation or awaken wonder, is likely to be felt as a barren\nvirtuosity. The pseudo-classicist was often unduly minute in the rules\nhe laid down for technique or outer form, as one may say, and then\nignored the ethical imagination or inner form entirely, or else set up\nas a substitute mere didacticism. Since pseudo-classic work of this\ntype plainly lacked soul and imagination, and since the romanticist\nfelt and felt rightly that he himself had a soul and imagination, he\nconcluded wrongly that soul and imagination are romantic monopolies.\nLike the pseudo-classicist, he inclines to identify high seriousness\nin art, something that can only come from the exercise of the ethical\nimagination at its best, with mere preaching, only he differs from\nthe pseudo-classicist in insisting that preaching should be left to\ndivines. One should insist, on the contrary, that the mark of genuinely\nethical art, art that is highly serious, is that it is free from\npreaching. Sophocles is more ethical than Euripides for the simple\nreason that he views life with more imaginative wholeness. At the same\ntime he is much less given to preaching than Euripides. He does not, as\nFitzGerald says, interrupt the action and the exhibition of character\nthrough action in order to \u201cjaw philosophy.\u201d\n\nIt is not unusual for the modern artist to seek, like Euripides,\nto dissimulate the lack of true ethical purpose in his work by\nagitating various problems. But problems come and go, whereas human\nnature abides. One may agitate problems without number, and yet\nlack imaginative insight into the abiding element in human nature.\nMoreover, not being of the soul of art, the problem that one agitates\nis in danger of being a clogging intellectualism. Furthermore to seek\nin problems an equivalent for the definition and purpose that the\nethical imagination alone can give is to renew, often in an aggravated\nform, the neo-classical error. The moralizing of the pseudo-classic\ndramatist, even though dull and misplaced, was usually sound enough in\nitself; whereas the moralizing of those who seek nowadays to use the\nstage as a pulpit, resting as it does on false humanitarian postulates,\nis in itself dubious. The problem play succeeds not infrequently in\nbeing at once dull and indecent.\n\nThe problem play is often very superior in technique or outer form\nto the earlier romantic drama, but it still suffers from the same\nlack of inner form, inasmuch as its social purpose cannot take the\nplace of true human purpose based on imaginative insight into the\nuniversal. The lack of inner form in so much modern drama and art in\ngeneral can be traced to the original unsoundness of the break with\npseudo-classic formalism. To a pseudo-classic art that lacked every\nkind of perceptiveness the Rousseauist opposed \u00e6sthetic perceptiveness,\nand it is something, one must admit, thus to have discovered the\nsenses. But to his \u00e6sthetic perceptiveness he failed, as I have\nalready said, to add ethical perceptiveness because of his inability\nto distinguish between ethical perceptiveness and mere didacticism,\nand so when asked to put ethical purpose into art he replied that\nart should be pursued for its own sake (_l\u2019art pour l\u2019art_) and\nthat \u201cbeauty is its own excuse for being.\u201d One should note here\nthe transformation that this pure \u00e6stheticism brought about in the\nmeaning of the word beauty itself. For the Greek beauty resided in\nproportion,[133] and proportion can be attained only with the aid of\nthe ethical imagination. With the elimination of the ethical element\nfrom the soul of art the result is an imagination that is free to\nwander wild with the emancipated emotions. The result is likely to be\nart in which a lively \u00e6sthetic perceptiveness is not subordinated to\nany whole, art that is unstructural, however it may abound in vivid and\npicturesque details; and a one-sided art of this kind the romanticist\ndoes not hesitate to call beautiful. \u201cIf we let the reason sleep and\nare content to watch a succession of dissolving views,\u201d says Mr. Elton\nof Shelley\u2019s \u201cRevolt of Islam,\u201d \u201cthe poem is seen at once to overflow\nwith beauty.\u201d[134] Mere reason is not strictly speaking a sufficient\nremedy for this unstructural type of \u201cbeauty.\u201d Thus Chateaubriand\u2019s\nreason is on the side of proportion and all the classical virtues but\nhis imagination is not (and we cannot repeat too often that it is what\na man is imaginatively and not what he preaches that really counts).\nInstead of siding with his reason and aiding it to ethical perception\nChateaubriand\u2019s imagination is the free playmate of his emotions. \u201cWhat\ndid I care for all these futilities\u201d (i.e. his functions as cabinet\nminister), he exclaims, \u201cI who never cared for anything except for my\ndreams, and even then on condition that they should last only for a\nnight.\u201d When a man has once spoken in that vein sensible people will\npay little heed to what he preaches; for they will be certain that the\ndriving power of his work and personality is elsewhere. The imagination\nholds the balance of power between the reason and the perceptions\nof sense, and Chateaubriand\u2019s imagination is plainly on the side of\nsensuous adventure. This vagabondage of the imagination appears\nespecially in his imagistic trend, in his pursuit of the descriptive\ndetail for its own sake. To set out like Chateaubriand to restore the\nmonarchy and the Christian religion and instead to become the founder\nof \u201c_l\u2019\u00e9cole des images \u00e0 tout prix_\u201d is an especially striking form of\nthe contrast in romantic morality between the ideal and the real.\n\nThe attempt that we have been studying to divorce beauty from ethics\nled in the latter part of the eighteenth century to the rise of a\nnightmare subject,--\u00e6sthetics. Shaftesbury indeed, as we have seen\nalready, anticipates the favorite romantic doctrine that beauty is\ntruth and truth beauty, which means in practice to rest both truth and\nbeauty upon a fluid emotionalism. Thus to deal \u00e6sthetically with truth\nis an error of the first magnitude, but it is also an error, though\na less serious one, to see only the \u00e6sthetic element in beauty. For\nbeauty to be complete must have not only \u00e6sthetic perceptiveness but\norder and proportion; and this brings us back again to the problem\nof the ethical imagination and the permanent model or pattern with\nreference to which it seeks to impose measure and proportion upon\nsensuous perception and expansive desire. We should not hesitate to\nsay that beauty loses most of its meaning when divorced from ethics\neven though every \u00e6sthete in the world should arise and denounce us as\nphilistines. To rest beauty upon feeling as the very name \u00e6sthetics\nimplies, is to rest it upon what is ever shifting. Nor can we escape\nfrom this endless mobility with the aid of physical science, for\nphysical science does not itself rise above the naturalistic flux.\nAfter eliminating from beauty the permanent pattern and the ethical\nimagination with the aid of which it is perceived, a man will be ready\nto term beautiful anything that reflects his ordinary or temperamental\nself. Diderot is a sentimentalist and so he sees as much beauty in the\nsentimentalist Richardson as in Homer. If a man is psychically restless\nhe will see beauty only in motion. The Italian futurist Marinetti says\nthat for him a rushing motor car is more beautiful than the Victory of\nSamothrace. A complete sacrifice of the principle of repose in beauty\n(which itself arises from the presence of the ethical imagination)\nto the suggesting of motion such as has been seen in certain recent\nschools, runs practically into a mixture of charlatanism and madness.\n\u201cHe that is giddy thinks the world goes round,\u201d says Shakespeare,\nand the exponents of certain ultra-modern movements in painting are\nsimply trying to paint their inner giddiness. As a matter of fact the\npretension of the \u00e6sthete to have a purely personal vision of beauty\nand then treat as a philistine every one who does not accept it, is\nintolerable. Either beauty cannot be defined at all or we must say\nthat only is beautiful which seems so to the right kind of man, and\nthe right kind of man is plainly he whose total attitude towards life\nis correct, who views life with some degree of imaginative wholeness,\nwhich is only another way of saying that the problem of beauty is\ninseparable from the ethical problem. In an absolute sense nobody can\nsee life steadily and see it whole; but we may at least move towards\nsteadiness and wholeness. The \u00e6sthete is plainly moving in an opposite\ndirection; he is becoming more and more openly a votary of the god\nWhirl. His lack of inner form is an error not of \u00e6sthetics but of\ngeneral philosophy.\n\nThe romantic imagination, the imagination that is not drawn back to\nany ethical centre and so is free to wander wild in its own empire of\nchimeras, has indeed a place in life. To understand what this place\nis one needs to emphasize the distinction between art that has high\nseriousness and art that is merely recreative. The serious moments of\nlife are moments of tension, of concentration on either the natural or\nthe human law. But Apollo cannot always be bending the bow. Man needs\nat times to relax, and one way of relaxing is to take refuge for a\ntime in some land of chimeras, to follow the Arcadian gleam. He may\nthen come back to the real world, the world of active effort, solaced\nand refreshed. But it is only with reference to some ethical centre\nthat we may determine what art is soundly recreative, in what forms\nof adventure the imagination may innocently indulge. The romanticist\nshould recollect that among other forms of adventure is what Ben Jonson\nterms \u201ca bold adventure for hell\u201d; and that a not uncommon nostalgia\nis what the French call _la nostalgie de la boue_--man\u2019s nostalgia for\nhis native mud. Because we are justified at times, as Lamb urges, in\nwandering imaginatively beyond \u201cthe diocese of strict conscience,\u201d it\ndoes not follow that we may, like him, treat Restoration Comedy as a\nsort of fairyland; for Restoration Comedy is a world not of pure but of\nimpure imagination.\n\nLamb\u2019s paradox, however, is harmless compared with what we have just\nbeen seeing in Chateaubriand. With a dalliant imagination that entitles\nhim at best to play a recreative r\u00f4le, he sets up as a religious\nteacher. Michelet again has been described as an \u201centertainer who\nbelieves himself a prophet,\u201d and this description fits many other\nRousseauists. The \u00e6sthete who assumes an apocalyptic pose is an\nespecially flagrant instance of the huddling together of incompatible\ndesires. He wishes to sport with Amaryllis in the shade and at the same\ntime enjoy the honors that belong only to the man who scorns delights\nand lives laborious days. For the exercise of the ethical imagination,\nit is hardly necessary to say, involves effort. Perhaps no one has\never surpassed Rousseau himself in the art of which I have already\nspoken,--that of giving to moral indolence a semblance of profound\nphilosophy.\n\nOne cannot indeed always affirm that the Rousseauist is by the quality\nof his imagination an entertainer pure and simple. His breaking down of\nbarriers and running together of the planes of being results at times\nin ambiguous mixtures--gleams of insight that actually seem to minister\nto fleshliness. One may cite as an example the \u201cvoluptuous religiosity\u201d\nthat certain critics have discovered in Wagner.\n\nThe romanticist will at once protest against the application of ethical\nstandards to Wagner or any other musician. Music, he holds, is the\nmost soulful of the arts and so the least subject to ethics. For the\nsame reason it is the chief of arts and also--in view of the fact that\nromanticists have a monopoly of soul--the most romantic. One should not\nallow to pass unchallenged this notion that because music is filled\nwith soul it is therefore subject to no ethical centre, but should be\ntreated as a pure enchantment. The Greeks were as a matter of fact much\nconcerned with the ethical quality of music. Certain musical modes, the\nDoric for example, had as they believed a virile \u201csoul,\u201d other modes\nlike the Lydian had the contrary (\u201cLap me in soft Lydian airs\u201d). For\nthe very reason that music is the most appealing of the arts (song,\nsays Aristotle, is the sweetest of all things) they were especially\nanxious that this art should be guarded from perversion.[135] Without\nattempting a full discussion of a difficult subject for which I have\nno competency, it will be enough to point out that the plain song that\nprevailed in Christian churches for over a thousand years evidently had\na very different \u201csoul,\u201d a soul that inspired to prayer and peace, from\nmuch specifically romantic music that has a soul of restlessness, of\ninfinite indeterminate desire. The result of the failure to recognize\nthis distinction is very often a hybrid art. Berlioz showed a rather\npeculiar conception of religion when he took pride in the fact that his\nRequiem (!) Mass frightened one of the listeners into a fit.\n\nThe ethical confusion that arises from the romantic cult of \u201csoul\u201d and\nthe closely allied tendency towards a hybrid art--art that lacks high\nseriousness without being frankly recreative--may also be illustrated\nfrom the field of poetry. Many volumes have been published and are\nstill being published on Browning as a philosophic and religious\nteacher. But Browning can pass as a prophet only with the half-educated\nperson, the person who has lost traditional standards and has at the\nsame time failed to work out with the aid of the ethical imagination\nsome fresh scale of values and in the meanwhile lives impulsively and\nglorifies impulse. Like the half-educated person, Browning is capable\nof almost any amount of intellectual and emotional subtlety, and like\nthe half-educated person he is deficient in inner form: that is he\ndeals with experience impressionistically without reference to any\ncentral pattern or purpose.[136] It is enough that the separate moments\nof this experience should each stand forth like\n\n              The quick sharp scratch\n    And blue spurt of a lighted match.\n\nOne may take as an illustration of this drift towards the melodramatic\nthe \u201cRing and the Book.\u201d The method of this poem is peripheral, that\nis, the action is viewed not from any centre but as refracted through\nthe temperaments of the actors. The twelve monologues of which the\npoem is composed illustrate the tendency of romantic writing to run\ninto some \u201csong of myself\u201d or \u201ctale of my heart.\u201d The \u201cRing and the\nBook\u201d is not only off the centre, but is designed to raise a positive\nprejudice against everything that is central. Guido, for example, had\nobserved decorum, had done all the conventional things and is horrible.\nPompilia, the beautiful soul, had the great advantage of having had\nan indecorous start. Being the daughter of a drab, she is not kept\nfrom heeding the voice of nature. Caponsacchi again shows the beauty\nof his soul by violating the decorum of the priesthood. This least\nrepresentative of priests wins our sympathy, not by his Christianity,\nbut by his lyrical intensity:\n\n    O lyric love, half angel and half bird,\n    And all a wonder and a wild desire!\n\nBrowning here escapes for once from the clogging intellectualism that\nmakes nearly all the \u201cRing and the Book\u201d an indeterminate blend of\nverse and prose, and achieves true poetry though not of the highest\ntype. The hybrid character of his art, due partly to a lack of outer\nform, to a defective poetical technique, arises even more from a lack\nof inner form--from an attempt to give a semblance of seriousness to\nwhat is at bottom unethical. The aged Pope may well meditate on the\nrevolution that is implied in the substitution of the morality of the\nbeautiful soul for that of St. Augustine.[137] In seeming to accept\nthis revolution Browning\u2019s Pope comes near to breaking all records,\neven in the romantic movement, for paradox and indecorum.\n\nAt bottom the war between humanist and romanticist is so irreconcilable\nbecause the one is a mediator and the other an extremist. Browning\nwould have us admire his Pompilia because her love knows no limit;[138]\nbut a secular love like hers must know a limit, must be decorous in\nshort, if it is to be distinguished from mere emotional intensity.\nIt is evident that the romantic ideal of art for art\u2019s sake meant in\nthe real world art for sensation\u2019s sake. The glorification of a love\nknowing no limit, that a Browning or a Hugo sets up as a substitute for\nphilosophy and even for religion, is therefore closely affiliated in\npractice with the _libido sentiendi_. \u201cIt is hard,\u201d wrote Stendhal, in\n1817, \u201cnot to see what the nineteenth century desires. A love of strong\nemotions is its true character.\u201d The romantic tendency to push every\nemotion to an extreme, regardless of decorum, is not much affected by\nwhat the romanticist preaches or by the problems he agitates. Doudan\nremarks of a mother who loses her child in Hugo\u2019s \u201cN\u00f4tre Dame de\nParis,\u201d that \u201cher rage after this loss has nothing to equal it in the\nroarings of a lioness or tigress who has been robbed of her young. She\nbecomes vulgar by excess of despair. It is the saturnalia of maternal\ngrief. You see that this woman belongs to a world in which neither the\ninstincts nor the passions have that divine aroma which imposes on them\nsome kind of measure--the dignity or decorum that contains a moral\nprinciple; \u2026 When the passions no longer have this check, they should\nbe relegated to the menagerie along with leopards and rhinoceroses,\nand, strange circumstance, when the passions do recognize this check\nthey produce more effect on the spectators than unregulated outbursts;\nthey give evidence of more depth.\u201d This superlativeness, as one may\nsay, that Hugo displays in his picture of maternal grief is not\nconfined to the emotional romanticist. It appears, for example, among\nthe intellectual romanticists of the seventeenth century and affected\nthe very forms of language. Moli\u00e8re and others ridiculed the adjectives\nand adverbs with which the _pr\u00e9cieuses_ sought to express their special\ntype of superlativeness and intensity (_extr\u00eamement_, _furieusement_,\n_terriblement_, etc.). Alfred de Musset\u2019s assertion that the chief\ndifference between classicist and romanticist is found in the latter\u2019s\ngreater proneness to adjectives is not altogether a jest. It has been\nsaid that the pessimist uses few, the optimist many adjectives; but the\nuse of adjectives and above all of superlatives would rather seem to\ngrow with one\u2019s expansiveness, and no movement was ever more expansive\nthan that we are studying. Dante, according to Rivarol, is very sparing\nof adjectives. His sentence tends to maintain itself by the verb\nand substantive alone. In this as in other respects Dante is at the\nopposite pole from the expansionist.\n\nThe romantic violence of expression is at once a proof of \u201csoul\u201d and\na protest against the tameness and smugness of the pseudo-classicist.\nThe human volcano must overflow at times in a lava of molten words.\n\u201cDamnation!\u201d cries Berlioz, \u201cI could crush a red-hot iron between my\nteeth.\u201d[139] The disproportion between the outer incident and the\nemotion that the Rousseauist expends on it is often ludicrous.[140]\nThe kind of force that the man attains who sees in emotional intensity\na mark of spiritual distinction, and deems moderation identical with\nmediocrity, is likely to be the force of delirium or fever. What one\nsees in \u201cWerther,\u201d says Goethe himself, is weakness seeking to give\nitself the prestige of strength; and this remark goes far. There is in\nsome of the romanticists a suggestion not merely of spiritual but of\nphysical an\u00e6mia.[141] Still the intensity is often that of a strong\nbut unbridled spirit. Pleasure is pushed to the point where it runs\nover into pain, and pain to the point where it becomes an auxiliary\nof pleasure. The _\u00e2cre baiser_ of the \u201cNouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse\u201d that so\nscandalized Voltaire presaged even more than a literary revolution. The\npoems of A. de Musset in particular contain an extraordinary perversion\nof the Christian doctrine of purification through suffering. There\nis something repellent to the genuine Christian as well as to the\nworldling in what one is tempted to call Musset\u2019s Epicurean cult of\npain.[142]\n\nMoments of superlative intensity whether of pleasure or pain must\nin the nature of the case be brief--mere spasms or paroxysms; and\none might apply to the whole school the term paroxyst and spasmodist\nassumed by certain minor groups during the past century. The\nRousseauist is in general loath to rein in his emotional vehemence, to\nimpair the zest with which he responds to the solicitations of sense,\nby any reference to the \u201cfuture and sum of time,\u201d by any reference,\nthat is, to an ethical purpose. He would enjoy his thrill pure and\nunalloyed, and this amounts in practice to the pursuit of the beautiful\nor sensation-crowded moment. Saint-Preux says of the days spent with\nJulie that a \u201csweet ecstasy\u201d absorbed \u201ctheir whole duration and\ngathered it together in a point like that of eternity. There was for\nme neither past nor future, and I enjoyed at one and the same time the\ndelights of a thousand centuries.\u201d[143] The superlativist one might\nsuppose could go no further. But in the deliberate sacrifice of all\nethical values to the beautiful moment Browning has perhaps improved\neven on Rousseau:\n\n        Truth, that\u2019s brighter than gem,\n        Trust, that\u2019s purer than pearl,--\n    Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe--all were for me\n        In the kiss of one girl.\n\nBrowning entitles the poem from which I am quoting _Summum Bonum_. The\nsupreme good it would appear is identical with the supreme thrill.\n\nI have already said enough to make clear that the title of this\nchapter and the last is in a way a misnomer. There is no such thing\nas romantic morality. The innovations in ethics that are due to\nromanticism reduce themselves on close scrutiny to a vast system of\nnaturalistic camouflage. To understand how this camouflage has been\nso successful one needs to connect Rousseauism with the Baconian\nmovement. Scientific progress had inspired man with a new confidence\nin himself at the same time that the positive and critical method\nby which it had been achieved detached him from the past and its\ntraditional standards of good and evil. To break with tradition on\nsound lines one needs to apply the utmost keenness of analysis not\nmerely to the natural but to the human law. But man\u2019s analytical powers\nwere very much taken up with the new task of mastering the natural\nlaw, so much so that he seemed incapable of further analytical effort,\nbut longed rather for relaxation from his sustained concentration of\nintellect and imagination on the physical order. At the same time\nhe was so elated by the progress he was making in this order that\nhe was inclined to assume a similar advance on the moral plane and\nto believe that this advance could also be achieved collectively. A\ncollective salvation of this kind without any need of a concentration\nof the intellect and imagination is precisely what was opened up to\nhim by the Rousseauistic \u201cideal\u201d of brotherhood. This \u201cideal,\u201d as I\nhave tried to show, was only a projection of the Arcadian imagination\non the void. But in the abdication of analysis and critical judgment,\nwhich would have reduced it to a purely recreative r\u00f4le, this Arcadian\ndreaming was enabled to set up as a serious philosophy, and to expand\ninto innumerable Utopias. Many who might have taken alarm at the\nhumanitarian revolution in ethics were reassured by the very fervor\nwith which its promoters continued to utter the old words--conscience,\nvirtue, etc. No one puts more stress than Rousseau himself on\nconscience, while in the very act of transforming conscience from an\ninner check into an expansive emotion.\n\nWe have seen that as a result of this transformation of conscience,\ntemperament is emancipated from both inner and outer control and that\nthis emancipation tends in the real world to the rise of two main\ntypes--the Bohemian and the superman, both unprimitive, inasmuch as\nprimitive man is governed not by temperament but by convention; and\nthat what actually tends to prevail in such a temperamental world\nin view of the superior \u201chardness\u201d of the superman, is the law of\ncunning and the law of force. So far as the Rousseauists set up the\nmere emancipation of temperament as a serious philosophy, they are\nto be held responsible for the results of this emancipation whether\ndisplayed in the lust of power or the lust of sensation. But the\nlust of power and the lust of sensation, such as they appear, for\nexample, in the so-called realism of the later nineteenth century, are\nnot in themselves identical with romanticism. Many of the realists,\nlike Flaubert, as I have already pointed out, are simply bitter and\ndisillusioned Rousseauists who are expressing their nausea at the\nsociety that has actually arisen from the emancipation of temperament\nin themselves and others. The essence of Rousseauistic as of other\nromance, I may repeat, is to be found not in any mere fact, not even\nin the fact of sensation, but in a certain quality of the imagination.\nRousseauism is, it is true, an emancipation of impulse, especially of\nthe impulse of sex. Practically all the examples I have chosen of the\ntense and beautiful moment are erotic. But what one has even here, as\nthe imagination grows increasingly romantic, is less the reality than\nthe dream of the beautiful moment, an intensity that is achieved only\nin the tower of ivory. This point can be made clear only by a fuller\nstudy of the romantic conception of love.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nROMANTIC LOVE\n\n\nWhat first strikes one in Rousseau\u2019s attitude towards love is the\nseparation, even wider here perhaps than elsewhere, between the ideal\nand the real. He dilates in the \u201cConfessions\u201d on the difference of\nthe attachment that he felt when scarcely more than a boy for two\nyoung women of Geneva, Mademoiselle Vulson and Mademoiselle Goton. His\nattachment for the latter was real in a sense that Zola would have\nunderstood. His attachment for Mademoiselle Vulson reminds one rather\nof that of a medi\u00e6val knight for his lady. The same contrast runs\nthrough Rousseau\u2019s life. \u201cSeamstresses, chambermaids, shop-girls,\u201d he\nsays, \u201cattracted me very little. I had to have fine ladies.\u201d[144] So\nmuch for the ideal; the real was Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Levasseur.\n\nWe are not to suppose that Rousseau\u2019s love even when most ideal is\nreally exalted above the fleshly level. Byron indeed says of Rousseau\nthat \u201chis was not the love of living dame but of ideal beauty,\u201d and\nif this were strictly true Rousseau might be accounted a Platonist.\nBut any particular beautiful object is for Plato only a symbol or\nadumbration of a supersensuous beauty; so that an earthly love can be\nat best only a stepping-stone to the Uranian Aphrodite. The terrestrial\nand the heavenly loves are not in short run together, whereas the\nessence of Rousseauistic love is this very blending. \u201cRousseau,\u201d says\nJoubert, \u201chad a voluptuous mind. In his writings the soul is always\nmingled with the body and never distinct from it. No one has ever\nrendered more vividly the impression of the flesh touching the spirit\nand the delights of their marriage.\u201d I need not, however, repeat here\nwhat I have said elsewhere[145] about this confusion of the planes of\nbeing, perhaps the most important aspect of romantic love.\n\nThough Rousseau is not a true Platonist in his treatment of love, he\ndoes, as I have said, recall at times the cult of the medi\u00e6val knight\nfor his lady. One may even find in medi\u00e6val love something that is\nremotely related to Rousseau\u2019s contrast between the ideal and the\nactual; for in its attitude towards woman as in other respects the\nMiddle Ages tended to be extreme. Woman is either depressed below the\nhuman level as the favorite instrument of the devil in man\u2019s temptation\n(_mulier hominis confusio_), or else exalted above this level as the\nmother of God. The figure of Mary blends sense and spirit in a way that\nis foreign to Plato and the ancients. As Heine says very profanely,\nthe Virgin was a sort of heavenly _dame du comptoir_ whose celestial\nsmile drew the northern barbarians into the Church. Sense was thus\npressed into the service of spirit at the risk of a perilous confusion.\nThe chivalric cult of the lady has obvious points of contact with the\nworship of the Madonna. The knight who is raised from one height of\nperfection to another by the light of his lady\u2019s eyes is also pressing\nsense into the service of spirit with the same risk that the process\nmay be reversed. The reversal actually takes place in Rousseau and his\nfollowers: spirit is pressed into the service of sense in such wise as\nto give to sense a sort of infinitude. Baudelaire pays his homage to a\nParisian grisette in the form of a Latin canticle to the Virgin.[146]\nThe perversion of medi\u00e6val love is equally though not quite so\nobviously present in many other Rousseauists.\n\nI have said that the Middle Ages inclined to the extreme; medi\u00e6val\nwriters are, however, fond of insisting on \u201cmeasure\u201d; and this\nis almost inevitable in view of the large amount of classical,\nespecially Aristotelian, survival throughout this period. But the two\ndistinctively medi\u00e6val types, the saint and the knight, are neither\nof them mediators. They stand, however, on an entirely different\nfooting as regards the law of measure. Not even Aristotle himself would\nmaintain that the law of measure applies to saintliness, and in general\nto the religious realm. The saint in so far as he is saintly has\nundergone conversion, has in the literal sense of the word faced around\nand is looking in an entirely different direction from that to which\nthe warnings \u201cnothing too much\u201d and \u201cthink as a mortal\u201d apply. Very\ndifferent psychic elements may indeed appear in any particular saint. A\nbook has been published recently on the \u201cRomanticism of St. Francis.\u201d\nThe truth seems to be that though St. Francis had his romantic side,\nhe was even more religious than romantic. One may affirm with some\nconfidence of another medi\u00e6val figure, Peter the Hermit, that he was,\non the other hand, much more romantic than religious. For all the\ninformation we have tends to show that he was a very restless person\nand a man\u2019s restlessness is ordinarily in inverse ratio to his religion.\n\nIf the saint transcends in a way the law of measure, the knight on\nthe other hand should be subject to it. For courage and the love of\nwoman--his main interests in life--belong not to the religious but\nto the secular realm. But in his conception of love and courage the\nknight was plainly not a mediator but an extremist: he was haunted\nby the idea of adventure, of a love and courage that transcend the\nbounds not merely of the probable but of the possible. His imagination\nis romantic in the sense I have tried to define--it is straining,\nthat is, beyond the confines of the real. Ruskin\u2019s violent diatribe\nagainst Cervantes[147] for having killed \u201cidealism\u201d by his ridicule\nof these knightly exaggerations, is in itself absurd, but interesting\nas evidence of the quality of Ruskin\u2019s own imagination. Like other\nromanticists I have cited, he seems to have been not unaware of his own\nkinship to Don Quixote. The very truth about either the medi\u00e6val or\nmodern forms of romantic love--love which is on the secular level and\nat the same time sets itself above the law of measure--was uttered by\nDr. Johnson in his comment on the heroic plays of Dryden: \u201cBy admitting\nthe romantic omnipotence of love he has recommended as laudable and\nworthy of imitation that conduct which through all ages the good have\ncensured as vicious and the bad have despised as foolish.\u201d\n\nThe man of the Middle Ages, however extravagant in his imaginings,\nwas often no doubt terrestrial enough in his practice. The troubadour\nwho addressed his high-flown fancies to some fair ch\u00e2telaine (usually\na married woman) often had relations in real life not unlike those\nof Rousseau with Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Levasseur. Some such contrast indeed between\nthe \u201cideal\u201d and the \u201creal\u201d existed in the life of one of Rousseau\u2019s\nfavorite poets, Petrarch. The lover may, however, run together the\nideal and the real. He may glorify some comparatively commonplace\nperson, crown as queen of his heart some Dulcinea del Toboso. Hazlitt\nemploys appropriately in describing his own passion for the vulgar\ndaughter of a London boarding-house keeper the very words of Cervantes:\n\u201cHe had courted a statue, hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert.\u201d\nHazlitt like other lovers of this type is in love not with a particular\nperson but with his own dream. He is as one may say in love with love.\nNo subject indeed illustrates like this of love the nostalgia, the\ninfinite indeterminate desire of the romantic imagination. Something of\nthis diffusive longing no doubt came into the world with Christianity.\nThere is a wide gap between the sentence of St. Augustine that Shelley\nhas taken as epigraph for his \u201cAlastor\u201d[148] and the spirit of the\ngreat Greek and Roman classics. Yet such is the abiding vitality of\nGreek mythology that one finds in Greece perhaps the best symbol of\nthe romantic lover. Rousseau could not fail to be attracted by the\nstory of Pygmalion and Galatea. His lyrical \u201cmonodrama\u201d in poetical\nprose, \u201cPygmalion,\u201d is important not only for its literary but for its\nmusical influence. The Germans in particular (including the youthful\nGoethe) were fascinated. To the mature Goethe Rousseau\u2019s account of the\nsculptor who became enamored of his own creation and breathed into it\nactual life by the sheer intensity of his desire seemed a delirious\nconfusion of the planes of being, an attempt to drag ideal beauty down\nto the level of sensuous realization. But a passion thus conceived\nexactly satisfies the romantic requirement. For though the romanticist\nwishes to abandon himself to the rapture of love, he does not wish to\ntranscend his own ego. The object with which Pygmalion is in love is\nafter all only a projection of his own \u201cgenius.\u201d But such an object is\nnot in any proper sense an object at all. There is in fact no object in\nthe romantic universe--only subject. This subjective love amounts in\npractice to a use of the imagination to enhance emotional intoxication,\nor if one prefers, to the pursuit of illusion for its own sake.\n\nThis lack of definite object appears just as clearly in the German\nsymbol of romantic love--the blue flower. The blue flower resolves\nitself at last, it will be remembered, into a fair feminine\nface[149]--a face that cannot, however, be overtaken. The color\ntypifies the blue distance in which it always loses itself, \u201cthe\nnever-ending quest after the ever-fleeting object of desire.\u201d The\nobject is thus elusive because, as I have said, it is not, properly\nspeaking, an object at all but only a dalliance of the imagination\nwith its own dream. Cats, says Rivarol, do not caress us, they caress\nthemselves upon us. But though cats may suffer from what the new\nrealist calls the egocentric predicament, they can scarcely vie in the\nsubtle involutions of their egoism with the romantic lover. Besides\ncreating the symbol of the blue flower, Novalis treats romantic love\nin his unfinished tale \u201cThe Disciples at Sa\u00efs.\u201d He contemplated two\nendings to this tale--in the one, when the disciple lifts the veil\nof the inmost sanctuary of the temple at Sa\u00efs, Rosenbl\u00fctchen (the\nequivalent of the blue flower) falls into his arms. In the second\nversion what he sees when he lifts the mysterious veil is--\u201cwonder of\nwonders--himself.\u201d The two endings are in substance the same.\n\nThe story of Novalis\u2019s attachment for a fourteen-year-old girl, Sophie\nvon K\u00fchn, and of his plans on her death for a truly romantic suicide--a\nswooning away into the night--and then of the suddenness with which\nhe transferred his dream to another maiden, Julie von Charpentier,\nis familiar. If Sophie had lived and Novalis had lived and they had\nwedded, he might conceivably have made her a faithful husband, but she\nwould no longer have been the blue flower, the ideal. For one\u2019s love\nis for something infinitely remote; it is as Shelley says, in what is\nperhaps the most perfect expression of romantic longing:\n\n    The desire of the moth for the star,\n      Of the night for the morrow,\n    The devotion to something afar\n      From the sphere of our sorrow.\n\nThe sphere of Shelley\u2019s sorrow at the time he wrote these lines to Mrs.\nWilliams was Mary Godwin. In the time of Harriet Westbrook, Mary had\nbeen the \u201cstar.\u201d\n\nThe romantic lover often feigns in explanation of his nostalgia\nthat in some previous existence he had been enamored of a nymph--an\nEgeria--or a woman transcending the ordinary mould--\u201csome Lilith or\nHelen or Antigone.\u201d[150] Shelley inquires eagerly in one of his letters\nabout the new poem by Horace Smith, \u201cThe Nympholept.\u201d In the somewhat\nunclassical sense that the term came to have in the romantic movement,\nShelley is himself the perfect example of the nympholept. In this\nrespect as in others, however, he merely continues Rousseau. \u201cIf it had\nnot been for some memories of my youth and Madame d\u2019Houdetot,\u201d says\nJean-Jacques, \u201cthe loves that I have felt and described would have been\nonly with sylphids.\u201d[151]\n\nChateaubriand speaks with aristocratic disdain of Rousseau\u2019s Venetian\namours, but on the \u201cideal\u201d side he is not only his follower but perhaps\nthe supreme French example of nympholepsy. He describes his lady of\ndreams sometimes like Rousseau as the \u201csylphid,\u201d sometimes as his\n\u201cphantom of love.\u201d He had been haunted by this phantom almost from his\nchildhood. \u201cEven then I glimpsed that to love and be loved in a way\nthat was unknown to me was destined to be my supreme felicity. \u2026 As a\nresult of the ardor of my imagination, my timidity and solitude, I did\nnot turn to the outer world, but was thrown back upon myself. In the\nabsence of a real object, I evoked by the power of my vague desires a\nphantom that was never to leave me.\u201d To those who remember the closely\nparallel passages in Rousseau, Chateaubriand will seem to exaggerate\nthe privilege of the original genius to look on himself as unique when\nhe adds: \u201cI do not know whether the history of the human heart offers\nanother example of this nature.\u201d[152] The pursuit of this phantom of\nlove gives the secret key to Chateaubriand\u2019s life. He takes refuge in\nthe American wilderness in order that he may have in this primitive\nArcadia a more spacious setting for his dream.[153]\n\nIf one wishes to see how very similar these nympholeptic experiences\nare not only from individual to individual, but from country to\ncountry, one has only to compare the passages I have just been quoting\nfrom Chateaubriand with Shelley\u2019s \u201cEpipsychidion.\u201d Shelley writes of\nhis own youth:\n\n    There was a Being whom my spirit oft\n    Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,\n    In the clear golden prime of my youth\u2019s dawn,\n    Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,\n    Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves\n    Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves\n    Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor\n    Paved her light steps; on an imagined shore,\n    Under the gray beak of some promontory\n    She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,\n    That I beheld her not, etc.\n\nAt the time of writing \u201cEpipsychidion\u201d the magic vision happened to\nhave coalesced for the moment with Emilia Viviani, though destined soon\nto flit elsewhere. Shelley invites his \u201csoul\u2019s sister,\u201d the idyllic\n\u201cshe,\u201d who is at bottom only a projection of his own imagination, to\nset sail with him for Arcady. \u201cEpipsychidion,\u201d indeed, might be used as\na manual to illustrate the difference between mere Arcadian dreaming\nand a true Platonism.\n\nChateaubriand is ordinarily and rightly compared with Byron rather\nthan with Shelley. He is plainly, however, far more of a nympholept\nthan Byron. Mr. Hilary, indeed, in Peacock\u2019s \u201cNightmare Abbey\u201d says\nto Mr. Cypress (Byron): \u201cYou talk like a Rosicrucian, who will love\nnothing but a sylph, who does not believe in the existence of a sylph,\nand who yet quarrels with the whole universe for not containing a\nsylph.\u201d[154] Certain distinctions would have to be made if one were\nattempting a complete study of love in Byron; yet after all the love of\nDon Juan and Haid\u00e9e is one that Sappho or Catullus or Burns would have\nunderstood; and these poets were not nympholepts. They were capable\nof burning with love, but not, as Rousseau says of himself, \u201cwithout\nany definite object.\u201d[155] Where Chateaubriand has some resemblance\nto Byron is in his actual libertinism. He is however nearer than\nByron to the libertine of the eighteenth century--to the Lovelace who\npushes the pursuit of pleasure to its final exasperation where it\nbecomes associated with the infliction of pain. Few things are stranger\nthan the blend in Chateaubriand of this Sadic fury[156] with the new\nromantic revery. Indeed almost every type of egotism that may manifest\nitself in the relations of the sexes and that pushed to the superlative\npitch, will be found in this theoretical classicist and champion of\nChristianity. Perhaps no more frenzied cry has ever issued from human\nlips than that uttered by Atala[157] in describing her emotions when\ntorn between her religious vow and her love for Chactas: \u201cWhat dream\ndid not arise in this heart overwhelmed with sorrow. At times in fixing\nmy eyes upon you, I went so far as to form desires as insensate as\nthey were guilty; at one moment I seemed to wish that you and I were\nthe only living creatures upon the earth; and then again, feeling a\ndivinity that held me back in my horrible transports, I seemed to want\nthis divinity to be annihilated provided that clasped in your arms I\nshould roll from abyss to abyss with the ruins of God and the world.\u201d\nLonging is here pushed to a pitch where it passes over, as in Wagner\u2019s\n\u201cTristan and Isolde,\u201d into the desire for annihilation.\n\nActual libertinism is no necessary concomitant of nympholeptic longing.\nThere is a striking difference in this respect between Poe, for\nexample, and his translator and disciple, Baudelaire. Nothing could be\nless suggestive of voluptuousness than Poe\u2019s nostalgia. \u201cHis ecstasy,\u201d\nsays Stedman, \u201cis that of the nympholept seeking an evasive being of\nwhom he has glimpses by moonlight, starlight, even fenlight, but never\nby noonday.\u201d The embodiments of his dream that flit through his tales\nand poems, enhanced his popularity with the ultra-romantic public in\nFrance. These strange apparitions nearly all of whom are epileptic,\ncataleptic, or consumptive made a natural appeal to a school that was\nknown among its detractors as _l\u2019\u00e9cole poitrinaire_. \u201cTender souls,\u201d\nsays Gautier, \u201cwere specially touched by Poe\u2019s feminine figures, so\nvaporous, so transparent and of an almost spectral beauty.\u201d Perhaps\nthe nympholepsy of G\u00e9rard de Nerval is almost equally vaporous and\nethereal. He pursued through various earthly forms the queen of Sheba\nwhom he had loved in a previous existence and hanged himself at last\nwith what he believed to be her garter: an interesting example of the\nrelation between the extreme forms of the romantic imagination and\nmadness.[158]\n\nThe pursuit of a phantom of love through various earthly forms led\nin the course of the romantic movement to certain modifications\nin a famous legend--that of Don Juan. What is emphasized in the\nolder Don Juan is not merely his libertinism but his impiety--the\ngratification of his appetite in deliberate defiance of God. He is\nanimated by Satanic pride, by the lust of power as well as by the lust\nof sensation. In Moli\u00e8re\u2019s treatment of the legend we can also see\nthe beginnings of the philanthropic pose.[159] With the progress of\nRousseauism Don Juan tends to become an \u201cidealist,\u201d to seek to satisfy\nin his amorous adventures not merely his senses but his \u201csoul\u201d and his\nthirst for the \u201cinfinite.\u201d[160] Along with this idealistic Don Juan we\nalso see appearing at a very early stage in the movement the exotic\nDon Juan who wishes to have a great deal of strangeness added to his\nbeauty. In his affair with the \u201cFloridiennes,\u201d Chateaubriand shows the\nway to a long series of exotic lovers.\n\n    I said to my heart between sleeping and waking,\n    Thou wild thing that always art leaping or aching,\n    What black, brown or fair, in what clime, in what nation,\n    By turns has not taught thee a pit-a-pat-ation?\n\nThese lines are so plainly meant for Pierre Loti that one learns\nwith surprise that they were written about 1724 by the Earl of\nPeterborough.[161]\n\nByron\u2019s Don Juan is at times exotic in his tastes, but, as I have\nsaid, he is not on the whole very nympholeptic--much less so than the\nDon Juan of Alfred de Musset, for example. Musset indeed suggests in\nmany respects a less masculine Byron--Mademoiselle Byron as he has\nbeen called. In one whole side of his art as well as his treatment\nof love he simply continues like Byron the eighteenth century. But\nfar more than Byron he aspires to ideal and absolute passion; so that\nthe Musset of the \u201cNuits\u201d is rightly regarded as one of the supreme\nembodiments, and at the same time the chief martyr, of the romantic\nreligion of love. The outcome of his affair with George Sand may\nsymbolize fitly the wrecking of thousands of more obscure lives by this\nmortal chimera. Musset and George Sand sought to come together, yet\nwhat they each sought in love is what the original genius seeks in all\nthings--self-expression. What Musset saw in George Sand was not the\nreal woman but only his own dream. But George Sand was not content thus\nto reflect back passively to Musset his ideal. She was rather a Galatea\nwhose ambition it was to create her own Pygmalion. \u201cYour chimera is\nbetween us,\u201d Musset exclaims; but his chimera was between them too.\nThe more Titan and Titaness try to meet, the more each is driven back\ninto the solitude of his own ego. They were in love with love rather\nthan with one another: and to be thus in love with love means on the\nlast analysis to be in love with one\u2019s own emotions. \u201cTo love,\u201d says\nMusset, \u201cis the great point. What matters the mistress? What matters\nthe flagon provided one have the intoxication?\u201d[162] He then proceeds\nto carry a love of this quality up into the presence of God and to\npresent it to him as his justification for having lived. The art of\nspeaking in tones of religious consecration of what is in its essence\negoistic has never been carried further than by the Rousseauistic\nromanticist. God is always appearing at the most unexpected\nmoments.[163] The highest of which man is capable apparently is to put\nan uncurbed imagination into the service of an emancipated temperament.\nThe credo that Perdican recites at the end of the second act of \u201cOn ne\nbadine pas avec l\u2019Amour\u201d[164] throws light on this point. Men and women\naccording to this credo are filled with every manner of vileness, yet\nthere is something \u201csacred and sublime,\u201d and that is the union of two\nof these despicable beings.\n\nThe confusion of ethical values here is so palpable as scarcely to call\nfor comment. It is precisely when men and women set out to love with\nthis degree of imaginative and emotional unrestraint that they come\nto deserve all the opprobrious epithets Musset heaps upon them. This\nradiant apotheosis of love and the quagmire in which it actually lands\none is, as I have said, the whole subject of \u201cMadame Bovary.\u201d I shall\nneed to return to this particular disproportion between the ideal and\nthe real when I take up the subject of romantic melancholy.\n\nThe romantic lover who identifies the ideal with the superlative thrill\nis turning the ideal into something very transitory. If the _summum\nbonum_ is as Browning avers the \u201ckiss of one girl,\u201d the _summum bonum_\nis lost almost as soon as found. The beautiful moment may however be\nprolonged in revery. The romanticist may brood over it in the tower of\nivory, and when thus enriched by being steeped in his temperament it\nmay become more truly his own than it was in reality. \u201cObjects make\nless impression upon me than my memory of them,\u201d says Rousseau. He is\nindeed the great master of what has been termed the art of impassioned\nrecollection. This art is far from being confined in its application\nto love, though it may perhaps be studied here to the best advantage.\nRousseau, one should note, had very little intellectual memory, but\nan extraordinarily keen memory of images and sensations. He could\nnot, as he tells us in the \u201cConfessions,\u201d learn anything by heart,\nbut he could recall with perfect distinctness what he had eaten for\nbreakfast about thirty years before. In general he recalls his past\nfeelings with a clearness and detail that are perhaps more feminine\nthan masculine. \u201cHe seems,\u201d says Hazlitt, one of his chief disciples\nin the art of impassioned recollection, \u201cto gather up the past moments\nof his being like drops of honey-dew to distil a precious liquor from\nthem; his alternate pleasures and pains are the bead-roll that he tells\nover and piously worships; he makes a rosary of the flowers of hope\nand fancy that strewed his earliest years.\u201d[165] This highly developed\nemotional memory is closely associated with the special quality of the\nromantic imagination--its cult of Arcadian illusion and the wistful\nbackward glance to the vanished paradise of childhood and youth when\nillusion was most spontaneous. \u201cLet me still recall [these memories],\u201d\nsays Hazlitt, \u201cthat they may breathe fresh life into me, and that I\nmay live that birthday of thought and romantic pleasure over again!\nTalk of the ideal! This is the only true ideal--the heavenly tints\nof Fancy reflected in the bubbles that float upon the spring-tide of\nhuman life.\u201d[166] Hazlitt converts criticism itself into an art of\nimpassioned recollection. He loves to linger over the beautiful moments\nof his own literary life. The passing years have increased the richness\nof their temperamental refraction and bestowed upon them the \u201cpathos of\ndistance.\u201d A good example is his account of the two years of his youth\nhe spent in reading the \u201cConfessions\u201d and the \u201cNouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse,\u201d and\nin shedding tears over them. \u201cThey were the happiest years of our life.\nWe may well say of them, sweet is the dew of their memory and pleasant\nthe balm of their recollection.\u201d[167]\n\nRousseau\u2019s own Arcadian memories are usually not of reading, like\nHazlitt\u2019s, but of actual incidents, though he does not hesitate to\nalter these incidents freely, as in his account of his stay at Les\nCharmettes, and to accommodate them to his dream. He neglected the real\nMadame de Warens at the very time that he cherished his recollection of\nher because this recollection was the idealized image of his own youth.\nThe yearning that he expresses at the beginning of his fragmentary\nTenth Promenade, written only a few weeks before his death, is for this\nidyllic period rather than for an actual woman.[168] A happy memory,\nsays Musset, repeating Rousseau, is perhaps more genuine than happiness\nitself. Possibly the three best known love poems of Lamartine, Musset,\nand Hugo respectively--\u201cLe Lac,\u201d \u201cSouvenir,\u201d and \u201cLa Tristesse\nd\u2019Olympio,\u201d all hinge upon impassioned recollection and derive very\ndirectly from Rousseau. Lamartine in particular has caught in the \u201cLe\nLac\u201d the very cadence of Rousseau\u2019s reveries.[169]\n\nImpassioned recollection may evidently be an abundant source of genuine\npoetry, though not, it must be insisted, of the highest poetry. The\npredominant r\u00f4le that it plays in Rousseau and many of his followers\nis simply a sign of an unduly dalliant imagination. Experience after\nall has other uses than to supply furnishings for the tower of ivory;\nit should control the judgment and guide the will; it is in short the\nnecessary basis of conduct. The greater a man\u2019s moral seriousness,\nthe more he will be concerned with doing rather than dreaming (and\nI include right meditation among the forms of doing). He will also\ndemand an art and literature that reflect this his main preoccupation.\nBetween Wordsworth\u2019s definition of poetry as \u201cemotion recollected in\ntranquillity,\u201d and Aristotle\u2019s definition of poetry as the imitation\nof human action according to probability or necessity, a wide gap\nplainly opens. One may prefer Aristotle\u2019s definition to that of\nWordsworth and yet do justice to the merits of Wordsworth\u2019s actual\npoetical performance. Nevertheless the tendency to put prime emphasis\non feeling instead of action shown in the definition is closely related\nto Wordsworth\u2019s failure not only in dramatic but in epic poetry, in all\npoetry in short that depends for its success on an element of plot and\nsustained narrative.\n\nA curious extension of the art of impassioned recollection should\nreceive at least passing mention. It has been so extended as to lead\nto what one may term an unethical use of literature and history. What\nmen have done in the past and the consequences of this doing should\nsurely serve to throw some light on what men should do under similar\ncircumstances in the present. But the man who turns his own personal\nexperience into mere dalliance may very well assume a like dalliant\nattitude towards the larger experience of the race. This experience\nmay merely provide him with pretexts for revery. This narcotic use of\nliterature and history, this art of creating for one\u2019s self an alibi as\nTaine calls it, is nearly as old as the romantic movement. The record\nof the past becomes a gorgeous pageant that lures one to endless\nimaginative exploration and lulls one to oblivion of everything except\nits variety and picturesqueness. It becomes everything in fact except a\nschool of judgment. One may note in connection with this use of history\nthe usual interplay between scientific and emotional naturalism.\nBoth forms of naturalism tend to turn man into the mere product and\nplaything of physical forces--climate, heredity, and the like, over\nwhich his will has no control. Since literature and history have no\nmeaning from the point of view of moral choice they may at least be\nmade to yield the maximum of \u00e6sthetic satisfaction. Oscar Wilde argues\nin this wise for example in his dialogue \u201cThe Critic as Artist,\u201d and\nconcludes that since man has no moral freedom or responsibility, and\ncannot therefore be guided in his conduct by the past experience of the\nrace, he may at least turn this experience into an incomparable \u201cbower\nof dreams.\u201d \u201cThe pain of Leopardi crying out against life becomes\nour pain. Theocritus blows on his pipe and we laugh with the lips of\nnymph and shepherd. In the wolf-skin of Pierre Vidal we flee before\nthe hounds, and in the armor of Lancelot we ride from the bower of the\nqueen. We have whispered the secret of our love beneath the cowl of\nAbelard, and in the stained raiment of Villon have put our shame into\nsong,\u201d etc.\n\nThe assumption that runs through this passage that the mere \u00e6sthetic\ncontemplation of past experience gives the equivalent of actual\nexperience is found in writers of far higher standing than Wilde--in\nRenan, for instance. The \u00e6sthete would look on his dream as a\nsubstitute for the actual, and at the same time convert the actual\ninto a dream. (_Die Welt wird Traum, der Traum wird Welt._) It is\nnot easy to take such a programme of universal dreaming seriously.\nIn the long run the dreamer himself does not find it easy to take it\nseriously. For his attempts to live his chimera result, as we have\nseen in the case of romantic love, in more or less disastrous defeat\nand disillusion. The disillusioned romanticist continues to cling to\nhis dream, but intellectually, at least, he often comes at the same\ntime to stand aloof from it. This subject of disillusion may best be\nconsidered, along with certain other important aspects of the movement,\nin connection with the singular phenomenon known as romantic irony.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nROMANTIC IRONY\n\n\nThe first romanticist who worked out a theory of irony was Friedrich\nSchlegel.[170] The attempt to put this theory into practice, after\nthe fashion of Tieck\u2019s plays, seemed and seemed rightly even to later\nrepresentatives of the movement to be extravagant. Thus Hegel, who\nin his ideas on art continues in so many respects the Schlegels,\nrepudiates irony. Formerly, says Heine, who is himself in any larger\nsurvey, the chief of German romantic ironists, when a man had said a\nstupid thing he had said it; now he can explain it away as \u201cirony.\u201d\nNevertheless one cannot afford to neglect this early German theory.\nIt derives in an interesting way from the views that the partisans\nof original genius had put forth regarding the r\u00f4le of the creative\nimagination. The imagination as we have seen is to be free to wander\nwild in its own empire of chimeras. Rousseau showed the possibilities\nof an imagination that is at once extraordinarily rich and also\nperfectly free in this sense. I have said that Kant believed like the\noriginal genius that the nobility of art depends on the free \u201cplay\u201d\nof the imagination; though he adds that art should at the same time\nsubmit to a purpose that is not a purpose--whatever that may mean.\nSchiller in his \u201c\u00c6sthetic Letters\u201d relaxed the rationalistic rigor of\nKant in favor of feeling and associated even more emphatically the\nideality and creativeness of art with its free imaginative play,\nits emancipation from specific aim. The personal friction that arose\nbetween the Schlegels and Schiller has perhaps obscured somewhat their\ngeneral indebtedness to him. The Schlegelian irony in particular merely\npushes to an extreme the doctrine that nothing must interfere with\nthe imagination in its creative play. \u201cThe caprice of the poet,\u201d as\nFriedrich Schlegel says, \u201csuffers no law above itself.\u201d Why indeed\nshould the poet allow any restriction to be placed upon his caprice in\na universe that is after all only a projection of himself? The play\ntheory of art is here supplemented by the philosophy of Fichte.[171]\nIn justice to him it should be said that though his philosophy may\nnot rise above the level of temperament, he at least had a severe and\nstoical temperament, and if only for this reason his \u201ctranscendental\nego\u201d is far less obviously ego than that which appears in the irony\nof his romantic followers. When a man has taken possession of his\ntranscendental ego, according to the Schlegels and Novalis, he looks\ndown on his ordinary ego and stands aloof from it. His ordinary ego may\nachieve poetry but his transcendental ego must achieve the poetry of\npoetry. But there is in him something that may stand aloof even from\nthis aloofness and so on indefinitely. Romantic irony joins here with\nwhat is perhaps the chief preoccupation of the German romanticists, the\nidea of the infinite or, as they term it, the striving for endlessness\n(_Unendlichkeitstreben_). Now, according to the romanticist, a man\ncan show that he lays hold imaginatively upon the infinite only by\nexpanding beyond what his age holds to be normal and central--its\nconventions in short; nay more, he must expand away from any centre he\nhas himself achieved. For to hold fast to a centre of any kind implies\nthe acceptance of limitations and to accept limitations is to be\nfinite, and to be finite is, as Blake says, to become mechanical; and\nthe whole of romanticism is a protest against the mechanizing of life.\nNo man therefore deserves to rank as a transcendental egotist unless\nhe has learned to mock not merely at the convictions of others but at\nhis own, unless he has become capable of self-parody. \u201cObjection,\u201d says\nNietzsche, \u201cevasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of\nhealth; everything absolute belongs to pathology.\u201d[172]\n\nOne cannot repeat too often that what the romanticist always sees at\nthe centre is either the mere rationalist or else the philistine; and\nhe therefore inclines to measure his own distinction by his remoteness\nfrom any possible centre. Now thus to be always moving away from\ncentrality is to be paradoxical, and romantic irony is, as Friedrich\nSchlegel says, identical with paradox. Irony, paradox and the idea of\nthe infinite have as a matter of fact so many points of contact in\nromanticism that they may profitably be treated together.\n\nFriedrich Schlegel sought illustrious sponsors in the past for his\ntheory of irony. Among others he invoked the Greeks and put himself in\nparticular under the patronage of Socrates. But Greek irony always had\na centre. The ironical contrast is between this centre and something\nthat is less central. Take for example the so-called irony of Greek\ntragedy. The tragic character speaks and acts in darkness as to\nhis impending doom, regarding which the spectator is comparatively\nenlightened. To take another example, the German romanticists\nwere especially absurd in their attempts to set up Tieck as a new\nAristophanes. For Aristophanes, however wild and irresponsible he may\nseem in the play of his imagination, never quite loses sight of his\ncentre, a centre from which the comic spirit proceeds and to which it\nreturns. Above all, however far he may push his mockery, he never mocks\nat his own convictions; he never, like Tieck, indulges in self-parody.\nA glance at the parabasis of almost any one of his plays will suffice\nto show that he was willing to lay himself open to the charge of\nbeing unduly didactic rather than to the charge of being aimless. The\nuniverse of Tieck, on the other hand, is a truly romantic universe: it\nhas no centre, or what amounts to the same thing, it has at its centre\nthat symbol of spiritual stagnation, the philistine, and his inability\nto rise above a dull didacticism. The romanticist cherishes the\nillusion that to be a spiritual vagrant is to be exalted on a pinnacle\nabove the plain citizen. According to Professor Stuart P. Sherman, the\nIrish dramatist Synge indulges in gypsy laughter from the bushes,[173]\na good description of romantic irony in general.\n\nThe irony of Socrates, to take the most important example of Greek\nirony, is not of the centrifugal character. Socrates professes\nignorance, and this profession seems very ironical, for it turns out\nthat his ignorance is more enlightened, that is, more central than\nother men\u2019s swelling conceit of knowledge. It does not follow that\nSocrates is insincere in his profession of ignorance; for though his\nknowledge may be as light in comparison with that of the ordinary\nAthenian, he sees that in comparison with true and perfect knowledge it\nis only darkness. For Socrates was no mere rationalist; he was a man of\ninsight, one would even be tempted to say a mystic were it not for the\ncorruption of the term mystic by the romanticists. This being the case\nhe saw that man is by his very nature precluded from true and perfect\nknowledge. A path, however, opens up before him towards this knowledge,\nand this path he should seek to follow even though it is in a sense\nendless, even though beyond any centre he can attain within the bounds\nof his finite experience there is destined always to be something still\nmore central. Towards the mere dogmatist, the man who thinks he has\nachieved some fixed and final centre, the attitude of Socrates is that\nof scepticism. This attitude implies a certain degree of detachment\nfrom the received beliefs and conventions of his time, and it is\nall the more important to distinguish here between Socrates and the\nromanticists because of the superficial likeness; and also because\nthere is between the Rousseauists and some of the Greeks who lived\nabout the time of Socrates a real likeness. Promethean individualism\nwas already rife at that time, and on the negative side it resulted\nthen as since in a break with tradition, and on the positive side in an\noscillation between the cult of force and the exaltation of sympathy,\nbetween admiration for the strong man and compassion for the weak. It\nis hardly possible to overlook these Promethean elements in the plays\nof Euripides. Antisthenes and the cynics, again, who professed to\nderive from Socrates, established an opposition between \u201cnature\u201d and\nconvention even more radical in some respects than that established\nby Rousseau. Moreover Socrates himself was perhaps needlessly\nunconventional and also unduly inclined to paradox--as when he\nsuggested to the jury who tried him that as an appropriate punishment\nhe should be supported at the public expense in the prytaneum. Yet in\nhis inner spirit and in spite of certain minor eccentricities, Socrates\nwas neither a superman nor a Bohemian, but a humanist. Now that the\ncritical spirit was abroad and the traditional basis for conduct was\nfailing, he was chiefly concerned with putting conduct on a positive\nand critical basis. In establishing this basis his constant appeal is\nto actual experience and the more homely this experience the more it\nseems to please him. While working out the new basis for conduct he\ncontinues to observe the existing laws and customs; or if he gets away\nfrom the traditional discipline it is towards a stricter discipline;\nif he repudiates in aught the common sense of his day, it is in\nfavor of a commoner sense. One may say indeed that Socrates and the\nRousseauists (who are in this respect like some of the sophists) are\nboth moving away from convention but in opposite directions. What the\nromanticist opposes to convention is his \u201cgenius,\u201d that is his unique\nand private self. What Socrates opposes to convention is his universal\nand ethical self. According to Friedrich Schlegel, a man can never be a\nphilosopher but only become one; if at any time he thinks that he is a\nphilosopher he ceases to become one. The romanticist is right in thus\nthinking that to remain fixed at any particular point is to stagnate.\nMan is, as Nietzsche says, the being who must always surpass himself,\nbut he has--and this is a point that Nietzsche did not sufficiently\nconsider--a choice of direction in his everlasting pilgrimage. The\nman who is moving away from some particular centre will always seem\nparadoxical to the man who remains at it, but he may be moving away\nfrom it in either the romantic or the ethical direction. In the first\ncase he is moving from a more normal to a less normal experience,\nin the second case he is moving towards an experience that is more\nprofoundly representative. The New Testament abounds in examples of the\nethical paradox--what one may term the paradox of humility. (A man must\nlose his life to find it, etc.) It is possible, however, to push even\nthis type of paradox too far, to push it to a point where it affronts\nnot merely some particular convention but the good sense of mankind\nitself, and this is a far graver matter. Pascal falls into this excess\nwhen he says that sickness is the natural state of the Christian. As a\nresult of its supreme emphasis on humility Christianity from the start\ninclined unduly perhaps towards this type of paradox. It is hardly\nworth while, as Goethe said, to live seventy years in this world if all\nthat one learn here below is only folly in the sight of God.\n\nOne of the most delicate of tasks is to determine whether a paradox\noccupies a position more or less central than the convention to which\nit is opposed. A somewhat similar problem is to determine which of\ntwo differing conventions has the greater degree of centrality. For\none convention may as compared with another seem highly paradoxical.\nIn 1870, it was announced at Peking that his Majesty the Emperor had\nhad the good fortune to catch the small-pox. The auspiciousness of\nsmall-pox was part of the Chinese convention at this time, but to\nthose of us who live under another convention it is a blessing we would\nwillingly forego. But much in the Chinese convention, so far from being\nabsurd, reflects the Confucian good sense, and if the Chinese decide to\nbreak with their convention, they should evidently consider long and\ncarefully in which direction they are going to move--whether towards\nsomething more central, or something more eccentric.\n\nAs to the direction in which Rousseau is moving and therefore as\nto the quality of his paradoxes there can be little question. His\nparadoxes--and he is perhaps the most paradoxical of writers--reduce\nthemselves on analysis to the notion that man has suffered a loss of\ngoodness by being civilized, by having had imposed on his unconscious\nand instinctive self some humanistic or religious discipline--e.g.,\n\u201cThe man who reflects is a depraved animal\u201d; \u201cTrue Christians are meant\nto be slaves\u201d; decorum is only the \u201cvarnish of vice\u201d or the \u201cmask of\nhypocrisy.\u201d Innumerable paradoxes of this kind will immediately occur\nto one as characteristic of Rousseau and his followers. These paradoxes\nmay be termed in opposition to those of humility, the paradoxes of\nspontaneity. The man who holds them is plainly moving in an opposite\ndirection not merely from the Christian but from the Socratic\nindividualist. He is moving from the more representative to the less\nrepresentative and not towards some deeper centre of experience,\nas would be the case if he were tending towards either humanism or\nreligion. Wordsworth has been widely accepted not merely as a poet but\nas a religious teacher, and it is therefore important to note that his\nparadoxes are prevailingly of the Rousseauistic type. His verse is\nnever more spontaneous or, as he would say, inevitable, than when it\nis celebrating the gospel of spontaneity. I have already pointed out\nsome of the paradoxes that he opposes to pseudo-classic decorum: e.g.,\nhis attempt to bestow poetical dignity and importance upon the ass,\nand to make of it a model of moral excellence, also to find poetry in\nan idiot boy and to associate sublimity with a pedlar in defiance of\nthe ordinary character of pedlars. In general Wordsworth indulges in\nRousseauistic paradoxes when he urges us to look to peasants for the\ntrue language of poetry and would have us believe that man is taught\nby \u201cwoods and rills\u201d and not by contact with his fellow men. He pushes\nthis latter paradox to a point that would have made even Rousseau\n\u201cstare and gasp\u201d when he asserts that\n\n    One impulse from a vernal wood\n    May teach you more of man\n    Of moral evil and of good\n    Than all the sages can.\n\nAnother form of this same paradox that what comes from nature\nspontaneously is better than what can be acquired by conscious effort\nis found in his poem \u201cLucy Gray\u201d:\n\n    No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;\n    She dwelt on a wide moor,\n    The sweetest thing that ever grew\n    Beside a human door!\n\nTrue maidenhood is made up of a thousand decorums; but this\nRousseauistic maiden would have seemed too artificial if she had been\nreared in a house instead of \u201cgrowing\u201d out of doors; she might in\nthat case have been a human being and not a \u201cthing\u201d and this would\nplainly have detracted from her spontaneity. Wordsworth\u2019s paradoxes\nabout children have a similar origin. A child who at the age of six\nis a \u201cmighty prophet, seer blest,\u201d is a highly improbable not to say\nimpossible child. The \u201cNature\u201d again of \u201cHeart-Leap Well\u201d which both\nfeels and inspires pity is more remote from normal experience than the\nNature \u201cred in tooth and claw\u201d of Tennyson. Wordsworth indeed would\nseem to have a penchant for paradox even when he is less obviously\ninspired by his naturalistic thesis.\n\nA study of Wordsworth\u2019s life shows that he became progressively\ndisillusioned regarding Rousseauistic spontaneity. He became less\nparadoxical as he grew older and in almost the same measure, one is\ntempted to say, less poetical. He returns gradually to the traditional\nforms until radicals come to look upon him as the \u201clost leader.\u201d He\nfinds it hard, however, to wean his imagination from its primitivistic\nArcadias; so that what one finds, in writing like the \u201cEcclesiastical\nSonnets,\u201d is not imaginative fire but at best a sober intellectual\nconviction, an opposition between the head and the heart in short that\nsuggests somewhat Chateaubriand and the \u201cGenius of Christianity.\u201d[174]\nIf Wordsworth had lost faith in his revolutionary and naturalistic\nideal, and had at the same time refused to return to the traditional\nforms, one might then have seen in his work something of the homeless\nhovering of the romantic ironist. If, on the other hand, he had\nworked away from the centre that the traditional forms give to life\ntowards a more positive and critical centre, if, in other words,\nhe had broken with the past not on Rousseauistic, but on Socratic\nlines, he would have needed an imagination of different quality, an\nimagination less idyllic and pastoral and more ethical than that he\nusually displays.[175] For the ethical imagination alone can guide one\nnot indeed to any fixed centre but to an ever increasing centrality.\nWe are here confronted once more with the question of the infinite\nwhich comes very close to the ultimate ground of difference between\nclassicist and romanticist. The centre that one perceives with the\naid of the classical imagination and that sets bounds to impulse and\ndesire may, as I have already said, be defined in opposition to the\nouter infinite of expansion as the inner or human infinite. If we\nmoderns, to repeat Nietzsche, are unable to attain proportionateness\nit is because \u201cour itching is really the itching for the infinite,\nthe immeasurable.\u201d Thus to associate the infinite only with the\nimmeasurable, to fail to perceive that the element of form and the curb\nit puts on the imagination are not external and artificial, but come\nfrom the very depths, is to betray the fact that one is a barbarian.\nNietzsche and many other romanticists are capable on occasion of\nadmiring the proportionateness that comes from allegiance to some\ncentre. But after all the human spirit must be ever advancing, and\nits only motive powers, according to romantic logic, are wonder and\ncuriosity; and so from the perfectly sound premise that man is the\nbeing who must always surpass himself, Nietzsche draws the perfectly\nunsound conclusion that the only way for man thus constantly to surpass\nhimself and so show his infinitude is to spurn all limits and \u201clive\ndangerously.\u201d The Greeks themselves, according to Renan, will some\nday seem the \u201capostles of ennui,\u201d for the very perfection of their\nform shows a lack of aspiration. To submit to form is to be static,\nwhereas \u201cromantic poetry,\u201d says Friedrich Schlegel magnificently, is\n\u201cuniversal progressive poetry.\u201d Now the only effective counterpoise to\nthe endless expansiveness that is implied in such a programme is the\ninner or human infinite of concentration. For it is perfectly true that\nthere is something in man that is not satisfied with the finite and\nthat, if he becomes stationary, he is at once haunted by the spectre\nof ennui. Man may indeed be defined as the insatiable animal; and the\nmore imaginative he is the more insatiable he is likely to become, for\nit is the imagination that gives him access to the infinite in every\nsense of the word. In a way Baudelaire is right when he describes\nennui as a \u201cdelicate monster\u201d that selects as his prey the most highly\ngifted natures. Marguerite d\u2019Angoul\u00eame already speaks of the \u201cennui\nproper to well-born spirits.\u201d Now religion seeks no less than romance\nan escape from ennui. Bossuet is at one with Baudelaire when he\ndilates on that \u201cinexorable ennui which is the very substance of human\nlife.\u201d But Bossuet and Baudelaire differ utterly in the remedies they\npropose for ennui. Baudelaire hopes to escape from ennui by dreaming\nof the superlative emotional adventure, by indulging in infinite,\nindeterminate desire, and becomes more and more restless in his quest\nfor a something that at the end always eludes him. This infinite of\nnostalgia has nothing in common with the infinite of religion. No\ndistinction is more important than that between the man who feels the\ndivine discontent of religion, and the man who is suffering from\nmere romantic restlessness. According to religion man must seek the\nsatisfaction that the finite fails to give by looking not without but\nwithin; and to look within he must in the literal sense of the word\nundergo conversion. A path will then be found to open up before him, a\npath of which he cannot see the end. He merely knows that to advance\non this path is to increase in peace, poise, centrality; though beyond\nany calm he can attain is always a deeper centre of calm. The goal\nis at an infinite remove. This is the truth that St. Augustine puts\ntheologically when he exclaims: \u201cFor thou hast made us for thyself\nand our heart is restless until it findeth peace in thee.\u201d[176] One\nshould insist that this question of the two infinites is not abstract\nand metaphysical but bears on what is most concrete and immediate\nin experience. If the inner and human infinite cannot be formulated\nintellectually, it can be known practically in its effect on life and\nconduct. Goethe says of Werther that he \u201ctreated his heart like a sick\nchild; its every wish was granted it.\u201d \u201cMy restless heart asked me\nfor something else,\u201d says Rousseau. \u201cRen\u00e9,\u201d says Chateaubriand, \u201cwas\nenchanted, tormented and, as it were, possessed by the demon of his\nheart.\u201d Mr. Galsworthy speaks in a similar vein of \u201cthe aching for the\nwild, the passionate, the new, that never quite dies in a man\u2019s heart.\u201d\nBut is there not deep down in the human breast another heart that is\nfelt as a power of control over this romantic heart and can keep within\ndue bounds \u201cits aching for the wild, the passionate, the new.\u201d This is\nthe heart, it would seem, to which a man must hearken if he is not for\na \u201clittle honey of romance\u201d to abandon his \u201cancient wisdom and austere\ncontrol.\u201d\n\nThe romantic corruption of the infinite here joins with the romantic\ncorruption of conscience, the transformation of conscience from an\ninner check into an expansive emotion that I have already traced in\nShaftesbury and Rousseau. But one should add that in some of its\naspects this corruption of the idea of the infinite antedates the\nwhole modern movement. At least the beginnings of it can be found in\nancient Greece,--especially in that \u201cdelirious and diseased Greece\u201d\nof which Joubert speaks--the Greece of the neo-Platonists. There is\nalready in the neo-Platonic notion of the infinite a strong element\nof expansiveness. Aristotle and the older Greeks conceived of the\ninfinite in this sense as bad. That something in human nature which\nis always reaching out for more--whether the more of sensation or of\npower or of knowledge--was, they held, to be strictly reined in and\ndisciplined to the law of measure. All the furies lie in wait for the\nman who overextends himself. He is ripening for Nemesis. \u201cNothing too\nmuch.\u201d \u201cThink as a mortal.\u201d \u201cThe half is better than the whole.\u201d In his\nattitude towards man\u2019s expansive self the Greek as a rule stands for\nmediation, and not like the more austere Christian, for renunciation.\nYet Plato frequently and Aristotle at times mount from the humanistic\nto the religious level. One of the most impressive passages in\nphilosophy is that in which Aristotle, perhaps the chief exponent of\nthe law of measure, affirms that one who has really faced about and\nis moving towards the inner infinite needs no warning against excess:\n\u201cWe should not give heed,\u201d he says, \u201cto those who bid one think as\na mortal, but so far as we can we should make ourselves immortal and\ndo all with a view to a life in accord with the best Principle in\nus.\u201d[177] (This Principle Aristotle goes on to say is a man\u2019s true\nself.)\n\nThe earlier Greek distinction between an outer and evil infinite\nof expansive desire and an inner infinite that is raised above the\nflux and yet rules it, is, in the Aristotelian phrase, its \u201cunmoved\nmover,\u201d became blurred, as I have said, during the Alexandrian period.\nThe Alexandrian influence entered to some extent into Christianity\nitself and filtered through various channels down to modern times.\nSome of the romanticists went directly to the neo-Platonists,\nespecially Plotinus. Still more were affected by Jacob Boehme, who\nhimself had no direct knowledge of the Alexandrian theosophy. This\ntheosophy appears nevertheless in combination with other elements in\nhis writings. He appealed to the new school by his insistence on the\nelement of appetency or desire, by his universal symbolizing, above\nall by his tendency to make of the divine an affirmative instead of a\nrestrictive force--a something that pushes forward instead of holding\nback. The expansive elements are moderated in Boehme himself and in\ndisciples like Law by genuinely religious elements--e.g., humility\nand the idea of conversion. What happens when the expansiveness is\ndivorced from these elements, one may see in another English follower\nof Boehme--William Blake. To be both beautiful and wise one needs,\naccording to Blake, only to be exuberant. The influence of Boehme\nblends in Blake with the new \u00e6stheticism. Jesus himself, he says, so\nfar from being restrained \u201cwas all virtue, and acted from impulse not\nfrom rules.\u201d This purely \u00e6sthetic and impulsive Jesus has been cruelly\nmaligned, as we learn from the poem entitled the \u201cEverlasting Gospel,\u201d\nby being represented as humble and chaste. Religion itself thus becomes\nin Blake the mere sport of a powerful and uncontrolled imagination,\nand this we are told is mysticism. I have already contrasted with\nthis type of mysticism something that goes under the same name and\nis yet utterly different--the mysticism of ancient India. Instead\nof conceiving of the divine in terms of expansion the Oriental sage\ndefines it experimentally as the \u201cinner check.\u201d No more fundamental\ndistinction perhaps can be made than that between those who associate\nthe good with the yes-principle and those who associate it rather with\nthe no-principle. But I need not repeat what I have said elsewhere on\nthe romantic attempt to discredit the veto power. Let no one think\nthat this contrast is merely metaphysical. The whole problem of evil\nis involved in it and all the innumerable practical consequences that\nfollow from one\u2019s attitude towards this problem. The passage in which\nFaust defines the devil as the \u201cspirit that always says no\u201d would seem\nto derive directly or indirectly from Boehme. According to Boehme\ngood can be known only through evil. God therefore divides his will\ninto two, the \u201cyes\u201d and the \u201cno,\u201d and so founds an eternal contrast\nto himself in order to enter into a struggle with it, and finally to\ndiscipline and assimilate it. The object of all manifested nature\nis the transforming of the will which says \u201cno\u201d into the will which\nsays \u201cyes.\u201d[178] The opposition between good and evil tends to lose\nits reality when it thus becomes a sort of sham battle that God gets\nup with himself (without contraries is no progression, says Blake),\nor when, to take the form that the doctrine assumes in \u201cFaust,\u201d the\ndevil appears as the necessary though unwilling instrument of man\u2019s\nbetterment. The recoil from the doctrine of total depravity was perhaps\ninevitable. What is sinister is that advantage has been taken of this\nrecoil to tamper with the problem of evil itself. Partial evil we are\ntold is universal good; or else evil is only good in the making. For\na Rousseau or a Shelley it is something mysteriously imposed from\nwithout on a spotless human nature; for a Wordsworth it is something\none may escape by contemplating the speargrass on the wall.[179] For a\nNovalis sin is a mere illusion of which a man should rid his mind if he\naspires to become a \u201cmagic idealist.\u201d[180] In spite of his quaint Tory\nprejudices Dr. Johnson is one of the few persons in recent times that\none may term wise without serious qualification because he never dodges\nor equivocates in dealing with the problem of evil; he never fades away\nfrom the fact of evil into some theosophic or sentimental dream.\n\nThe rise of a purely expansive view of life in the eighteenth century\nwas marked by a great revival of enthusiasm. The chief grievance of\nthe expansionist indeed against the no-principle is that it kills\nenthusiasm. But concentration no less than expansion may have its own\ntype of enthusiasm. It is therefore imperative in an age that has\nrepudiated the traditional sanctions and set out to walk by the inner\nlight that all general terms and in particular the term enthusiasm\nshould be protected by a powerful dialectic. Nothing is more perilous\nthan an uncritical enthusiasm, since it is only by criticism that one\nmay determine whether the enthusiast is a man who is moving towards\nwisdom or is a candidate for Bedlam. The Rousseauist, however, exalts\nenthusiasm at the same time that he depreciates discrimination.\n\u201cEnthusiasm,\u201d says Emerson, \u201cis the height of man. It is the passage\nfrom the human to the divine.\u201d It is only too characteristic of Emerson\nand of the whole school to which he belongs, to put forth statements of\nthis kind without any dialectical protection. The type of enthusiasm\nto which Emerson\u2019s praise might be properly applied, the type that\nhas been defined as exalted peace, though extremely rare, actually\nexists. A commoner type of enthusiasm during the past century is that\nwhich has been defined as \u201cthe rapturous disintegration of civilized\nhuman nature.\u201d When we have got our fingers well burned as a result of\nour failure to make the necessary discriminations, we may fly to the\nopposite extreme like the men of the early eighteenth century among\nwhom, as is well known, enthusiasm had become a term of vituperation.\nThis dislike of enthusiasm was the natural recoil from the uncritical\nfollowing of the inner light by the fanatics of the seventeenth\ncentury. Shaftesbury attacks this older type of enthusiasm and at the\nsame time prepares the way for the new emotional enthusiasm. One cannot\nsay, however, that any such sharp separation of types appears in the\nrevival of enthusiasm that begins about the middle of the eighteenth\ncentury, though some of those who were working for this revival felt\nthe need of discriminating:\n\n    That which concerns us therefore is to see\n    What Species of Enthusiasts we be--\n\nsays John Byrom in his poem on Enthusiasm. The different species,\nhowever,--the enthusiasm of the Evangelicals and Wesleyans, the\nenthusiasm of those who like Law and his disciple Byrom hearken back\nto Boehme, the enthusiasm of Rousseau and the sentimentalists, tend to\nrun together. To \u201clet one\u2019s feelings run in soft luxurious flow,\u201d[181]\nis, as Newman says, at the opposite pole from spirituality. Yet much of\nthis mere emotional facility appears alongside of genuinely religious\nelements in the enthusiasm of the Methodist. One may get a notion of\nthe jumble to which I refer by reading a book like Henry Brooke\u2019s\n\u201cFool of Quality.\u201d Brooke is at one and the same time a disciple of\nBoehme and Rousseau while being more or less affiliated with the\nMethodistic movement. The book indeed was revised and abridged by\nJohn Wesley himself and in this form had a wide circulation among his\nfollowers.[182]\n\nThe enthusiasm that has marked the modern movement has plainly not been\nsufficiently critical. Perhaps the first discovery that any one will\nmake who wishes to be at once critical and enthusiastic is that in a\ngenuinely spiritual enthusiasm the inner light and the inner check\nare practically identical. He will find that if he is to rise above\nthe naturalistic level he must curb constantly his expansive desires\nwith reference to some centre that is set above the flux. Here let me\nrepeat is the supreme r\u00f4le of the imagination. The man who has ceased\nto lean on outer standards can perceive his new standards or centre of\ncontrol only through its aid. I have tried to show that to aim at such\na centre is not to be stagnant and stationary but on the contrary to\nbe at once purposeful and progressive. To assert that the creativeness\nof the imagination is incompatible with centrality or, what amounts to\nthe same thing, with purpose, is to assert that the creativeness of\nthe imagination is incompatible with reality or at least such reality\nas man may attain. Life is at best a series of illusions; the whole\noffice of philosophy is to keep it from degenerating into a series\nof delusions. If we are to keep it from thus degenerating we need to\ngrasp above all the difference between the eccentric and the concentric\nimagination. To look for serious guidance to an imagination that owes\nallegiance to nothing above itself, is to run the risk of taking some\ncloud bank for terra firma. The eccentric imagination may give access\nto the \u201cinfinite,\u201d but it is an infinite empty of content and therefore\nan infinite not of peace but of restlessness. Can any one maintain\nseriously that there is aught in common between the \u201cstriving for\nendlessness\u201d of the German romanticists and the supreme and perfect\nCentre that Dante glimpses at the end of the \u201cDivine Comedy\u201d and in the\npresence of which he becomes dumb?\n\nWe are told to follow the gleam, but the counsel is somewhat ambiguous.\nThe gleam that one follows may be that which is associated with the\nconcentric imagination and which gives steadiness and informing\npurpose, or it may be the romantic will o\u2019 the wisp. One may, as I\nhave said, in recreative moments allow one\u2019s imagination to wander\nwithout control, but to take these wanderings seriously is to engage\nin a sort of endless pilgrimage in the void. The romanticist is\nconstantly yielding to the \u201cspell\u201d of this or the \u201clure\u201d of that, or\nthe \u201ccall\u201d of some other thing. But when the wonder and strangeness\nthat he is chasing are overtaken, they at once cease to be wondrous\nand strange, while the gleam is already dancing over some other object\non the distant horizon. For nothing is in itself romantic, it is only\nimagining that makes it so. Romanticism is the pursuit of the element\nof illusion in things for its own sake; it is in short the cherishing\nof glamour. The word glamour introduced into literary usage from\npopular Scotch usage by Walter Scott itself illustrates this tendency.\nTraced etymologically, it turns out to be the same word as grammar. In\nan illiterate age to know how to write at all was a weird and magical\naccomplishment,[183] but in an educated age, nothing is so drearily\nunromantic, so lacking in glamour as grammar.\n\nThe final question that arises in connection with this subject is\nwhether one may quell the mere restlessness of one\u2019s spirit and impose\nupon it an ethical purpose. \u201cThe man who has no definite end is lost,\u201d\nsays Montaigne. The upshot of the romantic supposition that purpose is\nincompatible with the freedom of the imagination is a philosophy like\nthat of Nietzsche. He can conceive of nothing beyond whirling forever\non the wheel of change (\u201cthe eternal recurrence\u201d) without any goal or\nfirm refuge that is set above the flux. He could not help doubting\nat times whether happiness was to be found after all in mere endless,\npurposeless mutation.\n\n    Have _I_ still a goal? A haven towards which _my_ sail is set?\n    A good wind? Ah, he only who knoweth _whither_ he saileth,\n    knoweth what wind is good, and a fair wind for him.\n\n    What still remaineth to me? A heart weary and flippant; an\n    unstable will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone.\n\n    \u2026\n\n    _Where_ is _my_ home? For it do I ask and seek, and have\n    sought, but have not found it. O eternal everywhere, O eternal\n    nowhere, O eternal--in vain.[184]\n\nTo allow one\u2019s self to revolve passively on the wheel of change\n(_sams\u0101ra_) seemed to the Oriental sage the acme of evil. An old Hindu\nwriter compares the man who does not impose a firm purpose upon the\nmanifold solicitations of sense to a charioteer who fails to rein\nin his restless steeds[185]--a comparison suggested independently\nto Ricarda Huch by the lives of the German romanticists. In the\nabsence of central control, the parts of the self tend to pull each\nin a different way. It is not surprising that in so centrifugal a\nmovement, at least on the human and spiritual level, one should find\nso many instances of disintegrated and multiple personality. The\nfascination that the phenomenon of the double (_Doppelg\u00e4ngerei_) had\nfor Hoffmann and other German romanticists is well known.[186] It may\nwell be that some such disintegration of the self takes place under\nextreme emotional stress.[187] We should not fail to note here the\nusual co\u00f6peration between the emotional and the scientific naturalist.\nLike the romanticist, the scientific psychologist is more interested\nin the abnormal than in the normal. According to the Freudians, the\npersonality that has become incapable of any conscious aim is not left\nentirely rudderless. The guidance that it is unable to give itself is\nsupplied to it by some \u201cwish,\u201d usually obscene, from the sub-conscious\nrealm of dreams. The Freudian then proceeds to develop what may be true\nof the hysterical degenerate into a complete view of life.\n\nMan is in danger of being deprived of every last scrap and vestige of\nhis humanity by this working together of romanticism and science. For\nman becomes human only in so far as he exercises moral choice. He must\nalso enter upon the pathway of ethical purpose if he is to achieve\nhappiness. \u201cMoods,\u201d says Novalis, \u201cundefined emotions, not defined\nemotions and feelings, give happiness.\u201d The experience of life shows\nso plainly that this is not so that the romanticist is tempted to\nseek shelter once more from his mere vagrancy of spirit in the outer\ndiscipline he has abandoned. \u201cTo such unsettled ones as thou, seemeth\nat last even a prisoner blessed. Didst thou ever see how captured\ncriminals sleep? They sleep quietly, they enjoy their new security. \u2026\nBeware in the end lest a narrow faith capture thee, a hard rigorous\ndelusion! For now everything that is narrow and fixed seduceth and\ntempteth thee.\u201d[188]\n\nVarious reasons have been given for romantic conversions to\nCatholicism--for example, the desire for confession (though the\nCatholic does not, like the Rousseauist, confess himself from the\nhousetops), the \u00e6sthetic appeal of Catholic rites and ceremonies, etc.\nThe sentence of Nietzsche puts us on the track of still another reason.\nThe affinity of certain romantic converts for the Church is that of the\njelly-fish for the rock. It is appropriate that Friedrich Schlegel,\nthe great apostle of irony, should after a career as a heaven-storming\nTitan end by submitting to this most rigid of all forms of outer\nauthority.\n\nFor it should now be possible to return after our digression on paradox\nand the idea of the infinite and the perils of aimlessness, to romantic\nirony with a truer understanding of its significance. Like so much\nelse in this movement it is an attempt to give to a grave psychic\nweakness the prestige of strength--unless indeed one conceives the\nsuperior personality to be the one that lacks a centre and principle of\ncontrol. Man it has usually been held should think lightly of himself\nbut should have some conviction for which he is ready to die. The\nromantic ironist, on the other hand, is often morbidly sensitive about\nhimself, but is ready to mock at his own convictions. Rousseau was no\nromantic ironist, but the root of self-parody is found nevertheless\nin his saying that his heart and his head did not seem to belong to\nthe same individual. Everything of course is a matter of degree. What\npoor mortal can say that he is perfectly at one with himself? Friedrich\nSchlegel is not entirely wrong when he discovers elements of irony\nbased on an opposition between the head and the heart in writers like\nAriosto and Cervantes, who love the very medi\u00e6val tales that they are\ntreating in a spirit of mockery. Yet the laughter of Cervantes is not\ngypsy laughter. He is one of those who next to Shakespeare deserve the\npraise of having dwelt close to the centre of human nature and so can\nin only a minor degree be ranked with the romantic ironists.\n\nIn the extreme type of romantic ironist not only are intellect and\nemotion at loggerheads but action often belies both: he thinks one\nthing and feels another and does still a third. The most ironical\ncontrast of all is that between the romantic \u201cideal\u201d and the actual\nevent. The whole of romantic morality is from this point of view, as\nI have tried to show, a monstrous series of ironies. The pacifist,\nfor example, has been disillusioned so often that he should by this\ntime be able to qualify as a romantic ironist, to look, that is, with\na certain aloofness on his own dream. The crumbling of the ideal is\noften so complete indeed when put to the test that irony is at times,\nwe may suppose, a merciful alternative to madness. When disillusion\novertakes the uncritical enthusiast, when he finds that he has taken\nsome cloud bank for terra firma, he continues to cling to his dream,\nbut at the same time wishes to show that he is no longer the dupe of\nit; and so \u201chot baths of sentiment,\u201d as Jean Paul says of his novels,\n\u201care followed by cold douches of irony.\u201d The true German master of\nthe genre is, however, Heine. Every one knows with what coldness his\nhead came to survey the enthusiasms of his heart, whether in love or\npolitics. One may again measure the havoc that life had wrought with\nRenan\u2019s ideals if one compares the tone of his youthful \u201cFuture of\nScience\u201d with the irony of his later writings. He compliments Jesus by\nascribing to him an ironical detachment similar to his own. Jesus, he\nsays, has that mark of the superior nature--the power to rise above\nhis own dream and to smile down upon it. Anatole France, who is even\nmore completely detached from his own dreams than his master Renan,\nsums up the romantic emancipation of imagination and sensibility from\nany definite centre when he says that life should have as its supreme\nwitnesses irony and pity.\n\nIrony is on the negative side, it should be remembered, a way of\naffirming one\u2019s escape from traditional and conventional control, of\nshowing the supremacy of mood over decorum. \u201cThere are poems old and\nnew which throughout breathe the divine breath of irony. \u2026 Within lives\nthe poet\u2019s mood that surveys all, rising infinitely above everything\nfinite, even above his own art, virtue or genius.\u201d[189] Decorum is for\nthe classicist the grand masterpiece to observe because it is only\nthus he can show that he has a genuine centre set above his own ego;\nit is only by the allegiance of his imagination to this centre that\nhe can give the illusion of a higher reality. The romantic ironist\nshatters the illusion wantonly. It is as though he would inflict upon\nthe reader the disillusion from which he has himself suffered. By his\nswift passage from one mood to another (_Stimmungsbrechung_) he shows\nthat he is subject to no centre. The effect is often that of a sudden\nbreaking of the spell of poetry by an intrusion of the poet\u2019s ego. Some\nof the best examples are found in that masterpiece of romantic irony,\n\u201cDon Juan.\u201d[190]\n\nClosely allied to the irony of emotional disillusion is a certain type\nof misanthropy. You form an ideal of man that is only an Arcadian dream\nand then shrink back from man when you find that he does not correspond\nto your ideal. I have said that the romantic lover does not love a\nreal person but only a projection of his mood. This substitution of\nillusion for reality often appears in the relations of the romanticist\nwith other persons. Shelley, for example, begins by seeing in Elizabeth\nHitchener an angel of light and then discovers that she is instead a\n\u201cbrown demon.\u201d He did not at any time see the real Elizabeth Hitchener.\nShe merely reflects back to him two of his own moods. The tender\nmisanthropy of the Rousseauist is at the opposite pole from that of a\nSwift, which is the misanthropy of naked intellect. Instead of seeing\nhuman nature through an Arcadian haze he saw it without any illusion at\nall. His irony is like that of Socrates, the irony of intellect. Its\nbitterness and cruelty arise from the fact that his intellect does not,\nlike the intellect of Socrates, have the support of insight. Pascal\nwould have said that Swift saw man\u2019s misery without at the same time\nseeing his grandeur. For man\u2019s grandeur is due to his infinitude and\nthis infinitude cannot be perceived directly, but only through a veil\nof illusion; only, that is, through a right use of the imagination.\nLiterary distinctions of this kind must of course be used cautiously.\nByron\u2019s irony is prevailingly sentimental, but along with this romantic\nelement he has much irony and satire that Swift would have understood\nperfectly.\n\nThe misanthropist of the Rousseauistic or Byronic type has a resource\nthat was denied to Swift. Having failed to find companionship among men\nhe can flee to nature. Rousseau relates how when he had taken refuge on\nSt. Peter\u2019s Island he \u201cexclaimed at times with deep emotion: Oh nature,\noh my mother, here I am under your protection alone. Here is no adroit\nand rascally man to interpose between you and me.\u201d[191] Few aspects of\nromanticism are more important than this attempt to find companionship\nand consolation in nature.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nROMANTICISM AND NATURE\n\n\nOne of the most disquieting features of the modern movement is\nthe vagueness and ambiguity of its use of the word nature and the\ninnumerable sophistries that have resulted. One can sympathize at\ntimes with Sir Leslie Stephen\u2019s wish that the word might be suppressed\nentirely. This looseness of definition may be said to begin with\nthe very rise of naturalism in the Renaissance, and indeed to go\nback to the naturalists of Greek and Roman antiquity.[192] Even\nwriters like Rabelais and Moli\u00e8re are not free from the suspicion\nof juggling dangerously on occasion with the different meanings of\nthe word nature. But the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were\nnot merely naturalistic, they were also humanistic, and what they\nusually meant by nature, as I have pointed out, was the conception\nof normal, representative human nature that they had worked out with\nthe aid of the ancients. There is undeniably an element of narrowness\nand artificiality in this conception of nature, and a resulting\nunfriendliness, as appears in Pope\u2019s definition of wit, towards\noriginality and invention. In his \u201cArt of Poetry\u201d Boileau says, \u201cLet\nnature be your sole study.\u201d What he means by nature appears a few lines\nlater: \u201cStudy the court and become familiar with the town.\u201d To this\nsomewhat conventionalized human nature the original genius opposed,\nas we have seen, the cult of primitive nature. A whole revolution is\nimplied in Byron\u2019s line:\n\n    I love not man the less, but nature more.\n\nAny study of this topic must evidently turn on the question how far at\ndifferent times and by different schools of thought the realm of man\nand the realm of nature (as Byron uses the word) have been separated\nand in what way, and also how far they have been run together and in\nwhat way. For there may be different ways of running together man\nand nature. Ruskin\u2019s phrase the \u201cpathetic fallacy\u201d is unsatisfactory\nbecause it fails to recognize this fact. The man who is guilty of the\npathetic fallacy sees in nature emotions that are not really there but\nonly in himself. Extreme examples of this confusion abound in Ruskin\u2019s\nown writings. Now the ancients also ran man and nature together, but in\nan entirely different way. The Greek we are told never saw the oak tree\nwithout at the same time seeing the dryad. There is in this and similar\nassociations a sort of overflow of the human realm upon the forms of\nouter nature whereas the Rousseauist instead of bestowing imaginatively\nupon the oak tree a conscious life and an image akin to his own and\nso lifting it up to his level, would, if he could, become an oak tree\nand so enjoy its unconscious and vegetative felicity. The Greek, one\nmay say, humanized nature; the Rousseauist naturalizes man. Rousseau\u2019s\ngreat discovery was revery; and revery is just this imaginative melting\nof man into outer nature. If the ancients failed to develop in a marked\ndegree this art of revery, it was not because they lacked naturalists.\nBoth Stoics and Epicureans, the two main varieties of naturalists\nwith which classical antiquity was familiar, inclined to affirm the\nultimate identity of the human and the natural order. But both Stoics\nand Epicureans would have found it hard to understand the indifference\nto the intellect and its activities that Rousseauistic revery implies.\nThe Stoics to be sure employed the intellect on an impossible and\ndisheartening task--that of founding on the natural order virtues that\nthe natural order does not give. The Epicureans remind one rather in\nmuch of their intellectual activity of the modern man of science. But\nthe Epicurean was less prone than the man of science to look on man\nas the mere passive creature of environment. The views of the man of\nscience about the springs of conduct often seem to coincide rather\nclosely with those of Rousseau about \u201csensitive morality.\u201d Geoffroy\nSaint-Hilaire says that when reclining on the banks of the Nile he felt\nawakening within himself the instincts of the crocodile. The point of\nview is Rousseauistic perhaps rather than genuinely scientific. An\nEpicurus or a Lucretius would, we are probably safe in assuming, have\nbeen disquieted by any such surrender to the subrational, by any such\nencroachment of the powers of the unconscious upon conscious control.\n\nIt is hard as a matter of fact to find in the ancients anything\nresembling Rousseauistic revery, even when they yield to the pastoral\nmood. Nature interests them as a rule less for its own sake than as\na background for human action; and when they are concerned primarily\nwith nature, it is a nature that has been acted upon by man. They\nhave a positive shrinking from wild and uncultivated nature. \u201cThe\ngreen pastures and golden slopes of England,\u201d says Lowell, \u201care\nsweeter both to the outward and to the inward eye that the hand of man\nhas immemorially cared for and caressed them.\u201d This is an attitude\ntowards nature that an ancient would have understood perfectly. One\nmay indeed call it the Virgilian attitude from the ancient who has\nperhaps expressed it most happily. The man who lives in the grand\nmanner may indeed wish to impose on nature some of the fine proportion\nand symmetry of which he is conscious in himself and he may then from\nour modern point of view carry the humanizing of nature too far. \u201cLet\nus sing of woods,\u201d says Virgil, \u201cbut let the woods be worthy of a\nconsul.\u201d This line has sometimes been taken to be a prophecy of the\nPark of Versailles. We may sympathize up to a certain point with the\ndesire to introduce a human symmetry into nature (such as appears, for\ninstance, in the Italian garden), but the peril is even greater here\nthan elsewhere of confounding the requirements of a real with those of\nan artificial decorum. I have already mentioned the neo-classicist who\ncomplained that the stars in heaven were not arranged in sufficiently\nsymmetrical patterns.\n\nWhat has been said should make clear that though both humanist and\nRousseauist associate man with nature it is in very different ways,\nand that there is therefore an ambiguity in the expression \u201cpathetic\nfallacy.\u201d It remains to show that men may not only associate themselves\nwith nature in different ways but that they may likewise differ in\ntheir ways of asserting man\u2019s separateness from nature. The chief\ndistinction to be made here is that between the humanist and the\nsupernaturalist. Some sense of the gap between man and the \u201coutworld\u201d\nis almost inevitable and forces itself at times even upon those most\nnaturalistically inclined:\n\n    Nor will I praise a cloud however bright,\n    Disparaging Man\u2019s gifts and proper food--\n    Grove, isle, with every shape of sky-built dome,\n    Though clad in colors beautiful and pure,\n    Find in the heart of man no natural home.[193]\n\nThe Wordsworth who speaks here is scarcely the Wordsworth of Tintern\nAbbey or the Wordsworth whose \u201cdaily teachers had been woods and\nrills.\u201d He reminds us rather of Socrates who gave as his reason for\ngoing so rarely into the country, delightful as he found it when once\nthere, that he did not learn from woods and rills but from the \u201cmen\nin the cities.\u201d This sense of the separateness of the human and the\nnatural realm may be carried much further--to a point where an ascetic\ndistrust of nature begins to appear. Something of this ascetic distrust\nis seen for example in the following lines from Cardinal Newman:\n\n    There strayed awhile amid the woods of Dart\n    One who could love them, but who durst not love;\n    A vow had bound him ne\u2019er to give his heart\n    To streamlet bright or soft secluded grove.[194]\n\nThe origins of this latter attitude towards nature are to be sought in\nmedi\u00e6val Christianity rather than in classical antiquity. No man who\nknows the facts would assert for a moment that the man of the Middle\nAges was incapable of looking on nature with other feelings than\nthose of ascetic distrust. It is none the less true that the man of\nthe Middle Ages often saw in nature not merely something alien but a\npositive temptation and peril of the spirit. In his attitude towards\nnature as in other respects Petrarch is usually accounted the first\nmodern. He did what no man of the medi\u00e6val period is supposed to have\ndone before him, or indeed what scarcely any man of classical antiquity\ndid: he ascended a mountain out of sheer curiosity and simply to enjoy\nthe prospect. But those who tell of his ascent of Mt. Ventoux sometimes\nforget to add that the passage of Saint Augustine[195] that occurred\nto him at the top reflects the distrust of the more austere Christian\ntowards the whole natural order. Petrarch is at once more ascetic and\nmore romantic in his attitude towards nature than the Greek or Roman.\n\nTraces of Petrarch\u2019s taste for solitary and even for wild nature are\nto be found throughout the Renaissance and the seventeenth century.\nBut the recoil from supernaturalism that took place at this time led\nrather, as I have remarked, to a revival of the Gr\u00e6co-Roman humanism\nwith something more of artifice and convention, and to an even more\nmarked preference[196] of the town to the country. An age that aims\nfirst of all at urbanity must necessarily be more urban than rural in\nits predilections. It was a sort of condescension for the neo-classical\nhumanist to turn from the central model he was imitating to mere\nunadorned nature, and even then he felt that he must be careful not\nto condescend too far. Even when writing pastorals he was warned by\nScaliger to avoid details that are too redolent of the real country;\nhe should indulge at most in an \u201curbane rusticity.\u201d Wild nature the\nneo-classicist finds simply repellent. Mountains he looks upon as\n\u201cearth\u2019s dishonor and encumbering load.\u201d The Alps were regarded as\nthe place where Nature swept up the rubbish of the earth to clear\nthe plains of Lombardy. \u201cAt last,\u201d says a German traveller of the\nseventeenth century, \u201cwe left the horrible and wearisome mountains and\nthe beautiful flat landscape was joyfully welcomed.\u201d The taste for\nmountain scenery is associated no doubt to some extent, as has been\nsuggested, with the increasing ease and comfort of travel that has come\nwith the progress of the utilitarian movement. It is scarcely necessary\nto point the contrast between the Switzerland of which Evelyn tells in\nhis diary[197] and the Switzerland in which one may go by funicular to\nthe top of the Jungfrau.\n\nThose who in the eighteenth century began to feel the need of less\ntrimness in nature and human nature were not it is true entirely\nwithout neo-classic predecessors. They turned at times to painting--as\nthe very word picturesque testifies--for the encouragement they failed\nto find in literature. A landscape was picturesque when it seemed\nlike a picture[198] and it might be not merely irregular but savage\nif it were to seem like some of the pictures of Salvator Rosa. This\nassociation of even wildness with art is very characteristic of\neighteenth-century sentimentalism. It is a particular case of that\ncurious blending in this period of the old principle of the imitation\nof models with the new principle of spontaneity. There was a moment\nwhen a man needed to show a certain taste for wildness if he was to be\nconventionally correct. \u201cThe fops,\u201d says Taine, describing Rousseau\u2019s\ninfluence on the drawing-rooms, \u201cdreamt between two madrigals of the\nhappiness of sleeping naked in the virgin forest.\u201d The prince in\nGoethe\u2019s \u201cTriumph of Sensibility\u201d has carried with him on his travels\ncanvas screens so painted that when placed in position they give him\nthe illusion of being in the midst of a wild landscape. This taste for\nartificial wildness can however best be studied in connection with the\nincreasing vogue in the eighteenth century of the English garden as\ncompared either with the Italian garden or the French garden in the\nstyle of Le N\u00f4tre.[199] As a relief from the neo-classical symmetry,\nnature was broken up, often at great expense, into irregular and\nunexpected aspects. Some of the English gardens in France and Germany\nwere imitated directly from Rousseau\u2019s famous description of this\nmethod of dealing with the landscape in the \u201cNouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse.\u201d[200]\nArtificial ruins were often placed in the English garden as a further\naid to those who wished to wander imaginatively from the beaten path,\nand also as a provocative of the melancholy that was already held to\nbe distinguished. Towards the end of the century this cult of ruins\nwas widespread. The veritable obsession with ruins that one finds in\nChateaubriand is not unrelated to this sentimental fashion, though\nit arises even more perhaps from the real ruins that had been so\nplentifully supplied by the Revolution.\n\nRousseau himself, it should hardly be necessary to say, stands for far\nmore than an artificial wildness. Instead of imposing decorum on nature\nlike the neo-classicist, he preached constantly the elimination of\ndecorum from man. Man should flee from that \u201cfalse taste for grandeur\nwhich is not made for him\u201d and which \u201cpoisons his pleasures,\u201d[201]\nto nature. Now \u201cit is on the summits of mountains, in the depths of\nforests, on deserted islands that nature reveals her most potent\ncharms.\u201d[202] The man of feeling finds the savage and deserted nook\nfilled with beauties that seem horrible to the mere worldling.[203]\nRousseau indeed did not crave the ultimate degree of wildness even\nin the Alps. He did not get beyond what one may term the middle zone\nof Alpine scenery--scenery that may be found around the shores of\nLake Leman. He was inclined to find the most appropriate setting for\nthe earthly paradise in the neighborhood of Vevey. Moreover, others\nabout the same time and more or less independently of his influence\nwere opposing an even more primitive nature to the artificialities of\ncivilization. The mountains of \u201cOssian\u201d are, as has been said, mere\nblurs, yet the new delight in mountains is due in no small measure\nthroughout Europe to the Ossianic influence.\n\nThe instinct for getting away from the beaten track, for exploration\nand discovery, has of course been highly developed at other epochs,\nnotably at the Renaissance. Much of the romantic interest in the wild\nand waste places of the earth did not go much beyond what might have\nbeen felt in Elizabethan England. Many of the Rousseauists, Wordsworth\nand Chateaubriand for example, not only read eagerly the older books\nof travel but often the same books. The fascination of penetrating to\nregions \u201cwhere foot of man hath ne\u2019er or rarely been,\u201d is perennial.\nIt was my privilege a few years ago to listen to Sir Ernest Shackleton\nspeak of his expedition across the Antarctic continent and of the\nthrill that he and the members of his party felt when they saw rising\nbefore them day after day mountain peaks that no human eye had ever\ngazed upon. The emotion was no doubt very similar to that of \u201cstout\nCortez\u201d when he first \u201cstared at the Pacific.\u201d Chateaubriand must\nhave looked forward to similar emotions when he planned his trip to\nNorth America in search of the North West Passage. But the passion for\nactual exploration which is a form of the romanticism of action is very\nsubordinate in the case of Chateaubriand to emotional romanticism. He\nwent into the wilderness first of all not to make actual discoveries\nbut to affirm his freedom from conventional restraint, and at the same\ntime to practice the new art of revery. His sentiments on getting\ninto what was then the virgin forest to the west of Albany were very\ndifferent we may assume from those of the early pioneers of America.\n\u201cWhen,\u201d he says, \u201cafter passing the Mohawk I entered woods which\nhad never felt the axe, I was seized by a sort of intoxication of\nindependence: I went from tree to tree, to right and left, saying to\nmyself, \u2018Here are no more roads or cities or monarchy or republic\nor presidents or kings or men.\u2019 And in order to find out if I was\nrestored to my original rights I did various wilful things that made\nmy guide furious. In his heart he believed me mad.\u201d The disillusion\nthat followed is also one that the early pioneers would have had some\ndifficulty in understanding. For he goes on to relate that while he\nwas thus rejoicing in his escape from conventional life to pure nature\nhe suddenly bumped up against a shed, and under the shed he saw his\nfirst savages--a score of them both men and women. A little Frenchman\nnamed M. Violet, \u201cbepowdered and befrizzled, with an apple-green coat,\ndrugget waistcoat and muslin frill and cuffs, was scraping on a pocket\nfiddle\u201d and teaching the Indians to dance to the tune of Madelon\nFriquet. M. Violet, it seemed, had remained behind on the departure\nfrom New York of Rochambeau\u2019s forces at the time of the American\nRevolution, and had set up as dancing-master among the savages. He\nwas very proud of the nimbleness of his pupils and always referred to\nthem as \u201cces messieurs sauvages et ces dames sauvagesses.\u201d \u201cWas it not\na crushing circumstance for a disciple of Rousseau,\u201d Chateaubriand\nconcludes, \u201cthis introduction to savage life by a ball that the\nex-scullion of General Rochambeau was giving to Iroquois? I felt very\nmuch like laughing, but I was at the same time cruelly humiliated.\u201d\n\nIn America, as elsewhere, Chateaubriand\u2019s chief concern is not\nwith any outer fact or activity, but with his own emotions and the\nenhancement of these emotions by his imagination. In him as in many\nother romanticists the different elements of Rousseauism--Arcadian\nlonging, the pursuit of the dream woman, the aspiration towards the\n\u201cinfinite\u201d (often identified with God)--appear at times more or less\nseparately and then again almost inextricably blended with one another\nand with the cult of nature. It may be well to consider more in detail\nthese various elements of Rousseauism and their relation to nature in\nabout the order I have mentioned. The association of Arcadian longing\nwith nature is in part an outcome of the conflict between the ideal and\nthe real. The romantic idealist finds that men do not understand him:\nhis \u201cvision\u201d is mocked and his \u201cgenius\u201d is unrecognized. The result\nis the type of sentimental misanthropy of which I spoke at the end of\nthe last chapter. He feels, as Lamartine says, that there is nothing\nin common between the world and him. Lamartine adds, however, \u201cBut\nnature is there who invites you and loves you.\u201d You will find in her\nthe comprehension and companionship that you have failed to find in\nsociety. And nature will seem a perfect companion to the Rousseauist\nin direct proportion as she is uncontaminated by the presence of man.\nWordsworth has described the misanthropy that supervened in many people\non the collapse of the revolutionary idealism. He himself overcame\nit, though there is more than a suggestion in the manner of his own\nretirement into the hills of a man who retreats into an Arcadian dream\nfrom actual defeat. The suggestion of defeat is much stronger in\nRuskin\u2019s similar retirement. Ruskin doubtless felt in later life, like\nRousseau, that if he had failed to get on with men \u201cit was less his\nfault than theirs.\u201d[204] Perhaps emotional misanthropy and the worship\nof wild nature are nowhere more fully combined than in Byron. He\ngives magnificent expression to the most untenable of paradoxes--that\none escapes from solitude by eschewing human haunts in favor of some\nwilderness.[205] In these haunts, he says, he became like a \u201cfalcon\nwith clipped wing,\u201d but found in nature the kindest of mothers.\n\n      Oh! she is fairest in her features wild,\n      Where nothing polished dare pollute her path:\n      To me by day or night she ever smiled\n      Though I have marked her when none other hath\n    And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.[206]\n\nHe not only finds companionship in nature but at the same time partakes\nof her infinitude--an infinitude, one should note, of feeling:\n\n    I live not in myself, but I become\n    Portion of that around me; and to me\n    High mountains are a feeling, but the hum\n    Of human cities torture.[207]\n\nIn his less misanthropic moods the Rousseauist sees in wild nature\nnot only a refuge from society, but also a suitable setting for his\ncompanionship with the ideal mate, for what the French term _la\nsolitude \u00e0 deux_.\n\n    Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place\n    With one fair Spirit for my minister,\n    That I might all forget the human race\n    And, hating no one, love but only her![208]\n\nThe almost innumerable passages in the romantic movement that celebrate\nthis Arcadian companionship in the wilderness merely continue in a\nsense the pastoral mood that must be as old as human nature itself.\nBut in the past the pastoral mood has been comparatively placid.\nIt has not been associated in any such degree with misanthropy and\nwildness, with nympholeptic longing and the thirst for the infinite.\nThe scene that Chateaubriand has imagined between Chactas and Atala in\nthe primeval forest, is surely the stormiest of Arcadias; so stormy\nindeed that it would have been unintelligible to Theocritus. It is\nnot certain that it would have been intelligible to Shakespeare, who\nlike the other Elizabethans felt at times that he too had been born\nin Arcadia. The Arcadian of the past was much less inclined to sink\ndown to the subrational and to merge his personality in the landscape.\nRousseau describes with a charm that has scarcely been surpassed by\nany of his disciples, the reveries in which he thus descends below\nthe level of his rational self. Time, no longer broken up by the\nimportunate intellect and its analysis, is then felt by him in its\nunbroken flow; the result is a sort of \u201ceternal present that leaves\nno sense of emptiness.\u201d Of such a moment of revery Rousseau says,\nanticipating Faust, that he \u201cwould like it to last forever.\u201d Bergson\nin his conception of the _summum bonum_ as a state in which time is\nno longer cut up into artificial segments but is perceived in its\ncontinuous stream as a \u201cpresent that endures,\u201d[209] has done little\nmore than repeat Rousseau. The sight and sound of water seem to have\nbeen a special aid to revery in Rousseau\u2019s case. His accounts of the\nsemi-dissolution of his conscious self that he enjoyed while drifting\nidly on the Lake of Bienne are justly celebrated. Lamartine\u2019s soul was,\nlike that of Rousseau, lulled by \u201cthe murmur of waters.\u201d Nothing again\nis more Rousseauistic than the desire Arnold attributes to Maurice de\nGu\u00e9rin--the desire \u201cto be borne on forever down an enchanted stream.\u201d\nThat too is why certain passages of Shelley are so near in spirit to\nRousseau--for example, the boat revery in \u201cPrometheus Unbound\u201d in which\nan Arcadian nature and the dream companion mingle to the strains of\nmusic in a way that is supremely romantic.[210]\n\nThe association of nature with Arcadian longing and the pursuit of\nthe dream woman is even less significant than its association with\nthe idea of the infinite. For as a result of this latter association\nthe nature cult often assumes the aspect of a religion. The various\nassociations may indeed as I have said be very much blended or else\nmay run into one another almost insensibly. No better illustration of\nthis blending can be found perhaps than in Chateaubriand--especially\nin that compendium of Rousseauistic psychology, his \u201cRen\u00e9.\u201d The soul\nof Ren\u00e9, one learns, was too great to adjust itself to the society of\nmen. He found that he would have to contract his life if he put himself\non their level. Men, for their part, treated him as a dreamer, and so\nhe is forced more and more by his increasing disgust for them into\nsolitude. Now Ren\u00e9 rests the sense of his superiority over other men\non two things: first, on his superlative capacity to feel grief;[211]\nsecondly, on his thirst for the infinite. \u201cWhat is finite,\u201d he says,\n\u201chas no value for me.\u201d What is thus pushing him beyond all bounds is\n\u201can unknown good of which the instinct pursues me.\u201d \u201cI began to ask\nmyself what I desired. I did not know but I thought all of a sudden\nthat the woods would be delicious to me!\u201d What he found in this quest\nfor the mystical something that was to fill the abyss of his existence\nwas the dream woman. \u201cI went down into the valley, I strode upon the\nmountain, summoning with all the force of my desire the ideal object\nof a future flame; I embraced this object in the winds; I thought\nthat I heard it in the moanings of the river. All was this phantom of\nthe imagination--both the stars in heaven and the very principle of\nlife in the universe.\u201d I have already quoted a very similar passage\nand pointed out the equivalent in Shelley. No such close equivalent\ncould be found in Byron, and Wordsworth, it is scarcely necessary to\nsay, offers no equivalent at all. If one reads on, however, one finds\npassages that are Byronic and others that are Wordsworthian. Paganism,\nChateaubriand complains, by seeing in nature only certain definite\nforms--fauns and satyrs and nymphs--had banished from it both God and\nthe infinite. But Christianity expelled these thronging figures in\nturn and restored to the grottoes their silence and to the woods their\nrevery. The true God thus became visible in his works and bestowed\nupon them his own immensity. What Chateaubriand understands by God and\nthe infinite appears in the following description of the region near\nNiagara seen by moonlight. The passage is Byronic as a whole with a\nWordsworthian touch at the end. \u201cThe grandeur, the amazing melancholy\nof this picture cannot be expressed in human language; the fairest\nnight of Europe can give no conception of it. In vain in our cultivated\nfields does the imagination seek to extend itself. It encounters on\nevery hand the habitations of men; but in these savage regions the soul\ntakes delight in plunging into an ocean of forests, in hovering over\nthe gulf of cataracts, in meditating on the shores of lakes and rivers\nand, so to speak, in finding itself alone in the presence of God.\u201d The\nrelation between wild and solitary nature and the romantic idea of the\ninfinite is here obvious. It is an aid to the spirit in throwing off\nits limitations and so in feeling itself \u201cfree.\u201d[212]\n\nA greater spiritual elevation it is sometimes asserted is found in\nWordsworth\u2019s communings with nature than in those of Rousseau and\nChateaubriand. The difference perhaps is less one of spirit than\nof temperament. In its abdication of the intellectual and critical\nfaculties, in its semi-dissolution of the conscious self, the\nrevery of Wordsworth does not differ from that of Rousseau[213] and\nChateaubriand, but the erotic element is absent. In the \u201cGenius of\nChristianity\u201d Chateaubriand gives a magnificent description of sunset\nat sea and turns the whole picture into a proof of God. Elsewhere he\ntells us that it was \u201cnot God alone that I contemplated on the waters\nin the splendor of his works. I saw an unknown woman and the miracle\nof her smile. \u2026 I should have sold eternity for one of her caresses.\nI imagined that she was palpitating behind that veil of the universe\nthat hid her from my eyes,\u201d etc. Wordsworth was at least consistently\nreligious in his attitude towards the landscape: he did not see in it\nat one moment God, and at another an unknown woman and the miracle of\nher smile. At the same time his idea of spirituality is very remote\nfrom the traditional conception. Formerly spirituality was held to be a\nprocess of recollection, of gathering one\u2019s self in, that is, towards\nthe centre and not of diffusive emotion; so that when a man wished\nto pray he retired into his closet, and did not, like a Wordsworth\nor a Rousseau, fall into an inarticulate ecstasy before the wonders\nof nature. As for the poets of the past, they inclined as a rule to\nlook on nature as an incentive not to religion but to love. Keble,\nfollowing Wordsworth, protests on this ground against Aristophanes, and\nCatullus and Horace and Theocritus. He might have lengthened the list\nalmost indefinitely. Chateaubriand bids us in our devotional moods to\nbetake ourselves \u201cto the religious forest.\u201d La Fontaine is at least\nas near to normal human experience and also at least as poetical when\nhe warns \u201cfair ones\u201d to \u201cfear the depths of the woods and their vast\nsilence.\u201d[214]\n\nNo one would question that Wordsworth has passages of great ethical\nelevation. But in some of these passages he simply renews the error\nof the Stoics who also display at times great ethical elevation; he\nascribes to the natural order virtues that the natural order does not\ngive. This error persists to some extent even when he is turning away,\nas in the \u201cOde to Duty,\u201d from the moral spontaneity of the Rousseauist.\nIt is not quite clear that the law of duty in the breast of man is the\nsame law that preserves \u201cthe stars from wrong.\u201d His earlier assertion\nthat the light of setting suns and the mind of man are identical in\ntheir essence is at best highly speculative, at least as speculative\nas the counter assertion of Sir Thomas Browne that \u201cthere is surely a\npiece of divinity in us; something that was before the elements, and\nowes no homage unto the sun.\u201d Furthermore this latter sense of the gap\nbetween man and nature seems to be more fully justified by its fruits\nin life and conduct, and this is after all the only test that counts in\nthe long run.\n\nOne of the reasons why pantheistic revery has been so popular is that\nit seems to offer a painless substitute for genuine spiritual effort.\nIn its extreme exponents, a Rousseau or a Walt Whitman, it amounts to a\nsort of ecstatic animality that sets up as a divine illumination. Even\nin its milder forms it encourages one to assume a tone of consecration\nin speaking of experiences that are \u00e6sthetic rather than truly\nreligious. \u201c\u2019Tis only heaven that\u2019s given away,\u201d sings Lowell; \u201c\u2019Tis\nonly God may be had for the asking.\u201d God and heaven are accorded by\nLowell with such strange facility because he identifies them with the\nluxurious enjoyment of a \u201cday in June.\u201d When pushed to a certain point\nthe nature cult always tends towards sham spirituality.\n\n    Oh World as God has made it\n      --All is beauty,\n    And knowing this is love, and\n      Love is duty.\n\nIt seems to follow from these verses of Browning, perhaps the most\nflaccid spiritually in the English language, that to go out and mix\none\u2019s self up with the landscape is the same as doing one\u2019s duty. As\na method of salvation this is even easier and more \u00e6sthetic than that\nof the Ancient Mariner, who, it will be remembered, is relieved of the\nburden of his transgression by admiring the color of water-snakes!\n\nThe nature cult arose at a time when the traditional religious\nsymbols were becoming incredible. Instead of working out new and\nfirm distinctions between good and evil, the Rousseauist seeks to\ndiscredit all precise distinctions whether new or old, in favor of mere\nemotional intoxication. The passage to which I have already alluded,\nin which Faust breaks down the scruples of Marguerite by proclaiming\nthe supremacy of feeling, surpasses even the lines I have cited from\nBrowning as an example of sham spirituality:\n\n    _Marguerite_:\n\n    Dost thou believe in God?\n\n    _Faust_:\n\n    My darling, who dares say,\n    Yes, I in God believe?\n    Question or priest or sage, and they\n    Seem, in the answer you receive,\n    To mock the questioner.\n\n    _Marguerite_:\n\n    Then thou dost not believe?\n\n    _Faust_:\n\n    Sweet one! my meaning do not misconceive!\n    Him who dare name\n    And who proclaim,\n    Him I believe?\n    Who that can feel,\n    His heart can steel\n    To say: I believe him not?\n    The All-embracer,\n    All-sustainer,\n    Holds and sustains he not\n    Thee, me, himself?\n    Lifts not the Heaven its dome above?\n    Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us lie?\n    And beaming tenderly with looks of love\n    Climb not the everlasting stars on high?\n    Do I not gaze into thine eyes?\n    Nature\u2019s impenetrable agencies,\n    Are they not thronging on thy heart and brain,\n    Viewless, or visible to mortal ken,\n    Around thee weaving their mysterious chain?\n    Fill thence thy heart, how large soe\u2019er it be;\n    And in the feeling when thou utterly art blest,\n    Then call it what thou wilt--\n    Call it Bliss! Heart! Love! God!\n    I have no name for it!\n    Feeling is all;\n    Name is but sound and smoke\n    Shrouding the glow of heaven.[215]\n\nThe upshot of this enthusiasm that overflows all boundaries and spurns\ndefinition as mere smoke that veils its heavenly glow is the seduction\nof a poor peasant girl. Such is the romantic contrast between the\n\u201cideal\u201d and the \u201creal.\u201d\n\nThose to whom I may seem to be treating the nature cult with\nundue severity should remember that I am treating it only in its\npseudo-religious aspect. In its proper place all this refining on\nman\u2019s relation to the \u201coutworld\u201d may be legitimate and delightful;\nbut that place is secondary. My quarrel is only with the \u00e6sthete who\nassumes an apocalyptic pose and gives forth as a profound philosophy\nwhat is at best only a holiday or week-end view of existence. No\ndistinction is more important for any one who wishes to maintain a\ncorrect scale of values than that between what is merely recreative and\nwhat ministers to leisure. There are times when we may properly seek\nsolace and renewal in nature, when we may invite both our souls and our\nbodies to loaf. The error is to look on these moments of recreation\nand relief from concentration on some definite end as in themselves\nthe consummation of wisdom. Rousseau indeed assumes that his art of\nmixing himself up with the landscape is identical with leisure; like\ninnumerable disciples he confuses revery with meditation--a confusion\nso grave that I shall need to revert to it later. He parodies subtly\nwhat is above the ordinary rational level in terms of what is below it.\nHe thus brings under suspicion the most necessary of all truths--that\nthe kingdom of heaven is within us.\n\nThe first place always belongs to action and purpose and not to mere\nidling, even if it be like that of the Rousseauist transcendental\nidling. The man who makes a deliberate choice and then plans his life\nwith reference to it is less likely than the aimless man to be swayed\nby every impulse and impression. The figures of Raphael according to\nHazlitt have always \u201ca set, determined, voluntary character,\u201d they\n\u201cwant that wild uncertainty of expression which is connected with the\naccidents of nature and the changes of the elements.\u201d And Hazlitt\ntherefore concludes rightly that Raphael has \u201cnothing romantic about\nhim.\u201d The distinction is so important that it might be made the\nbasis for a comparison between the painting of the Renaissance and\nsome of the important schools of the nineteenth century. Here again\nno sensible person would maintain that the advantage is all on one\nside. Romanticism gave a great impulse to landscape painting and to\nthe painting of man in the landscape. Few romantic gains are more\nindubitable. One may prefer the best work of the Barbizon school for\nexample to the contemporary product in French literature. But even here\nit must be insisted that painting from which man is absent or in which\nhe is more or less subordinated to the landscape is not the highest\ntype of painting. Turner, one of the greatest masters of landscape,\nwas almost incapable of painting the human figure. Ruskin is therefore\nindulging in romantic paradox when he puts Turner in the same class\nas Shakespeare. Turner\u2019s vision of life as compared with that of\nShakespeare is not central but peripheral.\n\nThe revolution that has resulted from the triumph of naturalistic over\nhumanistic tendencies in painting extends down to the minutest details\nof technique; it has meant the subordination of design--the imposition,\nthat is, on one\u2019s material of a firm central purpose--to light and\ncolor; and this in painting corresponds to the literary pursuit of\nglamour and illusion for their own sake. It has meant in general a\ntendency to sacrifice all the other elements of painting to the capture\nof the vivid and immediate impression. And this corresponds to the\nreadiness of the writer to forego decorum in favor of intensity. The\nchoice that is involved, including a choice of technique, according\nas one is a naturalist or a humanist, is brought out by Mr. Kenyon Cox\nin his comparison of two paintings of hermits,[216] one by Titian and\none by John Sargent: the impressionistic and pantheistic hermit of\nSargent is almost entirely merged in the landscape; he is little more\nthan a pretext for a study of the accidents of light. The conception\nof Titian\u2019s St. Jerome in the Desert is perhaps even more humanistic\nthan religious. The figure of the saint on which everything converges\nis not merely robust, it is even a bit robustious. The picture affirms\nin its every detail the superior importance of man and his purposes to\nhis natural environment. So far as their inner life is concerned the\ntwo hermits are plainly moving in opposite directions. An appropriate\nmotto for Sargent\u2019s hermit would be the following lines that I take\nfrom a French symbolist, but the equivalent of which can be found in\ninnumerable other Rousseauists:\n\n    _Je voudrais me confondre avec les chases, tordre_\n    _Mes bras centre la pierre et les fra\u00eeches \u00e9corces,_\n    _Etre l\u2019arbre, le mur, le pollen et le sel,_\n    _Et me dissoudre au fond de l\u2019\u00eatre universel._\n\nThis is to push the reciprocity between man and nature to a point\nwhere the landscape is not only a state of the soul but the soul is\na state of the landscape; just as in Shelley\u2019s Ode, Shelley becomes\nthe West Wind and the West Wind becomes Shelley.[217] The changes in\nthe romantic soul are appropriately mirrored in the changes of the\nseasons. In Tieck\u2019s \u201cGenoveva,\u201d for example, Golo\u2019s love blossoms in\nthe springtime, the sultry summer impels him to sinful passion, the\nautumn brings grief and repentance, and in winter avenging judgment\novertakes the offender and casts him into the grave.[218] Autumn\nis perhaps even more than springtime the favorite season of the\nRousseauist. The movement is filled with souls who like the hero of\nPoe\u2019s \u201cUlalume\u201d have reached the October of their sensations. Some\ntraces of this sympathetic relation between man and nature may indeed\nbe found in the literature of the past. The appropriateness of the\nsetting in the \u201cPrometheus Bound\u201d of \u00c6schylus would scarcely seem to\nbe an accident. The storm in \u201cLear\u201d may also be instanced. But as I\nhave already said occidental man did not before Rousseau show much\ninclination to mingle with the landscape. The parallelism that Pater\nestablishes in \u201cMarius the Epicurean\u201d between the moods of the hero and\nthe shifting aspects of nature is felt as a distinct anachronism. If we\nwish to find any early approximations to the subtleties and refinements\nof the Rousseauist in his dealings with nature we need to turn to the\nFar East--especially to the Taoist movement in China.[219] As a result\nof the Taoist influence China had from a very early period poets and\npainters for whom the landscape is very plainly a state of the soul.\n\nPantheistic revery of the kind I have been describing leads inevitably\nto a special type of symbolism. The Rousseauist reads into nature\nunutterable love. He sees shining through its finite forms the light of\nthe infinite. The Germans especially set out to express symbolically\nthe relationship between the love and infinitude that they saw in\nnature and the kindred elements in themselves. Any one who has\nattempted to thread his way through the German theories of the symbol\nwill feel that he has, like Wordsworth\u2019s shepherd, \u201cbeen in the heart\nof many thousand mists.\u201d But in view of the importance of the subject\nit is necessary to venture for a moment into this metaphysical murk.\nSchelling\u2019s \u201cNature Philosophy\u201d is perhaps the most ambitious of all\nthe German attempts to run together symbolically the human spirit and\nphenomenal nature. \u201cWhat we call nature,\u201d says Schelling, \u201cis a poem\nthat lies hidden in a secret wondrous writing\u201d; if the riddle could be\nrevealed we should recognize in nature \u201cthe Odyssey of the Spirit.\u201d\n\u201cThere looks out through sensuous objects as through a half-transparent\nmist the world of phantasy for which we long.\u201d \u201cAll things are only a\ngarment of the world of spirit.\u201d \u201cTo be romantic,\u201d says Uhland, \u201cis\nto have an inkling of the infinite in appearances.\u201d \u201cBeauty,\u201d says\nSchelling in similar vein, \u201cis a finite rendering of the infinite.\u201d Now\nthe infinite and the finite can only be thus brought together through\nthe medium of the symbol. Therefore, as A. W. Schlegel says, \u201cbeauty\nis a symbolical representation of the infinite. All poetry is an\neverlasting symbolizing.\u201d\n\nThis assertion is in an important sense true. Unfortunately there\nremains the ambiguity that I have already pointed out in the word\n\u201cinfinite.\u201d No one would give a high rating to a certain type of\nallegory that flourished in neo-classical times as also in a somewhat\ndifferent form during the Middle Ages. It is a cold intellectual\ncontrivance in which the imagination has little part and which\ntherefore fails to suggest the infinite in any sense. But to\nuniversalize the particular in the classical sense is to give access\nimaginatively to the human infinite that is set above nature. Every\nsuccessful humanistic creation is more or less symbolical. Othello is\nnot merely a jealous man; he is also a symbol of jealousy. Some of the\nmyths of Plato again are imaginative renderings of a supersensuous\nrealm to which man has no direct access. They are symbolical\nrepresentations of an infinite that the romanticist leaves out of\nhis reckoning. The humanistic and spiritual symbols that abound in\nthe religion and poetry of the past, are then, it would seem, very\ndifferent from the merely \u00e6sthetic symbolizing of a Schelling. For\nSchelling is one of the chief of those who from Shaftesbury down have\ntended to identify beauty and truth and to make both purely \u00e6sthetic.\nBut a symbol that is purely \u00e6sthetic, that is in other words purely a\nmatter of feeling, rests on what is constantly changing not only from\nman to man but in the same man. Romantic symbolism, therefore, though\nit claims at one moment to be scientific (especially in Germany) and at\nanother moment to have a religious value, is at bottom the symbolizing\nof mood. Both the imagination and the emotion that enter into the\nromantic symbol are undisciplined. The results of such a symbolism do\nnot meet the demand of the genuine man of science for experimental\nproof, they do not again satisfy the test of universality imposed by\nthose who believe in a distinctively human realm that is set above\nnature. The nature philosophy of a Schelling leads therefore on the one\nhand to sham science and on the other to sham philosophy and religion.\n\nThe genuine man of science has as a matter of fact repudiated the\nspeculations of Schelling and other romantic physicists as fantastic.\nHe may also be counted on to look with suspicion on the speculations\nof a Bergson who, more perhaps than any living Rousseauist, reminds\none of the German romantic philosophers. One idea has however lingered\nin the mind even of the genuine man of science as a result of all this\nromantic theorizing--namely that man has access to the infinite only\nthrough nature. Thus Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn said in a recent\naddress to the students of Columbia University:\n\n    I would not for a moment take advantage of the present\n    opportunity to discourage the study of human nature and of\n    the humanities, but for what is called the best opening for\n    a constructive career give me nature. The ground for my\n    preference is that human nature is an exhaustible fountain\n    of research; Homer understood it well; Solomon fathomed\n    it; Shakespeare divined it, both normal and abnormal;\n    the modernists have been squeezing out the last drops of\n    abnormality. Nature, studied since Aristotle\u2019s time, is\n    still full to the brim; no perceptible falling of its tides\n    is evident from any point at which it is attacked, from\n    nebul\u00e6 to protoplasm; it is always wholesome, refreshing and\n    invigorating. Of the two most creative literary artists of our\n    time, Maeterlinck, jaded with human abnormality, comes back to\n    the bee and the flowers and the \u201cblue bird,\u201d with a delicious\n    renewal of youth, while Rostand turns to the barnyard.\n\nThe romanticists acted from the start, following here in the wake of\nthe pseudo-classicists, on Professor Osborn\u2019s assumption that normal\nhuman nature is something that may be bottled up once for all and put\nby on a shelf, though they would have been pained to learn from him\nthat even abnormal human nature may also be bottled up and put by in\nthe same fashion. Sophistries of this kind should perhaps be pardoned\nin the man of science when so many men who are supposed to stand for\nletters have shown him the way. Great literature is an imaginative and\nsymbolical interpretation of an infinite that is accessible only to\nthose who possess in some degree the same type of imagination. A writer\nlike Maeterlinck, whom Professor Osborn takes to be representative of\nliterature in general, is merely a late exponent of a movement that\nfrom the start turned away from this human infinite towards pantheistic\nrevery.\n\nThe imagination is, as Coleridge says, the great unifying power; it\ndraws together things that are apparently remote. But its analogies to\nbe of value should surely have validity apart from the mere shifting\nmood of the man who perceives them. Otherwise he simply wrests some\nouter object from the chain of cause and effect of which it is actually\na part, and incorporates it arbitrarily into his own private dream.\nWordsworth is not sparing of homely detail in his account of his\nleech-gatherer; but at a given moment in this poem the leech-gatherer\nundergoes a strange transformation; he loses all verisimilitude as a\nleech-gatherer and becomes a romantic symbol, a mere projection, that\nis, of the poet\u2019s own broodings. To push this symbolizing of mood\nbeyond a certain point is incipient hallucination. We are told that\nwhen the asylum at Charenton was shelled in the Franco-Prussian War\nof 1870, the lunatics saw reflected in the bursting bombs, each in\na different way, his own madness. One took the bombs to be a link in\nthe plot of his enemies against him, etc. It is hard to consider the\nsymbolizing and visions of the extreme romanticist, such as those of\nWilliam Blake, without thinking at times of Charenton.\n\nWhat I have said of the romantic symbol is true in some degree of\nthe romantic metaphor, for the symbol and even the myth are often\nonly a developed metaphor. The first part of the romantic metaphor,\nthe image or impression that has been received from the outer world,\nis often admirably fresh and vivid.[220] But the second part of the\nmetaphor when the analogy involved is that between some fact of outer\nperception and the inner life of man is often vague and misty; for the\ninner life in which the romanticist takes interest is not the life\nhe possesses in common with other men but what is most unique in his\nown emotions--his mood in short. That is why the metaphor and still\nmore the symbol in so far as they are romantic are always in danger of\nbecoming unintelligible, since it is not easy for one man to enter into\nanother\u2019s mood. Men accord a ready welcome to metaphors and symbols\nthat instead of expressing something more or less individual have a\nreal relevancy to their common nature. Tribulation, for example, means\nliterally the beating out of grain on the threshing floor. The man\nwho first saw the analogy between this process and certain spiritual\nexperiences established a legitimate link between nature and human\nnature, between sense and the supersensuous. Language is filled with\nwords and expressions of this kind which have become so current that\ntheir metaphorical and symbolical character has been forgotten and\nwhich have at the same time ceased to be vivid and concrete and become\nabstract.\n\nThe primitivistic fallacies of the German romanticists in their\ndealings with the symbol and metaphor appear in various forms in\nFrench romanticism and even more markedly in its continuation known\nas the symbolistic movement. What is exasperating in many of the\npoets of this school is that they combine the pretence to a vast\nillumination with the utmost degree of spiritual and intellectual\nemptiness and vagueness. Like the early German romanticists they mix\nup flesh and spirit in nympholeptic longing and break down and blur\nall the boundaries of being in the name of the infinite. Of this inner\nformlessness and anarchy the chaos of the _vers libre_ (in which they\nwere also anticipated by the Germans) is only an outer symptom.[221]\n\nIf the Rousseauistic primitivist recognizes the futility of his\nsymbolizing, and consents to become a passive register of outer\nperception, if for example he proclaims himself an imagist, he at least\nhas the merit of frankness, but in that case he advertises by the very\nname he has assumed the bankruptcy of all that is most worth while in\npoetry.\n\nBut to return to romanticism and nature. It should be plain from what\nhas already been said that the romanticist tends to make of nature the\nmere plaything of his mood. When Werther\u2019s mood is cheerful, nature\nsmiles at him benignly. When his mood darkens she becomes for him \u201ca\ndevouring monster.\u201d When it grows evident to the romanticist that\nnature does not alter with his alteration, he chides her at times for\nher impassibility; or again he seeks to be impassible like her, even if\nhe can be so only at the expense of his humanity. This latter attitude\nis closely connected with the dehumanizing of man by science that is\nreflected in a whole literature during the last half of the nineteenth\ncentury--for instance, in so-called \u201cimpassive\u201d writers like Flaubert\nand Leconte de Lisle.\n\nThe causal sequences that had been observed in the physical realm\nwere developed more and more during this period with the aid of pure\nmathematics and the mathematical reason (_esprit de g\u00e9om\u00e9trie_) into an\nall-embracing system. For the earlier romanticists nature had at least\nbeen a living presence whether benign or sinister. For the mathematical\ndeterminist she tends to become a soulless, pitiless mechanism against\nwhich man is helpless.[222] This conception of nature is so important\nthat I shall need to revert to it in my treatment of melancholy.\n\nThe man who has accepted the universe of the mechanist or determinist\nis not always gloomy. But men in general felt the need of some relief\nfrom the deterministic obsession. Hence the success of the philosophy\nof Bergson and similar philosophies. The glorification of impulse\n(_\u00e9lan vital_) that Bergson opposes to the mechanizing of life is in\nits main aspects, as I have already indicated, simply a return to\nthe spontaneity of Rousseau. His plan of escape from deterministic\nscience is at bottom very much like Rousseau\u2019s plan of escape from\nthe undue rationalism of the Enlightenment. As a result of these\neighteenth-century influences, nature had, according to Carlyle, become\na mere engine, a system of cogs and pulleys. He therefore hails Novalis\nas an \u201canti-mechanist,\u201d a \u201cdeep man,\u201d because of the way of deliverance\nthat he teaches from this nightmare. \u201cI owe him somewhat.\u201d What Carlyle\nowed to Novalis many moderns have owed to Bergson, but it is not yet\nclear that either Novalis or Bergson are \u201cdeep men.\u201d\n\nThe mechanistic view of nature, whether held pessimistically or\noptimistically, involving as it does factors that are infinite\nand therefore beyond calculation, cannot furnish proofs that will\nsatisfy the true positivist: he is inclined to dismiss it as a mere\nphantasmagoria of the intellect. The Rousseauistic view of nature, on\nthe other hand, whether held optimistically or pessimistically, is\neven less capable of satisfying the standards of the positivist and\nmust be dismissed as a mere phantasmagoria of the emotions. The fact\nis that we do not know and can never know what nature is in herself.\nThe mysterious mother has shrouded herself from us in an impenetrable\nveil of illusion. But though we cannot know nature absolutely we can\npick up a practical and piecemeal knowledge of nature not by dreaming\nbut by doing. The man of action can within certain limits have his way\nwith nature. Now the men who have acted during the past century have\nbeen the men of science and the utilitarians who have been turning\nto account the discoveries of science. The utilitarians have indeed\nderived such potent aid from science that they have been able to stamp\ntheir efforts on the very face of the landscape. The romanticists have\nnot ceased to protest against this scientific utilizing of nature as\na profanation. But inasmuch as these protests have come from men who\nhave stood not for work but for revery they have for the most part\nbeen futile. This is not the least of the ironic contrasts that abound\nin this movement between the ideal and the real. No age ever grew so\necstatic over natural beauty as the nineteenth century, at the same\ntime no age ever did so much to deface nature. No age ever so exalted\nthe country over the town, and no age ever witnessed such a crowding\ninto urban centres.\n\nA curious study might be made of this ironic contrast as it appears\nin the early romantic crusade against railways. One of the romantic\ngrievances against the railway is that it does not encourage\nvagabondage: it has a definite goal and gets to it so far as possible\nin a straight line. Yet in spite of Wordsworth\u2019s protesting sonnet the\nWindermere railway was built. Ruskin\u2019s wrath at railways was equally\nvain. In general, sentiment is not of much avail when pitted against\nindustrial advance. The papers announced recently that one of the\nloveliest cascades in the California Sierras had suddenly disappeared\nas a result of the diversion of its water to a neighboring power-plant.\nThe same fate is overtaking Niagara itself. It is perhaps symbolic\nthat a quarry has made a hideous gash in the hillside on the shores of\nRydal Mere right opposite Wordsworth\u2019s house.\n\nIf the man of science and the utilitarian do not learn what nature\nis in herself they learn at least to adjust themselves to forces\noutside themselves. The Rousseauist, on the other hand, does not in\nhis \u201ccommunion\u201d with nature adjust himself to anything. He is simply\ncommuning with his own mood. Rousseau chose appropriately as title for\nthe comedy that was his first literary effort \u201cNarcissus or the Lover\nof Himself.\u201d The nature over which the Rousseauist is bent in such rapt\ncontemplation plays the part of the pool in the legend of Narcissus. It\nrenders back to him his own image. He sees in nature what he himself\nhas put there. The Rousseauist transfuses himself into nature in much\nthe same way that Pygmalion transfuses himself into his statue. Nature\nis dead, as Rousseau says, unless animated by the fires of love. \u201cMake\nno mistake,\u201d says M. Masson, \u201cthe nature that Jean-Jacques worships\nis only a projection of Jean-Jacques. He has poured himself forth\nso complacently upon it that he can always find himself and cherish\nhimself in it.\u201d And M. Masson goes on and quotes from a curious and\nlittle-known fragment of Rousseau: \u201cBeloved solitude,\u201d Rousseau sighs,\n\u201cbeloved solitude, where I still pass with pleasure the remains of\na life given over to suffering. Forest with stunted trees, marshes\nwithout water, broom, reeds, melancholy heather, inanimate objects,\nyou who can neither speak to me nor hear me, what secret charm brings\nme back constantly into your midst? Unfeeling and dead things, this\ncharm is not in you; it could not be there. It is in my own heart which\nwishes to refer back everything to itself.\u201d[223] Coleridge plainly only\ncontinues Rousseau when he writes:\n\n    O Lady! we receive but what we give,\n    And in our life alone does nature live:[224]\n    Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!\n      And would we aught behold, of higher worth,\n    Than that inanimate cold world allow\u2019d\n    To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,\n      Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth\n    A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud\n      Enveloping the Earth.\n\nThe fair luminous cloud is no other than the Arcadian imagination. \u201cThe\nlight that never was on sea or land, the consecration and the poet\u2019s\ndream\u201d of which Wordsworth speaks, is likewise as appears very plainly\nfrom the context,[225] Arcadian. He should once, Wordsworth writes,\nhave wished to see Peele Castle bathed in the Arcadian light, but now\nthat he has escaped by sympathy for his fellow-men from the Arcadian\naloofness, he is willing that it should be painted in storm. Mere\nstorminess, one should recollect, is not in itself an assurance that\none has turned from the romantic dream to reality. One finds in this\nmovement, if nowhere else, as I remarked apropos of Chateaubriand, the\nstormy Arcadia.\n\nIt is not through the Arcadian imagination that one moves towards\nreality. This does not much matter if what one seeks in a \u201creturn to\nnature\u201d is merely recreation. I cannot repeat too often that I have no\nquarrel with the nature cult when it remains recreative but only when\nit sets up as a substitute for philosophy and religion. This involves\na confusion between the two main directions of the human spirit, a\nconfusion as I have said in a previous chapter between the realm of\nawe and the region of wonder. Pascal exaggerates somewhat when he says\nthe Bible never seeks to prove religion from the \u201cwonders\u201d of nature.\nBut this remark is true to the total spirit of the Bible. A knowledge\nof the flowers of the Holy Land is less necessary for an understanding\nof the gospel narrative than one might suppose from Renan.[226] Renan\nis simply seeking to envelop Jesus so far as possible in an Arcadian\natmosphere. In so doing he is following in the footsteps of the great\nfather of sentimentalists. According to M. Masson, Jesus, as depicted\nby Jean-Jacques, becomes \u201ca sort of grand master of the Golden Age.\u201d\n\nHere as elsewhere the Rousseauist is seeking to identify the Arcadian\nview of life with wisdom. The result is a series of extraordinarily\nsubtle disguises for egoism. We think we see the Rousseauist prostrate\nbefore the ideal woman or before nature or before God himself, but\nwhen we look more closely we see that he is only (as Sainte-Beuve said\nof Alfred de Vigny) \u201cin perpetual adoration before the holy sacrament\nof himself.\u201d The fact that he finds in nature only what he has put\nthere seems to be for Rousseau himself a source of satisfaction. But\nthe poem of Coleridge I have just quoted, in which he proclaims that so\nfar as nature is concerned \u201cwe receive but what we give,\u201d is entitled\n\u201cOde to Dejection.\u201d One of man\u2019s deepest needs would seem to be for\ngenuine communion, for a genuine escape, that is, from his ordinary\nself. The hollowness of the Rousseauistic communion with nature as\nwell as other Rousseauistic substitutes for genuine communion is\nindissolubly bound up with the subject of romantic melancholy.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nROMANTIC MELANCHOLY\n\n\nRousseau and his early followers--especially perhaps his early French\nfollowers--were very much preoccupied with the problem of happiness.\nNow in a sense all men--even those who renounce the world and mortify\nthe flesh--aim at happiness. The important point to determine is what\nany particular person means by happiness and how he hopes to attain it.\nIt should be plain from all that has been said that the Rousseauist\nseeks happiness in the free play of the emotions. The \u201cInfluence of\nthe Passions on Happiness\u201d is the significant title of one of Madame\nde Sta\u00ebl\u2019s early treatises. The happiness that the Rousseauist seeks\ninvolves not merely a free play of feeling but--what is even more\nimportant--a free play of the imagination. Feeling acquires a sort\nof infinitude as a result of this co\u00f6peration of the imagination,\nand so the romanticist goes, as we have seen, in quest of the thrill\nsuperlative, as appears so clearly in his nympholepsy, his pursuit of\nthe \u201cimpossible she.\u201d But the more imaginative this quest for emotional\nhappiness grows the more it tends to become a mere nostalgia. Happiness\nis achieved so far as it is achieved at all in dreamland. Rousseau says\nof himself: _Mon plus constant bonheur fut en songe_. Every finite\nsatisfaction by the very fact that it is finite leaves him unsatisfied.\nRen\u00e9 says that he had exhausted solitude as he had exhausted society:\nthey had both failed to satisfy his insatiable desires. Ren\u00e9 plainly\ntakes his insatiableness to be the badge of his spiritual distinction.\nTo submit to any circumscribing of one\u2019s desires is to show that\none has no sense of infinitude and so to sink to the level of the\nphilistine.\n\nBut does one become happy by being nostalgic and hyper\u00e6sthetic, by\nburning with infinite indeterminate desire? We have here perhaps the\nchief irony and contradiction in the whole movement. The Rousseauist\nseeks happiness and yet on his own showing, his mode of seeking it\nresults, not in happiness but in wretchedness. One finds indeed figures\nin the nineteenth century, a Browning, for example, who see in life\nfirst of all an emotional adventure and then carry this adventure\nthrough to the end with an apparently unflagging gusto. One may affirm\nnevertheless that a movement which began by asserting the goodness\nof man and the loveliness of nature ended by producing the greatest\nliterature of despair the world has ever seen. No movement has perhaps\nbeen so prolific of melancholy as emotional romanticism. To follow it\nfrom Rousseau down to the present day is to run through the whole gamut\nof gloom.[227]\n\n    Infections of unutterable sadness,\n    Infections of incalculable madness,\n      Infections of incurable despair.\n\nAccording to a somewhat doubtful authority, Ninon de Lenclos, \u201cthe\njoy of the spirit measures its force.\u201d When the romanticist on the\nother hand discovers that his ideal of happiness works put into actual\nunhappiness he does not blame his ideal. He simply assumes that the\nworld is unworthy of a being so exquisitely organized as himself, and\nso shrinks back from it and enfolds himself in his sorrow as he would\nin a mantle. Since the superlative bliss that he craves eludes him\nhe will at least be superlative in woe. So far from being a mark of\nfailure this woe measures his spiritual grandeur. \u201cA great soul,\u201d as\nRen\u00e9 says, \u201cmust contain more grief than a small one.\u201d The romantic\npoets enter into a veritable competition with one another as to who\nshall be accounted the most forlorn. The victor in this competition\nis awarded the palm not merely for poetry but wisdom. In the words of\nArnold:\n\n            Amongst us one\n      Who most has suffered, takes dejectedly\n    His seat upon the intellectual throne;\n      And all his store of sad experience he\n        Lays bare of wretched days.\n    Tells us his misery\u2019s birth and growth and signs,\n      And how the dying spark of hope was fed,\n      And how the breast was soothed, and how the head,\n    And all his hourly varied anodynes.\n\n    This for our wisest! and we others pine,\n      And wish the long unhappy dream would end,\n        And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear;\n    With close-lipped patience for our only friend,\n        Sad patience, too near neighbor to despair.\n\nThough Arnold may in this poem, as some one has complained, reduce the\nmuse to the r\u00f4le of hospital nurse, he is, like his master Senancour,\nfree from the taint of theatricality. He does not as he said of Byron\nmake \u201ca pageant of his bleeding heart\u201d; and the Byronic pose has a\nclose parallel in the pose of Chateaubriand. An Irish girl at London\nonce told Chateaubriand that \u201che carried his heart in a sling.\u201d He\nhimself said that he had a soul of the kind \u201cthe ancients called a\nsacred malady.\u201d\n\nChateaubriand, to be sure, had his cheerful moments and many of them.\nHis sorrows he bestowed upon the public. Herein he was a true child\nof Jean-Jacques. We are told by eye-witnesses how heartily Rousseau\nenjoyed many aspects of his life at Motiers-Travers. On his own\nshowing, he was plunged during this period in almost unalloyed misery.\nFroude writes of Carlyle: \u201cIt was his peculiarity that if matters were\nwell with himself, it never occurred to him that they could be going\nill with any one else; and, on the other hand, if he was uncomfortable,\nhe required everybody to be uncomfortable along with him.\u201d We can\nfollow clear down to Gissing the assumption in some form or other that\n\u201cart must be the mouthpiece of misery.\u201d This whole question as to the\nproper function of art goes to the root of the debate between the\nclassicist and the Rousseauist. \u201cAll these poets,\u201d Goethe complains to\nEckermann of the romanticists of 1830, \u201cwrite as though they were ill,\nand as though the whole world were a hospital. \u2026 Every one of them in\nwriting tries to be more desolate than all the others. This is really\nan abuse of poetry which has been given to make man satisfied with the\nworld and with his lot. But the present generation is afraid of all\nsolid energy; its mind is at ease and sees poetry only in weakness. I\nhave found a good expression to vex these gentlemen. I am going to call\ntheir poetry hospital poetry.\u201d[228]\n\nNow Goethe is here, like Chateaubriand, mocking to some degree his own\nfollowers. When he suffered from a spiritual ailment of any kind he got\nrid of it by inoculating others with it; and it was in this way, as we\nlearn from his Autobiography, that he got relief from the _Weltschmerz_\nof \u201cWerther.\u201d But later in life Goethe was classical not merely in\nprecept like Chateaubriand, but to some extent in practice. The best of\nthe poetry of his maturity tends like that of the ancients to elevate\nand console.\n\nThe contrast between classic and romantic poetry in this matter of\nmelancholy is closely bound up with the larger contrast between\nimitation and spontaneity. Homer is the greatest of poets, according\nto Aristotle, because he does not entertain us with his own person but\nis more than any other poet an imitator. The romantic poet writes, on\nthe other hand, as Lamartine says he wrote, solely for the \u201crelief of\nhis heart.\u201d He pours forth himself--his most intimate and private self;\nabove all, his anguish and his tears. In his relation to his reader, as\nMusset tells us in a celebrated image,[229] he is like the pelican who\nrends and lacerates his own flesh to provide nourishment for his young\n(_Pour toute nourriture il apporte son c\u0153ur_):\n\n    _Les plus d\u00e9sesp\u00e9r\u00e9s sont les chants les plus beaux,_\n    _Et j\u2019en sais d\u2019immortels qui sont de purs sanglots._[230]\n\nTo make of poetry a spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion, usually\nof sorrowful emotion, is what the French understand by lyricism (_le\nlyrisme_); and it may be objected that it is not fair to compare an\nepic poet like Homer with a lyricist like Musset. Let us then take for\nour comparison the poet whom the ancients themselves looked upon as\nthe supreme type of the lyricist--Pindar. He is superbly imaginative,\n\u201csailing,\u201d as Gray tells us, \u201cwith supreme dominion through the azure\ndeep of air,\u201d but his imagination is not like that of Musset in the\nservice of sensibility. He does not bestow his own emotions upon us\nbut is rather in the Aristotelian sense an imitator. He is indeed at\nthe very opposite pole from Rousseau and the \u201capostles of affliction.\u201d\n\u201cLet a man,\u201d he says, \u201cnot darken delight in his life.\u201d \u201cDisclose not\nto strangers our burden of care; this at least shall I advise thee.\nTherefore is it fitting to show openly to all the folk the fair and\npleasant things allotted us; but if any baneful misfortune sent of\nheaven befalleth man, it is seemly to shroud this in darkness.\u201d[231]\nAnd one should also note Pindar\u2019s hostility towards that other great\nsource of romantic lyricism--nostalgia (\u201cThe desire of the moth for\nthe star\u201d), and the closely allied pursuit of the strange and the\nexotic. He tells of the condign punishment visited by Apollo upon the\ngirl Coronis who became enamoured of \u201ca strange man from Arcadia,\u201d and\nadds: \u201cShe was in love with things remote--that passion which many ere\nnow have felt. For among men, there is a foolish company of those who,\nputting shame on what they have at home, cast their glances afar, and\npursue idle dreams in hopes that shall not be fulfilled.\u201d[232]\n\nWe are not to suppose that Pindar was that most tiresome and\nsuperficial of all types--the professional optimist who insists on\ninflicting his \u201cgladness\u201d upon us. \u201cThe immortals,\u201d he says, \u201capportion\nto man two sorrows for every boon they grant.\u201d[233] In general the\nGreek whom Kipling sings and whom we already find in Schiller--the\nGreek who is an incarnation of the \u201cjoy of life unquestioned, the\neverlasting wondersong of youth\u201d[234]--is a romantic myth. We read\nin the Iliad:[235] \u201cOf all the creatures that breathe or crawl upon\nthe earth, none is more wretched than man.\u201d Here is the \u201cjoy of life\nunquestioned\u201d in Homer. Like Homer the best of the later Greeks\nand Romans face unflinchingly the facts of life and these facts do\nnot encourage a thoughtless elation. Their melancholy is even more\nconcerned with the lot of man in general than with their personal and\nprivate grief. The quality of this melancholy is rendered in Tennyson\u2019s\nline on Virgil, one of the finest in nineteenth century English poetry:\n\n    Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind.[236]\n\nOne should indeed not fail to distinguish between the note of\nmelancholy in a Homer or a Virgil and the melancholy of the ancients,\nwhether Stoic or Epicurean, who had experienced the hopelessness and\nhelplessness of a pure naturalism in dealing with ultimate problems.\nThe melancholy of the Stoic is the melancholy of the man who associates\nwith the natural order a \u201cvirtue\u201d that the natural order does not give,\nand so is tempted to exclaim at last with Brutus, that he had thought\nvirtue a thing and had found that it was only a word. The melancholy of\nthe Epicurean is that of the man who has tasted the bitter sediment\n(_amari aliquid_) in the cup of pleasure. It is not difficult to\ndiscover modern equivalents of both Stoic and Epicurean melancholy.\n\u201cOne should seek,\u201d says Sainte-Beuve, \u201cin the pleasures of Ren\u00e9 the\nsecret of his _ennuis_,\u201d and so far as this is true Chateaubriand is\non much the same level as some Roman voluptuary who suffered from\nthe _t\u00e6dium vit\u00e6_ in the time of Tiberius or Nero.[237] But though\nthe Roman decadent gave himself up to the pursuit of sensation and\noften of violent and abnormal sensation he was less prone than a\nChateaubriand to associate this pursuit with the \u201cinfinite\u201d; and so he\nwas less nostalgic and hyper\u00e6sthetic. His Epicureanism was therefore\nless poetical no doubt, but on the other hand he did not set up mere\nromantic restlessness as a sort of substitute for religion. It was\nprobably easier therefore for him to feel the divine discontent and\nso turn to real religion than it would have been if he had, like the\nRousseauist, complicated his Epicureanism with sham spirituality.\n\nTo say that the melancholy even of the decadent ancient is less\nnostalgic is perhaps only another way of saying what I have said about\nthe melancholy of the ancients in general--that it is not so purely\npersonal. It derives less from his very private and personal illusions\nand still less from his very private and personal disillusions. In\nits purely personal quality romantic melancholy is indeed inseparable\nfrom the whole conception of original genius. The genius sets out not\nmerely to be unique but unique in feeling, and the sense uniqueness in\nfeeling speedily passes over into that of uniqueness in suffering--on\nthe principle no doubt laid down by Horace Walpole that life, which is\na comedy for those who think, is a tragedy for those who feel. To be\na beautiful soul, to preserve one\u2019s native goodness of feeling among\nmen who have been perverted by society, is to be the elect of nature\nand yet this election turns out as Rousseau tells us to be a \u201cfatal\ngift of heaven.\u201d It is only the disillusioned romanticist, however,\nwho assumes this elegiac tone. We need to consider what he means by\nhappiness while he still seeks for it in the actual world and not in\nthe _pays des chim\u00e8res_. Rousseau tells us that he based the sense\nof his own worth on the fineness of his powers of perception. Why\nshould nature have endowed him with such exquisite faculties[238] if\nhe was not to have a satisfaction commensurate with them, if he was\n\u201cto die without having lived\u201d? We have here the psychological origins\nof the right to happiness that the romanticists were to proclaim.\n\u201cWe spend on the passions,\u201d says Joubert, \u201cthe stuff that has been\ngiven us for happiness.\u201d The Rousseauist hopes to find his happiness\nin the passions themselves. Romantic happiness does not involve any\nmoral effort and has been defined in its extreme forms as a \u201cmonstrous\ndream of passive enjoyment.\u201d Flaubert has made a study of the right to\nhappiness thus understood in his \u201cMadame Bovary.\u201d Madame Bovary, who\nis very commonplace in other respects, feels exquisitely; and inasmuch\nas her husband had no such fineness the right to happiness meant for\nher, as it did for so many other \u201cmisunderstood\u201d women, the right\nto extra-marital adventure. One should note the germs of melancholy\nthat lurk in the quest of the superlative moment even if the quest is\nrelatively successful. Suppose Saint-Preux had succeeded in compressing\ninto a single instant \u201cthe delights of a thousand centuries\u201d; and so\nfar as outer circumstances are concerned had had to pay no penalty. The\nnearer the approach to a superhuman intensity of feeling the greater is\nlikely to be the ensuing languor. The ordinary round of life seems pale\nand insipid compared with the exquisite and fugitive moment. One seems\nto one\u2019s self to have drained the cup of life at a draught and save\nperhaps for impassioned recollection of the perfect moment to have no\nreason for continuing to live. One\u2019s heart is \u201cempty and swollen\u201d[239]\nand one is haunted by thoughts of suicide.\n\nThis sense of having exhausted life[240] and the accompanying\ntemptation to suicide that are such striking features of the malady\nof the age are not necessarily associated with any outer enjoyment at\nall. One may devour life in revery and then the melancholy arises from\nthe disproportion between the dream and the fact. The revery that thus\nconsumes life in advance is not necessarily erotic. What may be termed\nthe cosmic revery of a Senancour or an Amiel[241] has very much the\nsame effect.\n\nThe atony and aridity of which the sufferer from romantic melancholy\ncomplains may have other sources besides the depression that follows\nupon the achieving of emotional intensity whether in revery or in fact;\nit may also be an incident in the warfare between head and heart that\nassumes so many forms among the spiritual posterity of Jean-Jacques.\nThe Rousseauist seeks happiness in emotional spontaneity and this\nspontaneity seems to be killed by the head which stands aloof and\ndissects and analyzes. Perhaps the best picture of the emotionalist\nwho is thus incapacitated for a frank surrender to his own emotions\nis the \u201cAdolphe\u201d of Benjamin Constant (a book largely reminiscent of\nConstant\u2019s actual affair with Madame de Sta\u00ebl).\n\nWhether the victim of romantic melancholy feels or analyzes he\nis equally incapable of action. He who faces resolutely the rude\nbuffetings of the world is gradually hardened against them. The\nromantic movement is filled with the groans of those who have evaded\naction and at the same time become highly sensitive and highly\nself-conscious. The man who thrills more exquisitely to pleasure than\nanother will also thrill more exquisitely to pain; nay, pleasure itself\nin its extreme is allied to pain;[242] so that to be hyper\u00e6sthetic is\nnot an unmixed advantage especially if it be true, as Pindar says,\nthat the Gods bestow two trials on a man for every boon. Perhaps the\ndeepest bitterness is found, not in those who make a pageant of their\nbleeding hearts, but in those who, like Leconte de Lisle[243] and\nothers (_les impassibles_), disdain to make a show of themselves to the\nmob, and so dissimulate their quivering sensibility under an appearance\nof impassibility; or, like Stendhal, under a mask of irony that \u201cis\nimperceptible to the vulgar.\u201d\n\nStendhal aims not at emotional intensity only, but also glorifies the\nlust for power. He did as much as any one in his time to promote the\nideal of the superman. Yet even if the superman has nerves of steel,\nas seems to have been the case with Stendhal\u2019s favorite, Napoleon, and\nacts on the outer world with a force of which the man in search of a\nsensation is quite incapable, he does not act upon himself, he remains\nethically passive. This ethical passivity is the trait common to all\nthose who incline to live purely on the naturalistic level--whether\nthey sacrifice the human law and its demands for measure to the lust\nof knowledge or the lust of sensation or the lust of power. The man\nwho neglects his ethical self and withdraws into his temperamental or\nprivate self, must almost necessarily have the sense of isolation,\nof remoteness from other men. We return here to the psychology of\nthe original genius to whom it was a tame and uninteresting thing\nto be simply human and who, disdaining to seem to others a being of\nthe same clay as themselves, wished to be in their eyes either an\nangel or a demon--above all a demon.[244] Ren\u00e9 does not, as I have\nsaid,[245] want even the woman who loves him to feel at one with him,\nbut rather to be at once astonished and appalled. He exercises upon\nthose who approach him a malign fascination; for he not only lives\nin misery himself as in his natural element, but communicates this\nmisery to those who approach him. He is like one of those fair trees\nunder which one cannot sit without perishing. Moreover Ren\u00e9 disavows\nall responsibility for thus being a human Upas-tree. Moral effort is\nunavailing, for it was all written in the book of fate. The victim of\nromantic melancholy is at times tender and elegiac, at other times he\nsets up as a heaven-defying Titan. This latter pose became especially\ncommon in France around 1830 when the influence of Byron had been added\nto that of Chateaubriand. Under the influence of these two writers a\nwhole generation of youth became \u201cthings of dark imaginings,\u201d[246]\npredestined to a blight that was at the same time the badge of their\nsuperiority. One wished like Ren\u00e9 to have an \u201cimmense, solitary and\nstormy soul,\u201d and also, like a Byronic hero, to have a diabolical glint\nin the eye and a corpse-like complexion,[247] and so seem the \u201cblind\nand deaf agent of funereal mysteries.\u201d[248] \u201cIt was possible to believe\neverything about Ren\u00e9 except the truth.\u201d The person who delights in\nbeing as mysterious as this easily falls into mystification. Byron\nhimself we are told was rather flattered by the rumor that he had\ncommitted at least one murder. Baudelaire, it has been said, displayed\nhis moral gangrene as a warrior might display honorable wounds. This\nflaunting of his own perversity was part of the literary attitude he\nhad inherited from the \u201cSatanic School.\u201d\n\nWhen the romanticist is not posing as the victim of fate he poses\nas the victim of society. Both ways of dodging moral responsibility\nenter into the romantic legend of the _po\u00e8te maudit_. Nobody loves\na poet. His own mother according to Baudelaire utters a malediction\nupon him.[249] That is because the poet feels so exquisitely that he\nis at once odious and unintelligible to the ordinary human pachyderm.\nInasmuch as the philistine is not too sensitive to act he has a great\nadvantage over the poet in the real world and often succeeds in driving\nhim from it and indeed from life itself. This inferiority in action is\na proof of the poet\u2019s ideality. \u201cHis gigantic wings,\u201d as Baudelaire\nsays, \u201ckeep him from walking.\u201d He has, in Coleridgean phrase, fed on\n\u201choney dew and drunk the milk of paradise,\u201d[250] and so can scarcely\nbe expected to submit to a diet of plain prose. It is hardly necessary\nto say that great poets of the past have not been at war with their\npublic in this way. The reason is that they were less taken up with\nthe uttering of their own uniqueness; they were, without ceasing to be\nthemselves, servants of the general sense.\n\nChatterton became for the romanticists a favorite type of the _po\u00e8te\nmaudit_, and his suicide a symbol of the inevitable defeat of the\n\u201cideal\u201d by the \u201creal.\u201d The first performance of Vigny\u2019s Chatterton\n(1835) with its picture of the implacable hatred of the philistine\nfor the artist was received by the romantic youth of Paris with\nsomething akin to delirium. As Gautier says in his well-known account\nof this performance one could almost hear in the night the crack of\nthe solitary pistols. The ordinary man of letters, says Vigny in\nhis preface to this play, is sure of success, even the great writer\nmay get a hearing, but the poet, a being who is on a far higher\nlevel than either, can look forward only to \u201cperpetual martyrdom and\nimmolation.\u201d He comes into the world to be a burden to others; his\nnative sensibility is so intimate and profound that it \u201chas plunged\nhim from childhood into involuntary ecstasies, interminable reveries,\ninfinite inventions. Imagination possesses him above all \u2026 it sweeps\nhis faculties heavenward as irresistibly as the balloon carries up\nits car.\u201d From that time forth he is more or less cut off from normal\ncontact with his fellow-men. \u201cHis sensibility has become too keen;\nwhat only grazes other men wounds him until he bleeds.\u201d He is thrown\nback more and more upon himself and becomes a sort of living volcano,\n\u201cconsumed by secret ardors and inexplicable languors,\u201d and incapable\nof self-guidance. Such is the poet. From his first appearance he is\nan outlaw. Let all your tears and all your pity be for him. If he is\nfinally forced to suicide not he but society is to blame. He is like\nthe scorpion that cruel boys surround with live coals and that is\nfinally forced to turn his sting upon himself. Society therefore owes\nit to itself to see that this exquisite being is properly pensioned and\nprotected by government, to the end that idealism may not perish from\nthe earth. M. Thiers who was prime minister at that time is said to\nhave received a number of letters from young poets, the general tenor\nof which was: \u201cA position or I\u2019ll kill myself.\u201d[251]\n\nA circumstance that should interest Americans is that Poe as\ninterpreted by Baudelaire came to hold for a later generation of\nromanticists the place that Chatterton had held for the romanticists\nof 1830. Poe was actually murdered, says Baudelaire--and there is an\nelement of truth in the assertion along with much exaggeration--by\nthis great gas-lighted barbarity (i.e., America). All his inner and\nspiritual life whether drunkard\u2019s or poet\u2019s, was one constant effort to\nescape from this antipathetic atmosphere \u201cin which,\u201d Baudelaire goes on\nto say, \u201cthe impious love of liberty has given birth to a new tyranny,\nthe tyranny of the beasts, a zo\u00f6cracy\u201d; and in this human zoo a being\nwith such a superhuman fineness of sensibility as Poe was of course at\na hopeless disadvantage. In general our elation at Poe\u2019s recognition in\nEurope should be tempered by the reflection that this recognition is\nusually taken as a point of departure for insulting America. Poe is\nabout the only hyper\u00e6sthetic romanticist we have had, and he therefore\nfell in with the main European tendency that comes down from the\neighteenth century. Villiers de l\u2019Isle-Adam, whom I have already cited\nas an extreme example of romantic idealism, was one of Poe\u2019s avowed\nfollowers; but Villiers is also related by his \u00e6sthetic and \u201cdiabolic\u201d\nCatholicism to Chateaubriand; and the religiosity of Chateaubriand\nitself derives from the religiosity of Rousseau.\n\nHitherto I have been studying for the most part only one main type of\nmodern melancholy. This type even in a Chateaubriand or a Byron and\nstill more in their innumerable followers may seem at once superficial\nand theatrical. It often does not get beyond that Epicurean toying with\nsorrow, that luxury of grief, which was not unknown even to classical\nantiquity.[252] The despair of Chateaubriand is frequently only a\ndisguise of his love of literary glory, and Chesterton is inclined to\nsee in the Byronic gloom an incident of youth and high spirits.[253]\nBut this is not the whole story even in Byron and Chateaubriand. To\nfind what is both genuine and distinctive in romantic melancholy we\nneed to enlarge a little further on the underlying difference between\nthe classicist and the Rousseauist. The Rousseauist, as indeed the\nmodern man in general, is more preoccupied with his separate and\nprivate self than the classicist. Modern melancholy has practically\nalways this touch of isolation not merely because of the proneness\nof the \u201cgenius\u201d to dwell on his own uniqueness, but also because of\nthe undermining of the traditional communions by critical analysis.\nThe noblest form of the \u201cmalady of the age\u201d is surely that which\nsupervened upon the loss of religious faith. This is what distinguishes\nthe sadness of an Arnold or a Senancour from that of a Gray. The\n\u201cElegy\u201d belongs to the modern movement by the humanitarian note, the\nsympathetic interest in the lowly, but in its melancholy it does\nnot go much beyond the milder forms of classical meditation on the\ninevitable sadness of life--what one may term pensiveness. Like the\nother productions of the so-called graveyard school, it bears a direct\nrelation to Milton\u2019s \u201cIl Penseroso.\u201d It is well to retain Gray\u2019s own\ndistinction. \u201cMine is a white Melancholy, or rather Leucocholy for the\nmost part,\u201d he wrote to Richard West in 1742, \u201cbut there is another\nsort, black indeed, which I have now and then felt.\u201d Gray did not\nexperience the more poignant sadness, one may suspect, without some\nloss of the \u201ctrembling hope\u201d that is the final note of the \u201cElegy.\u201d No\nforlornness is greater than that of the man who has known faith and\nthen lost it. Renan writes of his own break with the Church:\n\n    The fish of Lake Baikal, we are told, have spent thousands\n    of years in becoming fresh-water fish after being salt-water\n    fish. I had to go through my transition in a few weeks. Like an\n    enchanted circle Catholicism embraces the whole of life with so\n    much strength that when one is deprived of it everything seems\n    insipid. I was terribly lost. The universe produced upon me\n    the impression of a cold and arid desert. For the moment that\n    Christianity was not the truth, all the rest appeared to me\n    indifferent, frivolous, barely worthy of interest. The collapse\n    of my life upon itself left in me a feeling of emptiness\n    like that which follows an attack of fever or an unhappy\n    love-affair.[254]\n\nThe forlornness at the loss of faith is curiously combined in many of\nthe romanticists with the mood of revolt. This type of romanticist\nheaps reproaches on a God in whose existence he no longer believes\n(as in Leconte de Lisle\u2019s \u201cQua\u00efn,\u201d itself related to Byron\u2019s \u201cCain\u201d).\nHe shakes his fist at an empty heaven, or like Alfred de Vigny (in\nhis _Jardin des Oliviers_) assumes towards this emptiness an attitude\nof proud disdain. He is loath to give up this grandiose defiance of\ndivinity if only because it helps to save him from subsiding into\nplatitude. A somewhat similar mood appears in the \u201cSatanic\u201d Catholics\nwho continue to cling to religion simply because it adds to the gusto\nof sinning.[255] A Barbey succeeded in combining the r\u00f4le of Byronic\nTitan with that of champion of the Church. But in general the romantic\nPrometheus spurns the traditional forms of communion whether classical\nor Christian. He is so far as everything established is concerned\nenormously centrifugal, but he hopes to erect on the ruins of the past\nthe new religion of human brotherhood. Everything in this movement from\nShaftesbury down hinges on the r\u00f4le that is thus assigned to sympathy:\nif it can really unite men who are at the same time indulging each to\nthe utmost his own \u201cgenius\u201d or idiosyncrasy there is no reason why one\nshould not accept romanticism as a philosophy of life.\n\nBut nowhere else perhaps is the clash more violent between the theory\nand the fact. No movement is so profuse in professions of brotherhood\nand none is so filled with the aching sense of solitude. \u201cBehold me\nthen alone upon the earth,\u201d is the sentence with which Rousseau begins\nhis last book;[256] and he goes on to marvel that he, the \u201cmost loving\nof men,\u201d had been forced more and more into solitude. \u201cI am in the\nworld as though in a strange planet upon which I have fallen from the\none that I inhabited.\u201d[257] When no longer subordinated to something\nhigher than themselves both the head and the heart (in the romantic\nsense) not only tend to be opposed to one another, but also, each in\nits own way, to isolate. Empedocles was used not only by Arnold but by\nother victims[258] of romantic melancholy, as a symbol of intellectual\nisolation: by his indulgence in the \u201cimperious lonely thinking power\u201d\nEmpedocles has broken the warm bonds of sympathy with his fellows:\n\n                            thou art\n    A living man no more, Empedocles!\n    Nothing but a devouring flame of thought,--\n    But a naked eternally restless mind!\n\nHis leaping into \u00c6tna typifies his attempt to escape from his\nloneliness by a fiery union with nature herself.\n\nAccording to religion one should seek to unite with a something that\nis set above both man and nature, whether this something is called\nGod as in Christianity or simply the Law as in various philosophies\nof the Far East.[259] The most severe penalty visited on the man who\ntransgresses is that he tends to fall away from this union. This is\nthe element of truth in the sentence of Diderot that Rousseau took as\na personal affront: \u201cOnly the wicked man is alone.\u201d Rousseau asserted\nin reply, anticipating Mark Twain,[260] that \u201con the contrary only\nthe good man is alone.\u201d Now in a sense Rousseau is right. \u201cMost men\nare bad,\u201d as one of the seven sages of Greece remarked, and any one\nwho sets out to follow a very strenuous virtue is likely to have few\ncompanions on the way. Rousseau is also right in a sense when he says\nthat the wicked man needs to live in society so that he may have\nopportunity to practice his wickedness. Yet Rousseau fails to face the\nmain issue: solitude is above all a psychic thing. A man may frequent\nhis fellows and suffer none the less acutely, like Poe\u2019s \u201cMan of the\nCrowd,\u201d from a ghastly isolation. And conversely one may be like the\nancient who said that he was never less alone than when he was alone.\n\nHawthorne, who was himself a victim of solitude, brooded a great deal\non this whole problem, especially, as may be seen in the \u201cScarlet\nLetter\u201d and elsewhere, on the isolating effects of sin. He perceived\nthe relation of the problem to the whole trend of religious life in\nNew England. The older Puritans had a sense of intimacy with God and\ncraved no other companionship. With the weakening of their faith the\nlater Puritans lost the sense of a divine companionship, but retained\ntheir aloofness from men. Hawthorne\u2019s own solution of the problem\nof solitude, so far as he offers any, is humanitarian. Quicken your\nsympathies. Let the man who has taken as his motto _Excelsior_[261]\nbe warned. Nothing will console him on the bleak heights either of\nknowledge or of power for the warm contact with the dwellers in the\nvalley. Faust, who is a symbol of the solitude of knowledge, seeks to\nescape from his forlornness by recovering this warm contact. That the\ninordinate quest of power also leads to solitude is beyond question.\nNapoleon, the very type of the superman, must in the nature of the case\nhave been very solitary.[262] His admirer Nietzsche wrote one day: \u201cI\nhave forty-three years behind me and am as alone as if I were a child.\u201d\nCarlyle, whose \u201chero\u201d derives like the superman from the original\ngenius[263] of the eighteenth century, makes the following entry in his\ndiary: \u201cMy isolation, my feeling of loneliness, unlimitedness (much\nmeant by this) what tongue shall say? Alone, alone!\u201d[264]\n\nIt cannot be granted, however, that one may escape by love, as the\nRousseauist understands the word, from the loneliness that arises from\nthe unlimited quest either of knowledge or power. For Rousseauistic\nlove is also unlimited whether one understands by love either passion\nor a diffusive sympathy for mankind at large. \u201cWhat solitudes are these\nhuman bodies,\u201d Musset exclaimed when fresh from his affair with George\nSand. Wordsworth cultivated a love for the lowly that quite overflowed\nthe bounds of neo-classic selection. It is a well-known fact that the\nlowly did not altogether reciprocate. \u201cA desolate-minded man, ye kna,\u201d\nsaid an old inn-keeper of the Lakes to Canon Rawnsley, \u201c\u2019Twas potry as\ndid it.\u201d If Wordsworth writes so poignantly of solitude one may infer\nthat it is because he himself had experienced it.[265] Nor would it be\ndifficult to show that the very philanthropic Ruskin was at least as\nsolitary as Carlyle with his tirades against philanthropy.\n\nI have spoken of the isolating effects of sin, but sin is scarcely the\nright word to apply to most of the romanticists. The solitude of which\nso many of them complain does, however, imply a good deal of spiritual\ninertia. Now to be spiritually inert, as I have said elsewhere, is\nto be temperamental, to indulge unduly the lust for knowledge or\nsensation or power without imposing on these lusts some centre or\nprinciple of control set above the ordinary self. The man who wishes\nto fly off on the tangent of his own temperament and at the same time\nenjoy communion on any except the purely material level is harboring\nincompatible desires. For temperament is what separates. A sense of\nunlimitedness (\u201cmuch meant by this\u201d as Carlyle says) and of solitude\nare simply the penalties visited upon the eccentric individualist. If\nwe are to unite on the higher levels with other men we must look in\nanother direction than the expansive outward striving of temperament:\nwe must in either the humanistic or religious sense undergo conversion.\nWe must pull back our temperaments with reference to the model that\nwe are imitating, just as, in Aristotle\u2019s phrase, one might pull\nback and straighten out a crooked stick.[266] Usually the brake on\ntemperament is supplied by the ethos, the convention of one\u2019s age and\ncountry. I have tried to show elsewhere that the whole programme of\nthe eccentric individualist is to get rid of this convention, whatever\nit may be, without developing some new principle of control. The\neccentric individualist argues that to accept control, to defer to some\ncentre as the classicist demands, is to cease to be himself. But are\nrestrictions upon temperament so fatal to a man\u2019s being himself? The\nreply hinges upon the definition of the word self, inasmuch as man is\na dual being. If a man is to escape from his isolation he must, I have\nsaid, aim at some goal set above his ordinary self which is at the\nsame time his unique and separate self. But because this goal is set\nabove his ordinary self, it is not therefore necessarily set above his\ntotal personality. The limitations that he imposes on his ordinary\nself may be the necessary condition of his entering into possession of\nhis ethical self, the self that he possesses in common with other men.\nAristotle says that if a man wishes to achieve happiness he must be a\ntrue lover of himself. It goes without saying that he means the ethical\nself. The author of a recent book on Ibsen says that Ibsen\u2019s message to\nthe world is summed up in the line:\n\n    This above all,--to thine own self be true.\n\nIt is abundantly plain from the context, however, that Polonius is a\ndecayed Aristotelian and not a precursor of Ibsen. The self to which\nAristotle would have a man be true is at the opposite pole from the\nself that Ibsen and the original geniuses are so eager to get uttered.\n\nTo impose the yoke of one\u2019s human self upon one\u2019s temperamental\nself is, in the Aristotelian sense, to work. Aristotle conceives of\nhappiness in terms of work. All types of temperamentalists, on the\nother hand, are from the human point of view, passive. The happiness\nthat they crave is a passive happiness. A man may pursue power with the\nenergy of a Napoleon and yet remain ethically passive. He may absorb\nwhole encyclop\u00e6dias and remain ethically passive. He may expand his\nsympathies until, like Schiller, he is ready to \u201cbestow a kiss upon\nthe whole world\u201d and yet remain ethically passive. A man ceases to\nbe ethically passive only when he begins to work in the Aristotelian\nsense, that is when he begins to put the brake on temperament and\nimpulse, and in the same degree he tends to become ethically efficient.\nBy his denial of the dualism of the spirit, Rousseau discredited this\ninner working, so that inwardness has come to seem synonymous with mere\nsubjectivity; and to be subjective in the Rousseauistic sense is to be\ndiffusive, to lack purpose and concentration, to lose one\u2019s self in a\nshoreless sea of revery.\n\nThe utilitarian intervenes at this point and urges the romanticist,\nsince he has failed to work inwardly, at least to work outwardly.\nHaving missed the happiness of ethical efficiency he may in this way\nfind the happiness of material efficiency, and at the same time serve\nthe world. This is the solution of the problem of happiness that Goethe\noffers at the end of the Second Faust, and we may affirm without\nhesitation that it is a sham solution. To work outwardly and in the\nutilitarian sense, without the inner working that can alone save from\nethical anarchy is to stimulate rather than repress the most urgent\nof all the lusts--the lust of power. It is only too plain that the\nunselective sympathy or joy in service with which Goethe would complete\nFaust\u2019s utilitarian activity is not in itself a sufficient counterpoise\nto the will to power, unless indeed we assume with Rousseau that one\nmay control expansive impulses by opposing them to one another.\n\nA terrible danger thus lurks in the whole modern programme: it is a\nprogramme that makes for a formidable mechanical efficiency and so\ntends to bring into an ever closer material contact men who remain\nethically centrifugal. The reason why the humanitarian and other\nschemes of communion that have been set up during the last century\nhave failed is that they do not, like the traditional schemes, set\nany bounds to mere expansiveness, or, if one prefers, they do not\ninvolve any conversion. And so it is not surprising that the feeling\nof emptiness[267] or unlimitedness and isolation should be the special\nmark of the melancholy of this period. Ren\u00e9 complains of his \u201cmoral\nsolitude\u201d;[268] but strictly speaking his solitude is the reverse of\nmoral. Only by cultivating his human self and by the unceasing effort\nthat this cultivation involves does a man escape from his nightmare of\nseparateness and so move in some measure towards happiness. But the\nhappiness of which Ren\u00e9 dreams is unethical--something very private and\npersonal and egoistic. Nothing is easier than to draw the line from\nRen\u00e9 to Baudelaire and later decadents--for instance to Des Esseintes,\nthe hero of Huysmans\u2019s novel \u201cA Rebours,\u201d[269] who is typical of the\nlast exaggerations of the movement. Des Esseintes cuts himself off as\ncompletely as possible from other men and in the artificial paradise\nhe has devised gives himself up to the quest of strange and violent\nsensation; but his dream of happiness along egoistic lines turns into\na nightmare,[270] his palace of art becomes a hell. Lema\u00eetre is quite\njustified in saying of Des Esseintes that he is only Ren\u00e9 or Werther\nbrought up to date--\u201ca played-out and broken-down Werther who has\na malady of the nerves, a deranged stomach and eighty years more of\nliterature to the bad.\u201d[271]\n\nEmotional romanticism was headed from the start towards this bankruptcy\nbecause of its substitution for ethical effort of a mere lazy floating\non the stream of mood and temperament. I have said that Buddhism\nsaw in this ethical indolence the root of all evil. Christianity in\nits great days was preoccupied with the same problem. To make this\npoint clear it will be necessary to add to what I have said about\nclassical and romantic melancholy a few words about melancholy in the\nMiddle Ages. In a celebrated chapter of his \u201cGenius of Christianity\u201d\n(_Le Vague des passions_) Chateaubriand seeks to give to the malady\nof the age Christian and medi\u00e6val origins. This was his pretext,\nindeed, for introducing Ren\u00e9 into an apology for Christianity and so,\nas Sainte-Beuve complained, administering poison in a sacred wafer.\nChateaubriand begins by saying that the modern man is melancholy\nbecause, without having had experience himself, he is at the same\ntime overwhelmed by the second-hand experience that has been heaped\nup in the books and other records of an advanced civilization; and so\nhe suffers from a precocious disillusion; he has the sense of having\nexhausted life before he has enjoyed it. There is nothing specifically\nChristian in this disillusion and above all nothing medi\u00e6val. But\nChateaubriand goes on to say that from the decay of the pagan world\nand the barbarian invasions the human spirit received an impression\nof sadness and possibly a tinge of misanthropy which has never been\ncompletely effaced. Those that were thus wounded and estranged from\ntheir fellow-men took refuge formerly in monasteries, but now that\nthis resource has failed them, they are left in the world without being\nof it and so they \u201cbecome the prey of a thousand chimeras.\u201d Then is\nseen the rise of that guilty melancholy which the passions engender\nwhen, left without definite object, they prey upon themselves in a\nsolitary heart.[272]\n\nThe _vague des passions_, the expansion of infinite indeterminate\ndesire, that Chateaubriand here describes may very well be related to\ncertain sides of Christianity--especially to what may be termed its\nneo-Platonic side. Yet Christianity at its best has shown itself a\ngenuine religion, in other words, it has dealt sternly and veraciously\nwith the facts of human nature. It has perceived clearly how a man may\nmove towards happiness and how on the other hand he tends to sink into\ndespair; or what amounts to the same thing, it has seen the supreme\nimportance of spiritual effort and the supreme danger of spiritual\nsloth. The man who looked on himself as cut off from God and so ceased\nto strive was according to the medi\u00e6val Christian the victim of\n_acedia_. This sluggishness and slackness of spirit, this mere drifting\nand abdication of will, may, as Chaucer\u2019s parson suggests, be the crime\nagainst the Holy Ghost itself. It would in fact not be hard to show\nthat what was taken by the Rousseauist to be the badge of spiritual\ndistinction was held by the medi\u00e6val Christian to be the chief of all\nthe deadly sins.\n\nThe victim of _acedia_ often looked upon himself, like the victim of\nthe malady of the age, as foredoomed. But though the idea of fate\nenters at times into medi\u00e6val melancholy, the man of the Middle Ages\ncould scarcely so detach himself from the community as to suffer\nfrom that sense of loneliness which is the main symptom of romantic\nmelancholy. This forlornness was due not merely to the abrupt\ndisappearance of the older forms of communion, but to the failure of\nthe new attempts at communion. When one gets beneath the surface of\nthe nineteenth century one finds that it was above all a period of\nviolent disillusions, and it is especially after violent disillusion\nthat a man feels himself solitary and forlorn. I have said that the\nspecial mark of the half-educated man is his harboring of incompatible\ndesires. The new religions or unifications of life that appeared\nduring the nineteenth century made an especially strong appeal to the\nhalf-educated man because it seemed to him that by accepting some one\nof these he could enjoy the benefits of communion and at the same time\nnot have to take on the yoke of any serious discipline; that he could,\nin the language of religion, achieve salvation without conversion. When\na communion on these lines turns out to be not a reality, but a sham,\nand its disillusioned votary feels solitary and forlorn, he is ready to\nblame everybody and everything except himself.\n\nA few specific illustrations will help us to understand how romantic\nsolitude, which was created by the weakening of the traditional\ncommunions, was enhanced by the collapse of various sham communions.\nLet us return for a moment to that eminent example of romantic\nmelancholy and disillusion, Alfred de Vigny. His \u201cChatterton\u201d deals\nwith the fatal misunderstanding of the original genius by other men.\n\u201cMo\u00efse\u201d deals more specifically with the problem of his solitude. The\ngenius is so eminent and unique, says Vigny, speaking for himself from\nbehind the mask of the Hebrew prophet, that he is quite cut off from\nordinary folk who feel that they have nothing in common with him.[273]\nThis forlornness of the genius is not the sign of some capital error in\nhis philosophy. On the contrary it is the sign of his divine election,\nand so Moses blames God for his failure to find happiness.[274] If\nthe genius is cut off from communion with men he cannot hope for\ncompanionship with God because he has grown too sceptical. Heaven is\nempty and in any case dumb; and so in the poem to which I have already\nreferred (_Le Mont des Oliviers_) Vigny assumes the mask of Jesus\nhimself to express this desolateness, and concludes that the just man\nwill oppose a haughty and Stoic disdain to the divine silence.[275]\n\nAll that is left for the genius is to retire into his ivory tower--a\nphrase appropriately applied for the first time to Vigny.[276] In the\nivory tower he can at least commune with nature and the ideal woman.\nBut Vigny came at a time when the Arcadian glamour was being dissipated\nfrom nature. Partly under scientific influence she was coming to seem\nnot a benign but a cold and impassive power, a collection of cruel\nand inexorable laws. I have already mentioned this mood that might\nbe further illustrated from Taine and so many others towards the\nmiddle of the nineteenth century.[277] \u201cI am called a \u2018mother,\u2019\u201d Vigny\nmakes Nature say, \u201cand I am a tomb.\u201d[278] (\u201cLa Maison du Berger\u201d);\nand so in the _Maison roulante_, or sort of Arcadia on wheels that he\nhas imagined, he must seek his chief solace with the ideal feminine\ncompanion. But woman herself turns out to be treacherous; and, assuming\nthe mask of Samson (\u201cLa Col\u00e8re de Samson\u201d), Vigny utters a solemn\nmalediction upon the eternal Delilah (_Et, plus ou moins, la Femme\nest toujours Dalila_). Such is the disillusion that comes from having\nsought an ideal communion in a liaison with a Parisian actress.[279]\n\nNow that every form of communion has failed, all that is left it\nwould seem is to die in silence and solitude like the wolf (\u201cLa Mort\ndu Loup\u201d). Vigny continues to hold, however, like the author of the\n\u201cCity of Dreadful Night,\u201d that though men may not meet in their joys,\nthey may commune after a fashion in their woe. He opposes to heartless\nnature and her \u201cvain splendors\u201d the religion of pity, \u201cthe majesty of\nhuman sufferings.\u201d[280] Towards the end when Vigny feels the growing\nprestige of science, he holds out the hope that a man may to a certain\nextent escape from the solitude of his own ego into some larger whole\nby contributing his mite to \u201cprogress.\u201d But the symbol of this\ncommunion[281] that he has chosen--that of the shipwrecked and sinking\nmariner who consigns his geographical discoveries to a bottle in the\nhope that it may be washed up on some civilized shore--is itself of a\nsingular forlornness.\n\nVigny has a concentration and power of philosophical reflection that\nis rare among the romanticists. George Sand is inferior to him in\nthis respect but she had a richer and more generous nature, and is\nperhaps even more instructive in her life and writings for the student\nof romantic melancholy. After the loss of the religious faith of her\nchildhood she became an avowed Rousseauist. She attacks a society\nthat seems to her to stand in the way of the happiness of which she\ndreams--the supreme emotional intensity to be achieved in an ideal\nlove. In celebrating passion and the rights of passion she is lyrical\nin the two main modes of the Rousseauist--she is either tender and\nelegiac, or else stormy and Titanic. But when she attempts to practice\nwith Musset this religion of love, the result is violent disillusion.\nIn the forlornness that follows upon the collapse of her sham communion\nshe meditates suicide. \u201cTen years ago,\u201d she wrote in 1845 to Mazzini,\n\u201cI was in Switzerland; I was still in the age of tempests; I made up\nmy mind even then to meet you, if I should resist the temptation to\nsuicide which pursued me upon the glaciers.\u201d And then gradually a new\nfaith dawned upon her; she substituted for the religion of love the\nreligion of human brotherhood. She set up as an object of worship\nhumanity in its future progress; and then, like so many other dreamers,\nshe suffered a violent disillusion in the Revolution of 1848. The\nradiant abstraction she had been worshipping had been put to the test\nand she discovered that there entered into the actual make-up of the\nhumanity she had so idealized \u201ca large number of knaves, a very large\nnumber of lunatics, and an immense number of fools.\u201d What is noteworthy\nin George Sand is that she not only saved the precious principle of\nfaith from these repeated shipwrecks but towards the end of her life\nbegan to put it on a firmer footing. Like Goethe she worked out to some\nextent, in opposition to romanticism, a genuinely ethical point of view.\n\nThis latter development can best be studied in her correspondence with\nFlaubert. She urges him to exercise his will, and he replies that he\nis as \u201cfatalistic as a Turk.\u201d His fatalism, however, was not oriental\nbut scientific or pseudo-scientific. I have already cited his demand\nthat man be studied \u201cobjectively\u201d just as one would study \u201ca mastodon\nor a crocodile.\u201d Flaubert refused to see any connection between this\ndeterminism and his own gloom or between George Sand\u2019s assertion\nof will and her cheerfulness. It was simply, he held, a matter of\ntemperament, and there is no doubt some truth in this contention.\n\u201cYou at the first leap mount to heaven,\u201d he says, \u201cwhile I, poor\ndevil, am glued to the earth as though by leaden soles.\u201d And again:\n\u201cIn spite of your great sphinx eyes you have always seen the world as\nthrough a golden mist,\u201d whereas \u201cI am constantly dissecting; and when\nI have finally discovered the corruption in anything that is supposed\nto be pure, the gangrene in its fairest parts, then I raise my head\nand laugh.\u201d Yet George Sand\u2019s cheerfulness is also related to her\nperception of a power in man to work upon himself--a power that sets\nhim apart from other animals. To enter into this region of ethical\neffort is to escape from the whole fatal circle of naturalism, and at\nthe same time to show some capacity to mature--a rare achievement among\nthe romanticists. The contrast is striking here between George Sand\nand Hugo, who, as the ripe fruit of his meditations, yields nothing\nbetter than the apotheosis of Robespierre and Marat. \u201cI wish to see\nman as he is,\u201d she writes to Flaubert. \u201cHe is not good or bad: he is\ngood and bad. But he is something else besides: being good and bad he\nhas an inner force which leads him to be very bad and a little good,\nor very good and a little bad. I have often wondered,\u201d she adds, \u201cwhy\nyour \u2018Education Sentimentale\u2019 was so ill received by the public, and\nthe reason, as it seems to me, is that its characters are passive--that\nthey do not act upon themselves.\u201d But the Titaness of the period of\n\u201cL\u00e9lia\u201d can scarcely be said to have acted upon herself, so that she is\njustified in writing: \u201cI cannot forget that my personal victory over\ndespair is the work of my will, and of a new way of understanding life\nwhich is the exact opposite of the one I held formerly.\u201d How different\nis the weary cry of Flaubert: \u201cI am like a piece of clock work, what\nI am doing to-day I shall be doing to-morrow; I did exactly the same\nthing yesterday; I was exactly the same man ten years ago.\u201d\n\nThe correspondence of Flaubert and George Sand bears interestingly on\nanother of the sham religions of the nineteenth century--the religion\nof art. Art is for Flaubert not merely a religion but a fanaticism. He\npreaches abstinence, renunciation and mortification of the flesh in the\nname of art. He excommunicates those who depart from artistic orthodoxy\nand speaks of heretics and disbelievers in art with a ferocity worthy\nof a Spanish inquisitor. Ethical beauty such as one finds in the\nGreeks at their best resides in order and proportion; it is not a thing\napart but the outcome of some harmonious whole. Beauty in the purely\n\u00e6sthetic and unethical sense that Flaubert gives to the word is little\nmore than the pursuit of illusion. The man who thus treats beauty as\na thing apart, who does not refer back his quest of the exquisite to\nsome ethical centre will spend his life Ixion-like embracing phantoms.\n\u201cO Art, Art,\u201d exclaims Flaubert, \u201cbitter deception, nameless phantom,\nwhich gleams and lures us to our ruin!\u201d He speaks elsewhere of \u201cthe\nchimera of style which is wearing him out soul and body.\u201d Attaching as\nhe did an almost religious importance to his quest of the exquisite\nhe became like so many other Rousseauists not merely \u00e6sthetic but\nhyper\u00e6sthetic. He complains in his old age: \u201cMy sensibility is sharper\nthan a razor\u2019s edge; the creaking of a door, the face of a bourgeois,\nan absurd statement set my heart to throbbing and completely upset me.\u201d\nHardly anywhere else, indeed, will one find such accents of bitterness,\nsuch melancholy welling up unbidden from the very depths of the heart,\nas in the devotees of art for art\u2019s sake--Flaubert, Leconte de Lisle,\nTh\u00e9ophile Gautier.\n\nGeorge Sand takes Flaubert to task with admirable tact for his failure\nto subordinate art to something higher than itself. \u201cTalent imposes\nduties; and art for art\u2019s sake is an empty word.\u201d As she grew older she\nsays she came more and more to put truth above beauty, and goodness\nbefore strength. \u201cI have reflected a great deal on what is _true_,\nand in this search for truth, the sentiment of my ego has gradually\ndisappeared.\u201d The truth on which she had reflected was what she herself\ncalls total truth (_le vrai total_), not merely truth according to\nthe natural law, which received such exclusive emphasis towards the\nmiddle of the nineteenth century as to lead to the rise of another\nsham religion--the religion of science. \u201cYou have a better sense for\ntotal truth,\u201d she tells one of her correspondents \u201cthan Sainte-Beuve,\nRenan and Littr\u00e9. They have fallen into the German rut: therein lies\ntheir weakness.\u201d And Flaubert writes to George Sand: \u201cWhat amazes and\ndelights me is the strength of your whole personality, not that of the\nbrain alone.\u201d\n\nFurthermore the holding of the human law that made possible this\nrounded development, this growth towards total truth, was a matter not\nof tradition but of immediate perception. George Sand had succeeded,\nas Taine says, in making the difficult transition from an hereditary\nfaith to a personal conviction. Now this perception of the human law is\nsomething very different from the pantheistic revery in which George\nSand was also an adept. To look on revery as the equivalent of vision\nin the Aristotelian sense, as Rousseau and so many of his followers\nhave done, is to fall into sham spirituality. Maurice de Gu\u00e9rin falls\ninto sham spirituality when he exclaims \u201cOh! this contact of nature\nand the soul would engender an ineffable voluptuousness, a prodigious\nlove of heaven and of God.\u201d I am not asserting that George Sand herself\ndiscriminated sharply between ethical and \u00e6sthetic perception or that\nshe is to be rated as a very great sage at any time. Yet she owes her\nrecovery of serenity after suffering shock upon shock of disillusion to\nher having exercised in some degree what she terms \u201cthe contemplative\nsense wherein resides invincible faith\u201d (_le sens contemplatif o\u00f9\nr\u00e9side la foi invincible_), and the passages that bear witness to her\nuse of this well-nigh obsolete sense are found in her correspondence.\n\nWordsworth lauds in true Rousseauistic fashion a \u201cwise passiveness.\u201d\nBut to be truly contemplative is not to be passive at all, but to be\n\u201cenergetic\u201d in Aristotle\u2019s sense, or strenuous in Buddha\u2019s sense. It\nis a matter of no small import that the master analyst of the East and\nthe master analyst of the West are at one in their solution of the\nsupreme problem of ethics--the problem of happiness. For there can\nbe no doubt that the energy[282] in which the doctrine of Aristotle\nculminates is the same as the \u201cstrenuousness\u201d[283] on which Buddha puts\nhis final emphasis. The highest good they both agree is a contemplative\n_working_. It is by thus working according to the human law that one\nrises above the naturalistic level. The scientific rationalists of\nthe nineteenth century left no place for this true human spontaneity\nwhen they sought to subject man entirely to the \u201claw for thing.\u201d This\nscientific determinism was responsible for a great deal of spiritual\ndepression and _acedia_, especially in France during the second half\nof the nineteenth century.[284] But even if science is less dogmatic\nand absolute one needs to consider why it does not deserve to be given\nthe supreme and central place in life, why it cannot in short take the\nplace of humanism and religion, and the working according to the human\nlaw that they both enjoin.\n\nA man may indeed effect through science a certain escape from himself,\nand this is very salutary so far as it goes; he has to discipline\nhimself to an order that is quite independent of his own fancies and\nemotions. He becomes objective in short, but objective according to\nthe natural and not according to the human law. Objectivity of this\nkind gives control over natural forces but it does not supply the\npurpose for which these forces are to be used. It gives the airship,\nfor instance, but does not determine whether the airship is to go on\nsome beneficent errand or is to scatter bombs on women and children.\nScience does not even set right limits to the faculty that it chiefly\nexercises--the intellect. In itself it stimulates rather than curbs one\nof the three main lusts to which human nature is subject--the lust of\nknowledge. Renan, who makes a religion of science, speaks of \u201csacred\ncuriosity.\u201d But this is even more dangerous than the opposite excess\nof the ascetic Christian who denounces all curiosity as vain. The man\nof science avers indeed that he does subordinate his knowledge to an\nadequate aim, namely the progress of humanity. But the humanity of the\nBaconian is only an intellectual abstraction just as the humanity of\nthe Rousseauist is only an emotional dream. George Sand found, as we\nhave seen, that the passage from one\u2019s dream of humanity to humanity\nin the concrete involved a certain disillusion. The scientific or\nrationalistic humanitarian is subject to similar disillusions.[285]\nScience not only fails to set proper limits to the activity of the\nintellect, but one must also note a curious paradox in its relation\nto the second of the main lusts to which man is subject, the lust\nfor emotion (_libido sentiendi_). The prime virtue of science is to\nbe unemotional and at the same time keenly analytical. Now protracted\nand unemotional analysis finally creates a desire, as Renan says, for\nthe opposite pole, \u201cthe kisses of the na\u00efve being,\u201d and in general\nfor a frank surrender to the emotions. Science thus actually prepares\nclients for the Rousseauist.[286] The man of science is also flattered\nby the Rousseauistic notion that conscience and virtue are themselves\nonly forms of emotion. He is thus saved from anything so distasteful as\nhaving to subordinate his own scientific discipline to some superior\nreligious or humanistic discipline. He often oscillates between the\nrationalistic and the emotional pole not only in other things but also\nin his cult of humanity. But if conscience is merely an emotion there\nis a cult that makes a more potent appeal to conscience than the cult\nof humanity itself and that is the cult of country. One is here at the\nroot of the most dangerous of all the sham religions of the modern\nage--the religion of country, the frenzied nationalism that is now\nthreatening to make an end of civilization itself.\n\nBoth emotional nationalism and emotional internationalism go\nback to Rousseau, but in his final emphasis he is an emotional\nnationalist;[287] and that is because he saw that patriotic \u201cvirtue\u201d is\na more potent intoxicant than the love of humanity. The demonstration\ncame in the French Revolution which began as a great international\nmovement on emotional lines and ended in imperialism and Napoleon\nBonaparte. It is here that the terrible peril of a science that is\npursued as an end in itself becomes manifest. It disciplines man and\nmakes him efficient on the naturalistic level, but leaves him ethically\nundisciplined. Now in the absence of ethical discipline the lust\nfor knowledge and the lust for feeling count very little, at least\npractically, compared with the third main lust of human nature--the\nlust for power. Hence the emergence of that most sinister of all types,\nthe efficient megalomaniac. The final use of a science that has thus\nbecome a tool of the lust for power is in Burke\u2019s phrase to \u201cimprove\nthe mystery of murder.\u201d\n\nThis union of material efficiency and ethical unrestraint, though\nin a way the upshot of the whole movement we have been studying, is\nespecially marked in the modern German. Goethe as I have pointed\nout is ready to pardon Faust for grave violations of the moral law\nbecause of work which, so far from being ethical, is, in view of the\nruin in which it involves the rustic pair, Baucis and Philemon, under\nsuspicion of being positively unethical. Yet Goethe was far from being\na pure utilitarian and he had reacted more than most Germans of his\ntime from Rousseauism. Rousseau is glorified by Germans as a chief\nsource of their _Kultur_, as I have already pointed out. Now _Kultur_\nwhen analyzed breaks up into two very different things--scientific\nefficiency and emotionalism or what the Germans (and unfortunately not\nthe Germans alone) term \u201cidealism.\u201d There is no question about the\nrelation of this idealism to the stream of tendency of which Rousseau\nis the chief representative. By his corruption of conscience Rousseau\nmade it possible to identify character with temperament. It was easy\nfor Fichte and others to take the next step and identify national\ncharacter with national temperament. The Germans according to Fichte\nare all beautiful souls, the elect of nature. If they have no special\nword for character it is because to be a German and have character are\nsynonymous. Character is something that gushes up from the primordial\ndepths of the German\u2019s being without any conscious effort on his\npart.[288] The members of a whole national group may thus flatter one\nanother and inbreed their national \u201cgenius\u201d in the romantic sense, and\nfeel all the while that they are ecstatic \u201cidealists\u201d; yet as a result\nof the failure to refer their genius back to some ethical centre, to\nwork, in other words, according to the human law, they may, so far as\nthe members of other national groups are concerned, remain in a state\nof moral solitude.\n\nEverything thus hinges on the meaning of the word work. In the abstract\nand metaphysical sense man can know nothing of unity. He may, however,\nby working in the human sense, by imposing, that is, due limits on his\nexpansive desires, close up in some measure the gap in his own nature\n(the \u201ccivil war in the cave\u201d) and so tend to become inwardly one. He\nmay hope in the same way to escape from the solitude of his own ego,\nfor the inner unity that he achieves through work is only an entering\ninto possession of his ethical self, the self that he possesses in\ncommon with other men. Thus to work ethically is not only to become\nmore unified and happy but also to move away from what is less\npermanent towards what is more permanent and therefore more peaceful\nin his total nature; so that the problem of happiness and the problem\nof peace turn out at last to be inseparable.\n\nSouls, says Emerson, never meet; and it is true that a man never quite\nescapes from his solitude. That does not make the choice of direction\nany the less important. An infinite beckons to him on either hand. The\none inspires the divine discontent, the other romantic restlessness.\nIf instead of following the romantic lure he heeds the call from the\nopposite direction, he will not indeed attain to any perfect communion\nbut he will be less solitary. Strictly speaking a man is never happy in\nthe sense of being completely satisfied with the passing moment,[289]\nor never, Dr. Johnson would add, except when he is drunk. The happiness\nof the sober and waking man resides, it may be, not in his content with\nthe present moment but in the very effort that marks his passage from a\nlower to a higher ethical level.\n\nThe happiness of which Rousseau dreamed, it has been made plain, was\nnot this active and ethical happiness, but rather the passive enjoyment\nof the beautiful moment--the moment that he would like to have last\nforever. After seeking for the beautiful moment in the intoxication of\nlove, he turned as we have seen to pantheistic revery. \u201cAs long as it\nlasts,\u201d he says of a moment of this kind, \u201cone is self-sufficing like\nGod.\u201d Yes, but it does not last, and when he wakes from his dream of\ncommunion with nature, he is still solitary, still the prisoner of\nhis ego. The pantheistic dreamer is passive in every sense. He is not\nworking either according to the human or according to the natural law,\nand so is not gaining either in material or in ethical efficiency.\nIn a world such as that in which we live this seems too much like\npicnicking on a battlefield. Rousseau could on occasion speak shrewdly\non this point. He wrote to a youthful enthusiast who wished to come\nand live with him at Montmorency: \u201cThe first bit of advice I should\nlike to give you is not to indulge in the taste you say you have for\nthe contemplative life and which is only an indolence of the spirit\nreprehensible at every age and especially at yours. Man is not made to\nmeditate but to act.\u201d\n\nThe contemplative life is then, according to Rousseau, the opposite\nof action. But to contemplate is according to an Aristotle or a\nBuddha to engage in the most important form of action, the form that\nleads to happiness. To identify leisure and the contemplative life\nwith pantheistic revery, as Rousseau does, is to fall into one of\nthe most vicious of confusions. Perhaps indeed the most important\ncontrast one can reach in a subject of this kind is that between a\nwise strenuousness and a more or less wise passiveness, between the\nspiritual athlete and the cosmic loafer, between a Saint Paul, let us\nsay, and a Walt Whitman.\n\nThe spiritual idling and drifting of the Rousseauist would be less\nsinister if it did not coexist in the world of to-day with an intense\nmaterial activity. The man who seeks happiness by work according to the\nnatural law is to be rated higher than the man who seeks happiness in\nsome form of emotional intoxication (including pantheistic revery).\nHe is not left unarmed, a helpless dreamer in the battle of life. The\ntype of efficiency he is acquiring also helps him to keep at bay man\u2019s\ngreat enemy, ennui. An Edison, we may suppose, who is drawn ever onward\nby the lure of wonder and curiosity and power, has little time to be\nbored. It is surely better to escape from the boredom of life after the\nfashion of Edison than after the fashion of Baudelaire.[290]\n\nI have already pointed out, however, the peril in a one-sided working\nof this kind. It makes man efficient without making him ethical. It\nstimulates rather than corrects a fearless, formless expansion on the\nhuman level. This inordinate reaching out beyond bounds is, as the\ngreat Greek poets saw with such clearness, an invitation to Nemesis.\nThe misery that results from unrestraint, from failure to work\naccording to the human law, is something different from mere pain and\nfar more to be dreaded; just as the happiness that results from a right\nworking according to the human law is something different from mere\npleasure and far more worthy of pursuit.\n\nThe present alliance between emotional romanticists and\nutilitarians[291] is a veritable menace to civilization itself. It\ndoes not follow, as I said in a previous chapter, because revery or\n\u201cintuition of the creative flux\u201d cannot take the place of leisure or\nmeditation, that one must therefore condemn it utterly. It may like\nother forms of romanticism have a place on the recreative side of\nlife. What finally counts is work according to either the human or\nthe natural law, but man cannot always be working. He needs moments\nof relief from tension and concentration and even, it should seem, of\nsemi-oblivion of his conscious self. As one of the ways of winning such\nmoments of relaxation and partial forgetfulness much may be said for\nrevery. In general one must grant the solace and rich source of poetry\nthat is found in communion with nature even though the final emphasis\nbe put on communion with man. It is no small thing to be, as Arnold\nsays Wordsworth was, a \u201cpriest of the wonder and bloom of the world.\u201d\nOne cannot however grant the Wordsworthian that to be a priest of\nwonder is necessarily to be also a priest of wisdom. Thus to promote to\nthe supreme and central place something that is legitimate in its own\ndegree, but secondary, is to risk starting a sham religion.\n\nThose who have sought to set up a cult of love or beauty or science or\nhumanity or country are open to the same objections as the votaries\nof nature. However important each of these things may be in its own\nplace, it cannot properly be put in the supreme and central place for\nthe simple reason that it does not involve any adequate conversion\nor discipline of man\u2019s ordinary self to some ethical centre. I have\ntried to show that the sense of solitude or forlornness that is so\nstriking a feature of romantic melancholy arises not only from a loss\nof hold on the traditional centres, but also from the failure of\nthese new attempts at communion to keep their promises. The number of\ndiscomfitures of this kind in the period that has elapsed since the\nlate eighteenth century, suggests that this period was even more than\nmost periods an age of sophistry. Every age has had its false teachers,\nbut possibly no age ever had so many dubious moralists as this, an\nincomparable series of false prophets from Rousseau himself down to\nNietzsche and Tolstoy. It remains to sum up in a closing chapter the\nresults of my whole inquiry and at the same time to discuss somewhat\nmore specifically the bearing of my whole point of view, especially the\nidea of work according to the human law, upon the present situation.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nTHE PRESENT OUTLOOK\n\n\nIt has been my endeavor throughout this book to show that classic and\nromantic art, though both at their best highly imaginative, differ in\nthe quality of the imagination. I pointed out in my first chapter that\nin his recoil from the intellectual romanticism of the Renaissance\nand the medi\u00e6val romanticism of actual adventure the neo-classicist\ncame to rest his literary faith on \u201creason\u201d (by which he meant either\nordinary good sense or abstract reasoning), and then opposed this\nreason or judgment to imagination. This supposed opposition between\nreason and imagination was accepted by the romantic rebels against\nneo-classicism and has been an endless source of confusion to the\npresent day. Though both neo-classicists and romanticists achieved much\nadmirable work, work which is likely to have a permanent appeal, it\nis surely no small matter that they both failed on the whole to deal\nadequately with the imagination and its r\u00f4le whether in literature\nor life. Thus Dryden attributes the immortality of the \u00c6neid to its\nbeing \u201ca well-weighed judicious poem. Whereas poems which are produced\nby the vigor of imagination only have a gloss upon them at the first\nwhich time wears off, the works of judgment are like the diamond; the\nmore they are polished, the more lustre they receive.\u201d[292] Read on\nand you will find that Dryden thus stresses judgment by way of protest\nagainst the Cavalier Marini and the imaginative unrestraint that he\nand other intellectual romanticists display. Dryden thus obscures the\nfact that what gives the immortalizing touch to the \u00c6neid is not mere\njudgment but imagination--a certain quality of imagination. Even the\nreader who is to enter properly into the spirit of Virgil needs more\nthan judgment--he needs to possess in some measure the same quality\nof imagination. The romantic answer to the neo-classic distrust of\nthe imagination was the apotheosis of the imagination, but without\nsufficient discrimination as to its quality, and this led only too\noften to an anarchy of the imagination--an anarchy associated, as we\nhave seen, in the case of the Rousseauist, with emotion rather than\nwith thought or action.\n\nThe modern world has thus tended to oscillate between extremes in its\nattitude towards the imagination, so that we still have to turn to\nancient Greece for the best examples of works in which the imagination\nis at once disciplined and supreme. Aristotle, I pointed out, is doing\nlittle more than give an account of this Greek practice when he says\nthat the poet ranks higher than the historian because he achieves a\nmore general truth, but that he can achieve this more general truth\nonly by being a master of illusion. Art in which the illusion is not\ndisciplined to the higher reality counts at best on the recreative\nside of life. \u201cImagination,\u201d says Poe, \u201cfeeling herself for once\nunshackled, roamed at will among the ever-changing wonders of a shadowy\nand unstable land.\u201d[293] To take seriously the creations of this type\nof imagination is to be on the way towards madness. Every madhouse,\nindeed, has inmates who are very imaginative in the fashion Poe here\ndescribes. We must not confuse the concentric or ethical with the\neccentric imagination if we are to define rightly the terms classic\nand romantic or indeed to attain to sound criticism at all. My whole\naim has been to show that a main stream of emotional sophistry that\ntakes its rise in the eighteenth century and flows down through the\nnineteenth involves just such a confusion.\n\nThe general distinction between the two types of imagination would seem\nsufficiently clear. To apply the distinction concretely is, it must be\nadmitted, a task infinitely difficult and delicate, a task that calls\nfor the utmost degree of the _esprit de finesse_. In any particular\ncase there enters an element of vital novelty. The relation of this\nvital novelty to the ethical or permanent element in life is something\nthat cannot be determined by any process of abstract reasoning or by\nany rule of thumb; it is a matter of immediate perception. The art of\nthe critic is thus hedged about with peculiar difficulties. It does not\nfollow that Aristotle himself because he has laid down sound principles\nin his Poetics, would always have been right in applying them. Our\nevidence on this point is as a matter of fact somewhat scanty.\n\nHaving thus admitted the difficulty of the undertaking we may ourselves\nattempt a few concrete illustrations of how sound critical standards\ntended to suffer in connection with the romantic movement. Leaving\naside for the moment certain larger aspects of the ethical imagination\nthat I am going to discuss presently, let us confine ourselves to\npoetry. Inasmuch as the ethical imagination does not in itself give\npoetry but wisdom, various cases may evidently arise: a man may be wise\nwithout being poetical; he may be poetical without being wise; he may\nbe both wise and poetical.\n\nWe may take as an example of the person who was wise without being\npoetical Dr. Johnson. Though most persons would grant that Dr. Johnson\nwas not poetical, it is well to remember that this generalization has\nonly the approximate truth that a literary generalization can have. The\nlines on Levet have been inserted and rightly in anthologies. If not on\nthe whole poetical, Johnson was, as Boswell says, eminently fitted to\nbe a \u201cmajestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom.\u201d Few men have had\na firmer grasp on the moral law or been freer from the various forms of\nsophistry that tend to obscure it. Unlike Socrates, however, of whom he\nreminds us at times by his ethical realism, Johnson rests his insight\nnot on a positive but on a traditional basis. To say that Johnson\nwas truly religious is only another way of saying that he was truly\nhumble, and one of the reasons for his humility was his perception\nof the ease with which illusion in man passes over into delusion,\nand even into madness. His chapter on the \u201cDangerous Prevalence of\nImagination\u201d in \u201cRasselas\u201d not only gives the key to that work but to\nmuch else in his writings. What he opposes to this dangerous prevalence\nof imagination is not a different type of imagination but the usual\nneo-classical reason or judgment or \u201csober probability.\u201d His defence\nof wisdom against the gathering naturalistic sophistries of his time\nis therefore somewhat lacking in imaginative prestige. He seemed to\nbe opposing innovation on purely formalistic and traditional grounds\nin an age which was more and more resolutely untraditional and which\nwas determined above all to emancipate the imagination from its\nstrait-jacket of formalism. Keats would not have hesitated to rank\nJohnson among those who \u201cblasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face.\u201d\n\nKeats himself may serve as a type of the new imaginative spontaneity\nand of the new fullness and freshness of sensuous perception. If\nJohnson is wise without being poetical, Keats is poetical without being\nwise, and here again we need to remember that distinctions of this\nkind are only approximately true. Keats has written lines that have\nhigh seriousness. He has written other lines which without being wise\nseem to lay claim to wisdom--notably the lines in which, following\nShaftesbury and other \u00e6sthetes, he identifies truth and beauty; an\nidentification that was disproved for practical purposes at least as\nfar back as the Trojan War. Helen was beautiful, but was neither good\nnor true. In general, however, Keats\u2019s poetry is not sophistical. It\nis simply delightfully recreative. There are signs that Keats himself\nwould not have been content in the long run with a purely recreative\nr\u00f4le--to be \u201cthe idle singer of an empty day.\u201d Whether he would ever\nhave achieved genuine ethical purpose is a question. In working out a\nwise view of life he did not, like Dante, have the support of a great\nand generally accepted tradition. It is not certain again that he would\never have developed the critical keenness that enabled a Sophocles to\nwork out a wise view of life in a less traditional age than that of\nDante. The evidence is rather that Keats would have succumbed, to his\nown poetical detriment, to some of the forms of sham wisdom current in\nhis day, especially the new humanitarian evangel.[294]\n\nIn any case we may contrast Sophocles and Dante with Keats as examples\nof poets who were not merely poetical but wise--wise in the relative\nand imperfect sense in which it is vouchsafed to mortals to achieve\nwisdom. Sophocles and Dante are not perhaps more poetical than\nKeats--it is not easy to be more poetical than Keats. As Tennyson says,\n\u201cthere is something magic and of the innermost soul of poetry in almost\neverything he wrote.\u201d Yet Sophocles and Dante are not only superior\nto Keats, but in virtue of the presence of the ethical imagination in\ntheir work, superior not merely in degree but in kind. Not that even\nSophocles and Dante maintain themselves uniformly on the level of\nthe ethical imagination. There are passages in Dante which are less\nimaginative than theological. Passages of this kind are even more\nnumerous in Milton, a poet who on the whole is highly serious.[295] It\nis in general easy to be didactic, hard to achieve ethical insight.\n\nIf Keats is highly imaginative and poetic without on the whole rising\nto high seriousness or sinking to sophistry, Shelley, on the other\nhand, illustrates in his imaginative activity the confusion of values\nthat was so fostered by romanticism. Here again I do not wish to be too\nabsolute. Shelley has passages especially in his \u201cAdonais\u201d that are\non a high level. Yet nothing is more certain than that the quality of\nhis imagination is on the whole not ethical but Arcadian or pastoral.\nIn the name of his Arcadia conceived as the \u201cideal\u201d he refuses to\nface the facts of life. I have already spoken of the flimsiness of his\n\u201cPrometheus Unbound\u201d as a solution of the problem of evil. What is\nfound in this play is the exact opposite of imaginative concentration\non the human law. The imagination wanders irresponsibly in a region\nquite outside of normal human experience. We are hindered from enjoying\nthe gorgeous iridescences of Shelley\u2019s cloudland by Shelley\u2019s own\nevident conviction that it is not a cloudland, an \u201cintense inane,\u201d but\na true empyrean of the spirit. And our irritation at Shelley\u2019s own\nconfusion is further increased by the long train of his indiscreet\nadmirers. Thus Professor C.H. Herford writes in the \u201cCambridge History\nof English Literature\u201d that what Shelley has done in the \u201cPrometheus\nUnbound,\u201d is to give \u201cmagnificent expression to the faith of Plato and\nof Christ\u201d![296] Such a statement in such a place is a veritable danger\nsignal, an indication of some grave spiritual bewilderment in the\npresent age. To show the inanity of these attempts to make a wise man\nof Shelley it is enough to compare him not with Plato and Christ, but\nwith the poet whom he set out at once to continue and contradict--with\n\u00c6schylus. The \u201cPrometheus Bound\u201d has the informing ethical imagination\nthat the \u201cPrometheus Unbound\u201d lacks, and so in its total structure\nbelongs to an entirely different order of art. Shelley, indeed, has\nadmirable details. The romanticism of nympholeptic longing may almost\nbe said to culminate, at least in England, in the passage I have\nalready cited (\u201cMy soul is an enchanted boat\u201d). There is no reason why\nin recreative moods one should not imagine one\u2019s soul an enchanted\nboat and float away in a musical rapture with the ideal dream companion\ntowards Arcady. But to suppose that revery of this kind has anything to\ndo with the faith of Plato and of Christ, is to fall from illusion into\ndangerous delusion.\n\nWe may doubt whether if Shelley had lived longer he would ever have\nrisen above emotional sophistry and become more ethical in the quality\nof his imagination. Such a progress from emotional sophistry to ethical\ninsight we actually find in Goethe; and this is the last and most\ncomplex case we have to consider. Johnson, I have said, is wise without\nbeing poetical and Keats poetical without being wise; Sophocles is\nboth poetical and wise, whereas Shelley is poetical, but with a taint\nof sophistry or sham wisdom. No such clear-cut generalization can be\nventured about Goethe. I have already quoted Goethe\u2019s own judgment\non his \u201cWerther\u201d as weakness seeking to give itself the prestige of\nstrength, and perhaps it would be possible to instance from his early\nwritings even worse examples of a morbid emotionalism (e.g. \u201cStella\u201d).\nHow about \u201cFaust\u201d itself? Most Germans will simply dismiss such a\nquestion as profane. With Hermann Grimm they are ready to pronounce\n\u201cFaust\u201d the greatest work of the greatest poet of all times, and of\nall peoples. Yet it is not easy to overlook the sophistical element\nin both parts of \u201cFaust.\u201d I have already commented on those passages\nthat would seem especially sophistical: the passage in which the devil\nis defined as the spirit that always says no strikes at the very root\nof any proper distinction between good and evil. The passage again in\nwhich Faust breaks down all precise discrimination in favor of mere\nemotional intoxication is an extreme example of the Rousseauistic\nart of \u201cmaking madness beautiful.\u201d The very conclusion of the whole\npoem, with its setting up of work according to the natural law as a\nsubstitute for work according to the human law, is an egregious piece\nof sham wisdom. The result of work according to the human law, of\nethical efficiency in short, is an increasing serenity; and it is not\nclear that Faust is much calmer at the end of the poem than he is at\nthe beginning. According to Dr. Santayana he is ready to carry into\nheaven itself his romantic restlessness--his desperate and feverish\nattempts to escape from ennui.[297] Perhaps this is not the whole truth\neven in regard to \u201cFaust\u201d; and still less can we follow Dr. Santayana\nwhen he seems to discover in the whole work of Goethe only romantic\nrestlessness. At the very time when Goethe was infecting others with\nthe wild expansiveness of the new movement, he himself was beginning\nto strike out along an entirely different path. He writes in his\nJournal as early as 1778: \u201cA more definite feeling of limitation and\nin consequence of true broadening.\u201d Goethe here glimpses the truth\nthat lies at the base of both humanism and religion. He saw that the\nromantic disease was the imaginative and emotional straining towards\nthe unlimited (_Hang zum Unbegrenzten_), and in opposition to this\nunrestraint he was never tired of preaching the need of working within\nboundaries. It may be objected that Goethe is in somewhat the same\ncase here as Rousseau: that the side of his work which has imaginative\nand emotional driving power and has therefore moved the world is of an\nentirely different order. We may reply that Goethe is at times both\npoetical and wise. Furthermore in his maxims and conversations where\nhe does not rise to the poetical level, he displays a higher quality of\nwisdom than Rousseau. At his best he shows an ethical realism worthy\nof Dr. Johnson, though in his attitude towards tradition he is less\nJohnsonian than Socratic. Like Socrates he saw on what terms a break\nwith the past may be safely attempted. \u201cAnything that emancipates the\nspirit,\u201d he says, \u201cwithout a corresponding growth in self-mastery, is\npernicious.\u201d We may be sure that if the whole modern experiment fails\nit will be because of the neglect of the truth contained in this maxim.\nGoethe also saw that a sound individualism must be rightly imaginative.\nHe has occasional hints on the r\u00f4le of illusion in literature and life\nthat go far beneath the surface.\n\nThough the mature Goethe, then, always stands for salvation by work,\nit is not strictly correct to say that it is work only according\nto the natural law. In Goethe at his best the imagination accepts\nthe limitations imposed not merely by the natural, but also by the\nhuman law. However, we must admit that the humanistic Goethe has had\nfew followers either in Germany or elsewhere, whereas innumerable\npersons have escaped from the imaginative unrestraint of the emotional\nromanticist, as Goethe himself likewise did, by the discipline of\nscience.\n\nThe examples I have chosen should suffice to show how my distinction\nbetween two main types of imagination--the ethical type that gives\nhigh seriousness to creative writing and the Arcadian or dalliant\ntype that does not raise it above the recreative level--works out in\npractice. Some such distinction is necessary if we are to understand\nthe imagination in its relation to the human law. But in order to\ngrasp the present situation firmly we need also to consider the\nimagination in its relation to the natural law. I have just said that\nmost men have escaped from the imaginative anarchy of the emotional\nromanticist through science. Now the man of science at his best is\nlike the humanist at his best, at once highly imaginative and highly\ncritical. By this co\u00f6peration of imagination and intellect they are\nboth enabled to concentrate effectively on the facts, though on facts\nof a very different order. The imagination reaches out and perceives\nlikenesses and analogies whereas the power in man that separates\nand discriminates and traces causes and effects tests in turn these\nlikenesses and analogies as to their reality: for we can scarcely\nrepeat too often that though the imagination gives unity it does not\ngive reality. If we were all Aristotles or even Goethes we might\nconcentrate imaginatively on both laws, and so be both scientific and\nhumanistic: but as a matter of fact the ordinary man\u2019s capacity for\nconcentration is limited. After a spell of concentration on either law\nhe aspires to what Aristotle calls \u201crelief from tension.\u201d Now the very\nconditions of modern life require an almost tyrannical concentration\non the natural law. The problems that have been engaging more and more\nthe attention of the Occident since the rise of the great Baconian\nmovement have been the problems of power and speed and utility. The\nenormous mass of machinery that has been accumulated in the pursuit of\nthese ends requires the closest attention and concentration if it is\nto be worked efficiently. At the same time the man of the West is not\nwilling to admit that he is growing in power alone, he likes to think\nthat he is growing also in wisdom. Only by keeping this situation in\nmind can we hope to understand how emotional romanticism has been\nable to develop into a vast system of sham spirituality. I have said\nthat the Rousseauist wants unity without reality. If we are to move\ntowards reality, the imagination must be controlled by the power\nof discrimination and the Rousseauist has repudiated this power as\n\u201cfalse and secondary.\u201d But a unity that lacks reality can scarcely be\naccounted wise. The Baconian, however, accepts this unity gladly. He\nhas spent so much energy in working according to the natural law that\nhe has no energy left for work according to the human law. By turning\nto the Rousseauist he can get the \u201crelief from tension\u201d that he needs\nand at the same time enjoy the illusion of receiving a vast spiritual\nillumination. Neither Rousseauist nor Baconian carry into the realm\nof the human law the keen analysis that is necessary to distinguish\nbetween genuine insight and some mere phantasmagoria of the emotions.\nI am speaking especially, of course, of the interplay of Rousseauistic\nand Baconian elements that appear in certain recent philosophies like\nthat of Bergson. According to Bergson one becomes spiritual by throwing\noverboard both thought and action, and this is a very convenient notion\nof spirituality for those who wish to devote both thought and action to\nutilitarian and material ends. It is hard to see in Bergson\u2019s intuition\nof the creative flux and perception of real duration anything more\nthan the latest form of Rousseau\u2019s transcendental idling. To work with\nsomething approaching frenzy according to the natural law and to be\nidle according to the human law must be accounted a rather one-sided\nview of life. The price the man of to-day has paid for his increase\nin power is, it should seem, an appalling superficiality in dealing\nwith the law of his own nature. What brings together Baconian and\nRousseauist in spite of their surface differences is that they are both\nintent on the element of novelty. But if wonder is associated with the\nMany, wisdom is associated with the One. Wisdom and wonder are moving\nnot in the same but in opposite directions. The nineteenth century may\nvery well prove to have been the most wonderful and the least wise\nof centuries. The men of this period--and I am speaking of course of\nthe main drift--were so busy being wonderful that they had no time,\napparently, to be wise. Yet their extreme absorption in wonder and the\nmanifoldness of things can scarcely be commended unless it can be shown\nthat happiness also results from all this revelling in the element\nof change. The Rousseauist is not quite consistent on this point. At\ntimes he bids us boldly set our hearts on the transitory. _Aimez_,\nsays Vigny, _ce que jamais on ne verra deux fois_. But the Rousseauist\nstrikes perhaps a deeper chord when looking forth on a world of flux he\nutters the anguished exclamation of Leconte de Lisle: _Qu\u2019est-ce que\ntout cela qui n\u2019est pas \u00e9ternel?_ Even as one swallow, says Aristotle,\ndoes not make a spring, so no short time is enough to determine whether\na man deserves to be called happy. The weakness of the romantic pursuit\nof novelty and wonder and in general of the philosophy of the beautiful\nmoment--whether the erotic moment[298] or the moment of cosmic\nrevery--is that it does not reckon sufficiently with the something\ndeep down in the human breast that craves the abiding. To pin one\u2019s\nhope of happiness to the fact that \u201cthe world is so full of a number of\nthings\u201d is an appropriate sentiment for a \u201cChild\u2019s Garden of Verse.\u201d\nFor the adult to maintain an exclusive Bergsonian interest in \u201cthe\nperpetual gushing forth of novelties\u201d would seem to betray an inability\nto mature. The effect on a mature observer of an age so entirely turned\nfrom the One to the Many as that in which we are living must be that of\na prodigious peripheral richness joined to a great central void.\n\nWhat leads the man of to-day to work with such energy according to\nthe natural law and to be idle according to the human law is his\nintoxication with material success. A consideration that should\ntherefore touch him is that in the long run not merely spiritual\nsuccess or happiness, but material prosperity depend on an entirely\ndifferent working. Let me revert here for a moment to my previous\nanalysis: to work according to the human law is simply to rein in one\u2019s\nimpulses. Now the strongest of all the impulses is the will to power.\nThe man who does not rein in his will to power and is at the same time\nvery active according to the natural law is in a fair way to become\nan efficient megalomaniac. Efficient megalomania, whether developed\nin individuals of the same group or in whole national groups in their\nrelations with one another, must lead sooner or later to war. The\nefficient megalomaniacs will proceed to destroy one another along with\nthe material wealth to which they have sacrificed everything else; and\nthen the meek, if there are any meek left, will inherit the earth.\n\n\u201cIf I am to judge by myself,\u201d said an eighteenth-century Frenchman,\n\u201cman is a stupid animal.\u201d Man is not only a stupid animal in spite\nof his conceit of his own cleverness but we are here at the source\nof his stupidity. The source is the moral indolence that Buddha with\nhis almost infallible sagacity defined long ago. In spite of the fact\nthat his spiritual and in the long run his material success hinge on\nhis ethical effort, man persists in dodging this effort, in seeking to\nfollow the line of least or lesser resistance. An energetic material\nworking does not mend but aggravate the failure to work ethically and\nis therefore especially stupid. Just this combination has in fact led\nto the crowning stupidity of the ages--the Great War. No more delirious\nspectacle has ever been witnessed than that of hundreds of millions\nof human beings using a vast machinery of scientific efficiency to\nturn life into a hell for one another. It is hard to avoid concluding\nthat we are living in a world that has gone wrong on first principles,\na world that, in spite of all the warnings of the past, has allowed\nitself to be caught once more in the terrible naturalistic trap. The\ndissolution of civilization with which we are threatened is likely to\nbe worse in some respects than that of Greece or Rome in view of the\nsuccess that has been attained in \u201cperfecting the mystery of murder.\u201d\nVarious traditional agencies are indeed still doing much to chain\nup the beast in man. Of these the chief is no doubt the Church. But\nthe leadership of the Occident is no longer here. The leaders have\nsuccumbed in greater or less degree to naturalism[299] and so have been\ntampering with the moral law. That the brutal imperialist who brooks\nno obstacle to his lust for dominion has been tampering with this law\ngoes without saying; but the humanitarian, all adrip with brotherhood\nand profoundly convinced of the loveliness of his own soul, has been\ntampering with it also, and in a more dangerous way for the very\nreason that it is less obvious. This tampering with the moral law, or\nwhat amounts to the same thing, this overriding of the veto power in\nman, has been largely a result, though not a necessary result, of the\nrupture with the traditional forms of wisdom. The Baconian naturalist\nrepudiated the past because he wished to be more positive and critical,\nto plant himself upon the facts. Yet the veto power is itself a\nfact,--the weightiest with which man has to reckon. The Rousseauistic\nnaturalist threw off traditional control because he wished to be more\nimaginative. Yet without the veto power the imagination falls into\nsheer anarchy. Both Baconian and Rousseauist were very impatient of\nany outer authority that seemed to stand between them and their own\nperceptions. Yet the veto power is nothing abstract, nothing that one\nneeds to take on hearsay, but is very immediate. The naturalistic\nleaders may be proved wrong without going beyond their own principles,\nand their wrongness is of a kind to wreck civilization.\n\nI have no quarrel, it is scarcely necessary to add, either with the man\nof science or the romanticist when they keep in their proper place.\nAs soon however as they try, whether separately or in unison, to set\nup some substitute for humanism or religion, they should be at once\nattacked, the man of science for not being sufficiently positive and\ncritical, the romanticist for not being rightly imaginative.\n\nThis brings us back to the problem of the ethical imagination--the\nimagination that has accepted the veto power--which I promised a\nmoment ago to treat in its larger aspects. This problem is indeed\nin a peculiar sense the problem of civilization itself. A curious\ncircumstance should be noted here: a civilization that rests on dogma\nand outer authority cannot afford to face the whole truth about the\nimagination and its r\u00f4le. A civilization in which dogma and outer\nauthority have been undermined by the critical spirit, not only can\nbut must do this very thing if it is to continue at all. Man, a being\never changing and living in a world of change, is, as I said at the\noutset, cut off from immediate access to anything abiding and therefore\nworthy to be called real, and condemned to live in an element of\nfiction or illusion. Yet civilization must rest on the recognition\nof something abiding. It follows that the truths on the survival of\nwhich civilization depends cannot be conveyed to man directly but\nonly through imaginative symbols. It seems hard, however, for man to\nanalyze critically this disability under which he labors, and, facing\ncourageously the results of his analysis, to submit his imagination\nto the necessary control. He consents to limit his expansive desires\nonly when the truths that are symbolically true are presented to him as\nliterally true. The salutary check upon his imagination is thus won at\nthe expense of the critical spirit. The pure gold of faith needs, it\nshould seem, if it is to gain currency, to be alloyed with credulity.\nBut the civilization that results from humanistic or religious control\ntends to produce the critical spirit. Sooner or later some Voltaire\nutters his fatal message:\n\n    _Les pr\u00eatres ne sont pas ce qu\u2019un vain peuple pense;_\n    _N\u00f4tre cr\u00e9dulit\u00e9 fait toute leur science._\n\nThe emancipation from credulous belief leads to an anarchic\nindividualism that tends in turn to destroy civilization. There is some\nevidence in the past that it is not quite necessary to run through this\ncycle. Buddha, for example, was very critical; he had a sense of the\nflux and evanescence of all things and so of universal illusion keener\nby far than that of Anatole France; at the same time he had ethical\nstandards even sterner than those of Dr. Johnson. This is a combination\nthat the Occident has rarely seen and that it perhaps needs to see. At\nthe very end of his life Buddha uttered words that deserve to be the\nMagna Charta of the true individualist: \u201cTherefore, O Ananda, be ye\nlamps unto yourselves. Be ye refuges unto yourselves. Look to no outer\nrefuge. Hold fast as a refuge unto the Law (_Dhamma_).\u201d[300] A man may\nsafely go into himself if what he finds there is not, like Rousseau,\nhis own emotions, but like Buddha, the law of righteousness.\n\nMen were induced to follow Rousseau in his surrender to the emotions,\nit will be remembered, because that seemed the only alternative to a\nhard and dry rationalism. The rationalists of the Enlightenment were\nfor the most part Cartesians, but Kant himself is in his main trend a\nrationalist. The epithet critical usually applied to his philosophy is\ntherefore a misnomer. For to solve the critical problem--the relation\nbetween appearance and reality--it is necessary to deal adequately with\nthe r\u00f4le of the imagination and this Kant has quite failed to do.[301]\nModern philosophy is in general so unsatisfactory because it has raised\nthe critical problem without carrying it through; it is too critical\nto receive wisdom through the traditional channels and not critical\nenough to achieve insight, and so has been losing more and more its\nhuman relevancy, becoming in the words of one of its recent votaries,\na \u201cnarrow and unfruitful eccentricity.\u201d The professional philosophers\nneed to mend their ways and that speedily if the great world is not\nto pass them disdainfully by and leave them to play their mysterious\nlittle game among themselves. We see one of the most recent groups, the\nnew realists, flat on their faces before the man of science--surely an\nundignified attitude for a philosopher. It is possible to look on the\nkind of knowledge that science gives as alone real only by dodging the\ncritical problem--the problem as to the trustworthiness of the human\ninstrument through which all knowledge is received--and it would be\neasy to show, if this were the place to go into the more technical\naspects of the question, that the new realists have been doing just\nthis--whether through sheer na\u00efvet\u00e9 or metaphysical despair I am unable\nto say. The truly critical observer is unable to discover anything\nreal in the absolute sense since everything is mixed with illusion.\nIn this absolute sense the man of science must ever be ignorant of\nthe reality behind the shows of nature. The new realist is, however,\njustified relatively in thinking that the only thing real in the view\nof life that has prevailed of late has been its working according to\nthe natural law and the fruits of this working. The self-deception\nbegins when he assumes that there can be no other working. What I have\nmyself been opposing to naturalistic excess, such as appears in the\nnew realism, is insight; but insight is in itself only a word, and\nunless it can be shown to have its own working and its own fruits,\nentirely different from those of work according to the natural law, the\npositivist at all events will have none of it.\n\nThe positivist will not only insist upon fruits, but will rate\nthese fruits themselves according to their bearing upon his main\npurpose. Life, says Bergson, can have no purpose in the human sense\nof the word.[302] The positivist will reply to Bergson and to the\nRousseauistic drifter in general, in the words of Aristotle, that the\nend is the chief thing of all and that the end of ends is happiness. To\nthe Baconian who wants work and purpose but according to the natural\nlaw alone, the complete positivist will reply that happiness cannot be\nshown to result from this one-sided working; that in itself it affords\nno escape from the misery of moral solitude, that we move towards true\ncommunion and so towards peace and happiness only by work according\nto the human law. Now the more individualistic we are, I have been\nsaying, the more we must depend for the apprehension of this law on\nthe imagination, the imagination, let me hasten to add, supplemented\nby the intellect. It is not enough to put the brakes on the natural\nman--and that is what work according to the human law means--we must\ndo it intelligently. Right knowing must here as elsewhere precede\nright doing. Even a Buddha admitted that at one period in his life\nhe had not been intelligent in his self-discipline. I need only to\namplify here what I have said in a previous chapter about the proper\nuse of the \u201cfalse secondary power\u201d by those who wish to be either\nreligious or humanistic in a positive fashion. They will employ their\nanalytical faculties, not in building up some abstract system, but in\ndiscriminating between the actual data of experience with a view to\nhappiness, just as the man of science at his best employs the same\nfaculties in discriminating between the data of experience with a view\nto power and utility.\n\nI have pointed out another important use of the analytical intellect in\nits relation to the imagination. Since the imagination by itself gives\nunity but does not give reality, it is possible to discover whether a\nunification of life has reality only by subjecting it to the keenest\nanalysis. Otherwise what we take to be wisdom may turn out to be only\nan empty dream. To take as wise something that is unreal is to fall\ninto sophistry. For a man like Rousseau whose imagination was in its\nultimate quality not ethical at all but overwhelmingly idyllic to set\nup as an inspired teacher was to become an arch-sophist. Whether or not\nhe was sincere in his sophistry is a question which the emotionalist\nis very fond of discussing, but which the sensible person will dismiss\nas somewhat secondary. Sophistry of all kinds always has a powerful\nally in man\u2019s moral indolence. It is so pleasant to let one\u2019s self go\nand at the same time deem one\u2019s self on the way to wisdom. We need to\nkeep in mind the special quality of Rousseau\u2019s sophistry if we wish to\nunderstand a very extraordinary circumstance during the past century.\nDuring this period men were moving steadily towards the naturalistic\nlevel, where the law of cunning and the law of force prevail, and\nat the same time had the illusion--or at least multitudes had the\nillusion--that they were moving towards peace and brotherhood. The\nexplanation is found in the endless tricks played upon the uncritical\nand still more upon the half-critical by the Arcadian imagination.\n\nThe remedy is not only a more stringent criticism, but, as I have\ntried to make plain in this whole work, in an age of sophistry, like\nthe present, criticism itself amounts largely to that art of inductive\ndefining which it is the great merit of Socrates, according to\nAristotle,[303] to have devised and brought to perfection. Sophistry\nflourishes, as Socrates saw, on the confused and ambiguous use of\ngeneral terms; and there is an inexhaustible source of such ambiguities\nand confusions in the very duality of human nature. The word nature\nitself may serve as an illustration. We may take as a closely allied\nexample the word progress. Man may progress according to either the\nhuman or the natural law. Progress according to the natural law has\nbeen so rapid since the rise of the Baconian movement that it has\nquite captivated man\u2019s imagination and stimulated him to still further\nconcentration and effort along naturalistic lines. The very magic\nof the word progress seems to blind him to the failure to progress\naccording to the human law. The more a word refers to what is above the\nstrictly material level, the more it is subject to the imagination and\ntherefore to sophistication. It is not easy to sophisticate the word\nhorse, it is only too easy to sophisticate the word justice. One may\naffirm, indeed, not only that man is governed by his imagination but\nthat in all that belongs to his own special domain _the imagination\nitself is governed by words_.[304]\n\nWe should not therefore surrender our imaginations to a general term\nuntil it has been carefully defined, and to define it carefully we\nneed usually to practice upon it what Socrates would call a dichotomy.\nI have just been dichotomizing or \u201ccutting in two\u201d the word progress.\nWhen the two main types of progress, material and moral, have been\ndiscriminated in their fruits, the positivist will proceed to rate\nthese fruits according to their relevancy to his main goal--the goal\nof happiness. The person who is thus fortified by a Socratic dialectic\nwill be less ready to surrender his imagination to the first sophist\nwho urges him to be \u201cprogressive.\u201d He will wish to make sure first that\nhe is not progressing towards the edge of a precipice.\n\nRousseau would have us get rid of analysis in favor of the \u201cheart.\u201d\nNo small part of my endeavor in this work and elsewhere has been to\nshow the different meanings that may attach to the term heart (and the\nclosely allied terms \u201csoul\u201d and \u201cintuition\u201d)--meanings that are a world\napart, when tested by their fruits. Heart may refer to outer perception\nand the emotional self or to inner perception and the ethical self. The\nheart of Pascal is not the heart of Rousseau. With this distinction\nonce obliterated the way is open for the Rousseauistic corruption of\nsuch words as virtue and conscience, and this is to fling wide the door\nto every manner of confusion. The whole vocabulary that is properly\napplicable only to the supersensuous realm is then transferred to the\nregion of the subrational. The impulsive self proceeds to cover its\nnakedness with all these fair phrases as it would with a garment. A\nrecent student of war-time psychology asks: \u201cIs it that the natural\nman in us has been masquerading as the spiritual man by hiding himself\nunder splendid words--courage, patriotism, justice--and now he rises up\nand glares at us with blood-red eyes?\u201d That is precisely what has been\nhappening.\n\nBut after all the heart in any sense of the word is controlled by\nthe imagination, so that a still more fundamental dichotomy, perhaps\nthe most fundamental of all, is that of the imagination itself. We\nhave seen how often the Arcadian dreaming of the emotional naturalist\nhas been labelled the \u201cideal.\u201d Our views of this type of imagination\nwill therefore determine our views of much that now passes current\nas idealism. Now the term idealist may have a sound meaning: it may\ndesignate the man who is realistic according to the human law. But\nto be an idealist in Shelley\u2019s sense or that of innumerable other\nRousseauists is to fall into sheer unreality. This type of idealist\nshrinks from the sharp discriminations of the critic: they are like\nthe descent of a douche of ice-water upon his hot illusions. But it\nis pleasanter, after all, to be awakened by a douche of ice-water\nthan by an explosion of dynamite under the bed; and that has been the\nfrequent fate of the romantic idealist. It is scarcely safe to neglect\nany important aspect of reality in favor of one\u2019s private dream, even\nif this dream be dubbed the ideal. The aspect of reality that one is\nseeking to exclude finally comes crashing through the walls of the\nivory tower and abolishes the dream and at times the dreamer.\n\nThe transformation of the Arcadian dreamer into the Utopist is a\nveritable menace to civilization. The ends that the Utopist proposes\nare often in themselves desirable and the evils that he denounces are\nreal. But when we come to scrutinize critically his means, what we\nfind is not a firm grip on the ascertained facts of human nature but\nwhat Bagehot calls the feeble idealities of the romantic imagination.\nMoreover various Utopists may come together as to what they wish to\ndestroy, which is likely to include the whole existing social order;\nbut what they wish to erect on the ruins of this order will be found\nto be not only in dreamland, but in different dreamlands. For with the\nelimination of the veto power from personality--the only power that can\npull men back to some common centre--the ideal will amount to little\nmore than the projection of this or that man\u2019s temperament upon the\nvoid. In a purely temperamental world an affirmative reply may be given\nto the question of Euryalus in Virgil: \u201cIs each man\u2019s God but his own\nfell desire?\u201d (_An sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?_)\n\nThe task of the Socratic critic at the present time is, then, seen\nto consist largely in stripping idealistic disguises from egoism, in\nexposing what I have called sham spirituality. If the word spirituality\nmeans anything, it must imply, it should seem, some degree of escape\nfrom the ordinary self, an escape that calls in turn for effort\naccording to the human law. Even when he is not an open and avowed\nadvocate of a \u201cwise passiveness,\u201d the Rousseauistic idealist is only\ntoo manifestly not making any such effort--it would interfere with his\npassion for self-expression which is even more deeply rooted in him\nthan his passion for saving society. He inclines like Rousseau to\nlook upon every constraint[305] whether from within or from without\nas incompatible with liberty. A right definition of liberty is almost\nas important as a right definition of imagination and derives from\nit very directly. Where in our anarchical age will such a definition\nbe found, a definition that is at once modern and in accord with the\npsychological facts? \u201cA man has only to declare himself free,\u201d says\nGoethe, \u201cand he will at once feel himself dependent. If he ventures to\ndeclare himself dependent, he will feel himself free.\u201d In other words\nhe is not free to do whatever he pleases unless he wishes to enjoy the\nfreedom of the lunatic, but only to adjust himself to the reality of\neither the natural or the human law. A progressive adjustment to the\nhuman law gives ethical efficiency, and this is the proper corrective\nof material efficiency, and not love alone as the sentimentalist is so\nfond of preaching. Love is another word that cries aloud for Socratic\ntreatment.\n\nA liberty that means only emancipation from outer control will result,\nI have tried to show, in the most dangerous form of anarchy--anarchy\nof the imagination. On the degree of our perception of this fact will\nhinge the soundness of our use of another general term--democracy.\nWe should beware above all of surrendering our imaginations to this\nword until it has been hedged about on every side with discriminations\nthat have behind them all the experience of the past with this form\nof government. Only in this way may the democrat know whether he is\naiming at anything real or merely dreaming of the golden age. Here as\nelsewhere there are pitfalls manifold for the uncritical enthusiast. A\ndemocracy that produces in sufficient numbers sound individualists who\nlook up imaginatively to standards set above their ordinary selves, may\nwell deserve enthusiasm. A democracy, on the other hand, that is not\nrightly imaginative, but is impelled by vague emotional intoxications,\nmay mean all kinds of lovely things in dreamland, but in the real world\nit will prove an especially unpleasant way of returning to barbarism.\nIt is a bad sign that Rousseau, who is more than any other one person\nthe father of radical democracy, is also the first of the great\nanti-intellectualists.\n\nEnough has been said to show the proper r\u00f4le of the secondary power\nof analysis that the Rousseauist looks upon with so much disfavor. It\nis the necessary auxiliary of the art of defining that can alone save\nus in an untraditional age from receiving some mere phantasmagoria of\nthe intellect or emotions as a radiant idealism. A Socratic dialectic\nof this kind is needed at such a time not only to dissipate sophistry\nbut as a positive support to wisdom. I have raised the question in\nmy Introduction whether the wisdom that is needed just now should be\nprimarily humanistic or religious. The preference I have expressed\nfor a positive and critical humanism I wish to be regarded as very\ntentative. In the dark situation that is growing up in the Occident,\nall genuine humanism and religion, whether on a traditional or a\ncritical basis, should be welcome. I have pointed out that traditional\nhumanism and religion conflict in certain respects, that it is\ndifficult to combine the imitation of Horace with the imitation of\nChrist. This problem does not disappear entirely when humanism and\nreligion are dealt with critically and is indeed one of the most\nobscure that the thinker has to face. The honest thinker, whatever his\nown preference, must begin by admitting that though religion can get\nalong without humanism, humanism cannot get along without religion.\nThe reason has been given by Burke in pointing out the radical defect\nof Rousseau: the whole ethical life of man has its root in humility.\nAs humility diminishes, conceit or vain imagining rushes in almost\nautomatically to take its place. Under these circumstances decorum, the\nsupreme virtue of the humanist, is in danger of degenerating into some\nart of going through the motions. Such was only too often the decorum\nof the French drawing-room, and such we are told, has frequently been\nthe decorum of the Chinese humanist. Yet the decorum of Confucius\nhimself was not only genuine but he has put the case for the humanist\nwith his usual shrewdness. \u201cI venture to ask about death,\u201d one of his\ndisciples said to him. \u201cWhile you do not know life,\u201d Confucius replied,\n\u201chow can you know about death?\u201d[306]\n\nThe solution of this problem as to the relation between humanism and\nreligion, so far as a solution can be found, lies in looking upon them\nboth as only different stages in the same path. Humanism should have\nin it an element of religious insight: it is possible to be a humble\nand meditative humanist. The type of the man of the world who is not\na mere worldling is not only attractive in itself but has actually\nbeen achieved in the West, though not perhaps very often, from the\nGreeks down. Chinese who should be in a position to know affirm again\nthat, alongside many corrupt mandarins, a certain number of true\nConfucians[307] have been scattered through the centuries from the time\nof the sage to the present.\n\nIf humanism may be religious, religion may have its humanistic side. I\nhave said, following Aristotle, that the law of measure does not apply\nto the religious life, but this saying is not to be understood in an\nabsolute sense. Buddha is continually insisting on the middle path in\nthe religious life itself. The resulting urbanity in Buddha and his\nearly followers in India is perhaps the closest approach that that very\nunhumanistic land has ever made to humanism.\n\nIt is right here in this joining of humanism and religion that\nAristotle, at least the Aristotle that has come down to us, does not\nseem altogether adequate. He fails to bring out sufficiently the\nbond between the meditative or religious life that he describes at\nthe end of his \u201cEthics\u201d and the humanistic life or life of mediation\nto which most of this work is devoted. An eminent French authority\non Aristotle,[308] complains that this separation of the two lives\nencouraged the ascetic excess of the Middle Ages, the undue spurning\nof the world in favor of mystic contemplation. I am struck rather\nby the danger of leaving the humanistic life without any support in\nreligion. In a celebrated passage,[309] Aristotle says that the\n\u201cmagnanimous\u201d man or ideal gentleman sees all things including himself\nproportionately: he puts himself neither too high nor too low. And\nthis is no doubt true so far as other men are concerned. But does the\nmagnanimous man put human nature itself in its proper place? Does he\nfeel sufficiently its nothingness and helplessness, its dependence on\na higher power? No one, indeed, who gets beyond words and outer forms\nwould maintain that humility is a Christian monopoly. Pindar is far\nmore humble[310] than Aristotle, as humble, one might almost maintain,\nas the austere Christian.\n\nA humanism sufficiently grounded in humility is not only desirable\nat all times but there are reasons for thinking that it would be\nespecially desirable to-day. In the first place, it would so far as\nthe emotional naturalist is concerned raise a clear-cut issue. The\nnaturalist of this type denies rather than corrupts humanism. He is the\nfoe of compromise and inclines to identify mediation and mediocrity.\nOn the other hand, he corrupts rather than denies religion, turning\nmeditation into pantheistic revery and in general setting up a subtle\nparody of what is above the ordinary rational level in terms of the\nsubrational. On their own showing Rousseau and his followers are\nextremists,[311] and even more effective perhaps than to attack them\ndirectly for their sham religion would be to maintain against them that\nthus to violate the law of measure is to cease to be human.\n\nFurthermore, a critical humanism would appear to be the proper\ncorrective of the other main forms of naturalistic excess at the\npresent time--the one-sided devotion to physical science. What keeps\nthe man of science from being himself a humanist is not his science but\nhis pseudo-science, and also the secret push for power and prestige\nthat he shares with other men. The reasons for putting humanistic\ntruth above scientific truth are not metaphysical but very practical:\nthe discipline that helps a man to self-mastery is found to have a\nmore important bearing on his happiness than the discipline that helps\nhim to a mastery of physical nature. If scientific discipline is not\nsupplemented by a truly humanistic or religious discipline the result\nis unethical science, and unethical science is perhaps the worst\nmonster that has yet been turned loose on the race. Man in spite of\nwhat I have termed his stupidity, his persistent evasion of the main\nissue, the issue of his own happiness, will awaken sooner or later\nto the fearful evil he has already suffered from a science that has\narrogated to itself what does not properly belong to it; and then\nscience may be as unduly depreciated as it has, for the past century\nor two, been unduly magnified; so that in the long run it is in the\ninterest of science itself to keep in its proper place, which is below\nboth humanism and religion.\n\nIt would be possible to frame in the name of insight an indictment\nagainst science that would make the indictment Rousseau has framed\nagainst it in the name of instinct seem mild. The critical humanist,\nhowever, will leave it to others to frame such an indictment. Nothing\nis more foreign to his nature than every form of obscurantism. He\nis ready indeed to point out that the man of science has in common\nwith him at least one important idea--the idea of habit, though its\nscientific form seems to him very incomplete. One may illustrate from\nperhaps the best known recent treatment of the subject, that of James\nin his \u201cPsychology.\u201d It is equally significant that the humanist can\nagree with nearly every line of James\u2019s chapter on habit and that\nhe disagrees very gravely with James in his total tendency. That is\nbecause James shows himself, as soon as he passes from the naturalistic\nto the humanistic level, wildly romantic. Even when dealing with the\n\u201cVarieties of Religious Experience\u201d he is plainly more preoccupied\nwith the intensity than with the centrality of this experience.[312]\nHe is obsessed with the idea that comes down to him straight from the\nage of original genius that to be at the centre is to be commonplace.\nIn a letter to C. E. Norton (June 30, 1904) James praises Ruskin\u2019s\nLetters and adds: \u201cMere sanity is the most philistine and at bottom\nunessential of a man\u2019s attributes.\u201d \u201cMere sanity\u201d is not to be thus\ndismissed, because to lack sanity is to be headed towards misery and\neven madness. \u201cRuskin\u2019s,\u201d says Norton, who was in a position to know,\n\u201cwas essentially one of the saddest of lives.\u201d[313] Is a man to live\none of the saddest of lives merely to gratify romantic lovers of the\nvivid and picturesque like James?\n\nHowever, if the man of science holds fast to the results reached by\nJames and others regarding habit and at the same time avoids James\u2019s\nromantic fallacies he might perceive the possibility of extending the\nidea of habit beyond the naturalistic level; and the way would then\nbe open for an important co\u00f6peration between him and the humanist.\nHumanists themselves, it must be admitted, even critical humanists,\nhave diverged somewhat in their attitude towards habit, and that from\nthe time of Socrates and Aristotle. I have been dwelling thus far on\nthe indispensableness of a keen Socratic dialectic and of the right\nknowledge it brings for those who aspire to be critical humanists.\nBut does right knowing in itself suffice to ensure right doing?\nSocrates and Plato with their famous identification of knowledge and\nvirtue would seem to reply in the affirmative. Aristotle has the\nimmediate testimony of consciousness on his side when he remarks\nsimply regarding this identification: The facts are otherwise.[314]\nNo experience is sadder or more universal than that of the failure\nof right knowledge to secure right performance: so much so that the\naustere Christian has been able to maintain with some plausibility\nthat all the knowledge in the world is of no avail without a special\ndivine succor. Now the Aristotelian agrees with the Christian that mere\nknowledge is insufficient: conversion is also necessary. He does not\nincline, however, like the austere Christian to look for conversion to\n\u201cthunderclaps and visible upsets of grace.\u201d Without denying necessarily\nthese pistol-shot transformations of human nature he conceives of\nman\u2019s turning away from his ordinary self--and here he is much nearer\nin temper to the man of science--as a gradual process. This gradual\nconversion the Aristotelian hopes to achieve by work according to\nthe human law. Now right knowledge though it supplies the norm, is\nnot in itself this working, which consists in the actual pulling back\nof impulse. But an act of this kind to be effective must be repeated.\nA habit is thus formed until at last the new direction given to the\nnatural man becomes automatic and unconscious. The humanistic worker\nmay thus acquire at last the spontaneity in right doing that the\nbeautiful soul professes to have received as a free gift from \u201cnature.\u201d\nConfucius narrates the various stages of knowledge and moral effort\nthrough which he had passed from the age of fifteen and concludes: \u201cAt\nseventy I could follow what my heart desired without transgressing the\nlaw of measure.\u201d[315]\n\nThe keener the observer the more likely he is to be struck by the\nempire of habit. Habit, as Wellington said, is ten times nature, and\nis indeed so obviously a second nature that many of the wise have\nsuspected that nature herself is only a first habit.[316] Now Aristotle\nwho is open to criticism, it may be, on the side of humility, still\nremains incomparable among the philosophers of the world for his\ntreatment of habit on the humanistic level. Any one who wishes to learn\nhow to become moderate and sensible and decent can do no better even at\nthis late day than to steep himself in the \u201cNicomachean Ethics.\u201d\n\nOne of the ultimate contrasts that presents itself in a subject of\nthis kind is that between habit as conceived by Aristotle and nature\nas conceived by Rousseau. The first great grievance of the critical\nhumanist against Rousseau is that he set out to be an individualist\nand at the same time attacked analysis, which is indispensable if\none is to be a sound individualist. The second great grievance of the\nhumanist is that Rousseau sought to discredit habit which is necessary\nif right analysis is to be made effective. \u201cThe only habit the child\nshould be allowed to form,\u201d says Rousseau, \u201cis that of forming no\nhabit.\u201d[317] How else is the child to follow his bent or genius and\nso arrive at full self-expression? The point I am bringing up is of\nthe utmost gravity, for Rousseau is by common consent the father of\nmodern education. To eliminate from education the idea of a progressive\nadjustment to a human law, quite apart from temperament, may be to\nimperil civilization itself. For civilization (another word that is\nsadly in need of Socratic defining) may be found to consist above all\nin an orderly transmission of right habits; and the chief agency for\nsecuring such a transmission must always be education, by which I mean\nfar more of course than mere formal schooling.\n\nRousseau\u2019s repudiation of habit is first of all, it should be pointed\nout, perfectly chimerical. The trait of the child to which the sensible\neducator will give chief attention is not his spontaneity, but his\nproneness to imitate. In the absence of good models the child will\nimitate bad ones, and so, long before the age of intelligent choice and\nself-determination, become the prisoner of bad habits. Men, therefore,\nwho aim at being civilized must come together, work out a convention\nin short, regarding the habits they wish transmitted to the young.\nA great civilization is in a sense only a great convention. A sane\nindividualist does not wish to escape from convention in itself;\nhe merely remembers that no convention is final--that it is always\npossible to improve the quality of the convention in the midst of which\nhe is living, and that it should therefore be held flexibly. He would\noppose no obstacles to those who are rising above the conventional\nlevel, but would resist firmly those who are sinking beneath it. It\nis much easier to determine practically whether one has to do with an\nascent or a descent (even though the descent be rapturous like that\nof the Rousseauist) than our anarchical individualists are willing to\nacknowledge.\n\nThe notion that in spite of the enormous mass of experience that has\nbeen accumulated in both East and West we are still without light as\nto the habits that make for moderation and good sense and decency, and\nthat education is therefore still purely a matter of exploration and\nexperiment is one that may be left to those who are suffering from an\nadvanced stage of naturalistic intoxication--for example, to Professor\nJohn Dewey and his followers. From an ethical point of view a child has\nthe right to be born into a cosmos, and not, as is coming to be more\nand more the case under such influences, pitch-forked into chaos. But\nthe educational radical, it may be replied, does stress the idea of\nhabit; and it is true that he would have the young acquire the habits\nthat make for material efficiency. This, however, does not go beyond\nRousseau who came out very strongly for what we should call nowadays\nvocational training.[318] It is the adjustment to the human law against\nwhich Rousseau and all the Rousseauists are recalcitrant.\n\nSelf-expression and vocational training combined in various\nproportions and tempered by the spirit of \u201cservice,\u201d are nearly the\nwhole of the new education. But I have already said that it is not\npossible to extract from any such compounding of utilitarian and\nromantic elements, with the resulting material efficiency and ethical\ninefficiency, a civilized view of life. It is right here indeed in\nthe educational field that concerted opposition to the naturalistic\nconspiracy against civilization is most likely to be fruitful. If\nthe present generation--and I have in mind especially American\nconditions--cannot come to a working agreement about the ethical\ntraining it wishes given the young, if it allows the drift towards\nanarchy on the human level to continue, it will show itself, however\necstatic it may be over its own progressiveness and idealism, both\ncowardly and degenerate. It is very stupid, assuming that it is not\nvery hypocritical, to denounce _Kultur_, and then to adopt educational\nideas that work out in much the same fashion as _Kultur_, and have\nindeed the same historical derivation.\n\nThe dehumanizing influences I have been tracing are especially to be\ndeprecated in higher education. The design of higher education, so far\nas it deserves the name, is to produce leaders, and on the quality of\nthe leadership must depend more than on any other single factor the\nsuccess or failure of democracy. I have already quoted Aristotle\u2019s\nsaying that \u201cmost men would rather live in a disorderly than in a\nsober manner.\u201d This does not mean much more than that most men would\nlike to live temperamentally, to follow each his own bent and then\nput the best face on the matter possible. Most men, says Goethe in a\nsimilar vein, prefer error to truth because truth imposes limitations\nand error does not. It is well also to recall Aristotle\u2019s saying that\n\u201cthe multitude is incapable of making distinctions.\u201d[319] Now my whole\nargument is that to be sound individualists we must not only make the\nright distinctions but submit to them until they become habitual.\nDoes it follow that the whole experiment in which we are engaged is\nforedoomed to failure? Not quite--though the obstacles to success are\nsomewhat greater than our democratic enthusiasts suspect. The most\ndisreputable aspect of human nature, I have said, is its proneness to\nlook for scapegoats; and my chief objection to the movement I have\nbeen studying is that more perhaps than any other in history it has\nencouraged the evasion of moral responsibility and the setting up of\nscapegoats. But as an offset to this disreputable aspect of man, one\nmay note a creditable trait: he is very sensitive to the force of a\nright example. If the leaders of a community look up to a sound model\nand work humanistically with reference to it, all the evidence goes to\nshow that they will be looked up to and imitated in turn by enough of\nthe rank and file to keep that community from lapsing into barbarism.\nSocieties always decay from the top. It is therefore not enough, as\nthe humanitarian would have us believe, that our leaders should act\nvigorously on the outer world and at the same time be filled with the\nspirit of \u201cservice.\u201d Purely expansive leaders of this kind we have\nseen who have the word humanity always on their lips and are at the\nsame time ceasing to be human. \u201cThat wherein the superior man cannot\nbe equalled,\u201d says Confucius, \u201cis simply this--his work which other\nmen cannot see.\u201d[320] It is this inner work and the habits that result\nfrom it that above all humanize a man and make him exemplary to the\nmultitude. To perform this work he needs to look to a centre and a\nmodel.\n\nWe are brought back here to the final gap that opens between classicist\nand romanticist. To look to a centre according to the romanticist\nis at the best to display \u201creason,\u201d at the worst to be smug and\nphilistine. To look to a true centre is, on the contrary, according\nto the classicist, to grasp the abiding human element through all the\nchange in which it is implicated, and this calls for the highest use\nof the imagination. The abiding human element exists, even though it\ncannot be exhausted by dogmas and creeds, is not subject to rules and\nrefuses to be locked up in formul\u00e6. A knowledge of it results from\nexperience,--experience vivified by the imagination. To do justice to\nwriting which has this note of centrality we ourselves need to be in\nsome measure experienced and imaginative. Writing that is romantic,\nwriting in which the imagination is not disciplined to a true centre\nis best enjoyed while we are young. The person who is as much taken by\nShelley at forty as he was at twenty has, one may surmise, failed to\ngrow up. Shelley himself wrote to John Gisborne (October 22, 1821): \u201cAs\nto real flesh and blood, you know that I do not deal in those articles;\nyou might as well go to a ginshop for a leg of mutton as expect\nanything human or earthly from me.\u201d The mature man is likely to be\ndissatisfied with poetry so unsubstantial as this even as an intoxicant\nand still more when it is offered to him as the \u201cideal.\u201d The very mark\nof genuinely classical work, on the other hand, is that it yields its\nfull meaning only to the mature. Young and old are, as Cardinal Newman\nsays, affected very differently by the words of some classic author,\nsuch as Homer or Horace. \u201cPassages, which to a boy are but rhetorical\ncommonplaces, neither better nor worse than a hundred others which any\nclever writer might supply \u2026 at length come home to him, when long\nyears have passed, and he has had experience of life, and pierce him,\nas if he had never before known them, with their sad earnestness and\nvivid exactness. Then he comes to understand how it is that lines, the\nbirth of some chance morning or evening at an Ionian festival or among\nthe Sabine hills, have lasted generation after generation for thousands\nof years, with a power over the mind and a charm which the current\nliterature of his own day, with all its obvious advantages, is utterly\nunable to rival.\u201d\n\nIn the poets whom Newman praises the imagination is, as it were,\ncentripetal. The neo-classic proneness to oppose good sense to\nimagination, and the romantic proneness to oppose imagination to good\nsense, have at least this justification, that in many persons, perhaps\nin most persons, the two actually conflict, but surely the point to\nemphasize is that they may come together, that good sense may be\nimaginative and imagination sensible. If imagination is not sensible,\nas is plainly the case in Victor Hugo, for example, we may suspect a\nlack of the universal and ethical quality. All men, even great poets,\nare more or less immersed in their personal conceit and in the zones of\nillusion peculiar to their age. But there is the question of degree.\nThe poets to whom the world has finally accorded its suffrage have not\nbeen megalomaniacs; they have not threatened like Hugo to outbellow\nthe thunder or pull comets around by the tail.[321] Bossuet\u2019s saying\nthat \u201cgood sense is the master of human life\u201d does not contradict but\ncomplete Pascal\u2019s saying that \u201cthe imagination disposes of everything,\u201d\nprovided only due stress be laid on the word human. It would not be\neasy to live a more imaginative life than Hugo, but his imagination was\nso unrestrained that we may ask whether he lived a very human life,\nwhether he was not rather, in Tennyson\u2019s phrase, a \u201cweird Titan.\u201d Man\nrealizes that immensity of his being of which Joubert speaks only in so\nfar as he ceases to be the thrall of his own ego. This human breadth he\nachieves not by throwing off but by taking on limitations, and what he\nlimits is above all his imagination. The reason why he should strive\nfor a life that is thus increasingly full and complete is simply,\nas Joubert suggests, that it is more delectable, that it is found\npractically to make for happiness.\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX\n\nCHINESE PRIMITIVISM\n\n\nPerhaps the closest approach in the past to the movement of which\nRousseau is the most important single figure is the early Taoist\nmovement in China. Taoism, especially in its popular aspects, became\nlater something very different, and what I say is meant to apply above\nall to the period from about 550 to 200 B.C. The material for the\nTaoism of this period will be found in convenient form in the volume\nof L\u00e9on Wieger (1913)--_Les P\u00e8res du Syst\u00e8me tao\u00efste_ (Chinese texts\nwith French translations of Lao-tz\u016d, Lieh-tz\u016d and Chuang-tz\u016d). The Tao\nT\u00ea King of Lao-tz\u016d is a somewhat enigmatical document of only a few\nthousand words, but plainly primitivistic in its general trend. The\nphrase that best sums up its general spirit is that of Wordsworth--a\n\u201cwise passiveness.\u201d The unity at which it aims is clearly of the\npantheistic variety, the unity that is obtained by breaking down\ndiscrimination and affirming the \u201cidentity of contradictories,\u201d and\nthat encourages a reversion to origins, to the state of nature and the\nsimple life. According to the Taoist the Chinese fell from the simple\nlife into artificiality about the time of the legendary Yellow Emperor,\nHoang-ti (27th century B.C.). The individual also should look back\nto beginnings and seek to be once more like the new-born child[322]\nor, according to Chuang-tz\u016d, like the new-born calf.[323] It is in\nChuang-tz\u016d indeed that the doctrine develops its full naturalistic and\nprimitivistic implications. Few writers in either East or West have\nset forth more entertainingly what one may term the Bohemian attitude\ntowards life. He heaps ridicule upon Confucius and in the name of\nspontaneity attacks his doctrine of humanistic imitation.[324] He\nsings the praises of the unconscious,[325] even when obtained through\nintoxication,[326] and extols the morality of the beautiful soul.[327]\nHe traces the fall of mankind from nature into artifice in a fashion\nthat anticipates very completely both Rousseau\u2019s Discourse on the Arts\nand Sciences[328] and that on the Origin of Inequality.[329] See also\nthe amusing passage in which the brigand Chi, child of nature and\nchampion of the weak against the oppressions of government, paints\na highly Rousseauistic picture of man\u2019s fall from his primitive\nfelicity.[330] Among the things that are contrary to nature and purely\nconventional, according to Chuang-tz\u016d and the Taoists, are, not only\nthe sciences and arts and attempts to discriminate between good and\nbad taste,[331] but likewise government and statecraft,[332] virtue\nand moral standards.[333] To the artificial music of the Confucians,\nthe Taoists oppose a natural music that offers startling analogies to\nthe most recent programmatic and descriptive tendencies of Occidental\nmusic.[334] See especially Chuang-tz\u016d\u2019s programme for a cosmic symphony\nin three movements[335]--the _Pipes of Pan_ as one is tempted to call\nit. This music that is supposed to reflect in all its mystery and\nmagic the infinite creative processes of nature is very close to the\nprimitivistic music (\u201cL\u2019arbre vu du c\u00f4t\u00e9 des racines\u201d) with which\nHugo\u2019s satyr strikes panic into the breasts of the Olympians.\n\nThe Taoist notion of following nature is closely related, as in other\nnaturalistic movements, to the idea of fate whether in its stoical\nor epicurean form.[336] From the references in Chuang-tz\u016d[337]\nand elsewhere to various sects and schools we see that Taoism was\nonly a part of a great stream of naturalistic and primitivistic\ntendency. China abounded at that time in pacifists,[338] in apostles\nof brotherly love, and as we should say nowadays Tolstoyans. A true\nopposite to the egoistic Yang-chu was the preacher of pure altruism\nand indiscriminate sympathy, Mei-ti. Mencius said that if the ideas\nof either of these extremists prevailed the time would come, not only\nwhen wolves would devour men, but men would devour one another.[339]\nIn opposing discrimination and ethical standards to the naturalists,\nMencius and the Confucian humanists were fighting for civilization.\nUnfortunately there is some truth in the Taoist charge that the\nstandards of the Confucians are too literal, that in their defence of\nthe principle of imitation they did not allow sufficiently for the\nelement of flux and relativity and illusion in things--an element for\nwhich the Taoists had so keen a sense that they even went to the point\nof suppressing the difference between sleeping and waking[340] and\nlife and death.[341] To reply properly to the Taoist relativist the\nConfucians would have needed to work out a sound conception of the r\u00f4le\nof the imagination--the universal key to human nature--and this they\ndo not seem to have done. One is inclined to ask whether this is the\nreason for China\u2019s failure to achieve a great ethical art like that of\nthe drama and the epic of the Occident at their best. The Taoists were\nrichly imaginative but along romantic lines. We should not fail to note\nthe Taoist influence upon Li Po and other Bohemian and bibulous poets\nof the Tang dynasty, or the relation of Taoism to the rise of a great\nschool of landscape painting at about the same time. We should note\nalso the Taoist element in \u201cCh\u2019an\u201d Buddhism (the \u201cZen\u201d Buddhism[342] of\nJapan), some knowledge of which is needed for an understanding of whole\nperiods of Japanese and Chinese art.\n\nIn these later stages, however, the issues are less clear-cut than\nin the original struggle between Taoists and Confucians. The total\nimpression one has of early Taoism is that it is a main manifestation\nof an age of somewhat sophistical individualism. Ancient Chinese\nindividualism ended like that of Greece at about the same time in\ndisaster. After a period of terrible convulsions (the era of the\n\u201cFighting States\u201d), the inevitable man on horseback appeared from the\nmost barbaric of these states and \u201cput the lid\u201d on everybody. Shi\nHwang-ti, the new emperor, had many of the scholars put to death and\nissued an edict that the writings of the past, especially the Confucian\nwritings, should be destroyed (213 B.C.). Though the emperor behaved\nlike a man who took literally the Taoist views as to the blessings of\nignorance, it is not clear from our chief authority, the historian\nSs\u016d-ma Ch\u2019ien, that he acted entirely or indeed mainly under Taoist\ninfluence.\n\nIt is proper to add that though Lao-tz\u016d proclaims that the soft is\nsuperior to the hard, a doctrine that should appeal to the Occidental\nsentimentalist, one does not find in him or in the other Taoists the\nequivalent of the extreme emotional expansiveness of the Rousseauist.\nThere are passages, especially in Lao-tz\u016d, that in their emphasis on\nconcentration and calm are in line with the ordinary wisdom of the\nEast; and even where the doctrine is unmistakably primitivistic the\nemotional quality is often different from that of the corresponding\nmovement in the West.\n\n\n\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\n\nMy only justification for these very unsystematic bibliographical notes\nis that, bringing together as they do under one cover material somewhat\nscattered and inaccessible to most readers, they may help to add to\nthe number, now unfortunately very small, of those who have earned\nthe right to have an opinion about romanticism as an international\nmovement. A list of this kind is a fragment of a fragment. I have\ngiven, for example, only a fraction of the books on Rousseau and\nscarcely any of the books, thousands in numbers, which without being\nchiefly on Rousseau, contain important passages on him. I may cite\nalmost at random as instances of this latter class, the comparison\nbetween Burke and Rousseau in the fifth volume of Lecky\u2019s _History of\nthe Eighteenth Century_; the stanzas on Rousseau in the third canto\nof _Childe Harold_; the passage on Rousseau in Hazlitt\u2019s essay on the\n_Past and Future_ (_Table Talk_).\n\nThe only period that I have covered with any attempt at fullness is\nthat from about 1795 to 1840. Books that seem to me to possess literary\ndistinction or to deal authoritatively with some aspect of the subject\nI have marked with a star. I make no claim, however, to have read\nall the books I have listed, and my rating will no doubt often be\nquestioned in the case of those I have read.\n\nI have not as a rule mentioned articles in periodicals. The files of\nthe following special publications may often be consulted with profit.\nThose that have current bibliographies I have marked with a dagger.\n\n\u2020 _Revue d\u2019Histoire litt\u00e9raire de la France._--\u2020 _Annales\nromantiques._--\u2020 _Revue germanique_ (Eng. and German).\n\n\u2020 _Englische Studien_--_Anglia_.--\u2020 _Mitteilungen \u00fcber Englische\nSprache und Literatur_ (Beiblatt zur Anglia).--\u2020 _Archiv f\u00fcr\ndas Studium der neueren Sprachen_ (_Herrigs Archiv_).--\u2020\n_Zeitschrift f\u00fcr franz\u00f6sische Sprache und Literatur_--_Kritischer\nJahresbericht der romanischen Philologie_--_Germanisch-Romanische\nMonatschrift_--_Euphorion_ (German lit.).--\u2020 _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr deutsches\nAltertum und deutsche Literatur._\n\n_Publications of the Modern Language Association of America._--\u2020\n_Modern Language Notes_ (Baltimore).--_Modern Philology_\n(Chicago).--_The Journal of English and Germanic Philology_ (Urbana,\nIll.).--\u2020 _Studies in Philology_ (Univ. of North Car.).--\u2020 _The Modern\nLanguage Review_ (Cambridge, Eng.).\n\nWorks that are international in scope and that fall either wholly\nor in part in the romantic period are as follows: L. P. Betz: \u2731 _La\nLitt\u00e9rature Compar\u00e9e, Essai bibliographique_, 2e \u00e9d. augment\u00e9e,\n1904.--A. Sayous: _Le XVIIIe si\u00e8cle \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9tranger_, 2 vols. 1861.--H.\nHettner: \u2731 _Literaturgeschichte des 18. Jahr._ 1872. 6 vols. 5th edn.\n1909. (Still standard.)--G. Brandes: \u2731 _Main Currents in 19th Century\nLiterature_, 6 vols. 1901 ff. Originally given as lectures in Danish at\nthe University of Copenhagen and trans. into German, 1872 ff. (Often\nmarred by political \u201ctendency.\u201d)--T. S\u00fcpfle: _Geschichte des deutschen\nKultureinflusses auf Frankreich_, 2 vols. 1886-90.--V. Rossel: _Hist.\nde la litt. fr. hors de France_. 2e \u00e9d. 1897.--C. E. Vaughan: _The\nRomantic Revolt_, 1900.--T. S. Omond: _The Romantic Triumph_, 1900. (A\nsomewhat colorless book.)\n\n\nENGLISH FIELD\n\n\u2731 _The Cambridge History of English Literature_, vols. X, XI, XII, 1913\nff. (Excellent bibliographies.)--See also articles and bibliographies\nin \u2731 _Dictionary of National Biography_, Chambers _Encyclop\u00e6dia of\nEnglish Literature_ (new edn.) and _Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica_ (11th\nedn.).\n\nL. Stephen: \u2731 _History of English Thought in the 18th Century_, 1876.\n(To be consulted for the deistic prelude to emotional naturalism. The\nauthor\u2019s horizons are often limited by his utilitarian outlook.)--T.\nS. Seccombe: _The Age of Johnson_, 1900.--E. Bernbaum\u2019s _English\nPoets of the 18th Century_, 1918. (An anthology so arranged as\nto illustrate the growth of sentimentalism.)--W. L. Phelps: _The\nBeginnings of the English Romantic Movement_, 1893.--H. A. Beers: _A\nHistory of English Romanticism in the 18th Century_, 1898. _A History\nof English Romanticism in the 19th Century_, 1901. (Both vols. are\nagreeably written but start from a very inadequate definition of\nromanticism.)--C. H. Herford: _The Age of Wordsworth_, 1897.--G.\nSaintsbury: _Nineteenth Century Literature_, 1896.--A. Symons: _The\nRomantic Movement in English Poetry_, 1909. (Ultra-romantic in\noutlook.)--W. J. Courthope: _History of English Poetry_, vols. V and\nVI, 1911.--O. Elton: \u2731 _A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830_,\n1912. (A distinguished treatment of the period, at once scholarly and\nliterary. The point of view is on the whole romantic, as appears in the\nuse of such general terms as \u201cbeauty\u201d and the \u201cinfinite.\u201d)--H. Richter:\n_Geschichte der englischen Romantik_, 1911 ff.--W. A. Neilson: _The\nEssentials of Poetry_, 1912. (The point of view appears in a passage\nlike the following, pp. 192-93: According to Arnold high seriousness\n\u201cis the final criterion of a great poet. One might suggest it as a more\nfit criterion for a great divine. \u2026 The element for which Arnold was\ngroping when he seized on the \u03c3\u03c0\u03bf\u03c5\u03b4\u03ae of Aristotle was not seriousness\nbut intensity.\u201d)--P. E. More: \u2731 _The Drift of Romanticism_ (_Shelburne\nEssays, Eighth Series_), 1913. (Deals also with the international\naspects of the movement, especially in the essay on Nietzsche. The\npoint of view has much in common with my own.)\n\nGeorge Lillo: _The London Merchant_; or _The History of George\nBarnwell_, 1731. _Fatal Curiosity_, 1737. Both plays ed. with intro.\nby A. W. Ward, 1906. (Bibliography.)--E. Bernbaum: _The Drama of\nSensibility, 1696-1780_, 1915.\n\n=S. Richardson=, 1689-1761: _Novels_, ed. L. Stephen, 12 vols. 1883.\n\nD. Diderot: _Eloge de R._, 1761. Reprinted in _\u0152uvres compl\u00e8tes_, vol.\nv.--J. Jusserand: _Le Roman Anglais_, 1886.--J. O. E. Donner: _R. in\nder deutschen Romantik_, 1896.--W. L. Cross: _The Development of the\nEnglish Novel_ (chap. II, \u201cThe 18th Century Realists\u201d), 1899.--J.\nTexte: \u2731 _J.-J. Rousseau et les Origines du Cosmopolitisme litt\u00e9raire_.\nEng. trans. by J.W. Matthews, 1899.--C. L. Thomson: _Samuel Richardson:\na Biographical and Critical Study_, 1900.--A. Dobson: _S. R._, 1902.\n\n=L. Sterne=, 1713-68: Collected Works, ed. G. Saintsbury, 6 vols. 1894.\nEd. W. L. Cross, 12 vols. 1904.\n\nP. Fitzgerald: _Life of S._, 2 vols. 1864. 3d edn. 1906.--P. Stapfer:\n_Laurence Sterne_, 1870.--H. D. Traill: _Sterne_, 1882.--L. Stephen:\n_Sterne. Hours in a Library_, vol. III, 1892.--J. Czerny: _Sterne,\nHippel, und Jean Paul_, 1904.--H. W. Thayer: _L. S. in Germany_,\n1905.--P. E. More: _Shelburne Essays_, 3d Series, 1905.--W. L. Cross:\n_The Life and Times of L. S._, 1909.--W. Sichel: \u2731 _Sterne_, 1910.--L.\nMelville: _The Life and Letters of L. S._, 2 vols. 1911.--F. B. Barton:\n_Etude sur l\u2019influence de S. en France au XVIIIe si\u00e8cle_, 1911.\n\nHenry Mackenzie: _The Man of Feeling_, 1771.--Horace Walpole: _The\nCastle of Otranto_, 1765.--Clara Reeve: _The Champion of Virtue_, 1777.\nTitle changed to _The Old English Baron_ in later edns.--Thomas Amory:\n_Life of John Buncle, Esq._, 4 vols. 1756-66. New edn. (with intro.\nby E. A. Baker), 1904.--Henry Brooke: _The Fool of Quality_, 5 vols.\n1766-70. Ed. E. A. Baker, 1906.--William Beckford: _An Arabian Tale_\n[_Vathek_], 1786. In French, 1787. Ed. R. Garnett, 1893.--L. Melville:\n_The Life and Letters of William Beckford_, 1910.--P. E. More: _W. B._,\nin _The Drift of Romanticism_, 1913.\n\n=Edward Young=, 1683-1765: _Works_, 6 vols. 1757-78. _Poetical Works_\n(Aldine Poets), 1858.--George Eliot: _The Poet Y._, in _Essays_, 2d\nedn. 1884.--W. Thomas: _Le po\u00e8te E. Y._, 1901.--J. L. Kind: _E. Y. in\nGermany_, 1906.--H. C. Shelley: _The Life and Letters of E. Y._, 1914.\n\n=James Macpherson=, 1736-96: _Fingal_, 1762. _Temora_, 1763. _The Works\nof Ossian_, ed. W. Sharp, 1896.--For bibliography of Ossian and the\nOssianic controversy see _Lowndes\u2019s Bibliographer\u2019s Manual_, part VI,\n1861.--J. S. Smart: \u2731 _James Macpherson_, 1905.\n\nThomas Percy: _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, 3 vols. 1765. Ed.\nH. B. Wheatley, 3 vols. 1876 and 1891.--A. C. C. Gaussen: _Percy,\nPrelate and Poet_, 1908.\n\n=Thomas Chatterton=, 1752-70: _Complete Poetical Works_, ed. with\nintro. and bibliography by H. D. Roberts, 2 vols. 1906. _Poetical\nWorks_, with intro. by Sir S. Lee, 2 vols. 1906-09.--A. de Vigny:\n_Chatterton_. Drame, 1835--D. Masson: _Chatterton_ in _Essays_,\n1856.--T. Watts-Dunton: Introduction to poems of C., in _Ward\u2019s English\nPoets_.--C. E. Russell: _Thomas Chatterton_, 1909.--J. H. Ingram: _The\nTrue Chatterton_, 1910.\n\nThomas Warton: _The History of English Poetry_, 1774-88.--C. Rinaker:\n_Thomas Warton_, 1916.--Joseph Warton: _Essay on the Genius and\nWritings of Pope_, 2 vols. 1756-82.--Paul-Henri Mallet: _Introduction\n\u00e0 l\u2019Hist. de Dannemarc_, 2 vols. 1755-56--F. E. Farley: _Scandinavian\nInfluence on the English Romantic Movement_, 1903 (Bibliography).--R.\nHurd: _Letters on Chivalry and Romance_, 1762; ed. E. J. Morley, 1911.\n\n=W. Godwin=, 1756-1836: _Political Justice_, 1793. _Caleb Williams_,\n1794.\n\nC. K. Paul: _W. G., his Friends and Contemporaries_, 2 vols 1876.--W.\nHazlitt: _W. G._, in _The Spirit of the Age_, 1902.--L. Stephen: _W.\nG.\u2019s Novels. Studies of a Biographer_, vol. III, 1902.--P. Ramus:\n_W. G. der Theoretiker des kommunistischen Anarchismus_, 1907.--H.\nSaitzeff: _W. G. und die Anf\u00e4nge des Anarchismus im xviii Jahrhundert_,\n1907.--Helene Simon: _W. G. und Mary Wollstonecraft_, 1909.--H.\nRoussin: _W. G._, 1912.\n\n=R. Burns=, 1759-96: _The Complete Poetical Works_, ed. J. L.\nRobertson, 3 vols. 1896.--J. C. Ewing: _Selected List of the Works of\nR. B., and of Books upon his Life and Writings_, 1899.\n\nW. Wordsworth: _Letter to a Friend of R. Burns_, 1816.--T. Carlyle:\n_Burns_, 1828. Rptd. 1854. _On Heroes and Hero-Worship_, 1841.--J.\nG. Lockhart: _Life of R. Burns_, 1828.--H. A. Taine: _Histoire de la\nLitt\u00e9rature Anglaise_, vol. III, 1863-64.--J. C. Shairp: _R. Burns_,\n1879.--R. L. Stevenson: _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_, 1882.--M.\nArnold: _Essays in Criticism, Second Series_, 1888.--A. Angellier: \u2731\n_R. Burns: la vie et les \u0153uvres_, 2 vols. 1893.--T. F. Henderson: _R.\nBurns_, 1904.--W. A. Neilson: _Burns: How to Know Him_, 1917.\n\n=W. Blake=, 1759-1827: _The Poetical Works_, ed. with an intro. and\ntextual notes by J. Sampson, 1913.\n\nA. Gilchrist: _Life of B._, 2 vols. 1863. New edn. 1906.--A.\nC. Swinburne: _W. B._, 1868. New edn. 1906.--A. T. Story: _W.\nB._, 1893.--J. Thomson (B.V.): _Essay on the Poems of W. B._, in\n_Biographical and Critical Studies_, 1896.--W. B. Yeats: _Ideas of Good\nand Evil_, 1903.--F. Benoit: _Un Ma\u00eetre de l\u2019Art. B. le Visionnaire_,\n1906.--P. E. More: _Shelburne Essays, Fourth Series_, 1906.--P. Berger:\n_W. B._, 1907.--S. A. Brooke: _Studies in Poetry_, 1907.--E. J. Ellis:\n_The Real B., a Portrait Biography_, 1907.--B. de Selincourt: _W.\nB._, 1909.--G. Saintsbury: _A History of English Prosody_, vol. III,\n1910.--J. H. Wicksteed: _B.\u2019s Vision of the Book of Job_, 1910.--H. C.\nBeeching: _B.\u2019s Religious Lyrics, Essays and Studies by Members of the\nEng. Association_, vol. III, 1912.--A. G. B. Russell: _The Engravings\nof W. B._, 1912.\n\n=W. Wordsworth=, 1770-1850: _Poetical Works_, ed. T. Hutchinson, 1904.\n_Poems_, chosen and edited by M. Arnold, 1879. _Prose Works_, ed. W.\nKnight, 2 vols. 1896. _Wordsworth\u2019s Literary Criticism_, ed. N. C.\nSmith, 1905.\n\nW. Hazlitt: _The Spirit of the Age_, 1825.--C. Wordsworth: _Memoirs of\nW. W._, 2 vols. 1851.--T.B. Macaulay: _Critical and Historical Essays_,\n1852.--J. R. Lowell: _Among my Books_, 1870.--R. H. Hutton: _Essays\nTheological and Literary_, 2 vols. 1871.--J. C. Shairp: _W._, 1872.--S.\nA. Brooke: _Theology in the English Poets_, 1874. 10th edn. 1907.--E.\nDowden: _Studies in Literature_, 1878. _New Studies in Literature_,\n1895.--W. Bagehot: _Literary Studies_, 1879.--F. W. H. Myers: _W._,\n1881.--J. H. Shorthouse: _On the Platonism of W._, 1882.--W. A. Knight:\n_Memorials of Coleorton_, 2 vols. 1887. _Letters of the Wordsworth\nFamily from 1787 to 1855_, 1907.--M. Arnold: \u2731 _Essays in Criticism,\nSecond Series_, 1888.--P. Bourget: _Etudes et Portraits_, vol. II,\n1888.--W. H. Pater: _Appreciations_, 1889.--L. Stephen: _Hours\nin a Library_, vol. II, 1892. _Studies of a Biographer_, vol. I,\n1898.--Dorothy Wordsworth: _Journals_, ed. W. Knight, 2 vols, 1897.--E.\nLegouis: \u2731 _The Early Life of W., 1770-98_. Trans. by J.W. Matthews,\n1897.--E. Yarnall: _W. and the Coleridges_, 1899.--W. A. Raleigh: _W._,\n1903.--K. B\u00f6mig: _W. W. im Urteile seiner Zeit_, 1906.--A. C. Bradley:\n_Eng. Poetry and German Philosophy in the Age of W._, 1909.--M.\nReynolds: _The Treatment of Nature in Eng. Poetry between Pope and\nW._, 1909. (Bibliography.)--L. Cooper: _A Concordance to the Poems of\nW. W._, 1911.--E. S. Robertson: _Wordsworthshire. An Introduction to a\nPoet\u2019s Country_, 1911.\n\n=W. Scott=, 1771-1832: _Poetical Works_, ed. J. L. Robertson, 1904.\n_The Waverly Novels_ (Oxford edn.), 25 vols. 1912. _The Miscellaneous\nProse Works_, 30 vols. 1834-71.\n\nW. Hazlitt: _The Spirit of the Age_, 1825.--J. G. Lockhart: \u2731 _Memoirs\nof the Life of Sir W. S. Baronet_, 2 vols. 1837-38.--T. Carlyle: _Sir\nW.S._, 1838.--G. Grant: _Life of Sir W. S._, 1849.--L. Stephen: _Hours\nin a Library_, vol. I, 1874. _The Story of S.\u2019s Ruin, Studies of a\nBiographer_, vol. II, 1898.--R. H. Hutton: _Sir W. S._, 1876.--W.\nBagehot: _The Waverley Novels in Literary Studies_, vol. II, 1879.--G.\nSmith: _Sir W. S._, in _Ward\u2019s English Poets_, vol. IV, 1883.--R.\nL. Stevenson: _A Gossip on Romance_ in _Memories and Portraits_,\n1887.--J. Veitch: _The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry_, 2 vols.\n1887. Vol. II. _History and Poetry of the Scottish Border_. 2d edn.\n2 vols. 1893.--C.D. Yonge: _Life of Sir W.S._ (bibliography by J.P.\nAnderson), 1888.--V. Waille: _Le Romantisme de Manzoni_, 1890.--A.\nLang: _Life and Letters of J.G. Lockhart_, 2 vols. 1896. _L. and the\nBorder Minstrelsy_, 1910.--F.T. Palgrave: _Landscape in Poetry_,\n1896.--A.A. Jack: _Essays on the Novel as illustrated by S. and Miss\nAusten_, 1897.--G. Saintsbury: _Sir W.S._, 1897.--L. Maigron: \u2731 _Le\nRoman historique \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9poque romantique. Essai sur l\u2019influence de W.S._,\n1898.--W.L. Cross: _Development of the English Novel_, 1899.--M.\nDotti: _Delle derivazioni nei Promessi sposi di A. Manzoni dai Romanzi\ndi W.S._, 1900.--W.H. Hudson: _Sir W.S._, 1901.--W.S. Crockett: _The\nScott Country_, 1902. _Footsteps of S._, 1907. _The Scott Originals_,\n1912.--A. Ainger: _S. Lectures and Essays_, vol. I. 1905.--A.S.G.\nCanning: _History in S.\u2019s Novels_, 1905. _Sir W.S. studied in Eight\nNovels_, 1910.--G. Agnoli: _Gli Albori del romanzo storico in Italia e\ni primi imitatori di W.S._, 1906.--C.A. Young: _The Waverley Novels_,\n1907.--G. Wyndham: _Sir W.S._, 1908.--F.A. MacCunn: _Sir W.S.\u2019s\nfriends_, 1909.\n\n=S. T. Coleridge=, 1772-1831: _Dramatic Works_, ed. D. Coleridge, 1852.\n_Poetical Works_, ed. with biographical intro. by J.D. Campbell, 1893.\n_Complete Poetical Works_, ed. E.H. Coleridge, 2 vols. 1912. _Prose\nWorks_, 6 vols. in _Bohn\u2019s Library_, 1865 ff.--_Biographia Literaria_,\ned. with his \u00e6sthetical essays by I. Shawcross, 2 vols. 1907. _Anima\nPoetae_, ed. E.H. Coleridge, 1895. C.\u2019s _Literary Criticism_, with\nintro. by J.W. Mackail, 1908. _Biographia epistalaris_, ed. A. Tumbull,\n2 vols. 1911.\n\nW. Hazlitt: _Mr. C._, in _The Spirit of the Age_, 1825.--T. Allsop:\n_Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S.T.C._, 2 vols.\n1836.--T. Carlyle: _Life of John Sterling_ (part I, chap, VIII),\n1851.--Sara Coleridge: _Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge_, 2\nvols. 1873.--H.D. Traill: _Coleridge_, 1884.--A. Brandl: _S.T.C.\nund die englishe Romantik_, 1886. Eng. trans. by Lady Eastlake,\n1887.--W. Pater: _Coleridge. Appreciations_, 1889.--T. De Quincey:\n_S.T.C._, 1889.--L. Stephen: _Coleridge, Hours in a Library_, vol.\nIII, 1892.--J.D. Campbell: _S.T.C._, 1894. 2d edn.; 1896.--E. Dowden:\n_C. as a Poet. New Studies in Literature_, 1895.--E.V. Lucas: _Charles\nLamb and the Lloyds_, 1898.--R.H. Shepherd: _The Bibliography of C._,\n1900.--C. Cestre: _La R\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise et les po\u00e8tes anglais\n(1789-1809)_, 1906.--J. Aynard: _La vie d\u2019un po\u00e8te_. _Coleridge_,\n1907.--A.A. Helmholtz: _The Indebtedness of S.T.C. to A.W. Schlegel_,\n1907.--A.A. Jack and A.C. Bradley: _Short Bibliography of C._, 1912.\n\n=C. Lamb=, 1775-1834: _Life and Works_, ed. A. Ainger, 12 vols.\n1899-1900. _The Works of Charles and Mary L._, ed. E.V. Lucas, 7 vols.\n1903-05. _The Works in Prose and Verse of Charles and Mary L._, ed. T.\nHutchinson, 2 vols. 1908. _The Letters of C.L._ Intro, by H.H. Harper,\n5 vols. 1907. _Dramatic Essays of C.L._, ed. B. Matthews, 1891.\n\nG. Gilfillan: _C.L._, vol. II, 1857.--B.W. Proctor: _C.L._, 1866.--P.\nFitzgerald: _C.L._, 1866.--A. Ainger: _C.L., a Biography_, 1882.\n_Lectures and Essays_, vol. II, 1905.--W. Pater: _C.L. Appreciations_,\n1889.--E.V. Lucas: _Bernard Barton and his Friends_, 1893. _C.L. and\nthe Lloyds_, 1898. _The Life of C.L._, 2 vols. 1905.--F. Harrison: _L.\nand Keats_, 1899.--G.E. Woodberry: _C.L._, 1900.--H. Paul: _C.L. Stray\nLeaves_, 1906.\n\n=W. Hazlitt=, 1778-1830: _Works_, edd. A.R. Waller and A. Glover, 12\nvols. and index, 1902-06.\n\nL. Hunt: _Autobiography_, 3 vols. 1850.--W. C. Hazlitt: _Memoirs of W.\nH._, 2 vols. 1867. _Four Generations of a Literary Family_, 2 vols.\n1897. _Lamb and H._, 1899.--G. Saintsbury: _H. Essays in English\nLiterature (1780-1860)_, 1890.--L. Stephen: _Hours in a Library_, vol.\nII, 1892.--A. Birrell: _W. H._, 1902.--P. E. More: _The Shelburne\nEssays, Second Series_, 1905.--J. Douady: _Vie de W. H._, 1907.--_Liste\nchronologique des \u0153uvres de W. H._, 1906.\n\n=Lord Byron=, 1788-1824: _The Works of Lord B._, ed. by R. H. Coleridge\nand R. E. Prothero, 13 vols. 1898-1904. _Complete Poetical Works_, ed.\nwith intro., etc., by P. E. More, 1905.--_Poetry of B._, chosen and\narranged by M. Arnold, 1881.\n\nS. E. Brydges: _Letters on the Character and Poetical Genius of Lord\nB._, 1824.--T. Medwin: _Journal of the Conversations of Lord B._,\n1824.--L. Hunt: _Lord B. and Some of his Contemporaries_, 3 vols.\n1828.--J. Galt: _The Life of Lord B._, 1830, 1908.--V. E. P. Chasles:\n_Vie et influence de B. sur son \u00e9poque_, 1850.--T. B. Macaulay: _Lord\nB._, 1853.--H. Beyle: _Lord B. en Italie_, in _Racine et Shakespeare_,\n1824.--K. Elze: _Lord B._, 1870.--H. von Treitschke: _Lord B. und\nder Radicalismus_, in _Historische und politische Aufs\u00e4tze_, vol. I,\n1871.--E. Castelar: _Vida de Lord B._, 1873.--A. C. Swinburne: B.,\nin _Essays and Studies_, 1875.--C. Cant: _Lord B. and his Works_,\n1883.--J. C. Jeaffreson: _The Real Lord B._, 2 vols. 1883.--M. Arnold:\n\u2731 _Essays in Criticism, Second Series_, 1888.--R. Noel: _Life of\nB._ (bibliography by J. P. Anderson), 1890.--O. Schmidt: _Rousseau\nund B._, 1890.--S. Singheimer: _Goethe und Lord B._, 1894.--K.\nBleibtreu: _B. der \u00dcbermensch_, 1897. _Das Byron-Geheimnis_, 1912.--R.\nAckermann: _Lord B._, 1901.--F. Melchior: _Heines Verh\u00e4ltnis zu Lord\nB._, 1902.--G. K. Chesterton: _The Optimism of B., in Twelve Types_,\n1902.--E. Koeppel: _Lord B._, 1903.--J. C. Collins: _The Works of Lord\nB., in Studies in Poetry and Criticism_, 1905.--W. E. Leonard: _B.\nand Byronism in America_, 1905.--M. Eimer: _Lord B. und die Kunst_,\n1907.--E. Est\u00e8ve: \u2731 _B. et le romantisme fran\u00e7ais_, 1907.--J. Calca\u00f1o:\n_Tres Poetas pesimistas del siglo xix_ (_Lord B., Shelley, Leopardi_),\n1907.--P. H. Churchman: _B. and Espronoeda_, 1909.--R. Edgcumbe: B.;\n_The Last Phase_, 1909.--B. Miller: _Leigh Hunt\u2019s Relations with B._,\n1910.--C. M. Fuess: _Lord B. as a Satirist in Verse_, 1912.--E. C.\nMayne: B., 2 vols. 1912.\n\n=T. De Quincey=, 1785-1859. _Select Essays_, ed. D. Masson, 2 vols.\n1888. _Collected Writings_, ed. D. Masson, 14 vols. 1889-90. _Literary\nCriticism_, ed. H. Darbishire, 1909.\n\nA. H. Japp: _T. De Q.: His Life and Writings._. 2 vols. 1877. New\nedn. 1890. _De Q. Memorials_, 2 vols. 1891.--S. H. Hodgson: _Outcast\nEssays_, 1881.--D. Masson: _T. De Q._, 1881.--G. Saintsbury: _De Q.\nEssays in English Literature (1780-1860)_, 1890.--L. Stephen: _Hours in\na Library._ New edn. vol. I. 1892.--J. Hogg: _De Q. and his Friends_,\n1895.--A. Barine: _N\u00e9vros\u00e9s: De Q._, etc., 1898.--A. Birrell: _Essays\nabout Men, Women and Books_, 1901.--H. S. Salt: _De Q._, 1904.--J. A.\nGreen: _T. De Q.: a Bibliography_, 1908.\n\n=P. B. Shelley=, 1792-1822: _Complete Poetical Works_, ed. T.\nHutchinson, 1904. _Prose Works_, 4 vols. Ed. H. B. Forman, 1880.\n_Prose Works_, ed. R. H. Shepherd, 2 vols. 1888, 1912. _S.\u2019s Literary\nCriticism_, ed. J. Shawcross, 1909. _Letters to Elizabeth Hitchener_,\ned. B. Dobell, 1909. The _Letters of S._, ed. R. Ingpen, 2 vols. 1909.\nNew edn. 1912.\n\nL. Hunt: _Lord Byron and his Contemporaries_, 1828.--T. Medwin: _The\nShelley Papers_, 1833. _Life of S._, 2 vols. 1847. Ed. H. B. Forman,\n1913.--T. J. Hogg: _Life of S._, 2 vols. 1858. Ed. E. Dowden, 1906.--E.\nJ. Trelawny: _Recollections of the Last Days of S. and Byron_, 1858.\nEd. E. Dowden, 1906.--D. Masson: _Wordsworth, S., Keats, and other\nEssays_, 1874.--J. A. Symonds: _S._, 1878.--J. Todhunter: _A Study\nof S._, 1880.--_Shelley Society Publications_, 1884-88.--F. Rabbe:\n_S._, 1887.--J. C. Jeaffreson: _The Real S._, 2 vols. 1885.--E.\nDowden: _Life of S._, 2 vols. 1886. Revised and condensed, 1896.--W.\nSharp: _Life of S._, 1887.--M. Arnold: \u2731 _Essays in Criticism, Second\nSeries_, 1888.--F. S. Ellis: _A Lexical Concordance to the Poetical\nWorks of S._, 1892.--W. Bagehot: _Literary Studies_. New edn., vol. I,\n1895.--H. Richter: _P. B. S._, 1898.--W. B. Yeats: _The Philosophy of\nS.\u2019s Poetry_, 1903.--S. A. Brooke: _The Lyrics of S._, etc. _Studies\nin Poetry_, 1907.--E. S. Bates: _A Study of S.\u2019s Drama The Cenci_,\n1908.--F. Thompson: _S._, 1909.--A. C. Bradley: _S.\u2019s View of Poetry_,\nin _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_, 1909. _Short Bibliography of S._,\nEnglish Association Leaflet, no. 23, 1912.--A. Clutton-Brock: _S.,\nthe Man and the Poet_, 1910.--P. E. More: _S._, in _Shelburne Essays,\nSeventh Series_, 1910.--A. H. Koszul: _La Jeunesse de Shelley_,\n1910.--H. R. Angeli: _S. and his Friends in Italy_, 1911.--F. E.\nSchelling: _The English Lyric_, 1913.--H. N. Brailsford: _S. and\nGodwin_, 1913.--R. Ingpen: _S. in England_, 2 vols. 1917.\n\n=J. Keats=, 1795-1821: _Poetical Works_, ed. with an intro., etc.,\nby H. B. Forman, 1906. _Poems_, ed. Sir S. Colvin, 2 vols. 1915.\n_Letters._ Complete revised edn., ed. H. B. Forman, 1895. _Keats\nLetters, Papers and other Relics_, ed. G. C. Williamson, 1914.\n\nM. Arnold: _Selections from K.\u2019s Poems_, with _Introduction_, in\n_Ward\u2019s English Poets_, vol. IV, 1880. Also in \u2731 _Essays in Criticism,\nSecond Series_, 1888.--A. C. Swinburne: _Miscellanies_, 1886.--W. M.\nRossetti: _Life of J. K._ (bibliography by J. P. Anderson), 1887.--S.\nColvin: _K._, 1887.--W. Watson: _Excursions in Criticism_, 1893.--J.\nTexte: _K. et le neo-hell\u00e9nisme dans la po\u00e9sie anglaise_ in _Etudes\nde litt\u00e9rature europ\u00e9enne_, 1898.--P. E. More: _Shelburne Essays,\nFourth Series_, 1906.--S. A. Brooke: _Studies in Poetry_, 1907.--A. E.\nHancock: _J. K._, 1908.--A. C. Bradley: _The Letters of K._, in _Oxford\nLectures on Poetry_, 1909.--L. Wolff: _An Essay on K.\u2019s Treatment of\nthe Heroic Rhythm and Blank Verse_, 1909. _J. K., sa vie et son \u0153uvre_,\n1910.--J. W. Mackail: _Lectures on Poetry_, 1912.--Sir S. Colvin: \u2731\n_Life of J. K._, 1917.\n\n\nFRENCH FIELD\n\nBibliography: G. Lanson: \u2731 _Manuel bibliographique de la litt. fr.\nmoderne, 1500-1900_, vols. III and IV. Nouvelle \u00e9d. revue et compl\u00e9t\u00e9e,\n1915.--H. P. Thieme: _Guide bibliographique de la litt. fr. de\n1800-1906_, 1907.--Asselineau: _Bibliographie romantique_, 3d edn.,\n1873. Histories of French Literature: D. Nisard: _Histoire de la litt.\nfr._, 4 vols. 1844-61. (For N.\u2019s type of classicism see my _Masters\nof Mod. Fr. Crit._, pp. 87 ff.)--F. Bruneti\u00e8re: _Manuel de l\u2019histoire\nde la litt. fr._, 1899.--G. Lanson: \u2731 _Histoire de la litt. fr._ 11th\nedn. 1909.--C. H. C. Wright: _A History of Fr. Lit._ (bibliography),\n1912.--C.-M. Des Granges: _Histoire illustr\u00e9e de la litt. fr._, 1915.\n\nEighteenth century: F. Baldensperger: _L\u00e9nore de B\u00fcrger dans la litt.\nfr._, in _Etudes d\u2019hist. litt._ 1e s\u00e9rie, 1907. _Young et ses Nuits\nen France_, _ibid._--J. Reboul: _Un grand pr\u00e9curseur des romantiques,\nRamond (1755-1827)_, 1911.--D. Mornet: _Le romantisme en Fr. au XVIIIe\nsi\u00e8cle_, 1912.--P. van Tieghem: _Ossian en Fr._, 2 vols. 1917.\n\nE. Bersot: _Etudes sur le XVIIIe si\u00e8cle_, 1855. _Hist. des id\u00e9es\nmorales et politiques en Fr. au XVIIIe si\u00e8cle_, 2 vols. 1865-67.--H.\nTaine: \u2731 _L\u2019Ancien R\u00e9gime_, 1876. Vol. I of _Les Origines de la Fr.\ncontemporaine_.--E. Faguet: \u2731 _XVIIIe si\u00e8cle_, 1892.--Rocafort: _Les\nDoctrines litt. de l\u2019Encyclop\u00e9die_, 1890.--G. Lanson: _Le R\u00f4le de\nl\u2019exp\u00e9rience dans la formation de la philosophie du XVIIIe si\u00e8cle_,\n1910.\n\nAbb\u00e9 Pr\u00e9vost: _Manon Lescaut_, 1731.--Harrisse: _Bibliographie et Notes\npour servir \u00e0 l\u2019hist. de Manon Lescaut_, 1875. _L\u2019Abb\u00e9 Pr\u00e9vost: hist.\nde sa vie et de ses \u0153uvres_, 1896.--Heilborn: _Abb\u00e9 Pr\u00e9vost und seine\nBeziehungen zur deutschen Lit._, 1897.\n\n_\u0152uvres compl\u00e8tes de Gessner_, trad. par Huber, 3 vols. 1768. H.\nHeis: _Studien aber einige Beziehungen zwischen der deutschen und der\nfranz\u00f6sischen Lit. im XVII. Jahr._ I. _Der Uebersetzer und Vermittler\nHuber_, 1909.\n\nG. Lanson: \u2731 _Nivelle de La Chauss\u00e9e et la com\u00e9die larmoyante_, 1887.\n2d edn. 1903.--E. Lintilhac: _Beaumarchais et ses \u0153uvres_, 1887.--L.\nB\u00e9clard: _S\u00e9bastien Mercier_, 1903.--G\u00fcnther: _L\u2019\u0153uvre dramatique de\nSedaine_, 1908.--F. Gaiffe: _Etude sur le drame en Fr. au XVIIIe\nsi\u00e8cle_, 1910.\n\n=J.-J. Rousseau=, 1712-1778: _Discours sur les sciences et les arts_,\n1750. _Discours sur l\u2019origine et les fondements de l\u2019in\u00e9galit\u00e9_, 1755.\n_Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse_, 1761. _Emile_, 1762. _Le contrat social_, 1762.\nEd. Dreyfus-Bris\u00e1c, 1896. Ed. Beaulavon, 1903. 2 \u00e9d. revue, 1914.\n_Confessions_, 1782-88. Ed. A. van Beyer, 1914. \u2731 _The Political\nWritings of R._, ed. with intro., etc. by C. E. Vaughan, 2 vols. 1915.\n(Excellent work on the text. The estimate of the political influence\nseems to me to lack penetration.) Collected works: Ed. Petitain, 22\nvols. 1819-20. Ed. Musset-Pathay, 23 vols. 1823-26. Ed. Hachette, 13\nvols. 1887. (No good collected ed. as yet.)\n\nStreckeisen-Moultou: _\u0152uvres et Correspondance in\u00e9dites de J.-J. R._,\n1861. _J.-J. R., ses amis et ses ennemis_ (Lettres \u00e0 R.), 1865.: E.\nAsse: _Bibliographie de J.-J. R._ [no date]. For current bibliography\nsee \u2731 _Annales de la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 J.-J. Rousseau_, 1905 ff. _Extraits de\nJ.-J. R._ publi\u00e9s avec intro. p. L. Brunel. 3e \u00e9d. 1896.--_Morceaux\nchoisis de J.-J. R._ avec intro. etc., p. D. Mornet, 1911.\n\nStudies (chiefly biographical): Musset-Pathay: _Histoire de la Vie\net des Ouvrages de J.-J. R._, 2 vols. 1821.--Gaberel: _R. et les\nG\u00e9nevois_, 1858.--H. Beaudoin: _La Vie et les \u0152uvres de J.-J. R._, 2\nvols. 1891 (bibliography).--F. Mugnier: _Mme. de Warens et J.-J. R._,\n1891.--F. Macdonald: _Studies in the France of Voltaire and R._, 1895.\n_J.-J. R., a New Criticism_, 2 vols. 1906. (The evidence offered as to\nthe tampering with the memoirs of Mad. d\u2019Epinay is of value. The work\nis in general uncritical.)--E. Ritter: \u2731 _La famille et la jeunesse\nde J.-J. R._, 1896.--Stoppolini: _Le donne nella vita di G.-G. R._,\n1898.--E. Rod: _L\u2019affaire J.-J. R._, 1906.--Comte de Girardin: \u2731\n_Iconographie de J.-J. R._, 1908. _Iconographie des \u0152uvres de J.-J.\nR._, 1910.--H. Buffenoir: _Les Portraits de J.-J. R._--E. Faguet: _Vie\nde R._, 1912.--G. Gran: _J.-J. R._, 1912.\n\nHume: _Expos\u00e9 succint de la contestation qui s\u2019est \u00e9lev\u00e9e entre M. Hume\net M. Rousseau_, 1766.--Dussaulx: _De mes rapports avec J.-J. R._,\n1798.--Comte d\u2019Escherny: _M\u00e9langes de litt\u00e9rature_, etc., 1811.--D.\nGuillaume: _J.-J. R. \u00e0 Motiers_, 1865.--Metzger: _J.-J. R. \u00e0 l\u2019\u00eele\nSaint-Pierre_, 1875. _La conversion de Mme. Warens_, 1887. _Une\npoign\u00e9e de documents in\u00e9dits sur Mme. Warens_, 1888. _Pens\u00e9es de Mme.\nWarens_, 1888. _Les derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es de Mme. Warens_ [no date]. G.\nDesnoiresterres: _Voltaire et J.-J. R._ (vol. VI of \u2731 _Voltaire et la\nsoci\u00e9t\u00e9 fr. au XVIIIe si\u00e8cle_) 2e \u00e9d. 1875.--G. Maugras: _Voltaire\net J.-J. R._, 1886.--F. Berthoud: _J.-J. R. au Val de Travers_,\n1881. _J.-J. R. et le pasteur de Montmollin_, 1884.--T. de Saussure:\n_J.-J. R. \u00e0 Venise, notes et documents_, recueillis par Victor\nCeresole 1885.--P. J. M\u00f6bius: \u2731 _J.-J. R.\u2019s Krankheitsgeschichte_,\n1889.--Chatelain: _La Folie de J.-J. R._, 1890.--F. Mugnier: _Nouvelles\nLettres de Mme. Warens_, 1900.--A. de Montaigu: _D\u00e9m\u00eal\u00e9s du Comte\nMontaigu et de son secr\u00e9taire J.-J. R._, 1904.--B. de Saint-Pierre:\n_La Vie et les Ouvrages de J.-J. R._, \u00e9d. critique p. par M. Souriau,\n1907.--C. Collins: _J.-J. R. in England_, 1908.--A. Rey: _J.-J. R.\ndans la vall\u00e9e de Montmorency_, 1909.--D. Caban\u00e8s: _Le Cabinet secret\nde l\u2019histoire_, 3e s\u00e9rie, 1909.--F. Girardet: _La Mort de J.-J. R._,\n1909.--P.-P. Plan: _R. racont\u00e9 par les gazettes de son temps_, 1913.\n\nGeneral Studies (chiefly critical): Bersot: _Etudes sur le XVIIIe\nsi\u00e8cle_, t. II, 1855.--J. Morley: \u2731 _R._, 1873. 2d edn. 2 vols.,\n1886--Saint-Marc Girardin: _J.-J. R., sa vie et ses \u0153uvres_,\n1874.--H.-F. Amiel: _Caract\u00e9ristique g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de R._, in _J.-J. R.\njug\u00e9 par les G\u00e9nevois d\u2019aujourd\u2019hui_, 1878.--Mahrenholtz: _J.-J. R.\u2019s\nLeben_, 1889.--Chuquet: _J.-J. R._, 1893.--H. H\u00f6ffding: _R. und seine\nPhilosophie_, 1897.--J.-F. Nourrisson: _J.-J. R. et le Rousseauisme_,\n1903.--Br\u00e9dif: _Du Caract\u00e8re intellectuel et moral de J.-J. R._,\n1906.--J. Lema\u00eetre: _J.-J. R._, 1907.--L. Claretie: _J.-J. R. et\nses amis_, 1907.--L. Ducros: _J.-J. R. (1712-57)_, 1908. _J.-J. R.\n(1757-65)_, 1917.--B. Bouvier: _J.-J. R._, 1912.\n\nSpecial Studies (chiefly critical): Sainte-Beuve: \u2731 _Lundis_, t. II\n(_R. et Mme. de Franqueville_), 1850; t. III (_les Confessions_),\n1850; t. XV (_\u0152uvres et Correspondance in\u00e9dites_), 1861. _Nouveaux\nLundis_, t. IX (_Mad. de Verdelin_), 1865.--J. R. Lowell: _R. and\nthe Sentimentalists, in Lit. Essays_, II, 1867.--Bruneti\u00e8re: _Etudes\ncritiques_, t. III (1886) et IV (1890).--C. Borgeaud: _J.-J. R.\u2019s\nReligionsphilosophie_, 1883.--A. Jansen: _R. als Musiker_, 1884.\n_R. als Botaniker_, 1885.--Espinas: _Le syst\u00e8me de R._, 1895.--T.\nDavidson: _J.-J. R. and Education according to Nature_, 1898.--M.\nLiepmann: _Die Rechtsphilosophie des J.-J. R._ 1898.--F. Haymann:\n_J.-J. R.\u2019s Sozial-Philosophie_, 1898.--P. E. Merriam: _History of\nthe Theory of Sovereignty since R._, 1900.--E. Duffau: _La profession\nde foi du Vicaire Savoyard_, 1900.--J. L. Windenberger: _Essai sur le\nSyst\u00e8me de politique \u00e9trang\u00e8re de J.-J. R._, 1900.--A. Pougin: _J.-J.\nR. musicien_, 1901.--G. Schumann: _Religion und Religion-Erziehung\nbei R._, 1902.--Faguet: _Politique compar\u00e9e de Montesquieu, Voltaire\net R._, 1902.--M. Gascheau: _Les Id\u00e9es \u00e9conomiques chez quelques\nphilosophes du XVIIIe si\u00e8cle_, 1903.--Grand-Carteret: _La Montagne \u00e0\ntravers les \u00e2ges_, 1903.--Albalat: _Le Travail du Style enseign\u00e9 par\nles corrections manuscrites des grands \u00e9crivains_, 1903.--A. Geikie:\n_Landscape in History and other Essays_, 1905.--B. Lassudrie-Duchesne:\n_J.-J. R. et le Droit des gens_, 1906.--G. del Vecchio: _Su la teoria\ndel Contratto Sociale_, 1906.--P. E. More: _Shelburne Essays_, VI\n(_Studies in Religious Dualism_), 1909.--D. Mornet: _Le sentiment\nde la nature en France, de J.-J. R. \u00e0 B. de S. Pierre_, 1907.--L.\nGignoux: _Le th\u00e9\u00e2tre de J.-J. R._, 1909.--H. Rodet: _Le Contrat Social\net les id\u00e9es politiques de J.-J. R._, 1909.--A. Schinz: _J.-J. R., a\nForerunner of Pragmatism_, 1909.--G. Fusseder: _Beitr\u00e4ge zur Kenntnis\nder Sprache R.\u2019s_, 1909.--J.-J. Tiersot: _R._, 1912 (_Les Ma\u00eetres de\nla Musique_).--G. Vallette: _J.-J. R. G\u00e9nevois_, 1911.--E. Faguet: _R.\ncontre Moli\u00e8re_, 1912. _Les Amies de R._, 1912. _R. Artiste_, 1913. _R.\nPenseur_, 1913.\n\nSources: Dom Cajot: _Les Plagiats de J.-J. R. de Gen\u00e8ve sur\nl\u2019Education_, 1765.--J. Vuy: _Origine des ide\u00e9s politiques de\nJ.-J. R._, 1878.--G. Kr\u00fcger: _Emprunts de J.-J. R. dans son\npremier Discours_, 1891.--J. Texte: \u2731 _J.-J. R. et les origines du\nCosmopolitisme litt\u00e9raire au XVIIIe si\u00e8cle_, 1895.--C. Culcasi: _Degli\ninflussi italiani nell\u2019 opera di J.-J. R._--G. Chinni: _Le fonti dell\u2019\nEmile de J.-J. R._, 1908.--D. Villey: _L\u2019influence de Montaigne sur les\nid\u00e9es p\u00e9dagogiques de Locke et de R._, 1911.\n\nReputation and Influence: Mme. de Sta\u00ebl: _Lettres sur le caract\u00e8re et\nles ouvrages de J.-J. R._, 1788.--Mercier: _De J.-J. R. consid\u00e9r\u00e9 comme\nl\u2019un des premiers auteurs de la R\u00e9volution_, 1791.--Kramer: _A.-H.\nFrancke, J.-J. R., H. Pestalozzi_, 1854.--E. Schmidt: _Richardson,\nRousseau und Goethe_, 1875.--Dietrich: _Kant et R._, 1878.--Nolen:\n_Kant et J.-J. R._, 1880.--O. Schmidt: _R. et Byron_, 1887.--Pinloche:\n_La r\u00e9forme de l\u2019\u00e9ducation en Allemagne au XVIIIe si\u00e8cle, Basedow\net le philanthropinisme_, 1889. _Pestalozzi et l\u2019\u00e9ducation populaire\nmoderne_, 1891.--L\u00e9vy-Bruhl: _L\u2019Allemagne depuis Leibnitz_, 1890.\n_La Philosophie de Jacobi_, 1894.--J. Grand-Carteret: _J.-J. R.\njug\u00e9 par les Fran\u00e7ais d\u2019aujourd\u2019hui_, 1890.--R. Fester: _R. und\ndie deutsche Geschichtsphilosophie_, 1890.--H. G\u00f6ssgen: _R. und\nBasedow_, 1891.--C. H. Lincoln: _J.-J. R. and the French Revolution_,\n1898.--A. Chalybans: _J.-J. R.\u2019s Einfluss auf die franz\u00f6sische\nRevolution und die Socialdemokratie_, 1899.--V. Delbos: _Essai sur\nla formation de la philosophie pratique de Kant_, 1903.--C. Cestre:\n_La R\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise et les Po\u00e8tes anglais_, 1906.--P. Lasserre:\n\u2731 _Le Romantisme fran\u00e7ais_, 1907.--Natorp: _Gesammelte Abhandlungen\nzur Sozialp\u00e4dagogik_, erste Abteilung: _Historisches (Pestalozzi\net R.)_, 1907.--M. Schiff: _Editions et traductions italiennes des\n\u0153uvres de J.-J. R._, 1908.--H. Buffenoir: _Le Prestige de J.-J.\nR._, 1909.--E. Champion: _J.-J. R. et la R\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise_,\n1910 (superficial).--A. Meynier: _J.-J. R. r\u00e9volutionnaire_, 1913\n(superficial).--_Revue de m\u00e9taphysique et de morale_, May, 1912.\nSymposium on R. and his influence by E. Boutroux, B. Bosanquet, J.\nJaur\u00e8s, etc. For similar symposium (by G. Lanson, H. H\u00f6ffding, E.\nGosse, etc.) see _Annales de la Soc. J.-J. R._, VIII (1912). For\nsymposium by Italian writers see _Per il IIo centenario di G. G. R.\n(Studi pubblicati dalla Rivista pedagogica)_, 1913.--P. M. Masson: \u2731\n_La Religion de J.-J. R._, 3 vols. 1917. (A storehouse of information\nfor the growth of deism and religious sentimentalism in France in the\n18th century. Unfortunately the author is himself confused as to the\ndifference between genuine religion and mere religiosity.)\n\n=D. Diderot=, 1713-84: _\u0152uvres_, p. par Ass\u00e9zat et Tourneux, 20 vols.\n1875-79. _Diderot. Extraits_, avec intro., etc., par J. Texte, 1909\n(excellent). _Pages choisies de D._, p. avec intro. par G. Pellissier,\n1909 (excellent).\n\nNaigeon: _M\u00e9moire sur la vie et les ouvrages de D._, 1798. _M\u00e9moires\nde Mme. de Vandeul_, 1830.--Sainte-Beuve: _Portraits litt._, I (1830).\n_Lundis_, III, (1851).--Rosenkranz: _D.\u2019s Leben und Werke_, 2 vols.\n1866.--E. Scherer: \u2731 _D._, 1880.--Caro: _La fin du Dix-huiti\u00e8me\nSi\u00e8cle_, t. I, 1880.--E. Faguet: _Dix-huiti\u00e8me Si\u00e8cle_, 1892.--J.\nMorley: \u2731 _Diderot and the Encyclop\u00e6dists_, 2 vols. 1891.--L. Ducros:\n_D., l\u2019homme et l\u2019\u00e9crivain_, 1894.--J. Reinach: _D._, 1894.--A.\nCollignon: _D., sa vie, ses \u0153uvres, sa correspondance_, 1895.--Bersot:\n_Etudes sur le Dix-huiti\u00e8me Si\u00e8cle_, t. II, 1855.--Bruneti\u00e8re: _Etudes\ncritiques_, t. II. _Les Salons de D._, 1880.--J. B\u00e9dier: _Le Paradoxe\nsur le Com\u00e9dien est-il de D.? Etudes Critiques_, 1903.\n\n=Bernardin de Saint-Pierre=, 1737-1814: _Etudes de la nature_, 3\nvols. 1784; 4 vols. 1787 (4th vol. contains _Paul et Virginie_); \u00e9d.\naugment\u00e9e, 5 vols. 1792. _\u0153uvres compl\u00e8tes_, p. par Aim\u00e9 Martin, 12\nvols. 1818-20. Suppl\u00e9ment, 1823. _Correspondance_, p. par A. Martin, 3\nvols. 1826.--A. Barine: _B. de Saint-Pierre_, 1891.--F. Maury: _Etude\nsur la vie et les \u0153uvres de B. de Saint-Pierre_, 1892.\n\nNineteenth Century: A. Nettement: _Histoire de la litt. fr. sous le\ngouvernement de juillet_, 2 vols. 1854.--A. Michiels: _Histoire des\nid\u00e9es lit. en Fr._, 2 vols. 1842.--G. Pellissier: \u2731 _Le mouvement\nlitt. au XIXe si\u00e8cle_. (Eng. trans.) 6th edn. 1900.--E. Faguet: _Le\nXIXe si\u00e8cle_, 1887. \u2731 _Politiques et Moralistes du XIXe si\u00e8cle_, 3\nvols. 1891-99.--F. Bruneti\u00e8re: \u2731 _L\u2019Evolution de la po\u00e9sie lyrique\nen Fr. au XIXe si\u00e8cle_, 2 vols. 1894.--C. Le Goffie: _La Litt. fr.\nau XIXe si\u00e8cle_, 1910.--F. Strowski: _Histoire de la litt. fr. au\nXIXe si\u00e8cle_, 1911. Important material bearing on the romantic period\nwill also be found in the critical essays of G. Planche, D. Nisard,\nSainte-Beuve, A. Vinet, E. Scherer, Barbey d\u2019Aurevilly, H. Taine, E.\nMont\u00e9gut, F. Bruneti\u00e8re, P. Bourget, E. Bir\u00e9, E. Faguet, J. Lema\u00eetre,\nG. Larroumet, G. Pellissier, R. Doumic, etc. For fuller information\nsee bibliography of my _Masters of Mod. Fr. Crit._, 395 ff. For tables\nof contents of the different volumes of these and other critics see\nThieme: _Guide bibliographique_, 499 ff.\n\nHistory, Critical Studies and Special Topics: Stendhal: _Racine\net Shakespeare_, 1823.--D. Sauvageot: _Le Romantisme_ (t. VIII de\n_L\u2019Hist. de la Litt. fr._, publi\u00e9e sous la direction de Petit de\nJulleville).--T. Gautier: _Hist. du Romantisme_, 1874.--Fournier:\n_Souvenirs po\u00e9tiques de l\u2019Ecole Romantique_, 1880.--R. Bazin:\n_Victor Pavie_, 1886.--T. Pavie: _Victor Pavie, sa jeunesse, ses\nrelations litt\u00e9raires_, 1887.--L. Der\u00f4me: _Les \u00e9ditions originales\ndes romantiques_, 2 vols. 1887.--G. Allais: _Quelques vues g\u00e9n\u00e9rales\nsur le Romantisme fr._ 1897.--J. Texte: _L\u2019influence allemande dans\nle Romantisme fr._, in _Etudes de litt. europ\u00e9enne_, 1898.--E. Asse:\n_Les petits romantiques_, 1900.--E. Dubedout: _Le sentiment chr\u00e9tien\ndans la po\u00e9sie romantique_, 1901.--Le Roy: _L\u2019Aube du th\u00e9\u00e2tre\nromantique_, 1902.--R. Canat: _Du sentiment de la solitude morale\nchez les romantiques et les parnassiens_, 1904.--E. Barat: _Le style\npo\u00e9tique et la r\u00e9volution romantique_, 1904.--H. Lardanchet: _Les\nenfants perdus du romantisme_, 1905.--A. Cassagne: _La th\u00e9orie de l\u2019art\npour l\u2019art en France_, 1906.--E. Kircher: _Philosophie der Romantik_,\n1906.--E. Est\u00e8ve: \u2731 _Byron et le Romantisme fr._, 1907.--Lasserre:\n\u2731 _Le Romantisme fr._, 1907. (A very drastic attack on Rousseau and\nthe whole Rousseauistic tendency.)--L. S\u00e9ch\u00e9: _Le C\u00e9nacle de La Muse\nFr. (1823-27)_, 1908.--E. Seilli\u00e8re: _Le Mal romantique, essai sur\nl\u2019imp\u00e9rialisme irrationnel_, 1908. (One of about 18 vols. in which S.\nattacks the underlying postulates of the Rousseauist. Like the other\nleaders of the crusade against romanticism in France, S. seems to me\nunsound on the constructive side.)--A. Pavie: _M\u00e9daillons romantiques_,\n1909.--W. K\u00fcchler: _Franz\u00f6sische Romantik_, 1909.--C. Lecigne: _Le\nFl\u00e9au romantique_, 1909.--P. Lafond: _L\u2019Aube romantique_, 1910.--L.\nMaigron: \u2731 _Le Romantisme et les m\u0153urs_, 1910. _Le Romantisme et\nla mode_, 1911.--G. Michaut: _Sur le Romantisme, une poign\u00e9e de\nd\u00e9finitions_ (extraits du _Globe_) in _Pages de critique et d\u2019hist.\nlitt._, 1910.--J. Marsan: _La Bataille romantique_, 1912.--P. van\nTieghem: _Le Mouvement romantique_, 1912.--G. Pellissier: _Le R\u00e9alisme\ndu romantisme_, 1912.--A. Bisi: _L\u2019Italie et le romantisme fran\u00e7ais_,\n1914.--C. Maurras: _L\u2019Avenir de l\u2019intelligence._ 2e \u00e9d. 1917.--L.\nRosenthal: _Du Romantisme au r\u00e9alisme_, 1918.\n\nA. Jullien: _Le Romantisme et l\u2019\u00e9diteur Renduel_, 1897.--P. Nebout: _Le\nDrame romantique_, 1897.--F. Baldensperger: \u2731 _Goethe en France_, 1904.\n_Bibliographie critique de Goethe en France_, 1907.--C. Latreille:\n_La Fin du th\u00e9\u00e2tre romantique et Fran\u00e7ois Ponsard_, 1899.--R. Canat:\n_La renaissance de la Gr\u00e8ce antique (1820-50)_, 1911.--G. Gendarme\nde B\u00e9votte: _La L\u00e9gende de Don Juan_, 2 vols. 1911.--L. S\u00e9ch\u00e9: _Le\nC\u00e9nacle de Joseph Delorme_, 2 vols. 1912.--J. L. Borgerhoff: _Le\nth\u00e9\u00e2tre anglais \u00e0 Paris sous la Restauration_, 1913.--M. Souriau: _De\nla convention dans la trag\u00e9die classique et dans le drame romantique_,\n1885.\n\nAnthologies: _Anthologie des po\u00e8tes fr. du XIXe si\u00e8cle_ (Lemerre), 4\nvols. 1887-88.--_French Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century_, ed. by G.\nN. Henning, 1913. (An excellent selection.)--_The Romantic Movement in\nFrench Literature_, traced by a series of texts selected and edited by\nH. F. Stewart and A. Tilley, 1910.\n\nThe Press: _La Muse Fran\u00e7aise_, 1823-24. Reprinted with intro. by J.\nMarsan, 2 vols. 1907-09.--P. F. Dubois: _Fragments litt._, articles\nextraits du _Globe_, 2 vols. 1879.--T. Ziessing: _\u201cLe Globe\u201d de 1824 \u00e0\n1830, consid\u00e9r\u00e9 dans ses rapports avec l\u2019\u00e9cole romantique_, 1881.--F.\nDavis: _French Romanticism and the Press, \u201cThe Globe\u201d_, 1906.--C. M.\nDesgranges: \u2731 _Le Romantisme et la critique, la presse litt. sous la\nRestauration_, 1907.\n\nB. Constant: _Adolphe_, 1816; avec pr\u00e9face de Sainte-Beuve, 1867; de\nP. Bourget, 1888; d\u2019A. France, 1889.--Sainte-Beuve: _Portraits litt._,\n1844. _Lundis_, XI (sur _Adolphe_); _Nouveaux Lundis_, I, 1862.--E.\nFaguet: _Politiques et Moralistes_, 1re s\u00e9rie, 1891.--G. Rudler: _La\njeunesse de B. Constant (1767-94)_, 1909. _Bibliographie critique des\n\u0153uvres de B. C._, 1908.--J. Ettlinger: _B. C., der Roman eines Lebens_,\n1909.\n\n=Madame de Sta\u00ebl=, 1766-1817: _De la litt\u00e9rature_, 1801. Delphine,\n1802. _Corinne_, 1807. _De l\u2019Allemagne_, 1814. _\u0152uvres compl\u00e8tes_, 3\nvols. 1836.\n\nBiography: Mme. Necker de Saussure: _Notice en t\u00eate de l\u2019\u00e9dition des\n\u0152uvres_, 1820.--Mme. Lenormant: _Mme. de S. et la grande duchesse\nLouise_, 1862. _Mme. R\u00e9camier_, 1872.--A. Stevens: _Mme. de S._, 2\nvols. 1881.--D\u2019Haussonville: _Le Salon de Mme. Necker_, 1882.--Lady\nBlennerhassett: \u2731 _Mme. de S. et son temps_, traduit de l\u2019allemand p.\nA. Dietrich, 3 vols. 1890.--A. Sorel: _Mme. de S._, 1890.--Dejob: _Mme.\nde S. et l\u2019Italie_, 1890.--E. Ritter: _Notes sur Mme. de S._, 1899.--P.\nGautier: _Mme. de S. et Napol\u00e9on_, 1903.\n\nCritical Studies: Sainte-Beuve: _Portraits Litt\u00e9raires_, t. III, 1836.\n_Portraits de Femmes_, 1844. _Nouveaux Lundis_, t. II, 1862.--Vinet:\n_Etudes sur la litt. fran\u00e7aise. Mme. de S. et Chateaubriand_, 1849. New\nedn. published by P. Sirven, 1911.--Faguet: _Politiques et Moralistes_,\n1891.--F. Bruneti\u00e8re: _Evolution de la Critique_, 1892.--U. Mengin:\n_L\u2019Italie des Romantiques_, 1902.--Maria-Teresa Porta: _Mme. de S. e\nl\u2019Italia (bibliographia)_, 1909.--G. Muoni: _Ludovico di Breme e le\nprime polemiche intorno a Mme. de S. ed al Romanticismo in Italia_.--E.\nG. Jaeck: _Mme. de S. and the Spread of German Literature_, 1915.--P.\nKohler: _Mme. de S. et la Suisse_, 1916.--R. C. Whitford: _Mme. de S.\u2019s\nReputation in England_, 1918.\n\n=Fran\u00e7ois Ren\u00e9 de Chateaubriand=, 1768-1848. _Essai sur les\nR\u00e9volutions_, 1797.--Atala, 1801. _Le G\u00e9nie du Christianisme_,\n1802. _Ren\u00e9_, 1802. _Les Martyrs_, 1809. _M\u00e9moires d\u2019Outre-Tombe_,\n1849-50; \u00e9d. Bir\u00e9, 6 vols. 1898-1901. _\u0153uvres compl\u00e8tes_, 12 vols.\n1859-61. _Correspondance g\u00e9n\u00e9rale_, p. par L. Thomas, vols. I-IV,\n1912-13.--Rocheblave: _Pages choisies de C._, 1896.--V. Giraud:\n_M\u00e9moires d\u2019Outre-Tombe: Pages choisies_, 1912.\n\nBiography: Vinet: _Etudes sur la litt. fran\u00e7aise. Mme. de Sta\u00ebl et\nC._, 1849. New edn. published by P. Sirven, 1911.--A. France: _Lucile\nde Chateaubriand_, 1879.--A. Bardoux: _Mme. de Beaumont_, 1884. _Mme.\nde Custine_, 1888. _Mme. de Duras_, 1898.--F. Saulnier: _Lucile de\nChateaubriand_, 1885.--G. Pailh\u00e8s: _Mme. de C._, 1887. _Mme. de C.,\nlettres in\u00e9dites \u00e0 Clausel de Coussergues_, 1888. _C., sa femme et ses\namis_, 1896. _Du nouveau sur Joubert, C._, etc., 1900.--J. B\u00e9dier: _C.\nen Am\u00e9rique_, 1899. _Etudes critiques_, 1903.--E. Bir\u00e9: _Les derni\u00e8res\nann\u00e9es de C. (1830-48)_, 1902.--A. Le Braz: _Au pays d\u2019exil de C._,\n1909.--A. Beaunier: _Trois amies de C._, 1910.--A. Cassagne: _La vie\npolitique de C._, 1911.\n\nCritical Studies: Sainte-Beuve: _Portraits Contemporains_, t. I, 1834,\n1844. _Lundis_, ts. I, II, 1850; X, 1854. _Nouveaux Lundis_, t. III,\n1862. \u2731 _C. et son groupe litt\u00e9raire sous l\u2019Empire_, 1848.\n\nVillemain: _C._, 1853.--Comte de Marcellus: _C. et son temps_,\n1859.--P. Bourget: _C._, in _Etudes et Portraits_, 1889.--C. Maurras:\n_Trois id\u00e9es politiques (C., Michelet, Sainte-Beuve)_, 1898.--F.\nGansen: _Le rapport de V. Hugo \u00e0 C._, 1900.--Lady Blennerhassett:\n_Die Romantik und die Restaurationsepoche in Frankreich, C._,\n1903.--E. Dick: _Plagiats de C._, 1905.--G. Daub: _Der Parallelismus\nzwischen C. und Lamartine_, 1909.--E. Michel: _C., interpr\u00e9tation\nm\u00e9dico-psychologique de son caract\u00e8re_, 1911.--Portiquet: _C. et\nl\u2019hyst\u00e9rie_, 1911.--V. Giraud: _Nouvelles \u00e9tudes sur C._, 1912.--J.\nLema\u00eetre: _C._, 1912.--G. Chinard: \u2731 _L\u2019Exotisme am\u00e9ricain dans l\u2019\u0153uvre\nde C._, 1918. (This volume with its two predecessors: _L\u2019Exotisme\nam\u00e9ricain au XVIe si\u00e8cle_ (1911), and _L\u2019Am\u00e9rique et le r\u00eave exotique\nau XVIIe et au XVIIIe si\u00e8cle_ (1913) is an important repertory of\nmaterial for the legend of the \u201cnoble savage\u201d and allied topics.)\n\n=E. P. de Senancour=, 1770-1846: _R\u00eaveries_, 1798, 1800. Ed. critique,\npub. par J. Merlant, vol. I, 1911. _Obermann_, 1804, 2d edn. with\npreface by Sainte-Beuve, 1833.--J. Levallois: _Un pr\u00e9curseur,\nSenancour_, 1897.--A. S. Tornudd: _S._, 1898--J. Troubat: _Essais\ncritiques_, 1902.--J. Merlant: _S., po\u00e8te, penseur religieux et\npubliciste_, 1907.--R. Bouyer: _Un contemporain de Beethoven, Obermann\npr\u00e9curseur et musicien_, 1907.--G. Michaut: _S., ses amis et ses\nennemis_, 1909.\n\n=Charles Nodier=, 1783-1844: _\u0152uvres_, 13 vols. 1832-41\n(incomplete).--S. de Lovenjoul: _Bibliographie et critique_, 1902.\n_\u0152uvres choisies de N._ Notices p. A. Cazes, 1914.--Sainte-Beuve:\n_Portraits litt\u00e9r._, I, 1840.--P. M\u00e9rim\u00e9e: _Portraits histor. et\nlitt\u00e9r._, 1874.--E. Mont\u00e9gut: _Nos morts contemp._, I, II, 1884.--M.\nSalomon: _C. N. et le groupe romantique d\u2019apr\u00e8s des documents in\u00e9dits_,\n1908.--J. Marsan: _Notes sur C. N., documents in\u00e9dits, lettres_, 1912.\n\n=Alphonse de Lamartine=, 1790-1869: _M\u00e9ditations po\u00e9tiques_, 1820.\n_Nouvelles m\u00e9ditations po\u00e9tiques_, 1823. _Harmonies po\u00e9tiques et\nreligieuses_, 1832. _Jocelyn_, 1836. _\u0152uvres compl\u00e8tes_, 41 vols.\n1860-66. _\u0152uvres_ (\u00e9d. Lemerre), 12 vols. 1885-87. _Correspondance_, p.\npar V. de Lamartine, 6 vols. 1872-75.\n\nBiographical and General Studies: F. Falconnet: _A. de L._,\n1840.--Chapuys-Montlaville: _L._, 1843.--E. de Mirecourt: _L._,\n1853.--E. Ollivier: _L._, 1874.--H. de Lacretelle: _L. et ses\namis_, 1878.--P. Bourget: _L._, in _Etudes et Portraits_, 1889.--De\nPomairols: _L._, 1889.--Baron de Chamborand de P\u00e9rissat: _L. inconnu_,\n1891.--F. Reyssi\u00e9: _La jeunesse de L._, 1892.--Deschanel: _L._,\n1893.--A. France: _L\u2019Elvire de L._, 1893.--R. Doumic: _Elvire \u00e0\nAix-les-Bains_, in _Etudes sur la litt. fran\u00e7aise_, 6e s\u00e9rie, 1909.\n_L._, 1912.--Zyromski: _L. po\u00e8te lyrique_, 1897.--Larroumet: _L._, in\n_Nouvelles \u00e9tudes de litt. et d\u2019art_, 1899.--L. S\u00e9ch\u00e9: _L. de 1816\n\u00e0 1830_, 1905. _Le Roman d\u2019Elvire_, 1909. _Les amiti\u00e9s de L., 1re\ns\u00e9rie_, 1911.--E. Sugier: _L._, 1910.--P.-M. Masson: _L._, 1911.--P. de\nLacretelle: _Les origines et la jeunesse de L._, 1911.\n\nCritical Studies: G. Planche: _Portraits litt\u00e9raires_, t. I, 1836.\n_Nouveaux Portraits_, 1854.--Sainte-Beuve: \u2731 _Lundis_, ts. I, IV,\nX, 1849-54. _Portraits contemporains_, t. I, 1832-39.--J. Lema\u00eetre:\n_Les Contemporains_, 6e s\u00e9rie, 1896.--E. Faguet: _XIXe si\u00e8cle_,\n1897--Bruneti\u00e8re: _L\u2019\u00e9volution de la po\u00e9sie lyrique en France au XIXe\nsi\u00e8cle_, 1894.--A. Roux: _La question de Jocelyn_, 1897.--M. Citoleux:\n_La po\u00e9sie philosophique au XIXe si\u00e8cle, L._, 1905.--C. Mar\u00e9chal:\n_Le v\u00e9ritable Voyage en Orient de L._, 1908.--P. de Lacretelle: _Les\norigines et la jeunesse de L._, 1911.--L. S\u00e9ch\u00e9: _Les Amiti\u00e9s de L._,\n1912.--R. Doumic: _L._, 1912.--H. R. Whitehouse: _The Life of L._, 2\nvols. 1918.\n\n=Alfred de Vigny=, 1797-1863: _Eloa_, 1824. _Po\u00e8mes antiques et\nmodernes_, 1826. _Cinq-Mars_, 1826. _Chatterton_, 1835. _Les\nDestin\u00e9es_, 1864. _\u0152uvres_ (Lemerre), 8 vols. 1883-85. _Le Journal\nd\u2019un po\u00e8te_, p. par L. Ratisbonne, 1867. _La Correspondance d\u2019A. de\nV._, 1906 (incomplete).--S. de Lovenjoul: _Les Lundis d\u2019un chercheur_,\n1894.--E. Asse: _A. de V. et les \u00e9ditions originales de ses po\u00e9sies_,\n1895.--J. Langlais: _Essai de bibliographie de A. de V._, 1905.\n\nBiography: L. S\u00e9ch\u00e9: _A. de V. et son temps_ [no date].--E. Dupuy:\n_La Jeunesse des Romantiques_, 1905. _A. de V., ses amiti\u00e9s, son r\u00f4le\nlitt\u00e9raire_, 2 vols. 1912.\n\nCritical Studies: Sainte-Beuve: _Portraits litt\u00e9raires_, t. III, 1844.\n_Nouveaux Lundis_, t. VI, 1863.--Barbey d\u2019Aurevilly: _Les \u0152uvres et\nles Hommes_, III, 1862.--A. France: _A. de V._, 1868.--P. Bourget:\n_Etudes et Portraits_, 1889.--Bruneti\u00e8re: _L\u2019\u00e9volution de la po\u00e9sie\nlyrique_, 1894.--Faguet: _XIXe si\u00e8cle_, 1897.--Pal\u00e9ologue: _A. de\nV._, 1891.--Dorison: _A. de V. po\u00e8te, philosophe_, 1891.--J. Lema\u00eetre:\n_Contemporains_, VII, 1899.--E. Sakellarid\u00e8s: _A. de V., auteur\ndramatique_, 1902.--Marabail: _De l\u2019influence de l\u2019esprit militaire\nsur A. de V._, 1905.--H. Schmack: _A. de V.\u2019s Stello und Chatterton_,\n1905.--P.-M. Masson: _A. de V._, 1908.--P. Buhle: _A. de V.\u2019s biblische\nGedichte und ihre Quellen_, 1909.--E. Lauvri\u00e8re: _A. de V._, 1910.--F.\nBaldensperger: _A. de V._, 1912.--L. S\u00e9ch\u00e9: _A. de V._, 2 vols.\n1914.--A. Desvoyes: _A. de V. d\u2019apr\u00e8s son \u0153uvre_, 1914.--J. Aicard: _A.\nde V._ 1914.\n\n=Victor Hugo=, 1802-85: _\u0152uvres compl\u00e8tes_, ed. _ne varietur d\u2019apr\u00e8s\nles manuscrits originaux_, 48 vols. 1880-85. _\u0152uvres in\u00e9dites_, 14\nvols. 1886-1902. _Correspondence (1815-84)_, 2 vols. 1896. _Lettres \u00e0\nla fianc\u00e9e (1820-22)_, 1901.\n\nBiography: Mme. Victor Hugo: _V. H. racont\u00e9 par un t\u00e9moin de sa\nvie_, 2 vols. 1863.--E. Bir\u00e9: _V. H. avant 1830_, 1883. _V. H. apr\u00e8s\n1830_, 2 vols. 1891. _V. H. apr\u00e8s 1852_, 1894.--G. Larroumet: _La\nmaison de V. H., impressions de Guernsey_, 1895.--A. Jullien: _Le\nRomantisme et l\u2019\u00e9diteur Renduel_, 1897.--A. Barbou: _La Vie de V. H._,\n1902.--G. Simon: _L\u2019Enfance de V. H._, 1904.--E. Dupuy: _La Jeunesse\ndes Romantiques_, 1905.--C. Mar\u00e9chal: _Lamennais et V. H._, 1906.--L.\nS\u00e9ch\u00e9: _Le C\u00e9nacle de Joseph Delorme._ I, _V. H. et les Po\u00e8tes._\nII, _V. H. et les artistes_, 1912.--L. Guimbaud: _V. H. et Juliette\nDrouet_, 1914.\n\nCritical Studies: G. Planche: _Portraits litt\u00e9raires_, ts. I, II, 1836.\n_Nouveaux Portraits litt\u00e9raires_, t. I, 1854.--Barbey d\u2019Aurevilly: _Les\nMis\u00e9rables de M. Victor Hugo_, 1862.--Sainte-Beuve: _Portraits litt._,\nt, I (1827); t. II (1840); t. III (1829); _Portraits contemporains_,\nt. I (1830-35).--R\u00e9musat: _Critiques et \u00e9tudes litt\u00e9raires du pass\u00e9\net du pr\u00e9sent_, 2e \u00e9d., 1857.--E. Zola: _Nos auteurs dramatiques_,\n1881. _Documents litt\u00e9raires_, 1881.--A. C. Swinburne: _Essay on\nV. H._, 1886.--E. Dupuy: _V. H., l\u2019homme et le po\u00e8te_, 1887.--G.\nDuval: _Dictionnaire des m\u00e9taphores de V. H._, 1888.--P. Bourget: _V.\nH._, in _Etudes et Portraits_, 1889.--Nisard: _Essais sur l\u2019\u00e9cole\nRomantique_, 1891.--L. Mabilleau: _V. H._, 1893.--C. Renouvier: _V.\nH., le po\u00e8te_, 1893. _V. H., le philosophe_, 1900.--A. Ricard: _Mgr.\nde Miollis, \u00e9v\u00eaque de Digne_, 1893.--Bruneti\u00e8re: _L\u2019\u00e9volution de la\npo\u00e9sie lyrique_, 1894. _Les \u00e9poques du th\u00e9\u00e2tre fran\u00e7ais_, 1892.--A.\nBlanchard: _Le th\u00e9\u00e2tre de V. H. et la parodie_, 1894.--Morel Fatio:\n_L\u2019Histoire dans Ruy Blas_, in _Etudes sur l\u2019Espagne, 1re s\u00e9rie_,\n1895.--A. J. Theys: _M\u00e9trique de V. H._, 1896.--M. Souriau: _La pr\u00e9face\nde Cromwell_, 1897. _Les id\u00e9es morales de V. H._, 1908.--A. Rochette:\n_L\u2019Alexandrin chez V. H._, 1899 and 1911.--F. Ganser: _Beitr\u00e4ge zur\nBeurteilung des Verh\u00e4ltnisses von V. H. zu Chateaubriand_, 1900.--E.\nRigal: _V. H. po\u00e8te \u00e9pique_, 1900.--P. Stapfer: _V. H. et la grande\npo\u00e9sie satirique en France_, 1901.--T. Gautier: _V.H._, 1902.--P.\nand V. Glachant: _Essai critique sur le th\u00e9\u00e2tre de V. H., Drames\nen vers. Drames en prose_, 2 vols., 1902 and 1903.--P. Levin: _V.\nH._, 1902.--_Le\u00e7ons faites \u00e0 l\u2019Ecole Normale sous la direction de F.\nBruneti\u00e8re_, 2 vols. 1902.--F. Gregh: _Etude sur V. H._, 1902.--H.\nPeltier: _La philosophie de V. H._, 1904.--H. Galletti: _L\u2019opera di\nV.H. nella letteratura italiana_, 1904.--E. Huguet: _La couleur, la\nlumi\u00e8re et l\u2019ombre dans les m\u00e9taphores de V. H._, 1905.--L. Lucchetti:\n_Les images dans les \u0153uvres de V. H._, 1907.--P. Bastier: _V. H. und\nseine Zeit._, 1908.--Maria Valente: _V. H. e la lirica italiana_,\n1908.--A. Guiard: _La fonction du po\u00e8te, \u00e9tude sur V. H._, 1910.\n_Virgile et V. H._, 1910.--C. Grillet: _La Bible dans V. H._, 1910.--P.\nBerret: _Le moyen \u00e2ge europ\u00e9en dans La L\u00e9gende des Si\u00e8cles_, 1911.--A.\nRochette: _L\u2019Alexandrin chez V. H._, 1911.--P. Dubois: _V. H. Ses Id\u00e9es\nreligieuses de 1802-25_, 1913.\n\nH. Berlioz: _Correspondance in\u00e9dite (1819-68)_, pub. par D. Bernard,\n1879. _Lettres intimes_, pub. par Ch. Gounod, 1882. _Berlioz; les\nann\u00e9es romantiques (1819-42), Correspondance_, pub. par J. Tiersot,\n1907.--A. Boschot: _La Jeunesse d\u2019un romantique, H. Berlioz (1803-31)_,\n1906. _Un romantique sous Louis Philippe, Berlioz (1831-42)_, 1908. _Le\nCr\u00e9puscule d\u2019un romantique, Berlioz (1842-69)_, 1913.\n\n=Alexandre Dumas=, 1803-70: _Henri III et sa cour_, 1829. _Antony_,\n1831. _Les Trois Mousquetaires_, 1844. _Le Comte de Monte Cristo_,\n1844-45.\n\nJ. Janin: _A.D._, 1871.--B. Matthews: In _Fr. Dramatists of the 19th\ncent._ , 1881.--B. de Bury: _A. D._, 1885.--E. Courmeaux: _A. D._,\n1886.--J. J. Weiss: _Le th\u00e9\u00e2tre et les m\u0153urs_, 3e \u00e9d. 1889.--H.\nParigot: _Le drame d\u2019 A. D._, 1898. _A. D._, 1901.--H. Lecomte: _A.\nD._, 1903.--J. Lema\u00eetre: _Impressions de th\u00e9\u00e2tre_, t. III (1890), IV\n(\u201995), VIII (\u201995), IX (\u201996).--R. Doumic: _De Scribe \u00e0 Ibsen_, 1896;\nalso in _Hommes et id\u00e9es du XIXe Si\u00e8cle_, 1903.\n\n=George Sand=, 1804-76: _Indiana_, 1832. _L\u00e9lia_, 1833. _Jacques_,\n1834. _Consuelo_, 1842-43. _La petite Fadette_, 1849. _Histoire\nde ma vie_, 4 vols. 1854-55.--_Correspondance_, 6 vols. 1882-84.\n_Correspondance de G. S. et d\u2019 A. de Musset_, p. par F. Decori, 1904.\n_\u0152uvres compl\u00e8tes_ (\u00e9d. C. L\u00e9vy), 105 vols.--S. de Lovenjoul: _Etude\nbibliographique sur les \u0153uvres de G. S._, 1868.\n\nBiography: H. Lapaire and F. Roz: _La bonne dame de Nohant_,\n1897.--Ageorges: _G. S. paysan_, 1901.--A. Le Roy: _G. S. et ses amis_,\n1903.--H. Harrisse: _Derniers moments et obs\u00e8ques de G. S., souvenirs\nd\u2019un ami_, 1905.--A. S\u00e9ch\u00e9 and J. Bertaut: _La vie anecdotique et\npittoresque des grands \u00e9crivains, G. S._, 1909.\n\nCritical Studies: G. Planche: _Portraits litt\u00e9raires_, t. II, 1836.\n_Nouveaux Portraits litt\u00e9raires_, t. II, 1854.--Sainte-Beuve: \u2731\n_Lundis_, t. I, 1850. _Portraits Contemporains_, 1832.--E. Caro: _G.\nS._, 1887.--P. Bourget: _Etudes et Portraits_, 1889.--J. Lema\u00eetre:\n_Les Contemporains_, t. IV, 1889. _Impressions de th\u00e9\u00e2tre_, ts. I, IV,\n1888-92.--Marillier: _La sensibilit\u00e9 et l\u2019imagination chez G. S._,\n1896.--W. Kar\u00e9nine: _G. S._, 3 vols. 1899-1912.--R. Doumic: _G. S._,\n1909.--L. Buis: _Les th\u00e9ories sociales de G. S._, 1910.--E. Moselly:\n_G. S._, 1911.\n\n=G\u00e9rard de Nerval=, 1808-55: _\u0152uvres compl._, 5 vols. 1868. M.\nTourneux: _G. de N._, 1867.--T. Gautier: _Portr. et souvenirs\nlitt\u00e9r._, 1875.--Arv\u00e8de Barine: _Les N\u00e9vros\u00e9s_, 1898.--Mlle.\nCartier: _Un interm\u00e9diaire entre la France et l\u2019Allemagne, G. de\nN._, 1904.--Gauthier-Ferri\u00e8res: _G. de N., la vie et l\u2019\u0153uvre_,\n1906.--J. Marsan: _G. de N., lettres in\u00e9dites_, 1909.--_Correspondance\n(1830-55)_, p. par J. Marsan, 1911.--A. Marie: _G. de N._, 1915.\n\n=Alfred de Musset=, 1810-57: _\u0152uvres Compl\u00e8tes_ (Charpentier),\n10 vols. 1866, 10 vols. (Lemerre), 1886. 9 vols. p. par E. Bir\u00e9,\n1907-08.--Rocheblave: _Lettres de George Sand \u00e0 Musset et \u00e0\nSainte-Beuve_, 1897.--_Correspondance de George Sand et d\u2019A. de M._,\np. par F. Decori, 1904.--_Correspondance d\u2019A. de M._, p. par L. S\u00e9ch\u00e9,\n1907.--S. de Lovenjoul: _Etude critique et bibliographique des \u0153uvres\nd\u2019A. de M._, 1867.--M. Clouard: _Bibliographie des \u0153uvres d\u2019A. de M._,\n1883.\n\nBiography: G. Sand: _Elle et Lui_, 1859.--P. de Musset: _Lui et Elle_,\n1859. _Biographie d\u2019A. de M._, 1877.--Louise Colet: _Lui_, 1859.--S. de\nLovenjoul: _La v\u00e9ritable histoire de Elle et Lui_, 1897.--P. Mari\u00e9ton:\n_Une histoire d\u2019amour, George Sand et A. de M._, 1897.--E. Lef\u00e9bure:\n_L\u2019\u00e9tat psychique d\u2019A. de M._, 1897.--E. Faguet: _Amours d\u2019hommes de\nlettres_, 1906.--L. S\u00e9ch\u00e9: _A. de M._, 1907. _La Jeunesse dor\u00e9e sous\nLouis-Philippe_, 1910.\n\nCritical Studies: Sainte-Beuve: _Portraits Contemporains_, t. II,\n1833. \u2731 _Lundis_, I., 1850, XIII, 1857.--D. Nisard: _Etudes d\u2019hist. et\nde lit._, 1859. _M\u00e9langes d\u2019hist. et de lit._, 1868.--P. Lindau: _A.\nde M._, 1876.--H. James: _Fr. Poets and Novelists_, 1878.--D\u2019Ancona:\n_A. de M. e l\u2019Italia_, in _Varieta Storiche e Letterarie_, 2 vols.\n1883-85.--J. Lema\u00eetre: _Impr. de th\u00e9\u00e2tre_, I, II (\u201988), VII (\u201993), IX\n(\u201996), X (\u201998).--Arv\u00e8de Barine: _A. de M._, 1893.--L. P. Betz: _H.\nHeine und A. de M._, 1897.--L. Lafoscade: _Le th\u00e9\u00e2tre d\u2019A. de M._,\n1901.--G. Crugnola: _A. de M. e la sua opera_, 2 vols. 1902-03.--J.\nd\u2019Aquitaine: _A. de M., l\u2019\u0153uvre, le po\u00e8te_, 1907.--Gauthier-Ferri\u00e8res:\n_M., la vie de M., l\u2019\u0153uvre, M. et son temps_, 1909.--M. Donnay: _A. de\nM._, 1914.--C. L. Maurras: \u2731 _Les Amants de Venise_, Nou. \u00e9d., 1917.\n\n=Th\u00e9ophile Gautier=, 1811-72: _Les Jeune-France_, 1833. _Mlle. de\nMaupin_, 1836-36. _Emaux et Cam\u00e9es_, 1852. _Histoire du romantisme_,\n1874. _\u0152uvres Compl._ (\u00e9d. Charpentier). 37 vols. 1883.--M. Tourneux:\n_T. G., sa bibliographie_, 1876.--S. de Lovenjoul: _Histoire des \u0153uvres\nde T. G._, 2 vols. 1887.\n\nSainte-Beuve: _Premiers Lundis_, t. II, 1838. _Portraits\nContemporains_, II. 1846. _Nouveaux Lundis_, VI, 1863.--Barbey\nd\u2019Aurevilly: _Les \u0152uvres et les Hommes_, 1865.--Baudelaire: _L\u2019Art\nromantique_, 1874.--E. Feydeau: _T. G., souvenirs intimes_, 1874.--H.\nJames: _Fr. Poets and Novelists_, 1878.--E. Bergerat: _T. G._,\n1880.--M. Du Camp: _T. G._, 1890.--E. Richet: _T. G., l\u2019homme, la vie\net l\u2019\u0153uvre_, 1893.\n\n\nGERMAN FIELD\n\nBibliography: Goedeke: \u2731 _Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen\nDichtung_, 2 edn. vol. VI, 1898.--R. M. Meyer: _Grundriss der neuren\ndeutschen Literaturgeschichte_, 2 edn. 1907.--A. Bartels: _Handbuch\nzur Geschichte der deutschen Literatur_, 2 edn. 1909.--_Jahresberichte\nf\u00fcr neuere deutsche Literaturgeschichte_, 1892 ff. (bibliographical\nnotes on romanticism by O. F. Walzel).\n\nGeneral Studies: H. Heine: \u2731 _Die romantische Schule_, 1836. Eng.\ntrans, in _Bohn\u2019s Library_. (Filled with political \u201ctendency.\u201d A\nbrilliant attack on romanticism by a romanticist.)--J. v. Eichendorff:\n_Ueber die ethische und religi\u00f6se Bedeutung der neuren romantischen\nPoesie in Deutschland_, 1847.--J. Schmidt: _Geschichte der Romantik im\nZeitalter der Reformation und der Revolution_, 2 vols. 1848-50.--H.\nHettner: \u2731 _Die romantische Schule in ihrem inneren Zusammenhange\nmit Goethe und Schiller_.--R. Haym: \u2731 _Die romantische Schule_,\n1870. Unrevised reprint, 1902. (Heavy reading but still the standard\ntreatment.)--Ricarda Huch: \u2731 _Bl\u00fctezeit der Romantik_, 1899. \u2731\n_Ausbreitung und Verfall der Romantik_, 1902. (Attractively written.\nThe point of view, like that of practically all Germans, is very\nromantic.)--Marie Joachimi: _Die Weltanschauung der deutschen\nRomantik_, 1905.--O. F. Walzel: \u2731 _Deutsche Romantik_, 3 edn. 1912.--R.\nM. Wernaer: _Romanticism and the Romantic School in Germany_, 1909.\n(The outlook, which professes to be humanistic, seems to me in the\nmain that of the beautiful soul.)--A. Farinelli: _Il romanticismo in\nGermania_, 1911. (Simply reeks with the \u201cinfinite\u201d in the romantic\nsense. \u201cSono, ahim\u00e8, stoffa di ribelle anch\u2019io.\u201d Useful bibliographical\nnotes.)--A. W. Porterfield: _An Outline of German Romanticism_, 1914.\n(Of no importance from the point of view of ideas. The bibliography is\nuseful.)--J. Bab: _Fortinbras, oder der Kampf des 19. Jahr. mil dem\nGeist der Romantik_, 1912. (An attack on romanticism.)\n\nSee also A. Kobersteim: _Geschichte der deutschen Nationalliteratur_,\nvol. IV, pp. 543-955, 1873.--G. G. Gervinus: _Geschichte der deutschen\nDichtung_, vol. V, pp. 631-816, 1874.--R. M. Meyer: _Die deutsche\nLiteratur des 19. Jahr._, pp. 1-243, 1898.--R. v. Gottschall:\n_Die deutsche Nationalliteratur des 19. Jahr._, vol. I, 1901.--K.\nFrancke: _A History of German Literature_, 1901. (The point of view\nis sociological rather than literary.)--W. Scherer: _Geschichte der\ndeutschen Literatur_, pp. 614-720, 1908.--C. Thomas: _A History of\nGerman Literature_, pp. 328-76, 1909.--J. G. Robertson: _Outlines\nof the History of German Literature_, pp. 178-253, 1911.--A. Biese:\n_Deutsche Literaturgeschichte_, vol. II, pp. 288-693, 1912.\n\nAnthologies: _St\u00fcrmer und Dr\u00e4nger_. An anthology ed. by A. Sauer.\n_Deutsche Nat. Lit._, vols. 79, 80, 81, 1883.--_Sturm und Drang.\nDichtungen aus der Geniezeit_, ed. by Karl Freye.--A. Spiess: _Die\ndeutschen Romantiker_, 1903. (Poetry and prose.)--F. Oppeln-Bronikowski\nand L. Jacobowski: _Die blaue Blume. Eine Anthologie romantischer\nLyrik_, 1908.\n\nPhilosophy: L. Noack: _Schelling und die Philosophie der Romantik_,\n2 vols. 1859.--E. Grucker: _Fran\u00e7ois Hemsterhuis, sa vie et ses\n\u0153uvres_, 1866.--E. Meyer: _Der Philosoph F. Hemsterhuis_, 1893.--W.\nDilthey: \u2731 _Leben Schleiermachers_, 1870.--J. Royce: _The Spirit of\nModern Philosophy_, 1892.--L. L\u00e9vy-Bruhl: _La Philosophie de Jacobi_,\n1894.--H. H\u00f6ffding: _A History of Modern Philosophy_ (bk. VIII: _The\nPhilosophy of Romanticism_), 1900.--R. Burck: _H. Steffens, Ein Beitrag\nzur Philosophie der Romantik_, 1906.--W. Windelband: _Geschichte der\nneuren Philosophie_, 4 edn. 2 vols. 1907 (Eng. trans.).\n\nMusic and painting: H. Riemann: \u2731 _Geschichte der Musik seit\nBeethoven_, 1800-1900, pp. 106-356, 1901.--D. G. Mason: _The Romantic\nComposers_, 1906.--E. Istel: \u2731 _Die Bl\u00fctezeit der musikalischen\nRomantik in Deutschland_, 1909.--\u2731 _The Oxford History of Music_,\nvol. VI (_The Romantic Period_, 1905).--C. Gurlitt: _Die deutsche Kunst\ndes 19. Jahr._, especially pp. 180-279, 1899.--A. Aubert: _Runge und\ndie Romantik_, 1909.--R. Muther: _Geschichte der Malerei_, 3 vols.\n(vol. III for romantic period in Germany and other countries), 1909.\n\nSpecial Topics (18th and 19th Centuries): L. Friedl\u00e4nder: _Ueber die\nEntstehung und Entwickelung des Gef\u00fchls f\u00fcr das Romantische in der\nNatur_, 1873.--J. Minor: _J. G. Hamann in seiner Bedeutung f\u00fcr die\nSturm und Drangperiode_, 1881. _Das Schicksalsdrama._ _Deutsche Nation.\nLit._, vol. 151. _Die Schicksalstrag\u00f6die in ihren Hauptvertretern_,\n1883.--R. Unger: \u2731 _Hamann und die Aufkl\u00e4rung_, 1911.--G. Bonet-Maury:\n_B\u00fcrger et les origines anglaises de la ballade litt\u00e9raire en\nAllemagne_, 1890.--S. Lublinski: _Die Fr\u00fchzeit der Romantik_, 1899.--T.\nS. Baker: _The Influence of L. Sterne upon German Literature_ in\n_Americana Germanica_, vol. II, 1900.--R. Tombo: _Ossian in Germany_,\n1902 (bibliography).--E. Ederheimer: _Jakob Boehme und die Romantiker_,\n1904.--L. Hirzel: _Wieland\u2019s Beziehungen zu den deutschen Romantikern_,\n1904.--K. Joel: _Nietzsche und die Romantik_, 1904.--S. Schultze:\n_Die Entwickelung des Naturgef\u00fchls in der deutschen Literatur des\n19. Jahr._ 1906.--M. Joachimi-Dege: _Deutsche Shakespeare-Probleme\nim 18. Jahr. und im Zeitalter der Romantik_, 1907.--E. Vierling:\n_Z. Werner: La conversion d\u2019un romantique_, 1908.--E. Gl\u00f6ckner:\n_Studien zur romantischen Psychologie der Musik_, 1909.--R. Benz:\n_M\u00e4rchen-Dichtung der Romantiker_, 1909.--F. Br\u00fcggemann: _Die Ironie\nals entwicklungsgeschichtliches Moment_, 1909.--O. F. Walzel: _Das\nPrometheussymbol von Shaftesbury zu Goethe_, 1910.--F. Strich: _Die\nMythologie in der deutschen Literatur von Klopstock bis Wagner_,\n1910.--F. G. Shneider: _Die Freimaurerei und ihr Einfluss auf die\ngeistige Kultur in Deutschland am Ende des 18. Jahr._ 1909.--R.\nBuchmann: _Helden und M\u00e4chte des romantischen Kunstm\u00e4rchens_, 1910.--K.\nG. Wendriner: _Das romantische Drama_, 1909.--O. F. Walzel and H. Hub:\n\u2731 _Zeitschriften der Romantik_, 1904.--J. Bobeth: _Die Zeitschriften\nder Romantik_, 1910.--J. E. Spenl\u00e9: _Rahel, Mme. Varnhagen v. Ense.\nHistoire d\u2019un salon romantique en Allemagne_, 1910.--P. W\u00e4chtler: _E.\nA. Poe und die deutsche Romantik_, 1910.--W. Brecht: _Heinse und das\n\u00e4sthetische Immoralismus_, 1911.--E. M\u00fcrmig: _Calderon und die \u00e4ltere\ndeutsche Romantik_, 1912.--G. Gabetti: _Il dramma di Z. Werner_,\n1917.--J. J. A. Bertrand: _Cervantes et le Romantisme allemand_, 1917.\n\n=J. G. Herder=, 1744-1803: _Fragmente \u00fcber die neuere deutsche\nLiteratur_, 1767. _Kritische W\u00e4lder_, 1769. _Volkslieder_, 1778.\n_Vom Geist der Ebr\u00e4ischen Poesie_, 1782. _Ideen zur Philosophie der\nGeschichte der Menschheit_, 1784-85. _S\u00e4mt. Werke_, ed. B. Suphan, 32\nvols. 1877-99.--Joret: _Herder_, 1876.--R. Haym: _Herder nach seinem\nLeben und seinen Werken dargestellt_, 2 vols. 1885.--E. K\u00fchnemann:\n_Herder_, 2 edn. 1907.\n\n=J. W. v. Goethe=, 1749-1832: _G\u00f6tz von Berlichingen_, 1773. _Die\nLeiden des jungen Werthers_, 1774. _Faust: Ein Fragment_, 1790.\nCollected Works (Jubil\u00e4ums Ausgabe), ed. E. von der Hellen, 40 vols.\n1902-12.--T. Carlyle: _Essays on G._ in Critical and Mis. Essays, vols.\nI, IV, 1828-32.--J. W. Appell: \u2731 _Werther und seine Zeit._, 1855.\n4 edn. 1896.--E. Schmidt: _Richardson, Rousseau und G._, 1875.--A.\nBrandl: _Die Aufnahme von G.\u2019s Jugendwerken in England. Goethe-Jahrb._,\nvol. III, 1883.--R. Steig: _G. und die Gebr\u00fcder Grimm_, 1892.--J. O. E.\nDonner: _Der Einfluss Wilhelm Meisters auf den Roman der Romantiker_,\n1893.--E. Oswald: _G. in England and America_, 1899.--A. Brandl: _Ueber\ndas Verh\u00e4ltnis G.\u2019s zu Lord Byron. Goethe-Jahrb._, vol. 20, 1900.--K.\nSch\u00fcddekopf and O. F. Walzel: \u2731 _Goethe und die Romantik, Briefe mit\nErl\u00e4uterungen_, vols. 13 and 14 of the pub. of the Goethegesellschaft,\n1893-94.--S. Waetzold: _G. und die Romantik_, 2 edn. 1903.--O.\nBaumgarten: _Carlyle und G._, 1906.--H. R\u00f6hl: _Die \u00e4lteste Romantik und\ndie Kunst des jungen G._, 1909.\n\n=J. C. F. Schiller=, 1759-1805: _Die R\u00e4uber_, 1781. _Briefe \u00fcber\ndie \u00e4sthetische Erziehung des Menschen_, 1795. _Ueber na\u00efve u.\nsentimentalische Dichtung_, 1795-96. (Trans. of these and other\n\u00e6sthetic treatises of S. in _Bohn\u2019s Library_.) Collected works, ed.\nE. von der Hellen, 16 vols. 1904-05.--C. Alt: _S. und die Br\u00fcder\nSchlegel_, 1904.--E. Spenl\u00e9: _Schiller et Novalis_, in _Etudes sur\nSchiller publi\u00e9es pour le Centenaire_, 1905.--A. Ludwig: \u2731 _Schiller\nund die deutsche Nachwelt_ (especially pp. 52-202), 1909.\n\n=J. P. F. Richter=, 1763-1825: _Titan_, 1803. _Flegeljahre_, 1804.\n_Die Vorschule der \u00c6sthetik_, 1804. Selected works with intro. by R.\nSteiner, 8 vols. (Cotta, no date).--P. Nerrlich: _Jean Paul und seine\nZeitgenossen_, 1876. _Jean Paul; sein Leben und seine Werke_, 1889.--J.\nM\u00fcller: _Jean Paul und seine Bedeutung f\u00fcr die Gegenwart_, 1894.\n_Jean Paul-Studien_, 1900.--W. Hoppe: _Das Verh\u00e4ltnis Jean Pauls zur\nPhilosophie seiner Zeit_, 1901.--H. Plath: _Rousseau\u2019s Einfluss auf\nJean Paul\u2019s \u201cLevana\u201d_, 1903.\n\n=J. C. F. H\u00f6lderlin=, 1770-1843: _Gesammelte Dichtungen_. Int. by B.\nLitzmann, 2 vols. (Cotta, no date). _Werke_, ed. M. Joachimi-Dege,\n1913. _H\u00f6lderlin\u2019s Leben in Briefen von und an H\u00f6lderlin_, ed. K. K.\nT. Litzmann, 1890.--C. M\u00fcller-Rastatt: _F. H. Sein Leben und seine\nDichtungen_, 1894.--W. Dilthey: \u2731 _Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung_, pp.\n330-455, 1907.--E. Bauer: _H. und Schiller_, 1908.--L. Bohme: _Die\nLandschaft in den Werken H.\u2019s und Jean Pauls_, 1908.\n\n=Friedrich Leopold, Freiherr von Hardenberg (Novalis)=, 1772-1801:\n_Die Lehrlinge zu Sa\u00efs_, 1798. _Die Christenheit oder Europa_, 1799.\n_Heinrich von Ofterdingen_, 1800. _Hymnen an die Nacht_, 1800.\nSchriften, ed. E. Heilborn, 3 vols. 1901. _Schriften_, ed. J. Minor, 4\nvols. 1907. _Werke_, ed. H. Friedemann [1913].--Carlyle: N., in _Crit.\nEssays_, vol. II, 1829.--_Friedrich v. Hardenberg._ A collection of\ndocuments from the family archives by a member of the family, 1873.--J.\nBing: _Novalis_, 1893.--C. Busse: _N.\u2019s Lyrik_, 1898.--E. Heilborn:\n_N., der Romantiker_, 1901.--E. Spenl\u00e9: \u2731 _Novalis_, 1904.--W.\nOlshausen: _F. v. Hardenbergs Beziehungen zur Naturwissenschaft seiner\nZeit_, 1905.--W. Dilthey: \u2731 _Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung_, pp.\n201-82, 1906.--H. Lichtenberger: \u2731 _Novalis_, 1912.\n\n=A. W. v. Schlegel=, 1767-1845: _Vorlesungen \u00fcber dramatische Kunst und\nLiteratur_, 1809-11. Eng. trans. 1814. Fr. trans. 1815. Ital. trans.\n1817. _S\u00e4mtliche Werke_, 12 vols. 1846-47; also _\u0153uvres \u00e9crites en\nfran\u00e7ais_, 3 vols. and Opera latine scripta, 1 vol. 1846.--_Vorlesungen\n\u00fcber sch\u00f6ne Literatur und Kunst_ (1801-03), ed. with intro. by J.\nMinor in _Literaturdenkm\u00e4ler des 18. und 19. Jahrs._ nos. 17-19,\n1884.--Selections with intro. by O. F. Walzel in _Deutsche Nat. lit._,\nvol. 143.--M. Bernays: _Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Schlegelschen\nShakespeare_, 1872.--E. Sulger-Gebing: _Die Br\u00fcder A. W. und F.\nSchlegel in ihrem Verh\u00e4ltnisse zur bildenden Kunst_, 1897.\n\n=Friedrich v. Schlegel=, 1772-1829: Lucinde, 1799. _Ueber die\nWeisheit und Sprache der Indier_, 1808. _S\u00e4mt. Werke_, 15 vols.\n1847. \u2731 _Jugendschriften_ (1794-1802), ed. J. Minor, 1906. _F.\nSchlegels Philosophische Vorlesungen aus den Jahren 1804 bis 1806.\nAus dem Nachlass_, von C. F. H. Windischmann, 2 vols. 1836-37.--\u2731\n_F. Schlegel\u2019s Briefe an seinen Br\u00fcder August Wilhelm_, ed. O. F.\nWalzel, 1890. Schleiermacher: _Vertraute Briefe \u00fcber die Lucinde_,\n1800. (New edn. ed. by R. Frank, 1907.)--I. Rouge: _F. Schlegel et\nla gen\u00e8se du Romantisme allemand_, 1904.--_Dorothea und F. Schlegel.\nBriefe an die Familie Paulus_, ed. R. Unger, 1913.--C. Enders: _F.\nSchlegel. Die Quellen seines Wesens und Werdens_, 1913. (Attaches great\nimportance to the influence on S. of Hemsterhuis, a philosopher of\nNeo-Platonic and Rousseauistic tendency.)--H. Horwitz: _Das Ich-Problem\nder Romantik. Die historische Stellung F. S.\u2019s innerhalb der modernen\nGeistesgeschichte_, 1916.\n\n=J. L. Tieck=, 1773-1853: _William Lovell_, 1796. _Der blonde Eckbert_,\n1796. _Prinz Zerbino_, 1798. _Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen_, 1798.\n_Leben und Tod der heiligen Genoveva_, 1799. _Schriften_, 28 vols.\n1828-54. _Ausgew\u00e4hlte Werke_, ed. H. Welti, 8 vols. 1888. Two of\nthe tales trans. in Carlyle\u2019s _German Romance_, 1841. \u2731 _Briefe an\nLudwig Tieck_, selected and edited by K. von Holtei, 4 vols. 1864.--H.\nPetrich: _Drei Kapitel vom romantischen Stil_, 1878.--J. Minor:\n_T. als Novellendichter_, in _Akademische Bl\u00e4tter_, pp. 128-61 and\n193-220, 1884.--J. Ranftl: _L. T.\u2019s Genoveva als romantische Dichtung\nbetrachtet_, 1899.--K. Hassler: _L. T.\u2019s Jugendroman William Lovell und\nder Paysan perverti_, 1902.--H. G\u00fcnther: _Romantische Kritik und Satire\nbei L. T._, 1907.--G. H. Danton: _The Nature Sense in the Writings of\nL. T._, 1907.--F. Br\u00fcggemann: _Die Ironie in T.\u2019s William Lovell und\nseinen Vorl\u00e4ufern_, 1909.--S. Krebs: _Philipp Otto Runge und L. T._,\n1909.--W. Steinert: _L. T. und das Farbenempfinden der romantischen\nDichtung_, 1910.--E. Sch\u00f6nebeck: _T. und Solger_, 1910.\n\n=W. H. Wackenroder=, 1773-98: _Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden\nKlosterbruders_, 1797, ed. by K. D. Jessen, 1904. _Tieck und\nWackenroder (Phantasien \u00fcber die Kunst)_, ed. J. Minor in _Deutsche\nNat. Lit._, vol. 145.--P. Koldewey: _Wackenroder und sein Einfluss auf\nTieck_, 1903.\n\n=Friedrich Baron de La Motte Fouqu\u00e9=, 1777-1843: _Undine_, 1811.\n_Lebensgeschichte des Baron F. de La M. Fouqu\u00e9, ausgezeichnet durch ihn\nselbst_, 1840. _Ausgew\u00e4hlte Werke_, 12 vols. 1841.--W. Pfeiffer: _Ueber\nFouqu\u00e9s Undine_, 1903.--L. Jeuthe: _Fouqu\u00e9 als Erz\u00e4hler_, 1910.\n\n=E. T. A. Hoffmann=, 1776-1822: _S\u00e4mt. Werke_. Intro. by E. Grisebach,\n15 vols. 1899. _Ausgew\u00e4hlte Erz\u00e4hlungen._ _B\u00fccher der Rose_ series,\nvol. 6, 1911. _Contes fantastiques_, trad. par Lo\u00e8ve-Veimars, 20 vols.\n1829-33. G. Ellinger: _E. T. A. H.: sein Leben und seine Werke_,\n1894.--G. Thurau: _H.\u2019s Erz\u00e4hlungen in Frankreich_, 1896.--A. Barine:\n_Po\u00e8tes et N\u00e9vros\u00e9s_, pp. 1-58, 1908.--P. Cobb: _The Influence of H.\non the Tales of E. A. Poe_, 1908.--A. Sakheim: _Hoffmann: Studien zu\nseiner Pers\u00f6nlichkeit und seinen Werken_, 1908.--C. Schaeffer: _Die\nBedeutung des Musikalischen und Akustischen in H.\u2019s literarischen\nSchaffen_, 1909.--E. Kroll: _H.\u2019s musikalische Anschauungen_, 1909.--P.\nSucher: _Les sources du merveilleux chez H._, 1912.\n\n=Heinrich v. Kleist=, 1777-1811: _S\u00e4mt. Werke_, ed. F. Muncker, 4\nvols. 1893. _Werke_, ed. E. Schmidt [1905].--A. Wilbrandt: _H. v.\nK._, 1863.--R. Bonafous: _H. de K. Sa vie et ses \u0153uvres_, 1894.--G.\nMinde-Pouet: _H. v. K. Seine Sprache und sein Stil_, 1897.--R. Steig:\n_K.\u2019s Berliner K\u00e4mpfe_, 1901.--S. Rahmer: _Das Kleist-Problem_, 1903.\n_H. v. K. als Mensch und Dichter_, 1909.--M. Lex: _Die Idee im Drama\nbei Goethe, Schiller, Grillparzer, K._, 1904.--E. Kayka: _K. und die\nRomantik_, 1906.--W. Herzog: _H. v. K. Sein Leben und seine Werke_,\n1911.--H. Meyer-Benfey: _Das Drama H. v. K.\u2019s_, 2 vols. 1911-13.--K.\nG\u00fcnther: _Die Entwickelung der novellistischen Kompositionstechnik K.\u2019s\nbis zur Meisterschaft_, 1911.--W. K\u00fchn: _H. v. K. und das deutsche\nTheater_, 1912.\n\n=C. M. Brentano=, 1778-1842: _Gesammelte Schriften_, 9 vols. 1852-55.\n_Godwi_, ed. A. Ruest, 1906.--A. Kerr: _Godwi; ein Kapitel deutscher\nRomantik_, 1898.\n\n=A. v. Chamisso=, 1781-38: _Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte_,\n1814. _Gesammelte Werke_, ed. M. Koch, 4 vols. 1883. _Werke_, ed. O. F.\nWalzel. _Deutsche Nat. Lit._, vol. 148, 1892. _Werke_, ed. M. Sydow,\n2 vols. 1912. _Aus Chamisso\u2019s Fr\u00fchzeit. Ungedruckte Briefe_, ed. L.\nGeiger, 1905.--K. Fulda: _Chamisso und seine Zeit._, 1881.--X. Brun:\n_A. de Chamisso de Boncourt_, 1896.\n\n=Achim v. Arnim=, 1781-1831: _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_ (first 3 vols.),\n1808. Werke, ed. M. Jacobs, 2 vols. 1910. _Arnims Tr\u00f6st Einsamkeit_,\ned. F. Pfaff, 1883.--R. Steig and H. Grimm: \u2731 _A. v. Arnim und die ihm\nnahe standen_, 3 vols. 1894-1904.--F. Rieser: _Des Knaben Wunderhorn\nund seine Quellen_, 1908.--K. Bode: _Die Bearbeitung der Vorlagen in\ndes Knaben Wunderhorn_, 1909.\n\n=J. L. Uhland=, 1787-1862: _Werke_, ed. H. Fischer, 6 vols. 1892.\n_Gedichte_, ed. E. Schmidt and J. Hartmann, 2 vols. 1898.--F. Notter:\n_L. U.; seine Leben und seiner Dichtungen_, 1863.--K. Mayer: _L.\nU.; seine Freunde und Zeitgenossen_, 1867.--A. v. Keller: _U. als\nDramatiker_, 1877.--G. Schmidt _U.\u2019s Poetik_, 1906.--W. Reinh\u00f6hl: _U.\nals Politiker_, 1911.\n\n=J. v. Eichendorff=, 1788-1857: _Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts_,\n1826. _Werke_, ed. R. v. Gottschall, 4 vols. [no date].--J. Nadler:\n_Eichendorff\u2019s Lyrik und ihre Geschichte_, 1908.\n\n=Heinrich Heine=, 1797-1856: _S\u00e4mt. Werke_, ed. E. Elster, 7 vols.\n1887-90. _H.\u2019s Autobiographie, nach seinen Werken, Briefen und\nGespr\u00e4chen_, ed. G. Karpeles, 1888. Trans. by Arthur Dexter, 1893.\n_Erinnerungen an H. H. und seine Familie_ by his brother, Maximilien\nHeine, 1868.--A. Meissner: _H. H.: Erinnerungen_, 1856.--A. Strodtmann:\n_H. H.\u2019s Leben und Werke_, 1884.--M. Arnold: \u2731 _H. H._, in _Essays\nin Criticism_, 4th edn., 1884.--George Eliot: _German Wit: H. H._,\nin _Essays_, 1885.--K. R. Pr\u00f6lls: _H. H.: Sein Lebensgang und seine\nShriften_, 1886.--G. Karpeles: _H. H. und seine Zeitgenossen_, 1888.\n_H. H.: Aus seinem Leben und aus seiner Zeit._, 1899.--A. Kohut: _H.\nH. und die Frauen_, 1888.--Wm. Sharp: _Life of H. H._ (bibliography by\nJ. P. Anderson), 1888.--T. Odinga: _Ueber die Einfl\u00fcsse der Romantik\nauf H. H._, 1891.--T. Gautier: _Portraits et souvenirs litt\u00e9raires_,\npp. 103-28, 1892.--L. P. Betz: _Die franz\u00f6sische Litteratur im Urteile\nH. H.\u2019s._, 1897. _H. H. und A. de Musset_, 1897.--J. Legras: _H. H.,\nPo\u00e8te_, 1897.--G. M. C. Brandes: _Ludwig B\u00f6rne und H. H._, 2n ed.\n1898.--O. zur Linde: _H. H. und die deutsche Romantik_, 1899.--F.\nMelchior: _H. H.\u2019s Verh\u00e4ltnis zu Lord Byron_, 1903.--E. A. Schalles:\n_H.\u2019s Verh\u00e4ltnis zu Shakespeare_, 1904.--A. W. Fischer: _Ueber die\nvolkst\u00fcmlichen Elemente in den Gedichten H.\u2019s_, 1905.--W. Ochsenbein:\n_Die Aufnahme Lord Byrons in Deutschland und sein Einfluss auf den\njungen H._, 1905.--R. M. Meyer: _Der Dichter des Romanzero in Gestalten\nund Probleme_, pp. 151-63, 1905.--A. Bartels: _H. H.: Auch ein\nDenkmal_, 1906.--H. Reu: _H. H. und die Bibel_, 1909.--C. Puetzfeld:\n_H. H.\u2019s Verh\u00e4ltnis zur Religion_, 1912.\n\n=Nikolaus Lenau=, 1802-50: _S\u00e4mt. Werke_, ed. A. Gr\u00fcss [no year].--A.\nX. Schurz: _L.\u2019s Leben_, 2 vols. 1855.--L. A. Frankl: _Zur Biographie\nL.\u2019s._, 1885.--T. S. Baker: _L. and Young Germany in America_,\n1897.--L. Roustan: _L. et son temps_, 1898.--J. Saly Stern: _La vie\nd\u2019un po\u00e8te, essai sur L._, 1902.--A. W. Ernst: _L.\u2019s Frauengestalten_,\n1902.--T. Gesky: _L. als Naturdichter_, 1902.--C. v. Klenze: _Treatment\nof Nature in the Works of N. L._, 1903.--L. Reynaud: _N. L., po\u00e8te\nlyrique_, 1905.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n[1] See, for example, in vol. IX of the _Annales de la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9\nJean-Jacques Rousseau_ the bibliography (pp. 87-276) for 1912--the year\nof the bicentenary.\n\n[2] _Literature and the American College_ (1908); _The New Laokoon_\n(1910); _The Masters of Modern French Criticism_ (1912).\n\n[3] See his Oxford address _On the Modern Element in Literature_.\n\n[4] These two tendencies in Occidental thought go back respectively at\nleast as far as Parmenides and Heraclitus.\n\n[5] In his _World as Imagination_ (1916) E. D. Fawcett, though\nultra-romantic and unoriental in his point of view, deals with a\nproblem that has always been the special preoccupation of the Hindu.\nA Hindu, however, would have entitled a similar volume _The World\nas Illusion_ (m\u0101y\u0101). Aristotle has much to say of fiction in his\n_Poetics_ but does not even use the word imagination (\u03c6\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03af\u03b1). In the\n_Psychology_, where he discusses the imagination, he assigns not to it,\nbut to mind or reason the active and creative r\u00f4le (\u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03b7\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03c2).\nIt is especially the notion of the _creative_ imagination that is\nrecent. The earliest example of the phrase that I have noted in French\nis in Rousseau\u2019s description of his erotic reveries at the Hermitage\n(_Confessions_, Livre IX).\n\n[6] Essay on Flaubert in _Essais de Psychologie contemporaine_.\n\n[7] _Le Romantisme et les m\u0153urs_ (1910).\n\n[8] _Annales de la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Jean-Jacques Rousseau_, VIII, 30-31.\n\n[9] I should perhaps say that in the case of Buddha I have been able to\nconsult the original P\u0101li documents. In the case of Confucius and the\nChinese I have had to depend on translations.\n\n[10] See appendix on Chinese primitivism.\n\n[11] See, for example, _Majjhima_ (P\u0101li Text Society), I, 265. Later\nBuddhism, especially Mah\u0101y\u0101na Buddhism, fell away from the positive and\ncritical spirit of the founder into mythology and metaphysics.\n\n[12] Buddha expressed on many occasions his disdain for the _Vedas_,\nthe great traditional authority of the Hindus.\n\n[13] I have explained the reasons for giving this place to Bacon in\nchapter II of _Literature and the American College_.\n\n[14] _Eth. Nic._, 1179 a.\n\n[15] I scarcely need remind the reader that the extant Aristotelian\nwritings which have repelled so many by their form were almost\ncertainly not meant for publication. For the problems raised by these\nwritings as well as for the mystery in the method of their early\ntransmission see R. Shute, _History of the Aristotelian Writings_\n(1888). The writings which Aristotle prepared for publication and\nwhich Cicero describes as a \u201cgolden stream of speech\u201d (_Acad._ II,\n38, 119) have, with the possible exception of the recently recovered\n_Constitution of Athens_, been lost.\n\n[16] See his _Essai sur le genre dramatique s\u00e9rieux_.\n\n[17] Quoted in Grimm\u2019s Dictionary.\n\n[18] Ex lectione quorundam romanticorum, i.e. librorum compositorum\nin gallico poeticorum de gestis militaribus, in quibus maxima pars\nfabulosa est.\n\n[19] Perhaps the most romantic lines in English are found in one of\nCamillo\u2019s speeches in _The Winter\u2019s Tale_ (IV, 4):\n\n        a wild dedication of yourselves\n    To unpath\u2019d waters, undream\u2019d shores.\n\nThis \u201cwild dedication\u201d is, it should be noted, looked upon by Camillo\nwith disfavor.\n\n[20] _Pepys\u2019s Diary_, 13 June, 1666.\n\n[21] Thomas Shadwell, Preface to the _Sullen Lovers_, 1668.\n\n[22] _Spectator_, 142, by Steele.\n\n[23] Pope, 2d Epistle, _Of the Character of Women_.\n\n[24] Cf. _Revue d\u2019hist. litt._, XVIII, 440. For the Early French\nhistory of the word, see also the article _Romantique_ by A. Fran\u00e7ois\nin _Annales de la Soc. J.-J. Rousseau_, V, 199-236.\n\n[25] First edition, 1698; second edition, 1732.\n\n[26] Cf. his _El\u00e9gie \u00e0 une dame_.\n\n    Mon \u00e2me, imaginant, n\u2019a point la patience\n    De bien polir les vers et ranger la science.\n    La r\u00e8gle me d\u00e9pla\u00eet, j\u2019\u00e9cris confus\u00e9ment:\n    Jamais un bon esprit ne fait rien qu\u2019ais\u00e9ment.\n    \u2026\n    Je veux faire des vers qui ne soient pas contraints\n    \u2026\n    Chercher des lieux secrets o\u00f9 rein ne me d\u00e9plaise,\n    M\u00e9diter \u00e0 loisir, r\u00eaver tout \u00e0 mon aise,\n    Employer toute une heure \u00e0 me mirer dans l\u2019eau,\n    Ou\u00efr, comme en songeant, la course d\u2019un ruisseau.\n    Ecrire dans un bois, m\u2019interrompre, me taire,\n    Composer un quatrain sans songer \u00e0 le faire.\n\n[27] _Caract\u00e8res_, ch. V.\n\n[28] His psychology of the memory and imagination is still\nAristotelian. Cf. E. Wallace, _Aristotle\u2019s Psychology_, Intr.,\nlxxxvi-cvii.\n\n[29] _An Essay upon Poetry_ (1682).\n\n[30] The French Academy discriminates in its _Sentiments sur le Cid_\nbetween two types of probability, \u201cordinary\u201d and \u201cextraordinary.\u201d\nProbability in general is more especially reserved for action. In the\ndomain of action \u201cordinary\u201d probability and decorum run very close\ntogether. It is, for example, both indecorous and improbable that\nChim\u00e8ne in the _Cid_ should marry her father\u2019s murderer.\n\n[31] In his _Preface_ to Shakespeare.\n\n[32] For a similar distinction in Aristotle see _Eth. Nic._, 1143 b.\n\n[33] The Platonic and Aristotelian reason or mind (\u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2) contains an\nelement of intuition.\n\n[34] In his _Lettre \u00e0 d\u2019Alembert sur les spectacles_.\n\n[35] _Rousseau contre Moli\u00e8re_, 238.\n\n[36] _Letters on Chivalry and Romance._\n\n[37] See verses prefixed to Congreve\u2019s _Double-Dealer_.\n\n[38]\n\n    Change l\u2019\u00e9tat douteux dans lequel tu nous ranges,\n    Nature \u00e9l\u00e8ve-nous \u00e0 la clart\u00e9 des anges,\n    Ou nous abaisse au sens des simples animaux.\n\n                                        _Sonnet_ (1657?).\n\n[39] See, for example, A. Gerard\u2019s _Essay on Genius_ (1774), _passim_.\n\n[40] The English translation of this part of the _Critique of\nJudgment_, edited by J. C. Meredith, is useful for its numerous\nillustrative passages from these theorists (Young, Gerard, Duff, etc.).\n\n[41] Mrs. Katharine Fullerton Gerould has dealt interestingly with this\npoint in an article in the _Unpopular Review_ (October, 1914) entitled\n_Tabu and Temperament_.\n\n[42] See _Biographia literaria_, ch. XXII.\n\n[43] This message came to him in any case straight from German\nromanticism. See Walzel, _Deutsche Romantik_, 22, 151.\n\n[44] \u201cDe tous les corps et esprits, on n\u2019en saurait tirer un\nmouvement de vraie charit\u00e9; cela est impossible, et d\u2019un autre ordre,\nsurnaturel.\u201d _Pense\u00e9s_, Article XVII. \u201cCharit\u00e9,\u201d one should recollect,\nhere has its traditional meaning--the love, not of man, but of God.\n\n[45] See poem, _Ce si\u00e8cle avait deux ans_ in the _Feuilles d\u2019Automne_.\n\n[46] For amusing details, see L. Maigron, _Le Romantisme et la mode_\n(1911), ch. V.\n\n[47] For Disraeli see Wilfrid Ward, _Men and Matters_, 54 ff. Of\nBulwer-Lytton at Nice about 1850 Princess von Racowitza writes\nas follows in her _Autobiography_ (p. 46): \u201cHis fame was at its\nzenith. He seemed to me antediluvian, with his long dyed curls and\nhis old-fashioned dress \u2026 with long coats reaching to the ankles,\nknee-breeches, and long colored waistcoats. Also, he appeared always\nwith a young lady who adored him, and who was followed by a man\nservant carrying a harp. She sat at his feet and appeared as he did\nin the costume of 1830, with long flowing curls called _Anglaises_.\n\u2026 In society, however, people ran after him tremendously, and spoilt\nhim in every possible way. He read aloud from his own works, and, in\nespecially poetic passages, his \u2018Alice\u2019 accompanied him with arpeggios\non the harp.\u201d\n\n[48] See essay by Kenyon Cox on _The Illusion of Progress_, in his\n_Artist and Public_.\n\n[49] See _Creative Criticism_ by J. E. Spingarn, and my article on\n_Genius and Taste_, reviewing this book, in the _Nation_ (New York), 7\nFeb., 1918.\n\n[50] One should note here as elsewhere points of contact between\nscientific and emotional naturalism. Take, for example, the educational\ntheory that has led to the setting up of the elective system. The\ngeneral human discipline embodied in the fixed curriculum is to be\ndiscarded in order that the individual may be free to work along the\nlines of his bent or \u201cgenius.\u201d In a somewhat similar way scientific\nnaturalism encourages the individual to sacrifice the general human\ndiscipline to a specialty.\n\n[51] See his poem _L\u2019Art_ in _Emaux et Cam\u00e9es_.\n\n[52]\n\n    Quel esprit ne bat la campagne?\n    Qui ne fait ch\u00e2teaux en Espagne?\n    Picrochole, Pyrrhus, la laiti\u00e8re, enfin tous,\n      Autant les sages que les fous\n    Chacun songe en veillant; il n\u2019est rien de plus doux.\n    Une flatteuse erreur emporte alors nos \u00e2mes;\n      Tout le bien du monde est \u00e0 nous,\n      Tous les honneurs, toutes les femmes.\n    Quand je suis seul, je fais au plus brave un d\u00e9fi,\n    Je m\u2019\u00e9carte, je vais d\u00e9tr\u00f4ner le sophi;\n      On m\u2019\u00e9lit roi, mon peuple m\u2019aime;\n    Les diad\u00e8mes vont sur ma t\u00eate pleuvant:\n    Quelque accident fait-il que je rentre en moi-m\u00eame,\n      Je suis gros Jean comme devant.\n\n[53] _Rasselas_, ch. XLIV.\n\n[54] _Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse_, Pt. II, Lettre XVII.\n\n[55] Rostand has hit off this change in the Balcony Scene of his\n_Cyrano de Bergerac_.\n\n[56] Essay on _Simple and Sentimental Poetry_.\n\n[57] The life of Rousseau by Gerhard Gran is written from this point of\nview.\n\n[58]\n\n    The world\u2019s great age begins anew,\n      The golden years return, etc.\n\n                           _Hellas_, vv. 1060 ff.\n\n[59] For an excellent analysis of Shelley\u2019s idealism see Leslie\nStephen\u2019s _Godwin and Shelley_ in his _Hours in a Library_.\n\n[60] _Letters_, II, 292.\n\n[61] See his letter to Wordsworth, 30 January, 1801.\n\n[62] _Dramatic Art and Literature_, ch. I.\n\n[63] Cf. Voltaire: On ne peut d\u00e9sirer ce qu\u2019on ne conna\u00eet pas.\n(_Za\u00efre_.)\n\n[64] Cf. Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du lundi_. XV, 371: \u201cLe romantique\na la nostalgie, comme Hamlet; il cherche ce qu\u2019il n\u2019a pas, et jusque\npar del\u00e0 les nuages; il r\u00eave, il vit dans les songes. Au dix-neuvi\u00e8me\nsi\u00e8cle, il adore le moyen \u00e2ge; au dix-huiti\u00e8me, il est d\u00e9j\u00e0\nr\u00e9volutionnaire avec Rousseau,\u201d etc. Cf. also T. Gautier as quoted in\nthe _Journal des Goncourt_, II, 51: \u201cNous ne sommes pas Fran\u00e7ais, nous\nautres, nous tenons \u00e0 d\u2019autres races. Nous sommes pleins de nostalgies.\nEt puis quand \u00e0 la nostalgie d\u2019un pays se joint la nostalgie d\u2019un\ntemps \u2026 comme vous par exemple du dix-huiti\u00e8me si\u00e8cle \u2026 comme moi de\nla Venise de Casanova, avec embranchement sur Chypre, oh! alors, c\u2019est\ncomplet.\u201d\n\n[65] See article _Go\u00fbt_ in _Postscriptum de ma vie_.\n\n[66] Schlegel\u2019s _Dramatic Art and Literature_, Lecture XXII.\n\n[67] For a discussion of this point see I. Rouge: _F. Schlegel et la\nGen\u00e8se du romantisme allemand_, 48 ff.\n\n[68] For a development of this point of view see the essay of Novalis:\n_Christianity or Europe_.\n\n[69] _Confessions_, Livre IX (1756).\n\n[70] This is Goethe\u2019s very classical definition of genius: Du nur,\nGenius, mehrst in der Natur die Natur.\n\n[71] Greek literature, after it had lost the secret of selection and\nthe grand manner, as was the case during the Alexandrian period, also\ntended to oscillate from the pole of romance to the pole of so-called\nrealism--from the _Argonautica_ of Apollonius of Rhodes, let us say, to\nthe _Mimes_ of Herondas.\n\n[72] _Emile_, Livre II.\n\n[73] _Etudes de la nature._\n\n[74] See, for example, _Tatler_, 17 November, 31 December, 1709 (by\nSteele).\n\n[75] See her letter to Gustavus III, King of Sweden, cited in _Gustave\nIII et la cour de France_, II, 402, par A. Geffroy.\n\n[76] See Hastings Rashdall: _Is Conscience an Emotion?_ (1914),\nespecially ch. I. Cf. _Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse_. (Pt. VI, Lettre VII):\n\u201cSaint-Preux fait de la conscience morale un sentiment, et non pas un\njugement.\u201d\n\n[77] _Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse_, Pt. V, Lettre II.\n\n[78] _Ibid._\n\n[79] _Ibid._, Pt. IV, Lettre XII.\n\n[80] Schiller\u2019s definition is well known: \u201cA beautiful soul we call\na state where the moral sentiment has taken possession of all the\nemotions to such a degree that it may unhesitatingly commit the\nguidance of life to instinct,\u201d etc. (_On Grace and Dignity._) Cf.\nMadame de Sta\u00ebl: \u201cLa vertu devient alors une impulsion involontaire,\nun mouvement qui passe dans le sang, et vous entra\u00eene irr\u00e9sistiblement\ncomme les passions les plus imp\u00e9rieuses.\u201d (_De la Litt\u00e9rature: Discours\npr\u00e9limin\u00e0ire._)\n\n[81] _Avenir de la Science_, 354.\n\n[82] _Ibid._, 179-180.\n\n[83] _Avenir de la Science_, 476.\n\n[84] Madame de Warens felt the influence of German pietism in her\nyouth. See _La Jeunesse de J.-J. Rousseau_ par E. Ritter; ch. XIII.\n\n[85] _Lettre \u00e0 M. Mol\u00e9_ (21 October, 1803).\n\n[86] _Le romantisme fran\u00e7ais_, 215.\n\n[87] See _Les Amours de Milord Bomston_ at the end of _La Nouvelle\nH\u00e9lo\u00efse_.\n\n[88] _Sultan Mourad_ in _La L\u00e9gende des Si\u00e8cles_.\n\n[89] _Correspondence_, III, 213 (June, 1791). The date of this letter\nshould be noted. Several of the worst terrorists of the French\nRevolution began by introducing bills for the abolition of capital\npunishment.\n\n[90] See Burton\u2019s _Hume_, II, 309 (note 2).\n\nThis sentimental trait did not escape the authors of the _Anti-Jacobin_:\n\n    Sweet child of sickly Fancy--Her of yore\n    From her lov\u2019d France Rousseau to exile bore;\n    And while midst lakes and mountains wild he ran\n    Full of himself and shunn\u2019d the haunts of man,\n    Taught her o\u2019er each lone vale and Alpine steep\n    To lisp the stories of his wrongs and weep;\n    Taught her to cherish still in either eye\n    Of tender tears a plentiful supply,\n    And pour them in the brooks that babbled by--\n    Taught her to mete by rule her feelings strong,\n    False by degrees and delicately wrong,\n    For the crush\u2019d Beetle, _first_--the widow\u2019d Dove,\n    And all the warbled sorrows of the grove,\n    _Next_ for poor suff\u2019ring Guilt--and _last_ of all,\n    For Parents, Friends, or King and Country\u2019s fall.\n\n[91]\n\n    Shepherds, dwellers in the valleys, men\n    Whom I already loved;--not verily\n    For their own sakes, but for the fields and hills\n    Where was their occupation and abode.\n\n                                       _Michael_\n\n[92]\n\n    Once more the Ass, with motion dull,\n    Upon the pivot of his skull\n    Turned round his long left ear.\n\n\u201cThe bard who soars to elegize an ass\u201d and the \u201claureate of the\nlong-eared kind\u201d (_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_) is, however,\nnot Wordsworth but Coleridge. See his poem _To a Young Ass, its mother\nbeing tethered near it_.\n\n[93] See the poem _Acte d\u2019accusation_ in _Les Contemplations_.\n\n[94] _Le Crapaud_ in _La L\u00e9gende des Si\u00e8cles_.\n\n[95] See _Apology_ 31D.\n\n[96] His _Language and Wisdom of the Hindus_ appeared in 1808.\n\n[97] See _Jugendschriften_, ed. by J. Minor, II, 362.\n\n[98] _Dhammapada._\n\n[99] _Sutta-Nip\u0101ta_, v. 149 (_Metta-sutta_).\n\n[100] _Second Dialogue._\n\n[101] _Letters_, II, 298. For Ruskin and Rousseau see _Ibid._ I, 360:\n\u201c[Ruskin] said that great parts of _Les Confessions_ were so true to\nhimself that he felt as if Rousseau must have transmigrated into his\nbody.\u201d\n\n[102] \u201cIf a poet wishes an atmosphere of indistinct illusion and of\nmoving shadow, he must use the romantic style. \u2026 Women, such as we know\nthem, such as they are likely to be, ever prefer a delicate unreality\nto a true or firm art.\u201d Essay on _Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art in\nEnglish Poetry_ (1864).\n\n[103] \u201cDie Romanze auf einem Pferde\u201d utters the following lines in the\nPrologue to Tieck\u2019s _Kaiser Octavianus_:\n\n    Mondbegl\u00e4nzte Zaubernacht,\n    Die den Sinn gefangen h\u00e4lt,\n    Wundervolle M\u00e4rchenwelt\n    Steig\u2019 auf in der alten Pracht.\n\nA special study might be made of the r\u00f4le of the moon in Chateaubriand\nand Coleridge--even if one is not prepared like Carlyle to dismiss\nColeridge\u2019s philosophy as \u201cbottled moonshine.\u201d\n\n[104] O. Walzel points out that as soon as the women in H. von Kleist\u2019s\nplays become conscious they fall into error (_Deutsche Romantik_, 3.\nAuflage, 147).\n\n[105] Byron, _Sardanapalus_, IV, 5. Cf. Rousseau, _Neuvi\u00e8me Promenade_:\n\u201cDomin\u00e9 par mes sens, quoi que je puisse faire, je n\u2019ai jamais pu\nr\u00e9sister \u00e0 leurs impressions, et, tant que l\u2019objet agit sur eux, mon\nc\u0153ur ne cesse d\u2019en \u00eatre affect\u00e9.\u201d Cf. also Musset, _Rolla_:\n\n    Ce n\u2019\u00e9tait pas Rolla qui gouvernait sa vie,\n    C\u2019\u00e9taient ses passions; il les laissait aller\n    Comme un p\u00e2tre assoupi regarde l\u2019eau couler.\n\n[106] _Modern Painters_, Part V, ch. XX.\n\n[107] _Confessions_, Pt. II, Livre IX (1756).\n\n[108]\n\n    With nature never do _they_ wage\n    A foolish strife; they see\n    A happy youth and their old age\n    Is beautiful and free.\n\n                         Wordsworth: _The Fountain_.\n\n[109] The phrase imaginative insight is, I believe, true to the spirit\nof Plato at his best, but it is certainly not true to his terminology.\nPlato puts the imagination (\u03c6\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03af\u03b1) not only below intuitive\nreason (\u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2) and discursive reason or understanding (\u03b4\u03b9\u03ac\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03b1), but\neven below outer perception (\u03c0\u03af\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03c2). He recognizes indeed that it\nmay reflect the operations of the understanding and even the higher\nreason as well as the impressions of sense. This notion of a superior\nintellectual imagination was carried much further by Plotinus and\nthe neo-Platonists. Even the intellectual imagination is, however,\nconceived of as passive. Perhaps no Greek thinker, not even Plato,\nmakes as clear as he might that reason gets its intuition of reality\nand the One with the aid of the imagination and, as it were, through\na veil of illusion, that, in Joubert\u2019s phrase, \u201cl\u2019illusion est une\npartie int\u00e9, grante de la r\u00e9alit\u00e9\u201d (_Pens\u00e9es_, Titre XI, XXXIX).\nJoubert again distinguishes (_ibid._, Titre III, XLVII, LI) between\n\u201cl\u2019imaginative\u201d which is passive and \u201cl\u2019imagination\u201d which is active\nand creative (\u201cl\u2019\u0153il de l\u2019\u00e2me\u201d). In its failure to bring out with\nsufficient explicitness this _creative_ r\u00f4le of the imagination and in\nthe stubborn intellectualism that this failure implies is to be found,\nif anywhere, the weak point in the cuirass of Greek philosophy.\n\n[110] See Xenophon, _Memorabilia_, IV, 16, 3.\n\n[111] \u03a3\u03c9\u03c6\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03cd\u03bd\u03b7.\n\n[112] See his _Lettre \u00e0 d\u2019Alembert_.\n\n[113] _Varieties of Religious Experience_, 387.\n\n[114] _Bl\u00fctezeit der Romantik_, 126.\n\n[115] \u201cParfaite illusion, r\u00e9alit\u00e9 parfaite\u201d (Alfred de Vigny). \u201cDie\nWelt wird Traum, der Traum wird Welt\u201d (Novalis). \u201cThis sort of dreaming\nexistence is the best; he who quits it to go in search of realities\ngenerally barters repose for repeated disappointments and vain regrets\u201d\n(Hazlitt).\n\n[116] _Lit. Ang._, IV, 130.\n\n[117] About 1885.\n\n[118] _Le Th\u00e9\u00e2tre en France_, 304.\n\n[119]\n\n                  Je suis une force qui va!\n    Agent aveugle et sourd de myst\u00e8res fun\u00e8bres.\n\n[120] E.g., Lillo\u2019s _Fatal Curiosity_ (1736) had a marked influence on\nthe rise of the German fate tragedy.\n\n[121]\n\n    Wo ist der, der sagen d\u00fcrfe,\n    So will ich\u2019s, so sei\u2019s gemacht,\n    Unser Taten sind nur W\u00fcrfe\n    In des Zufalls blinde Nacht.\n\n                            _Die Ahnfrau._\n\n[122] \u201cSo that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of\nall mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that\nceaseth only in Death.\u201d _Leviathan_, Part I, ch. XI.\n\n[123] See _Unpopular Review_, October, 1915.\n\n[124] E. Seilli\u00e8re has been tracing, in _Le Mal romantique_ and\nother volumes, the relation between Rousseauism and what he terms an\n\u201cirrational imperialism.\u201d His point of view is on the constructive side\nvery different from mine.\n\n[125] The best account of Rousseau\u2019s German influence is still that of\nH. Hettner in his _Literaturgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts_. Compared\nwith Rousseau\u2019s German influence, says Professor Paul Hensel in his\n_Rousseau_ (1907), \u201chis influence in France seems almost trifling.\u201d In\nGermany \u201cRousseau became the basis not of a guillotine but of a new\nculture (Kultur). \u2026 We have drawn his spirit over to us, we have made\nit our own.\u201d (121.) See also Professor Eugen K\u00fchnemann, _Vom Weltreich\ndes deutschen Geistes_ (1914), 54-62, and _passim_. German idealism is,\naccording to K\u00fchnemann, the monument that does the greatest honor to\nRousseau.\n\n[126]\n\n    A robin redbreast in a cage\n    Puts all Heaven in a rage.\n    \u2026\n    He who shall hurt the little wren\n    Shall never be belov\u2019d by men.\n    He who the ox to wrath has mov\u2019d\n    Shall never be by woman lov\u2019d.\n    \u2026\n    Kill not the moth nor butterfly,\n    For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.\n\n                            _Auguries of Innocence._\n\n[127] See _Hart-Leap Well_.\n\n[128] _Beyond Good and Evil_, ch. IV.\n\n[129] \u201cOut into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen, into\nwarmer souths than ever sculptor conceived. \u2026 Let this love be your new\nnobility,--the undiscovered in the remotest seas,\u201d etc. (_Thus Spake\nZarathustra_, translated by Thomas Common, 240, 248.)\n\n[130] \u201cOn trouverait, en r\u00e9tablissant les anneaux interm\u00e9diaires de\nla cha\u00eene, qu\u2019\u00e0 Pascal se rattachent les doctrines modernes qui font\npasser en premi\u00e8re ligne la connaissance imm\u00e9diate, l\u2019intuition, la vie\nint\u00e9rieure, comme \u00e0 Descartes \u2026 se rattachent plus particuli\u00e8rement les\nphilosophies de la raison pure.\u201d _La Science fran\u00e7aise_ (1915), I, 17.\n\n[131] Cf. Tennyson:\n\n        Fantastic beauty, such as lurks\n        In some wild poet when he works\n    Without a conscience or an aim--\n\n[132] Addison writes:\n\n    \u2019Twas then great Marlbro\u2019s mighty soul was proved,\n    That, in the shock of changing hosts unmoved,\n    Amidst confusion, horror, and despair,\n    Examin\u2019d all the dreadful scenes of war;\n    In peaceful thought the field of death survey\u2019d.\n\nSo far as Marlborough deserved this praise he was a general in the\ngrand manner.\n\n[133] \u201cBeauty resides in due proportion and order,\u201d says Aristotle\n(_Poetics_, ch. VII).\n\n[134] _A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830_ (1912), II, 191.\n\n[135] Confucius and the Chinese sages were if anything even more\nconcerned than Plato or Aristotle with the ethical quality of music.\n\n[136] Like Bishop Blougram\u2019s his \u201cinterest\u2019s on the dangerous edge of\nthings.\u201d\n\n[137]\n\n    Does he take inspiration from the church,\n    Directly make her rule his law of life?\n    Not he: his own mere impulse guides the man.\n    \u2026\n    Such is, for the Augustine that was once,\n    This Canon Caponsacchi we see now.\n\n                                     X, 1911-28.\n\n[138] See X, 1367-68.\n\n[139] Letter to Joseph d\u2019Ortigue, January 19, 1833.\n\n[140] Here is an extreme example from Maigron\u2019s manuscript collection\n(_Le Romantisme et les m\u0153urs_, 153). A youth forced to be absent\nthree weeks from the woman he loves writes to her as follows: \u201cTrois\nsemaines, mon amour, trois semaines loin de toi! \u2026 Oh! Dieu m\u2019a maudit!\n\u2026 Hier j\u2019ai err\u00e9 toute l\u2019apr\u00e8s-midi comme une b\u00eate fauve, une b\u00eate\ntraqu\u00e9e. \u2026 Dans la for\u00eat, j\u2019ai hurl\u00e9, hurl\u00e9 comme un d\u00e9mon \u2026 je me suis\nroul\u00e9 par terre \u2026 j\u2019ai broy\u00e9 sous mes dents des branches que mes mains\navaient arrach\u00e9es. \u2026 Alors, de rage, j\u2019ai pris ma main entre mes dents;\nj\u2019ai serr\u00e9, serr\u00e9 convulsivement; le sang a jailli et j\u2019ai crach\u00e9 au\nciel le morceau de chair vive \u2026 j\u2019aurais voulu lui cracher mon c\u0153ur.\u201d\n\n[141] Maxime Du Camp asserts in his _Souvenirs litt\u00e9raires_ (I, 118)\nthat this an\u00e6mia was due in part to the copious blood-letting to which\nthe physicians of the time, disciples of Broussais, were addicted.\n\n[142] This perversion was not unknown to classical antiquity. Cf.\nSeneca, _To Lucilius_, XCIX: \u201cQuid turpius quam captare in ipso luctu\nvoluptatem; et inter lacrymas quoque, quod juvet, qu\u00e6rere?\u201d\n\n[143] _Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse_, Pt. III, Lettre VI.\n\n[144] _Confessions_, Livre IV.\n\n[145] _The New Laokoon_, ch. V.\n\n[146] _Franciscae me\u00e6 laudes_, in _Les Fleurs du mal_.\n\n[147] _Architecture and Painting_, Lecture II. This diatribe may have\nbeen suggested by Byron\u2019s _Don Juan_, Canto XIII, IX-XI:\n\n    Cervantes smiled Spain\u2019s chivalry away:\n    A single laugh demolished the right arm\n    Of his own country, etc.\n\n[148] \u201cNondum amabam, et amare amabam, qu\u00e6rebam quid amarem, amans\namare.\u201d\n\n[149] Cf. Shelley\u2019s _Alastor_:\n\n                              Two eyes,\n    Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought\n    And seemed with their serene and azure smiles\n    To beckon.\n\n[150] \u201cSome of us have in a prior existence been in love with an\nAntigone, and that makes us find no full content in any mortal tie.\u201d\nShelley to John Gisborne, October 22, 1821.\n\n[151] _Confessions_, Livre XI (1761).\n\n[152] _M\u00e9moires d\u2019Outre-Tombe_, November, 1817.\n\n[153] \u201cJe me faisais une f\u00e9licit\u00e9 de r\u00e9aliser avec ma sylphide mes\ncourses fantastiques dans les for\u00eats du Nouveau Monde.\u201d\n\n_M\u00e9moires d\u2019Outre-Tombe_, December, 1821.\n\n[154] Peacock has in mind _Childe Harold_, canto IV, CXXI ff.\n\n[155] Rousseau plans to make a nympholept of his ideal pupil, Emile:\n\u201cIl faut que je sois le plus maladroit des hommes si je ne le rends\nd\u2019avance passionn\u00e9 sans savoir de quoi\u201d, etc. _Emile_, Liv. IV.\n\n[156] Cf. Ren\u00e9\u2019s letter to C\u00e9luta in _Les Natchez_: \u201cJe vous ai tenue\nsur ma poitrine au milieu du d\u00e9sert, dans les vents de l\u2019orage,\nlorsque, apr\u00e8s vous avoir port\u00e9e de l\u2019autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 d\u2019un torrent, j\u2019aurais\nvoulu vous poignarder pour fixer le bonheur dans votre sein, et pour me\npunir de vous avoir donn\u00e9 ce bonheur.\u201d\n\n[157] The romantic lover, it should be observed, creates his dream\ncompanion even less that he may adore her than that she may adore him.\n\n[158] Walter Bagehot has made an interesting study of the romantic\nimagination in his essay on a figure who reminds one in some respects\nof G\u00e9rard de Nerval--Hartley Coleridge.\n\n[159] Don Juan bids his servant give a coin to the beggar not for the\nlove of God but for the love of humanity.\n\n[160]\n\n    Demandant aux for\u00eats, \u00e0 la mer, \u00e0 la plaine,\n    Aux brises du matin, \u00e0 toute heure, \u00e0 tout lieu,\n    La femme de son \u00e2me et de son premier voeu!\n    Prenant pour fianc\u00e9e un r\u00eave, une ombre vaine,\n    Et fouillant dans le c\u0153ur d\u2019une h\u00e9catombe humaine,\n    Pr\u00eatre d\u00e9sesp\u00e9r\u00e9, pour y trouver son Dieu.\n\n                               A. de Musset, _Namouna_.\n\n\u201cDon Juan avait en lui cet amour pour la femme id\u00e9ale; il a couru le\nmonde serrant et brisant de d\u00e9pit dans ses bras toutes les imparfaites\nimages qu\u2019il croyait un moment aimer; et il est mort \u00e9puis\u00e9 de fatigue,\nconsum\u00e9 de son insatiable amour.\u201d Pr\u00e9vost-Paradol, _Lettres_, 149.\n\n[161] See Scott\u2019s (2d) edition of Swift, XIII, 310.\n\n[162]\n\n    Aimer c\u2019est le grand point. Qu\u2019importe la ma\u00eetresse?\n    Qu\u2019importe le flacon pourvu qu\u2019on ait l\u2019ivresse?\n\n[163] It has been said that in the novels of George Sand when a lady\nwishes to change her lover God is always there to facilitate the\ntransfer.\n\n[164] \u201cTous les hommes sont menteurs, inconstants, faux, bavards,\nhypocrites, orgueilleux ou l\u00e2ches, m\u00e9prisables et sensuels; toutes\nles femmes sont perfides, artificieuses, vaniteuses, curieuses et\nd\u00e9prav\u00e9es; le monde n\u2019est qu\u2019un \u00e9gout sans fond o\u00f9 les phoques les\nplus informes rampent et se tordent sur des montagnes de fange; mais\nil y a au monde une chose sainte et sublime, c\u2019est l\u2019union de deux de\nces \u00eatres si imparfaits et si affreux. On est souvent tromp\u00e9 en amour;\nsouvent bless\u00e9 et souvent malheureux; mais on aime et quand on est sur\nle bord de sa tombe, on se retourne pour regarder en arri\u00e8re, et on se\ndit: J\u2019ai souffert souvent, je me suis tromp\u00e9 quelquefois, mais j\u2019ai\naim\u00e9. C\u2019est moi qui ai v\u00e9cu, et non pas un \u00eatre factice cr\u00e9\u00e9 par mon\norgueil et mon ennui.\u201d (The last sentence is taken from a letter of\nGeorge Sand to Musset.) _On ne badine pas avec l\u2019Amour_, II, 5.\n\n[165] _Table-Talk. On the Past and Future._\n\n[166] _The Plain Speaker. On Reading Old Books._\n\n[167] _The Round Table. On the Character of Rousseau._\n\n[168] \u201cAujourd\u2019hui, jour de P\u00e2ques fleuries, il y a pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment\ncinquante ans de ma premi\u00e8re connaissance avec Madame de Warens.\u201d\n\n[169] Even on his death-bed the hero of Browning\u2019s _Confessions_ gives\nhimself up to impassionated recollection:\n\n    How sad and bad and mad it was--\n    But then, how it was sweet.\n\nIn his _Stances \u00e0 Madame Lullin_ Voltaire is at least as poetical and\nnearer to normal experience:\n\n    Quel mortel s\u2019est jamais flatt\u00e9\n    D\u2019un rendez-vous \u00e0 l\u2019agonie?\n\n[170] See especially _Lyceum fragment_, no. 108.\n\n[171] A well-known example of the extreme to which the romanticists\npushed their Fichtean solipsism is the following from the _William\nLovell_ of the youthful Tieck: \u201cHaving gladly escaped from anxious\nfetters, I now advance boldly through life, absolved from those irksome\nduties which were the inventions of cowardly fools. Virtue is, only\nbecause I am; it is but a reflection of my inner self. What care I for\nforms whose dim lustre I have myself brought forth? Let vice and virtue\nwed. They are only shadows in the mist,\u201d etc.\n\n[172] _Beyond Good and Evil_, ch. IV.\n\n[173] _On Contemporary Literature_, 206. The whole passage is excellent.\n\n[174] M. Legouis makes a similar remark in the _Cambridge History of\nEnglish Literature_ XI, 108.\n\n[175] I scarcely need say that Wordsworth is at times genuinely\nethical, but he is even more frequently only didactic. The _Excursion_,\nas M. Legouis says, is a \u201clong sermon against pessimism.\u201d\n\n[176] \u201cQuia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec\nrequiescat in te.\u201d\n\n[177] _Eth. Nic._, 1177 b.\n\n[178] Cf. the chapter on _William Law and the Mystics_ in _Cambridge\nHistory of English Literature_, IX, 341-67; also the bibliography of\nBoehme, _ibid._, 560-74.\n\n[179] See _Excursion_, I, VV. 943 ff.\n\n[180] In his attitude towards sin Novalis continues Rousseau and\nanticipates the main positions of the Christian Scientist.\n\n[181]\n\n    Prune thou thy words,\n      The thoughts control\n    That o\u2019er thee swell and throng.\n      They will condense within the soul\n    And change to purpose strong.\n    But he who lets his feelings run\n      In soft, luxurious flow,\n    Shrinks when hard service must be done\n      And faints at every foe.\n\n[182] Wesley had no liking for Boehme and cut out from Brooke\u2019s book\nthe theosophy that had this origin.\n\n[183] Writing was often associated with magic formul\u00e6. Hence \u03b3\u03c1\u03ac\u03bc\u03bc\u03b1\nalso gave Fr. \u201cgrimoire.\u201d\n\n[184] _Thus Spake Zarathustra_, LXIX (The Shadow to Zarathustra).\n\n[185] _Katha-Upanishad._ The passage is paraphrased as follows by P. E.\nMore in his _Century of Indian Epigrams_:\n\n      Seated within this body\u2019s car\n      The silent Self is driven afar,\n      And the five senses at the pole\n    Like steeds are tugging restive of control.\n\n      And if the driver lose his way,\n      Or the reins sunder, who can say\n      In what blind paths, what pits of fear\n    Will plunge the chargers in their mad career?\n\n      Drive well, O mind, use all thy art,\n      Thou charioteer!--O feeling Heart,\n      Be thou a bridle firm and strong!\n    For the Lord rideth and the way is long.\n\n[186] See Brandes: _The Romantic School in Germany_, ch. XI.\n\n[187] Alfred de Musset saw his double in the stress of his affair with\nGeorge Sand (see _Nuit de D\u00e9cembre_), Jean Valjean (_Les Mis\u00e9rables_)\nsees his double in the stress of his conversion. Peter Bell also sees\nhis double at the emotional crisis in Wordsworth\u2019s poem of that name.\n\n[188] _Thus Spake Zarathustra_, LXIX.\n\n[189] F. Schlegel: _Lyceumfragment_, no. 42.\n\n[190] E.g., canto III, CVII-CXI.\n\n[191] _Confessions_, Livre XII (1765).\n\n[192] Cf. Th. Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, I, 402.\n\n[193] Wordsworth: _Miscellaneous Sonnets_, XII.\n\n[194] In much the same spirit the Japanese hermit, Kamo Ch\u014dmei\n(thirteenth century), expresses the fear that he may forget Buddha\nbecause of his fondness for the mountains and the moon.--See article on\nnature in Japan by M. Revon in _Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics_.\n\n[195] _Confessions_, Bk. X, ch. IX.\n\n[196] Cf. Cicero: \u201cUrbem, urbem, mi Rufe, cole et in ista luce vive.\u201d\n(_Ad Fam._, II, 22.)\n\n[197] March 23, 1646.\n\n[198] It was especially easy for the poets to go for their landscapes\nto the painters because according to the current theory poetry was\nitself a form of painting (_ut pictura poesis_). Thus Thomson writes in\n_The Castle of Indolence_:\n\n      Sometimes the pencil, in cool airy halls,\n      Bade the gay bloom of vernal landskips rise,\n      Or autumn\u2019s varied shades embrown the walls:\n      Now the black tempest strikes the astonish\u2019d eyes;\n      Now down the steep the flashing torrent flies;\n      The trembling sun now plays o\u2019er ocean blue,\n      And now rude mountains frown amid the skies;\n      Whate\u2019er _Lorrain_ light touch\u2019d with softening hue,\n    Or savage _Rosa_ dash\u2019d, or learned _Poussin_ drew.\n\n                                          (C. I, st. 38.)\n\n[199]\n\n      Disparaissez, monuments du g\u00e9nie,\n    Pares, jardins immortels, que Le N\u00f4tre a plant\u00e9s;\n    De vos dehors pompeux l\u2019exacte symm\u00e9trie,\n    Etonne vainement mes regards attrist\u00e9s.\n      J\u2019aime bien mieux ce d\u00e9sordre bizarre,\n    Et la vari\u00e9t\u00e9 de ces riches tableaux\n    Que disperse l\u2019Anglais d\u2019une main moins avare.\n\nBertin, 19e El\u00e9gie of _Les Amours_.\n\n[200] Pt. IV, Lettre XI.\n\n[201] _Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse_, Pt. IV, Lettre XI.\n\n[202] _Ibid._\n\n[203] _Ibid._, Pt. IV, Lettre XVII.\n\n[204] _Confessions_, Livre V (1732).\n\n[205] See especially _Childe Harold_, canto II, XXV ff.\n\n[206] _Ibid._, canto II, XXXVII.\n\n[207] _Ibid._, canto III, LXXII.\n\n[208] _Ibid._, canto IV, CLXXVII.\n\n[209] See _La Perception du changement_, 30.\n\n[210] ASIA\n\n      My soul is an enchanted boat,\n      Which like a sleeping swan, doth float\n    Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;\n      And thine doth like an angel sit\n      Beside a helm conducting it,\n    Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.\n      It seems to float ever, for ever\n      Upon that many-winding river,\n      Between mountains, woods, abysses,\n      A paradise of wildernesses!\n    \u2026\n      Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions\n      In music\u2019s most serene dominions;\n    Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.\n      And we sail on away, afar,\n      Without a course, without a star,\n      But by the instinct of sweet music driven;\n      Till through Elysian garden islets\n      By thee, most beautiful of pilots,\n      Where never mortal pinnace glided\n      The boat of my desire is guided;\n      Realms where the air we breathe is love--\n\n                       _Prometheus Unbound_, Act II, Sc. V.\n\n[211] \u201cSi tu souffres plus qu\u2019un autre des choses de la vie, il ne faut\npas t\u2019en \u00e9tonner; une grande \u00e2me doit contenir plus de douleurs qu\u2019une\npetite.\u201d\n\n[212] Cf. Shelley, _Julian and Maddalo_:\n\n                        I love all waste\n    And solitary places; where we taste\n    The pleasure of believing what we see\n    Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.\n\n[213] Cf. for example, the passage of Rousseau in the seventh\n_Promenade_ (\u201cJe sens des extases, des ravissements inexprimables \u00e0\nme fondre pour ainsi dire dans le syst\u00e8me des \u00eatres,\u201d etc.) with the\nrevery described by Wordsworth in _The Excursion_, I, 200-218.\n\n[214] O belles, craignez le fond des bois, et leur vaste silence.\n\n[215] _Faust_ (Miss Swanwick\u2019s translation).\n\n[216] _Artist and Public_, 134 ff.\n\n[217]\n\n    Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:\n    What if my leaves are falling like its own!\n    The tumult of thy mighty harmonies\n\n    Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,\n    Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,\n    My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!\n    Drive my dead thoughts over the universe\n    Like withered leaves, etc.\n\nCf. Lamartine:\n\n    Quand la feuille des bois tombe dans la prairie,\n    Le vent du soir s\u2019\u00e9l\u00e8ve et l\u2019arrache aux vallons;\n    Et moi, je suis semblable \u00e0 la feuille fl\u00e9trie;\n    Emportez-moi comme elle, orageux aquilons.\n\n                                        _L\u2019Isolement._\n\n[218] Cf. Hettner, _Romantische Schule_, 156.\n\n[219] See appendix on Chinese primitivism.\n\n[220] G. Duval has written a _Dictionnaire des m\u00e9taphores de Victor\nHugo_, and G. Lucchetti a work on _Les Images dans les \u0153uvres de Victor\nHugo_. So far as the ethical values are concerned, the latter title is\nalone justified. Hugo is, next to Chateaubriand, the great imagist.\n\n[221] The French like to think of the symbolists as having rendered\ncertain services to their versification. Let us hope that they did,\nthough few things are more perilous than this transfer of the idea of\nprogress to the literary and artistic domain. Decadent Rome, as we\nlearn from the younger Pliny and others, simply swarmed with poets who\nalso no doubt indulged in many strange experiments. All this poetical\nactivity, as we can see only too plainly at this distance, led nowhere.\n\n[222] Grant Allen writes of the laws of nature in _Magdalen Tower_:\n\n    They care not any whit for pain or pleasure,\n    That seems to us the sum and end of all,\n    Dumb force and barren number are their measure,\n    What shall be shall be, tho\u2019 the great earth fall,\n    They take no heed of man or man\u2019s deserving,\n    Reck not what happy lives they make or mar,\n    Work out their fatal will unswerv\u2019d, unswerving,\n    And know not that they are!\n\n[223] Fragment de l\u2019_Art de jouir_, quoted by P.-M. Masson in _La\nReligion de J.-J. Rousseau_, II, 228.\n\n[224] If nature merely reflects back to a man his own image, it follows\nthat Coleridge\u2019s celebrated distinction between fancy and imagination\nhas little value, inasmuch as he rests his proof of the unifying\npower of the imagination, in itself a sound idea, on the union the\nimagination effects between man and outer nature--and this union is on\nhis own showing fanciful.\n\n[225] If I had had this consecration Wordsworth says, addressing Peele\nCastle,\n\n    I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile,\n    Amid a world how different from this!\n    Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;\n    On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.\n    \u2026\n    A Picture had it been of lasting ease,\n    _Elysian quiet, without toil or strife_, etc.\n\n_Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a picture of Peele Castle in a storm._\n\n[226] Cf. Doudan, _Lettres_, IV, 216: \u201cJ\u2019ai parcouru le _Saint-Paul_\nde Renan. Je n\u2019ai jamais vu dans un th\u00e9ologien une si grande\nconnaissance de la flore orientale. C\u2019est un paysagiste bien sup\u00e9rieur\n\u00e0 Saint-Augustin et \u00e0 Bossuet. Il s\u00e8me des r\u00e9s\u00e9das, des an\u00e9mones, des\np\u00e2querettes pour recueillir l\u2019incr\u00e9dulit\u00e9.\u201d\n\n[227] In his _Mal romantique_ (1908) E. Seilli\u00e8re labels the\ngenerations that have elapsed since the rise of Rousseauism as follows:\n\n    1. Sensibility (_Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse_, 1761).\n\n    2. Weltschmerz (Schiller\u2019s _\u00c6sthetic Letters_, 1795).\n\n    3. Mal du si\u00e8cle (Hugo\u2019s _Hernani_, 1830).\n\n    4. Pessimism (vogue of Schopenhauer and Stendhal, 1865).\n\n    5. Neurasthenia (culmination of _fin de si\u00e8cle_ movement, 1900).\n\n[228] _Eckermann_, September 24, 1827.\n\n[229] See _La Nuit de Mai_.\n\n[230] These lines are inscribed on the statue of Musset in front of the\nTh\u00e9\u00e2tre Fran\u00e7ais. Cf. Shelley:\n\n    Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.\n\n[231] Translation by J. E. Sandys of fragment cited in Stob\u00e6us, _Flor._\nCIX, I.\n\n[232] _Pythian Odes_, III, 20 ff.\n\n[233] _Pythian Odes_, III, 81-82.\n\n[234] _Song of the Banjo_, in the _Seven Seas_.\n\n[235] XVII, 446-47.\n\n[236] A brief survey of melancholy among the Greeks will be found in\nProfessor S. H. Butcher\u2019s _Some Aspects of the Greek Genius_.\n\n[237] The exasperated quest of novelty is one of the main traits\nboth of the ancient and the modern victim of ennui. See Seneca, _De\nTranquillitate animi_: \u201cFastidio illis esse c\u0153pit vita, et ipse mundus;\net subit illud rabidorum deliciarum: quousque eadem?\u201d (Cf. La Fontaine:\nIl me faut du nouveau, n\u2019en f\u00fbt-il plus au monde.)\n\n[238] \u201cA quoi bon m\u2019avoir fait na\u00eetre avec des facult\u00e9s exquises pour\nles laisser jusqu\u2019\u00e0 la fin sans emploi? Le sentiment de mon prix\ninterne en me donnant celui de cette injustice m\u2019en d\u00e9dommageait en\nquelque sorte, et me faisait verser des larmes que j\u2019aimais a laisser\ncouler.\u201d _Confessions._ Livre IX (1756).\n\n[239] _Nouvelle H\u00e9loise_, Pt. VI, Lettre VIII.\n\n[240] \u201cEncore enfant par la t\u00eate, vous \u00eates d\u00e9j\u00e0 vieux par le c\u0153ur.\u201d\n_Ibid._\n\n[241] See the examples quoted in Arnold: _Essays in Criticism_, Second\nSeries, 305-06.\n\n[242] This is the thought of Keats\u2019s _Ode to Melancholy_:\n\n    Ay, in the very temple of Delight\n      Veil\u2019d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,\n    Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue\n      Can burst Joy\u2019s grape against his palate fine.\n\nCf. Chateaubriand: _Essai sur les R\u00e9volutions_, Pt. II, ch. LVIII: \u201cCes\njouissances sont trop poignantes: telle est notre faiblesse, que les\nplaisirs exquis deviennent des douleurs,\u201d etc.\n\n[243] See his sonnet _Les Montreurs_. This type of Rousseauist is\nanticipated by \u201cMilord\u201d Bomston in _La Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse_. Rousseau\ndirected the engraver to depict him with \u201cun maintien grave et sto\u00efque\nsous lequel il cache avec peine une extr\u00eame sensibilit\u00e9.\u201d\n\n[244] \u201cQui es-tu? \u00c0 coup s\u00fbr tu n\u2019es pas un \u00eatre p\u00e9tri du m\u00eame limon et\nanim\u00e9 de la m\u00eame vie que nous! Tu es un ange ou un d\u00e9mon mais tu n\u2019es\npas une cr\u00e9ature humaine. \u2026 Pourquoi habiter parmi nous, qui ne pouvons\nte suffire ni te comprendre?\u201d G. Sand, _L\u00e9lia_, I, 11.\n\n[245] See p. 51.\n\n[246] See _Lara_, XVIII, XIX, perhaps the best passage that can be\nquoted for the Byronic hero.\n\n[247] Cf. Gautier, _Histoire du romantisme_: \u201cIl \u00e9tait de mode\nalors dans l\u2019\u00e9cole romantique d\u2019\u00eatre p\u00e2le, livide, verd\u00e2tre, un peu\ncadav\u00e9reux, s\u2019il \u00e9tait possible. Cela donnait l\u2019air fatal, byronien,\ngiaour, d\u00e9vor\u00e9 par les passions et les remords.\u201d\n\n[248] Hugo, _Hernani_.\n\n[249]\n\n    Lorsque, par un d\u00e9cret des puissances supr\u00eames,\n    Le Po\u00e8te appara\u00eet dans ce monde ennuy\u00e9,\n    Sa m\u00e8re \u00e9pouvant\u00e9e et pleine de blasph\u00e8mes\n    Crispe ses poings vers Dieu, qui la prend en piti\u00e9.\n\n                               _Fleurs du mal: B\u00e9n\u00e9diction._\n\nCf. _Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse_, Pt. III, Lettre XXVI:\n\n\u201cCiel inexorable! \u2026 O ma m\u00e8re, pourquoi vous donna-t-il un fils dans sa\ncol\u00e8re?\u201d\n\n[250] Coleridge has a side that relates him to the author of _Les\nFleurs du mal_. In his _Pains of Sleep_ he describes a dream in which\nhe felt\n\n    Desire with loathing strangely mix\u2019d,\n    _On wild or hateful objects fix\u2019d_.\n\n[251] Keats according to Shelley was an example of the _po\u00e8te maudit_.\n\u201cThe poor fellow\u201d he says \u201cwas literally hooted from the stage of\nlife.\u201d Keats was as a matter of fact too sturdy to be snuffed out by an\narticle and had less of the quivering Rousseauistic sensibility than\nShelley himself. Cf. letter of Shelley to Mrs. Shelley (Aug. 7, 1820):\n\u201cImagine my despair of good, imagine how it is possible that one of\nso weak and sensitive a nature as mine can run further the gauntlet\nthrough this hellish society of men.\u201d\n\n[252] Euripides speaks of the \u03a7\u03ac\u03c1\u03b9\u03c2 \u03b3\u03cc\u03c9\u03bd in his \u1f39\u03ba\u03ad\u03c4\u03b9\u03b4\u03b5\u03c2 (Latin,\n\u201cdolendi voluptas\u201d; German, \u201cdie Wonne der Wehmut\u201d).\n\n[253] Chesterton is anticipated in this paradox by Wordsworth:\n\n    In youth we love the darksome lawn\n    Brushed by the owlet\u2019s wing.\n    Then Twilight is preferred to Dawn\n    And autumn to the spring.\n    Sad fancies do we then affect\n    In luxury of disrespect\n    To our own prodigal excess\n    Of too familiar happiness.\n\n                    _Ode to Lycoris._\n\n[254] _Souvenirs d\u2019enfance et de jeunesse_, 329-30.\n\n[255] \u201c[Villiers] \u00e9tait de cette famille des n\u00e9o-catholiques\nlitt\u00e9raires dont Chateaubriand est le p\u00e8re commun, et qui a produit\nBarbey d\u2019Aurevilly, Baudelaire et plus r\u00e9cemment M. Jos\u00e9phin Peladan.\nCeux-l\u00e0 ont go\u00fbt\u00e9 par-dessus tout dans la religion les charmes du\np\u00e9ch\u00e9, la grandeur du sacril\u00e8ge, et leur sensualisme a caress\u00e9 les\ndogmes qui ajoutaient aux volupt\u00e9s la supr\u00eame volupt\u00e9 de se perdre.\u201d A.\nFrance, _Vie Litt\u00e9raire_, III, 121.\n\n[256] _Premi\u00e8re Promenade._\n\n[257] _Ibid._\n\n[258] E.g., H\u00f6lderlin and Jean Polonius.\n\n[259] A striking passage on solitude will be found in the _Laws of\nManu_, IV, 240-42. (\u201cAlone a being is born: alone he goes down to\ndeath.\u201d His kin forsake him at the grave; his only hope then is in the\ncompanionship of the Law of righteousness [Dharma]. \u201cWith the Law as\nhis companion he crosses the darkness difficult to cross.\u201d)\n\n[260] \u201cBe good and you will be lonely.\u201d\n\n[261] In the poem by the Swiss poet C. Didier from which Longfellow\u2019s\npoem seems to be derived, the youth who persists in scaling the heights\nin spite of all warnings is Byron!\n\n    Et Byron \u2026 dispara\u00eet aux yeux du p\u00e2tre \u00e9pouvant\u00e9.\n\n(See E. Est\u00e8ve, _Byron en France_, 147).\n\n[262] In the _M\u00e9moires d\u2019Outre-Tombe_ Chateaubriand quotes from the\njottings of Napoleon on the island of Elba. \u201cMon c\u0153ur se refuse aux\njoies communes comme \u00e0 la douleur ordinaire.\u201d He says of Napoleon\nelsewhere in the same work: \u201cAu fond il ne tenait \u00e0 rien: homme\nsolitaire, il se suffisait; le malheur ne fit que le rendre au d\u00e9sert\nde sa vie.\u201d\n\n[263] The solitude of the \u201cgenius\u201d is already marked in Blake:\n\n    O! why was I born with a different face?\n    Why was I not born like the rest of my race?\n    When I look, each one starts; when I speak, I offend;\n    Then I\u2019m silent and passive and lose every friend.\n\n[264] Froude\u2019s _Carlyle_, II, 377.\n\n[265] No finer lines on solitude are found in English than those in\nwhich Wordsworth relates how from his room at Cambridge he could look\nout on\n\n    The antechapel where the statue stood\n    Of Newton with his prism and silent face,\n    The marble index of a mind for ever\n    Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.\n\n                             (_Prelude_ III, 61-63.)\n\nCf. also the line in the Sonnet on Milton:\n\n    His soul was like a star and dwelt apart.\n\n[266] _Eth. Nic._, 1109 b.\n\n[267] James Thomson in _The City of Dreadful Night_ says that he would\nhave entered hell\n\n            gratified to gain\n    That positive eternity of pain\n    Instead of this insufferable inane.\n\n[268] R. Canat has taken this phrase as the title of his treatment of\nthe subject: _La Solitude morale dans le mouvement romantique_.\n\n[269] Decadent Rome had the equivalent of Des Esseintes. Seneca (_To\nLucilius_, CXXII) speaks of those who seek to affirm their originality\nand attract attention to themselves by doing everything differently\nfrom other people and, \u201cut ita dicam, _retro vivunt_.\u201d\n\n[270] Tennyson has traced this change of the \u00e6sthetic dream into a\nnightmare in his _Palace of Art_.\n\n[271] _Contemporains_, I, 332.\n\n[272] _G\u00e9nie du Christianisme_, Pt. II, Livre III, ch. IX.\n\n[273]\n\n    L\u2019orage est dans ma voix, l\u2019\u00e9clair est sur ma bouche;\n    Aussi, loin de m\u2019aimer, voil\u00e0 qu\u2019ils tremblent tous,\n    Et quand j\u2019ouvre les bras, on tombe \u00e0 mes genoux.\n\n[274]\n\n    Que vous ai-je donc fait pour \u00eatre votre \u00e9lu?\n    \u2026\n    H\u00e9las! je suis, Seigneur, puissant et solitaire,\n    Laissez-moi m\u2019endormir du sommeil de la terre!\n\n[275]\n\n    Le juste opposera le d\u00e9dain \u00e0 l\u2019absence\n    Et ne r\u00e9pondra plus que par un froid silence\n    Au silence \u00e9ternel de la Divinit\u00e9.\n\n[276] See Sainte-Beuve\u2019s poetical epistle _A. M. Villemain_ (_Pens\u00e9es\nd\u2019Ao\u00fbt 1837_).\n\n[277] See _Masters of Modern French Criticism_, 233, 238.\n\n[278] Wordsworth writes\n\n      A piteous lot it were to flee from man\n    Yet not rejoice in Nature.\n\n                       (_Excursion_, IV, 514.)\n\nThis lot was Vigny\u2019s:\n\n    Ne me laisse jamais seul avec la Nature\n    Car je la connais trop pour n\u2019en avoir pas peur.\n\n[279] Madame Dorval.\n\n[280] _La Maison du Berger._ Note that in Wordsworth the \u201cstill sad\nmusic of humanity\u201d is very closely associated with nature.\n\n[281] _La Bouteille \u00e0 la Mer._\n\n[282] See Book IX of the _Nicomachean Ethics_.\n\n[283] \u201cAll salutary conditions have their root in strenuousness\u201d\n(appam\u0101da), says Buddha.\n\n[284] See _Masters of Modern French Criticism_, Essay on Taine,\n_passim_. Paul Bourget in his _Essais de Psychologie contemporaine_ (2\nvols.) has followed out during this period the survivals of the older\nromantic melancholy and their reinforcement by scientific determinism.\n\n[285] \u201cLe pauvre M. Arago, revenant un jour de l\u2019H\u00f4tel de Ville en 1848\napr\u00e8s une \u00e9pouvantable \u00e9meute, disait tristement \u00e0 l\u2019un de ses aides\nde camp au minist\u00e8re de la marine: \u2018En v\u00e9rit\u00e9 ces gens-l\u00e0 ne sont pas\nraisonnables.\u2019\u201d Doudan, _Lettres_, IV, 338.\n\n[286] See Preface (pp. viii-ix) to his _Souvenirs d\u2019enfance et de\njeunesse_ and my comment in _The New Laokoon_, 207-08.\n\n[287] Most of the political implications of the point of view I am\ndeveloping I am reserving for a volume I have in preparation to be\nentitled _Democracy and Imperialism_. Some of my conclusions will be\nfound in two articles in the (New York) _Nation: The Breakdown of\nInternationalism_ (June 17 and 24, 1915), and _The Political Influence\nof Rousseau_ (Jan. 18, 1917).\n\n[288] _Reden an die deutsche Nation_, XII.\n\n[289] I should perhaps allow for the happiness that may be experienced\nin moments of supernormal consciousness--something quite distinct from\nemotional or other intoxication. Fairly consistent testimony as to\nmoments of this kind is found in the records of the past from the early\nBuddhists down to Tennyson.\n\n[290] I scarcely need say that I am speaking of the man of science only\nin so far as he is purely naturalistic in his point of view. There may\nenter into the total personality of Edison or any particular man of\nscience other and very different elements.\n\n[291] M. Ren\u00e9 Berthelot has written a book on pragmatism and similar\ntendencies in contemporary philosophy entitled _Un Romantisme\nutilitaire_. I have not read it but the title alone is worth more than\nmost books on the subject I have read.\n\n[292] _Dedication of the \u00c6neis_ (1697).\n\n[293] _Adventure of one Hans Pfaal._\n\n[294] His attempt to rewrite _Hyperion_ from a humanitarian point of\nview is a dismal failure.\n\n[295] There is also a strong idyllic element in _Paradise Lost_ as\nRousseau (_Emile_, V) and Schiller (_Essay on Na\u00efve and Sentimental\nPoetry_) were among the first to point out. Critics may be found even\nto-day who, like Tennyson, prefer the passages which show a richly\npastoral imagination to the passages where the ethical imagination\nis required but where it does not seem to prevail sufficiently over\ntheology.\n\n[296] XII, 74.\n\n[297] _Three Philosophical Poets_, 188.\n\n[298] After telling of the days when \u201cil n\u2019y avait pour moi ni pass\u00e9\nni avenir et je go\u00fbtais \u00e0 la fois les d\u00e9lices de mille si\u00e8cles,\u201d\nSaint-Preux concludes: \u201cH\u00e9las! vous avez disparu comme un \u00e9clair. Cette\n\u00e9ternit\u00e9 de bonheur ne fut qu\u2019un instant de ma vie. Le temps a repris\nsa lenteur dans les moments de mon d\u00e9sespoir, et l\u2019ennui mesure par\nlongues ann\u00e9es le reste infortun\u00e9 de mes jours\u201d (_Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse_,\nPt. III, Lettre VI).\n\n[299] The Church, so far as it has become humanitarian, has itself\nsuccumbed to naturalism.\n\n[300] _Sutta of the Great Decease._\n\n[301] If a man recognizes the supreme r\u00f4le of fiction or illusion in\nlife while proceeding in other respects on Kantian principles, he\nwill reach results similar to the \u201cAs-if Philosophy\u201d (_Philosophie\ndes Als Ob_) of Vaihinger, a leading authority on Kant and co-editor\nof the _Kantstudien_. This work, though not published until 1911, was\ncomposed, the author tells us in his preface, as early as 1875-78. It\nwill be found to anticipate very strikingly pragmatism and various\nother isms in which philosophy has been proclaiming so loudly of late\nits own bankruptcy.\n\n[302] \u201cC\u2019est en vain qu\u2019on voudrait assigner \u00e0 la vie un but, au sens\nhumain du mot.\u201d _L\u2019Evolution cr\u00e9atrice_, 55.\n\n[303] _Metaphysics_, 1078 b.\n\n[304] In the beginning was the Word! To seek to substitute, like Faust,\nthe Deed for the Word is to throw discrimination to the winds. The\nfailure to discriminate as to the _quality_ of the deed is responsible\nfor the central sophistry of _Faust_ (see p. 331) and perhaps of our\nmodern life in general.\n\n[305] \u201cJ\u2019adore la libert\u00e9; j\u2019abhorre la g\u00eane, la peine,\nl\u2019assujettissement.\u201d _Confessions_, Livre I.\n\n[306] _Analects_, XI, CXI. Cf. _ibid._, VI, CXX: \u201cTo give one\u2019s self\nearnestly to the duties due to men, and while respecting spiritual\nbeings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.\u201d Much that has\npassed current as religion in all ages has made its chief appeal, not\nto awe but to wonder; and like many humanists Confucius was somewhat\nindifferent to the marvellous. \u201cThe subjects on which the Master did\nnot talk were: extraordinary things, feats of strength, disorder and\nspiritual beings\u201d (_ibid._, VII, CXX).\n\n[307] One of the last Chinese, I am told, to measure up to the\nConfucian standard was Ts\u00eang Kuo-fan (1811-1872) who issued forth\nfrom poverty, trained a peasant soldiery and, more than any other one\nperson, put down the Taiping Rebellion.\n\n[308] See J. Barth\u00e9lemy Saint-Hilaire\u2019s Introduction to his translation\nof the _Nicomachean Ethics_, p. cxlix.\n\n[309] _Eth. Nic._, 1122-25.\n\n[310] I have in mind such passages as _P._, VIII, 76-78, 92-96; _N._,\nVI, 1-4; _N._, XI, 13-16.\n\n[311] \u201cII n\u2019y eut jamais pour moi d\u2019interm\u00e9diaire entre tout et rien.\u201d\n_Confessions_, Livre VII.\n\n[312] Some wag, it will be remembered, suggested as an alternative\ntitle for this work: _Wild Religions I have known_.\n\n[313] _Letters_, II, 298; cf. _ibid._, 291: \u201cI have never known a life\nless wisely controlled or less helped by the wisdom of others than his.\nThe whole retrospect of it is pathetic; waste, confusion, ruin of one\nof the most gifted and sweetest natures the world ever knew.\u201d\n\n[314] _Nic. Eth._, 1145 b. The opposition between Socrates or Plato\nand Aristotle, when put thus baldly, is a bit misleading. Socrates\nemphasized the importance of practice (\u03bc\u03b5\u03bb\u03ad\u03c4\u03b7) in the acquisition of\nvirtue, and Plato has made much of habit in the _Laws_.\n\n[315] _Analects_, II, CIV.\n\n[316] This belief the Oriental has embodied in the doctrine of Karma.\n\n[317] \u201cLa seule habitude qu\u2019on doit laisser prendre \u00e0 l\u2019enfant est de\nn\u2019en contractor aucune.\u201d _Emile_, Livre I.\n\n[318] Emile was to be trained to be a cabinet-maker.\n\n[319] _Eth. Nic._, 1172 b.\n\n[320] _Doctrine of the Mean_ (c. XXXIII, v. 2).\n\n[321] See his poem _Ibo_ in _Les Contemplations_.\n\n[322] La. 55, p. 51. (In my references La. stands for Lao-tz\u016d, Li. for\nLieh-tz\u016d, Ch. for Chuang-tz\u016d. The first number gives the chapter; the\nsecond number the page in Wieger\u2019s edition.)\n\n[323] Ch. 22 C, p. 391.\n\n[324] Ch. 12 n, p. 305.\n\n[325] Ch. 11 D, p. 291. Ibid. 15, p. 331. See also Li. 31, p. 113.\n\n[326] Ch. 19 B, p. 357.\n\n[327] Ch. 19 L, p. 365.\n\n[328] Ch. 10, pp. 279-80.\n\n[329] Ch. 9, pp. 274-75.\n\n[330] Ch. 29, pp. 467 ff.\n\n[331] Ch. 2, p. 223.\n\n[332] La. 27, p. 37.\n\n[333] Ch. 8 A, p. 271.\n\n[334] Li. 5, p. 143.\n\n[335] Ch. 14 C, p. 321.\n\n[336] For an extreme form of Epicureanism see the ideas of Yang-chu,\nLi. 7, pp. 165 ff. For stoical apathy see Ch. 6 C., p. 253. For fate\nsee Li. 6, p. 165, Ch. 6 K, p. 263.\n\n[337] Ch. 33, pp. 499 ff.\n\n[338] Ch. 33 C, p. 503.\n\n[339] Bk. III, Part 2, ch. 9.\n\n[340] Li. 3, p. 111. Ch. 24, pp. 225-27.\n\n[341] Ch. 6 E, p. 255.\n\n[342] See _The Religion of the Samurai: a Study of Zen Philosophy_\n(1913) by Kaiten Nukariya (himself a Zenist), p. 23.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX OF NAMES\n\n\n    Abelard, 238.\n\n    Addison, 12, 35, 37, 38, 202 _n._\n\n    \u00c6schylus, 292, 359.\n\n    Ajax, 144.\n\n    Allen, Grant, 299 _n._\n\n    Amiel, 315.\n\n    Ananda, 370.\n\n    Ang\u00e9lique, Mother, 123.\n\n    d\u2019Angoul\u00eame, Marguerite, 251.\n\n    Antisthenes, 244.\n\n    Apollonius of Rhodes, 104.\n\n    Aquinas, St. Thomas, 101, 112.\n\n    Arago, 244 _n._\n\n    Ariosto, 264.\n\n    Aristophanes, 181, 243, 285.\n\n    Aristotle, xv _n._, xix, xxi, xxii, 4, 12 _n._, 15-19, 24, 28\n    _n._, 29, 33, 47, 148, 166, 171, 173, 202, 205 _n._, 211, 222,\n    237, 253, 254, 295, 329, 330, 343, 349, 354, 355, 363, 365,\n    372, 374, 381, 382, 385, 386, 389, 390.\n\n    Arnold, Matthew, xi, 281, 308, 315 _n._, 323, 325, 351.\n\n    Augustine, St., 116, 213, 224, 252, 273, 304 _n._\n\n\n    Bacon, F., xxi _n._, 26, 63, 64, 119, 122.\n\n    Bacon, Roger, 26.\n\n    Bagehot, W., 25, 41, 159, 231 _n._, 377.\n\n    Balzac, 11, 58, 106, 107, 192, 193.\n\n    Barbauld, Mrs., 154.\n\n    Barbey d\u2019Aurevilly, 92, 324.\n\n    Baudelaire, 63, 222, 230, 251, 319, 321, 324 _n._, 332, 350.\n\n    Bayle, Pierre, 114.\n\n    Beaumarchais, 2.\n\n    Bergson, Henri, xii, xiii, 1, 147, 167, 186, 200, 281, 295,\n    300, 364, 372.\n\n    Berlioz, 79, 112, 162, 211, 215.\n\n    Berthelot, Ren\u00e9, 350 _n._\n\n    Bertin, Edouard, 275 _n._\n\n    Blake, William, 47, 94, 152, 168, 196, 197, 242, 254-256, 297,\n    327 _n._\n\n    Boehme, Jacob, 46, 254, 255, 258.\n\n    Boileau, 5, 11, 16, 20, 21, 27, 66, 76, 87, 268.\n\n    Bossuet, 251, 304 _n._, 392.\n\n    Boswell, 356.\n\n    Boufflers, Mme. de, 129.\n\n    Bourget, Paul, xvi, 343 _n._\n\n    Bowles, Samuel, 101.\n\n    Brandes, G., 262 _n._\n\n    Brooke, Henry, 258.\n\n    Broussais, 215 _n._\n\n    Browne, Sir Thomas, 286.\n\n    Brownell, W. C., 67.\n\n    Browning, Robert, 211-213, 216, 217, 234, 236 _n._, 287, 307.\n\n    Bruneti\u00e8re, F., 28.\n\n    Buddha, xix-xxi, 149-153, 272 _n._, 343, 349, 367, 370, 372,\n    381.\n\n    Buffon, 56, 57, 66.\n\n    Bulwer-Lytton, 62.\n\n    Bunyan, 133.\n\n    Burke, Edmund, 128, 142, 147, 346, 380.\n\n    Burns, Robert, 229.\n\n    Burton, 143 _n._\n\n    Butcher, S. H., 312 _n._\n\n    Byrom, John, 257, 258.\n\n    Byron, 54, 101, 161 _n._, 181, 186, 220, 223 _n._, 228, 229,\n    232, 266, 269, 280, 283, 308, 318, 322, 324, 327 _n._\n\n\n    Calvin, 118.\n\n    Canat, R., 332 _n._\n\n    Carlyle, 52, 53, 147, 154, 159 _n._, 193, 300, 309, 327-329.\n\n    Catullus, 229, 285.\n\n    Cervantes, 99, 176, 223, 224, 264.\n\n    C\u00e9zanne, 63.\n\n    Chapelain, 28.\n\n    Charpentier, Julie von, 226.\n\n    Chateaubriand, 50, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 91, 126, 134, 151, 155,\n    159 _n._, 206, 207, 209, 227-229, 232, 249, 252, 276-278, 281,\n    283-285, 297 _n._, 304, 309, 310, 313, 316 _n._, 318, 322, 324\n    _n._, 327 _n._, 333, 334.\n\n    Chatterton, 90, 320, 321.\n\n    Chaucer, 334.\n\n    Chesterfield, 24, 25.\n\n    Chesterton, G., 322.\n\n    Christ (Jesus), 36, 52, 115, 254, 265, 304, 336, 359, 360, 379.\n\n    Cicero, xxii, 134, 273 _n._\n\n    Clifford, W. K., 138, 139.\n\n    Coleridge, Hartley, 231 _n._\n\n    Coleridge, Samuel T., 51, 52, 126, 146 _n._, 154, 159 _n._,\n    181, 296, 303, 305, 319 _n._\n\n    Common, T., 198 _n._\n\n    Confucius, xix-xxi, 176, 211 _n._, 380, 386, 390.\n\n    Congreve, 35 _n._\n\n    Constant, Benjamin, 316.\n\n    Cortez, F., 277.\n\n    Cowley, 12.\n\n    Cox, Kenyon, 64 _n._, 291.\n\n    Croce, Benedetto, xiii.\n\n\n    Dante, 112, 215, 259, 357, 358.\n\n    Daunou, 99.\n\n    Davidson, John, 90.\n\n    Descartes, xvi, 26, 27, 138, 168, 169, 172, 176, 200.\n\n    Dewey, John, xiii, 388.\n\n    Diderot, xi, xii, 38, 70, 100, 122, 126, 130, 191, 192, 326.\n\n    Didier, C., 327 _n._\n\n    Disraeli, 62.\n\n    Dorval, Mme., 337 _n._\n\n    Doudan, 214, 304 _n._, 344 _n._\n\n    Dryden, 13, 34, 223, 353, 354.\n\n    Du Camp, M., 215 _n._\n\n    Duff, 40 _n._\n\n    D\u2019Urf\u00e9, 76.\n\n    Duval, G., 297 _n._\n\n\n    Eckermann, 96, 309.\n\n    Edison, 350.\n\n    Edwards, Jonathan, 123, 124, 139.\n\n    Elton, O., 206.\n\n    Emerson, R. W., x, 67, 93, 111, 176, 257, 348.\n\n    Epicurus, 270.\n\n    Euripides, 183, 204, 244, 322 _n._\n\n    Evelyn, 6, 274.\n\n\n    Faguet, E., 30.\n\n    Fawcett, E. D., xv _n._\n\n    Fichte, 241, 347.\n\n    FitzGerald, 204.\n\n    Flaubert, xvi _n._, 67, 87, 105, 107-109, 218, 299, 314,\n    339-342.\n\n    Fontenelle, 27.\n\n    Foster, John, 8, 9, 96.\n\n    France, A., 88, 265, 324 _n._, 370.\n\n    Francis, St., 222.\n\n    Fran\u00e7ois, A. F., 7 _n._\n\n    Francueil, Mme. de, 155.\n\n    Froude, 309, 327 _n._\n\n\n    Galileo, 119.\n\n    Galsworthy, John, 252.\n\n    Gautier, T., 60, 61, 67, 93 _n._, 108, 230, 318 _n._, 320, 341.\n\n    Geffroy, A., 129 _n._\n\n    Gerard, A., 40 _n._\n\n    G\u00e9rard de Nerval, 230, 231 _n._\n\n    Gerould, Katherine F., 49 _n._\n\n    Gisborne, John, 227 _n._, 391.\n\n    Gissing, George, 309.\n\n    Godard, Colonel, 73.\n\n    Godwin, Mary, 226.\n\n    Goethe, xi, xvii, xviii, 2, 19, 22, 23, 32, 73, 85, 86, 89, 92,\n    96, 101, 103 _n._, 147, 170, 171, 192, 215, 224, 246, 252, 275,\n    309, 310, 331, 339, 346, 360-363, 378, 389.\n\n    Gomperz, Th., 268 _n._\n\n    Gran, Gerhard, 78 _n._\n\n    Gray, 311, 323.\n\n    Greville, F., 6.\n\n    Grillparzer, 191.\n\n    Grimm, H., 360.\n\n    Gu\u00e9rin, M. de, 281, 342.\n\n    Gustavus III, 129.\n\n\n    Hardy, T., 191.\n\n    Havemeyer, H. O., 141.\n\n    Hawthorne, N., 67, 326, 327.\n\n    Hazlitt, 97, 181, 186 _n._, 224, 235, 236, 289.\n\n    Hearn, Lafcadio, 111.\n\n    Heidigger, 7, 8.\n\n    Heine, 31, 221, 265.\n\n    Hensel, P., 194 _n._\n\n    Heraclitus, xiii _n._\n\n    Herder, 97, 98.\n\n    Herford, C. H., 359.\n\n    Herondas, 104.\n\n    Hettner, H., 194 _n._, 292 _n._\n\n    Hitchener, Elizabeth, 266.\n\n    Hobbes, 12, 13, 131, 192, 196, 197.\n\n    Hoffmann, E. T. A., 86, 262.\n\n    H\u00f6lderlin, 81, 82, 86, 90, 98, 110, 325 _n._\n\n    Homer, 38, 80, 92, 144, 146, 208, 295, 311, 312, 391.\n\n    Horace, 24, 36, 77, 81, 115, 285, 379, 391.\n\n    d\u2019Houdetot, Mme., 227.\n\n    Huch, Ricarda, 184, 261.\n\n    Hugo, 50, 52, 57, 59, 94, 140-142, 146, 189, 190, 213, 214,\n    236, 297 _n._, 307 _n._, 318 _n._, 340, 392, 393.\n\n    Hurd, 31.\n\n    Hutcheson, 44, 121, 131, 179.\n\n    Huysmans, 332.\n\n\n    Ibsen, H., 330.\n\n\n    James, W., xiii, 78, 181, 183, 384.\n\n    Johnson, Dr. Samuel, xx, 12, 21, 25, 33, 46, 50, 69, 71, 72,\n    91, 174, 223, 256, 348, 356, 357, 360, 362, 370.\n\n    Jonson, Ben, 209.\n\n    Joubert, 134, 158, 172 _n._, 179, 221, 253, 314, 393.\n\n\n    Kamo Ch\u014dmei, 272 _n._\n\n    Kant, xvi, 40, 42, 43, 70, 370.\n\n    Keats, 316 _n._, 321 _n._, 357, 358, 360.\n\n    Keble, 285.\n\n    Kepler, 119.\n\n    Kipling, 312.\n\n    Kleist, H. von, 160 _n._\n\n    K\u00fchn, Sophie von, 226.\n\n    K\u00fchnemann, E., 194 _n._\n\n\n    La Bruy\u00e8re, 11, 125.\n\n    La Fontaine, 71, 72, 157, 285, 313 _n._\n\n    La Harpe, 100.\n\n    Lamartine, 61, 103, 126, 187, 236, 279, 281, 292 _n._, 310.\n\n    Lamb, Charles, 91, 92, 209.\n\n    La Motte Houdard, 55.\n\n    Lanson, Gustave, xvii, xviii.\n\n    La Place, 138.\n\n    La Rochefoucauld, 160.\n\n    Lasserre, Pierre, 140.\n\n    Law, 258.\n\n    Leconte de Lisle, xiv, 149, 299, 317, 324, 341, 365.\n\n    Legouis, E., 249 _n._, 250 _n._\n\n    Lema\u00eetre, Jules, 106, 127, 141, 155, 332.\n\n    Lenau, 91.\n\n    Lenclos, Ninon de, 307.\n\n    Le N\u00f4tre, 275.\n\n    Leopardi, 238.\n\n    Levasseur, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, 78, 220, 224.\n\n    Levet, 356.\n\n    Lillo, 190 _n._\n\n    Lionardo da Vinci, 117.\n\n    Littr\u00e9, 234.\n\n    Locke, 12, 26, 32.\n\n    Longfellow, H. W., 327 _n._\n\n    Longinus, 37.\n\n    Lorrain, C., 274 _n._\n\n    Loti, Pierre, 232.\n\n    Louis XIV, 154.\n\n    Lowell, J. R., 10, 270, 286, 287.\n\n    Lucchetti, G., 297 _n._\n\n    Lucretius, 270.\n\n\n    Maeterlinck, 52, 295, 296.\n\n    Maigron, L., xvi, 61 _n._, 215 _n._\n\n    Malherbe, 11.\n\n    Malesherbes, de, 84.\n\n    Manu, 326 _n._\n\n    Marat, 340.\n\n    Marinetti, 208.\n\n    Marini, Cavalier, 353.\n\n    Marlborough, 202 _n._\n\n    Mary, the Virgin, 221, 222.\n\n    Masson, P. M., 302, 303 _n._, 304.\n\n    Mather, F. J., Jr., 192.\n\n    Maupassant, 203.\n\n    Mazzini, 338.\n\n    Mercier, 100.\n\n    Meredith, J. C., 40 _n._\n\n    M\u00e9rim\u00e9e, P., 203.\n\n    Michelet, 209.\n\n    Milton, 22, 25, 114, 323, 328 _n._, 358.\n\n    Mirabeau, Bailli de, 74.\n\n    Mohammed, 91.\n\n    Moli\u00e8re, 29, 30, 76, 214, 231, 268.\n\n    Montaigne, 260.\n\n    Moore, George, 128.\n\n    More, Henry, 109.\n\n    More, Paul Elmer, 261 _n._\n\n    Mulgrave, 13.\n\n    Musset, A. de, 126, 161 _n._, 214, 216, 231 _n._, 232-234, 236,\n    262 _n._, 310, 311, 328, 338.\n\n\n    Napoleon, 24, 58, 138, 317, 327, 330, 346.\n\n    Nero, 313.\n\n    Newman, Cardinal, 258, 272, 391, 392.\n\n    Newton, 2, 26, 27, 41.\n\n    Nietzsche, 25, 95, 144, 197-199, 242, 245, 246, 250, 260, 263,\n    327, 352.\n\n    Nisard, D., 23.\n\n    Norton, C. E., 90, 158, 163, 384.\n\n    Novalis, 74, 86, 94, 99 _n._, 110, 166, 186 _n._, 226, 241,\n    256, 262, 300.\n\n\n    d\u2019Ortigue, J., 215 _n._\n\n    Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 295, 296.\n\n    Ossian, 38, 276.\n\n    Ovid, 92, 129.\n\n\n    Parmenides, xiii _n._\n\n    Pascal, 8, 24, 28-30, 53, 71, 123, 138, 151, 167, 177, 178,\n    200, 246, 266, 304, 375, 393.\n\n    Pater, W., 292.\n\n    Paul, St., 78, 349.\n\n    Peacock, 229.\n\n    Peladan, Jos\u00e9phin, 324 _n._\n\n    Pepys, 6 _n._\n\n    Pericles, 24, 60.\n\n    Perrault, 27.\n\n    Peterborough, Earl of, 232.\n\n    Peter the Hermit, 222.\n\n    Petit de Julleville, 188.\n\n    Petrarch, xi, xii, 224, 273.\n\n    Pindar, 38, 182, 311, 316, 382.\n\n    Plato, xiii, xx, 29, 146, 161, 166, 171, 211 _n._, 220, 221,\n    253, 294, 359, 360, 385.\n\n    Pliny, the Younger, 298 _n._\n\n    Plotinus, 171 _n._, 254.\n\n    Plutarch, 84.\n\n    Poe, E. A., 50, 63, 230, 292, 321, 326, 354, 355.\n\n    Polonius, Jean, 325 _n._\n\n    Pope, 6 _n._, 12, 25, 33, 34, 38, 91, 174, 177, 268.\n\n    Poussin, 274 _n._\n\n    Pr\u00e9vost-Paradol, 231 _n._\n\n\n    Rabelais, 117, 268.\n\n    Racine, 100.\n\n    Racowitza, Princess von, 62 _n._\n\n    Radcliffe, Anne, 106.\n\n    Rambouillet, Marquise de, 75.\n\n    Raphael, 289, 290.\n\n    Rashdall, Hastings, 131 _n._\n\n    Rawnsley, Canon, 328.\n\n    R\u00e9gnier, M., 62.\n\n    Renan, xi, 133, 183, 203, 238, 251, 265, 304, 323, 342, 344,\n    345.\n\n    Revon, M., 272 _n._\n\n    Richardson, 208.\n\n    Richter, Jean Paul, 93, 264.\n\n    Ritter, E., 134 _n._\n\n    Rivarol, xxiii, 215, 225.\n\n    Robespierre, M., 135, 136, 180, 340.\n\n    Rochambeau, 278.\n\n    Ronsard, 11.\n\n    Rosa, Salvator, 274.\n\n    Rostand, 76 _n._, 89, 295.\n\n    Rouge, I., 96 _n._\n\n    Rousseau, ix, xv _n._, xvii, xviii, 1, 5, 7, 23-25, 30, 32, 34,\n    43-45, 47, 50, 54, 58, 60, 61, 63, 68, 70, 72-82, 85-87, 90,\n    93, 97, 98, 102-104, 106-108, 110-112, 114, 115, 117, 119, 122,\n    123, 126-132, 135, 136, 140, 143, 144, 147, 153-158, 160-167,\n    174, 175, 179-181, 183, 185, 187, 188, 193-197, 210, 216, 218,\n    220, 221, 224, 227, 229, 234, 236, 245, 247, 248, 253, 256,\n    258, 263, 267, 269, 270, 275, 278, 279, 281, 282, 284-286, 289,\n    292, 300, 302, 303, 305-307, 309, 314, 317 _n._, 322, 325, 326,\n    330, 331, 342, 345-349, 352, 358 _n._, 361, 362, 364, 370, 373,\n    375, 377, 379, 380, 382, 383, 386-388.\n\n    Ruskin, 83, 90, 158, 163, 164, 269, 279, 290, 301, 328, 384.\n\n    Rymer, T., 13, 14.\n\n\n    Sainte-Beuve, xi, 14, 50, 57, 58, 93 _n._, 305, 313, 333, 336,\n    342.\n\n    Saint-Evremond, 39, 166.\n\n    Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy, 270.\n\n    Saint-Hilaire, J. Barth\u00e9lemy, 381 _n._\n\n    Saint-Pierre, B. de, 122.\n\n    Sand, George, 107, 232, 233 _n._, 262 _n._, 318 _n._, 328,\n    338-342, 344.\n\n    Sandys, J. E., 311 _n._\n\n    Santayana, G., 77, 361.\n\n    Sappho, 229.\n\n    Sargent, John, 291.\n\n    Scaliger, 19, 144, 146, 273.\n\n    Schelling, 293-295.\n\n    Schiller, 43, 44, 70, 77, 80-82, 96-98, 102, 110, 112, 129, 132\n    _n._, 140, 141, 241, 307 _n._, 312, 330, 358 _n._\n\n    Schlegel, A. W., 92, 94-97, 101, 149, 241, 293.\n\n    Schlegel, F., 95-99, 148, 149, 182, 241, 242, 245, 251, 263-265\n    _n._\n\n    Schomberg, Marshal, 73.\n\n    Schopenhauer, 149, 307 _n._\n\n    Scott, Walter, 232 _n._, 260.\n\n    Seilli\u00e8re, E., 194 _n._, 307 _n._\n\n    Senancour, 308, 315, 323.\n\n    Seneca, 216 _n._, 313 _n._, 332 _n._\n\n    Shackleton, Sir Ernest, 277.\n\n    Shadwell, T., 6 _n._\n\n    Shaftesbury, 44, 45, 121, 122, 131, 179, 196, 197, 207, 253,\n    257, 294, 324, 357.\n\n    Shakespeare, 21 _n._, 33, 38, 41, 99, 208, 264, 281, 290, 295.\n\n    Shelley, 82, 137, 161, 180, 196, 206, 224, 225 _n._-228, 256,\n    266, 282-284 _n._, 291, 310 _n._, 321 _n._, 358-360, 376, 391.\n\n    Shelley, Mrs., 161, 321 _n._\n\n    Sherman, Stuart P., 243.\n\n    Shute, R., xxii _n._\n\n    Sidney, Sir Phillip, 6, 18.\n\n    Smith, Horace, 227.\n\n    Socrates, 1, 112, 146, 147, 175, 195, 242-245, 266, 272, 356,\n    362, 374, 375, 385.\n\n    Solomon, 295.\n\n    Solon, xxi.\n\n    Sophocles, 23, 48, 53, 174, 204, 358, 360.\n\n    Spingarn, J. E., 65 _n._\n\n    Sta\u00ebl, Mme. de, 45, 99, 101, 132 _n._, 306, 316.\n\n    Stedman, E. C., 230.\n\n    Steele, 6 _n._, 127 _n._\n\n    Stendhal, 192, 213, 307 _n._, 317.\n\n    Stephen, Leslie, 82 _n._, 107, 258.\n\n    Sterne, L., 144.\n\n    Stob\u00e6us, 311 _n._\n\n    Swanwick, Miss, 288 _n._\n\n    Swift, 8, 266, 267.\n\n    Synge, 243.\n\n\n    Tagore, 149.\n\n    Taine, 28, 89, 170, 188, 237, 275, 337, 343 _n._\n\n    Talleyrand, 24, 25.\n\n    Tasso, 85, 89.\n\n    Taylor, Jeremy, 115.\n\n    Tennyson, 92, 197, 202 _n._, 312, 332 _n._, 348 _n._, 358, 393.\n\n    Theocritus, 238, 281, 285.\n\n    Thiers, 321.\n\n    Thomson, James (author of _The Seasons_), 8, 274 _n._\n\n    Thomson, James (\u201cB.V.\u201d), 332 _n._\n\n    Tiberius, 313.\n\n    Tieck, 94, 159 _n._, 241 _n._, 243, 292.\n\n    Titian, 291.\n\n    Tolstoy, 197, 198, 352.\n\n    Ts\u00eang Kuo-fan, 381 _n._\n\n    Turner, 290.\n\n    Twain, Mark, 326.\n\n\n    Uhland, 293.\n\n\n    Vaihinger, H., 370.\n\n    Vida, 144.\n\n    Vidal, Pierre, 238.\n\n    Vigny, A. de., 186 _n._, 305, 320, 324, 335-338, 365.\n\n    Villemain, 336 _n._\n\n    Villers, 45.\n\n    Villiers de l\u2019Isle Adam, 88, 322, 324 _n._\n\n    Villon, 238.\n\n    Violet, 278.\n\n    Virgil, 19, 271, 312, 354, 377.\n\n    Viviani, Emilia, 228.\n\n    Voltaire, 32-34, 39, 93 _n._, 100, 103, 119, 177, 216, 236\n    _n._, 369.\n\n\n    Wackenroder, 86.\n\n    Wagner, 170, 210, 230.\n\n    Wallace, E., 12 _n._\n\n    Walpole, H., 127, 314.\n\n    Walzel, O. F., 52 _n._, 160 _n._\n\n    Ward, Wilfrid, 62 _n._\n\n    Warens, Mme. de, 74, 134 _n._, 135, 236.\n\n    Wellington, 386.\n\n    Wesley, John, 258.\n\n    West, Richard, 323.\n\n    Westbrook, Harriet, 226.\n\n    Whitman, Walt, 137, 166, 286, 349.\n\n    Wilde, Oscar, 238.\n\n    Williams, Mrs., 226.\n\n    Wolseley, R., 65.\n\n    Wordsworth, xvii, 1, 52, 74, 83, 91, 92 _n._, 145, 146, 166\n    _n._, 171, 197, 237, 247-250 _n._, 256, 262 _n._, 272, 277,\n    279, 283-285, 293, 296, 301-303, 322 _n._, 328, 337 _n._, 343,\n    351.\n\n\n    Xenophon, 175 _n._\n\n\n    Yalden, 50.\n\n    Yeats, W. B., 149.\n\n    Young, E., 37, 38, 40.\n\n\n    Zola, 58, 103, 106, 107, 187, 220.","title":"Rousseau and Romanticism","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":137133}