{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_5428/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_5428","id":"gutenberg_5428","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5428","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","English essays","Poetry"],"text":"Produced by Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA DEFENCE OF POETRY AND OTHER ESSAYS\n\nBy Percy Bysshe Shelley\n\n\n\n   ON LOVE\n   ON LIFE IN A FUTURE STATE\n   ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH SPECULATIONS\n   ON METAPHYSICS SPECULATIONS\n   ON MORALS\n   ON THE LITERATURE, THE ARTS AND THE MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS\n   ON THE SYMPOSIUM, OR PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO\n   A DEFENCE OF POETRY\n\n\n\n\n\nON LOVE\n\nWhat is love? Ask him who lives, what is life? ask him who adores,\nwhat is God?\n\nI know not the internal constitution of other men, nor even thine,\nwhom I now address. I see that in some external attributes they\nresemble me, but when, misled by that appearance, I have thought\nto appeal to something in common, and unburthen my inmost soul to\nthem, I have found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant\nand savage land. The more opportunities they have afforded me for\nexperience, the wider has appeared the interval between us, and\nto a greater distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn.\nWith a spirit ill fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble\nthrough its tenderness, I have everywhere sought sympathy and have\nfound only repulse and disappointment.\n\nThou demandest what is love? It is that powerful attraction towards\nall that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we\nfind within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void,\nand seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we\nexperience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood;\nif we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were\nborn anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's\nnerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes\nshould kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of\nmotionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with\nthe heart's best blood. This is Love. This is the bond and the\nsanction which connects not only man with man, but with everything\nwhich exists. We are born into the world, and there is something\nwithin us which, from the instant that we live, more and more\nthirsts after its likeness. It is probably in correspondence with\nthis law that the infant drains milk from the bosom of its mother;\nthis propensity develops itself with the development of our nature.\nWe dimly see within our intellectual nature a miniature as it were\nof our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise,\nthe ideal prototype of everything excellent or lovely that we are\ncapable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. Not only\nthe portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest\nparticles of which our nature is composed;[Footnote: These words\nare ineffectual and metaphorical. Most words are so--No help!] a\nmirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness;\na soul within our soul that describes a circle around its proper\nparadise, which pain, and sorrow, and evil dare not overleap. To\nthis we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that they should\nresemble or correspond with it. The discovery of its antitype; the\nmeeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own;\nan imagination which should enter into and seize upon the subtle\nand delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and\nunfold in secret; with a frame whose nerves, like the chords of\ntwo exquisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful\nvoice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own; and of a combination\nof all these in such proportion as the type within demands; this\nis the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends; and\nto attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the\nfaintest shadow of that, without the possession of which there\nis no rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence in\nsolitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human\nbeings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers,\nthe grass, and the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very\nleaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret\ncorrespondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless\nwind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the\nreeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something\nwithin the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless\nrapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like\nthe enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved\nsinging to you alone. Sterne says that, if he were in a desert,\nhe would love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead,\nman becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives\nis the mere husk of what once he was.\n\n[1815; publ. 1840]\n\n\n\nON LIFE\n\nLife and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel,\nis an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us\nthe wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of\nits transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.\nWhat are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the\nopinions which supported them; what is the birth and the extinction\nof religious and of political systems to life? What are the revolutions\nof the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements\nof which it is composed, compared with life? What is the universe\nof stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their\nmotions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great\nmiracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well\nthat we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once\nso certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would\notherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its\nobject.\n\nIf any artist, I do not say had executed, but had merely conceived\nin his mind the system of the sun, and the stars, and planets, they\nnot existing, and had painted to us in words, or upon canvas, the\nspectacle now afforded by the nightly cope of heaven, and illustrated it\nby the wisdom of astronomy, great would be our admiration. Or had\nhe imagined the scenery of this earth, the mountains, the seas,\nand the rivers; the grass, and the flowers, and the variety of\nthe forms and masses of the leaves of the woods, and the colours\nwhich attend the setting and the rising sun, and the hues of the\natmosphere, turbid or serene, these things not before existing,\ntruly we should have been astonished, and it would not have been a\nvain boast to have said of such a man, 'Non merita nome di creatore,\nse non Iddio ed il Poeta.' But now these things are looked on with\nlittle wonder, and to be conscious of them with intense delight is\nesteemed to be the distinguishing mark of a refined and extraordinary\nperson. The multitude of men care not for them. It is thus with\nLife--that which includes all.\n\nWhat is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will,\nand we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is\nunremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments; we live\non, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it\nto think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being! Rightly\nused they may make evident our ignorance to ourselves, and this is\nmuch. For what are we? Whence do we come? and whither do we go? Is\nbirth the commencement, is death the conclusion of our being? What\nis birth and death?\n\nThe most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life,\nwhich, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which\nthe habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished\nin us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene\nof things. I confess that I am one of those who are unable to refuse\nmy assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that\nnothing exists but as it is perceived.\n\nIt is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle, and we\nmust be long convicted before we can be convinced that the solid\nuniverse of external things is 'such stuff as dreams are made\nof.' The shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind\nand matter, its fatal consequences in morals, and their violent\ndogmatism concerning the source of all things, had early conducted\nme to materialism. This materialism is a seducing system to young and\nsuperficial minds. It allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses\nthem from thinking. But I was discontented with such a view of\nthings as it afforded; man is a being of high aspirations, 'looking\nboth before and after,' whose 'thoughts wander through eternity,'\ndisclaiming alliance with transience and decay; incapable of\nimagining to himself annihilation; existing but in the future and\nthe past; being, not what he is, but what he has been and shall be.\nWhatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit\nwithin him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the\ncharacter of all life and being. Each is at once the centre and\nthe circumference; the point to which all things are referred, and\nthe line in which all things are contained. Such contemplations as\nthese, materialism and the popular philosophy of mind and matter\nalike forbid; they are only consistent with the intellectual system.\n\nIt is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation of arguments\nsufficiently familiar to those inquiring minds, whom alone a writer\non abstruse subjects can be conceived to address. Perhaps the most\nclear and vigorous statement of the intellectual system is to be\nfound in Sir William Drummond's Academical Questions.\n\nAfter such an exposition, it would be idle to translate into other\nwords what could only lose its energy and fitness by the change.\nExamined point by point, and word by word, the most discriminating\nintellects have been able to discern no train of thoughts in the\nprocess of reasoning, which does not conduct inevitably to the\nconclusion which has been stated.\n\nWhat follows from the admission? It establishes no new truth, it\ngives us no additional insight into our hidden nature, neither its\naction nor itself. Philosophy, impatient as it may be to build,\nhas much work yet remaining, as pioneer for the overgrowth of ages.\nIt makes one step towards this object; it destroys error, and the\nroots of error. It leaves, what it is too often the duty of the\nreformer in political and ethical questions to leave, a vacancy.\nIt reduces the mind to that freedom in which it would have acted,\nbut for the misuse of words and signs, the instruments of its own\ncreation. By signs, I would be understood in a wide sense, including\nwhat is properly meant by that term, and what I peculiarly mean. In\nthis latter sense, almost all familiar objects are signs, standing,\nnot for themselves, but for others, in their capacity of suggesting\none thought which shall lead to a train of thoughts. Our whole life\nis thus an education of error.\n\nLet us recollect our sensations as children. What a distinct and\nintense apprehension had we of the world and of ourselves! Many of\nthe circumstances of social life were then important to us which\nare now no longer so. But that is not the point of comparison on\nwhich I mean to insist. We less habitually distinguished all that\nwe saw and felt, from ourselves. They seemed as it were to constitute\none mass. There are some persons who, in this respect, are always\nchildren. Those who are subject to the state called reverie, feel\nas if their nature were dissolved into the surrounding universe,\nor as if the surrounding universe were absorbed into their being.\nThey are conscious of no distinction. And these are states which\nprecede, or accompany, or follow an unusually intense and vivid\napprehension of life. As men grow up this power commonly decays,\nand they become mechanical and habitual agents. Thus feelings and\nthen reasonings are the combined result of a multitude of entangled\nthoughts, and of a series of what are called impressions, planted\nby reiteration.\n\nThe view of life presented by the most refined deductions of the\nintellectual philosophy, is that of unity. Nothing exists but as\nit is perceived. The difference is merely nominal between those two\nclasses of thought, which are vulgarly distinguished by the names\nof ideas and of external objects. Pursuing the same thread of\nreasoning, the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to\nthat which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise\nfound to be a delusion. The words _I_, YOU, THEY, are not signs of\nany actual difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts\nthus indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the different\nmodifications of the one mind.\n\nLet it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts to the monstrous\npresumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one\nmind. I am but a portion of it. The words _I_, and YOU, and THEY,\nare grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and totally\ndevoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually attached to\nthem. It is difficult to find terms adequate to express so subtle\na conception as that to which the Intellectual Philosophy has\nconducted us. We are on that verge where words abandon us, and what\nwonder if we grow dizzy to look down the dark abyss of how little\nwe know. The relations of THINGS remain unchanged, by whatever system.\nBy the word THINGS is to be understood any object of thought, that\nis any thought upon which any other thought is employed, with an\napprehension of distinction.\n\nThe relations of these remain unchanged; and such is the material\nof our knowledge. What is the cause of life? that is, how was it\nproduced, or what agencies distinct from life have acted or act\nupon life? All recorded generations of mankind have weariedly busied\nthemselves in inventing answers to this question; and the result\nhas been,--Religion. Yet, that the basis of all things cannot be,\nas the popular philosophy alleges, mind, is sufficiently evident.\nMind, as far as we have any experience of its properties, and beyond\nthat experience how vain is argument! cannot create, it can only\nperceive. It is said also to be the cause. But cause is only a\nword expressing a certain state of the human mind with regard to\nthe manner in which two thoughts are apprehended to be related to\neach other. If any one desires to know how unsatisfactorily the\npopular philosophy employs itself upon this great question, they\nneed only impartially reflect upon the manner in which thoughts\ndevelop themselves in their minds. It is infinitely improbable that\nthe cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind.\n\n[1815; publ. 1840]\n\n\n\n\nON A FUTURE STATE\n\nIt has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings\nin all ages and nations that we continue to live after death,--that\napparent termination of all the functions of sensitive and intellectual\nexistence. Nor has mankind been contented with supposing that\nspecies of existence which some philosophers have asserted; namely,\nthe resolution of the component parts of the mechanism of a living\nbeing into its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest\nparticle of these sustaining the smallest diminution. They have\nclung to the idea that sensibility and thought, which they have\ndistinguished from the objects of it, under the several names\nof spirit and matter, is, in its own nature, less susceptible of\ndivision and decay, and that, when the body is resolved into its\nelements, the principle which animated it will remain perpetual\nand unchanged.  Some philosophers-and those to whom we are indebted\nfor the most stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose,\non the other hand, that intelligence is the mere result of certain\ncombinations among the particles of its objects; and those among\nthem who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition\nof a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent\nin all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into\nother forms.\n\nLet us trace the reasonings which in one and the other have conducted\nto these two opinions, and endeavour to discover what we ought to\nthink on a question of such momentous interest. Let us analyse the\nideas and feelings which constitute the contending beliefs, and\nwatchfully establish a discrimination between words and thoughts.\nLet us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and\nask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what\nlight we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its\ncomponent parts, which may enable, us to assert, with certainty,\nthat we do or do not live after death.\n\nThe examination of this subject requires that it should be stript\nof all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the common opinion\nof men. The existence of a God, and a future state of rewards and\npunishments, are totally foreign to the subject. If it be proved\nthat the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily\ncan be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state.\nIt has been asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice are to\nbe numbered among the attributes of the Deity, He will undoubtedly\ncompensate the virtuous who suffer during life, and that He will\nmake every sensitive being who does not deserve punishment, happy\nfor ever. But this view of the subject, which it would be tedious\nas well as superfluous to develop and expose, satisfies no person,\nand cuts the knot which we now seek to untie. Moreover, should it\nbe proved, on the other hand, that the mysterious principle which\nregulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent\nnor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the\nsame time, that the animating power survives the body which it\nhas animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent as\nthose through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future\nstate be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of\npunishment or reward.\n\nBy the word death, we express that condition in which natures\nresembling ourselves apparently cease to be that which they were.\nWe no longer hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have\nsensations and apprehensions, we no longer participate in them.\nWe know no more than that those external organs, and all that fine\ntexture of material frame, without which we have no experience that\nlife or thought can subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad.\nThe body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there\nremains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation\nof inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness\nof the world. The common observer is struck with dejection at the\nspectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave,\nthat the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic\nof his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice\nwas delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle\nfire; whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path--these\nhe cannot meet again. The organs of sense are destroyed, and the\nintellectual operations dependent on them have perished with their\nsources. How can a corpse see or feel? its eyes are eaten out, and\nits heart is black and without motion. What intercourse can two\nheaps of putrid clay and crumbling bones hold together? When you\ncan discover where the fresh colours of the faded flower abide,\nor the music of the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such\nare the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer,\nthough the popular religion often prevents him from confessing them\neven to himself.\n\nThe natural philosopher, in addition to the sensations common\nto all men inspired by the event of death, believes that he sees\nwith more certainty that it is attended with the annihilation of\nsentiment and thought. He observes the mental powers increase and\nfade with those of the body, and even accommodate themselves to\nthe most transitory changes of our physical nature. Sleep suspends\nmany of the faculties of the vital and intellectual principle;\ndrunkenness and disease will either temporarily or permanently\nderange them. Madness or idiotcy may utterly extinguish the most\nexcellent and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind gradually\nwithers; and as it grew and was strengthened with the body, so does\nit together with the body sink into decrepitude. Assuredly these\nare convincing evidences that so soon as the organs of the body\nare subjected to the laws of inanimate matter, sensation, and\nperception, and apprehension, are at an end.  It is probable that\nwhat we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the\nrelation between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass,\nof which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases\nto exist so soon as those parts change their position with regard\nto each other. Thus colour, and sound, and taste, and odour exist\nonly relatively. But let thought be considered as some peculiar\nsubstance, which permeates, and is the cause of, the animation of\nliving beings. Why should that substance be assumed to be something\nessentially distinct from all others, and exempt from subjection\nto those laws from which no other substance is exempt? It differs,\nindeed, from all other substances, as electricity, and light, and\nmagnetism, and the constituent parts of air and earth, severally\ndiffer from all others. Each of these is subject to change and\nto decay, and to conversion into other forms. Yet the difference\nbetween light and earth is scarcely greater than that which exists\nbetween life, or thought, and fire. The difference between the two\nformer was never alleged as an argument for the eternal permanence\nof either, in that form under which they first might offer themselves\nto our notice. Why should the difference between the two latter\nsubstances be an argument for the prolongation of the existence\nof one and not the other, when the existence of both has arrived\nat their apparent termination? To say that fire exists without\nmanifesting any of the properties of fire, such as light, heat,\netc., or that the principle of life exists without consciousness,\nor memory, or desire, or motive, is to resign, by an awkward\ndistortion of language, the affirmative of the dispute. To say\nthat the principle of life MAY exist in distribution among various\nforms, is to assert what cannot be proved to be either true or\nfalse, but which, were it true, annihilates all hope of existence\nafter death, in any sense in which that event can belong to the\nhopes and fears of men. Suppose, however, that the intellectual\nand vital principle differs in the most marked and essential manner\nfrom all other known substances; that they have all some resemblance\nbetween themselves which it in no degree participates.  In what manner\ncan this concession be made an argument for its imperishability?\nAll that we see or know perishes and is changed.  Life and thought\ndiffer indeed from everything else. But that it survives that\nperiod, beyond which we have no experience of its existence, such\ndistinction and dissimilarity affords no shadow of proof, and nothing\nbut our own desires could have led us to conjecture or imagine.\nHave we existed before birth? It is difficult to conceive the\npossibility of this. There is, in the generative principle of each\nanimal and plant, a power which converts the substances by which\nit is surrounded into a substance homogeneous with itself. That\nis, the relations between certain elementary particles of matter\nundergo a change, and submit to new combinations. For when we use\nthe words PRINCIPLE, POWER, CAUSE, we mean to express no real being,\nbut only to class under those terms a certain series of co-existing\nphenomena; but let it be supposed that this principle is a certain\nsubstance which escapes the observation of the chemist and anatomist.\nIt certainly MAY BE; though it is sufficiently unphilosophical\nto allege the possibility of an opinion as a proof of its truth.\nDoes it see, hear, feel, before its combination with those organs\non which sensation depends? Does it reason, imagine, apprehend,\nwithout those ideas which sensation alone can communicate? If we\nhave not existed before birth; if, at the period when the parts\nof our nature on which thought and life depend, seem to be woven\ntogether; if there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed\nbefore that period at which our existence apparently commences,\nthen there are no grounds for supposition that we shall continue\nto exist after our existence has apparently ceased.  So far as\nthought is concerned, the same will take place with regard to use,\nindividually considered, after death, as had place before our birth.\n\nIt is said that it, is possible that we should continue to exist\nin some mode totally inconceivable to us at present. This is a most\nunreasonable presumption. It casts on the adherents of annihilation\nthe burthen of proving the negative of a question, the affirmative\nof which is not supported by a single argument, and which, by its\nvery nature, lies beyond the experience of the human understanding.\nIt is sufficiently easy, indeed, to form any proposition, concerning\nwhich we are ignorant, just not so absurd as not to be contradictory\nin itself, and defy refutation. The possibility of whatever enters\ninto the wildest imagination to conceive is thus triumphantly\nvindicated. But it is enough that such assertions should be either\ncontradictory to the known laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our\nexperience, that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration\nshould be demonstrated. They persuade, indeed, only those who\ndesire to be persuaded. This desire to be for ever as we are; the\nreluctance to a violent and unexperienced change, which is common\nto all the animated and inanimate combinations of the universe, is,\nindeed, the secret persuasion which has given birth to the opinions\nof a future state.\n\n[1815; publ. 1840]\n\n\n\n\nON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH\n\nA FRAGMENT\n\nThe first law which it becomes a Reformer to propose and support,\nat the approach of a period of great political change, is the\nabolition of the punishment of death.\n\nIt is sufficiently clear that revenge, retaliation, atonement,\nexpiation, are rules and motives, so far from deserving a place in\nany enlightened system of political life, that they are the chief\nsources of a prodigious class of miseries in the domestic circles\nof society. It is clear that however the spirit of legislation may\nappear to frame institutions upon more philosophical maxims, it\nhas hitherto, in those cases which are termed criminal, done little\nmore than palliate the spirit, by gratifying a portion of it; and\nafforded a compromise between that which is bests--the inflicting\nof no evil upon a sensitive being, without a decisively beneficial\nresult in which he should at least participates--and that which is\nworst; that he should be put to torture for the amusement of those\nwhom he may have injured, or may seem to have injured.\n\nOmitting these remoter considerations, let us inquire what, DEATH\nis; that punishment which is applied as a measure of transgressions\nof indefinite shades of distinction, so soon as they shall have\npassed that degree and colour of enormity, with which it is supposed\nno, inferior infliction is commensurate.\n\nAnd first, whether death is good or evil, a punishment or a reward,\nor whether it be wholly indifferent, no man can take upon himself\nto assert. That that within us which thinks and feels, continues\nto think and feel after the dissolution of the body, has been the\nalmost universal opinion of mankind, and the accurate philosophy\nof what I may be permitted to term the modern Academy, by showing\nthe prodigious depth and extent of our ignorance respecting the\ncauses and nature of sensation, renders probable the affirmative\nof a proposition, the negative of which it is so difficult to\nconceive, and the popular arguments against which, derived from\nwhat is called the atomic system, are proved to be applicable only\nto the relation which one object bears to another, as apprehended\nby the mind, and not to existence itself, or the nature of that\nessence which is the medium and receptacle of objects.\n\nThe popular system of religion suggests the idea that the mind,\nafter death, will be painfully or pleasurably affected according to\nits determinations during life. However ridiculous and pernicious\nwe must admit the vulgar accessories of this creed to be, there\nis a certain analogy, not wholly absurd, between the consequences\nresulting to an individual during life from the virtuous or vicious,\nprudent or imprudent, conduct of his external actions, to those\nconsequences which are conjectured to ensue from the discipline\nand order of his internal thoughts, as affecting his condition in\na future state. They omit, indeed, to calculate upon the accidents\nof disease, and temperament, and organization, and circumstance,\ntogether with the multitude of independent agencies which affect\nthe opinions, the conduct, and the happiness of individuals, and\nproduce determinations of the will, and modify the judgement, so\nas to produce effects the most opposite in natures considerably\nsimilar. These are those operations in the order of the whole of\nnature, tending, we are prone to believe, to some definite mighty\nend, to which the agencies of our peculiar nature are subordinate;\nnor is there any reason to suppose, that in a future state they should\nbecome suddenly exempt from that subordination.  The philosopher is\nunable to determine whether our existence in a previous state has\naffected our present condition, and abstains from deciding whether\nour present condition will affect us in that which may be future.\nThat, if we continue to exist, the manner of our existence will be\nsuch as no inferences nor conjectures, afforded by a consideration\nof our earthly experience, can elucidate, is sufficiently obvious.\nThe opinion that the vital principle within us, in whatever mode\nit may continue to exist, must lose that consciousness of definite\nand individual being which now characterizes it, and become a unit\nin the vast sum of action and of thought which disposes and animates\nthe universe, and is called God, seems to belong to that class of\nopinion which has been designated as indifferent.\n\nTo compel a person to know all that can be known by the dead\nconcerning that which the living fear, hope, or forget; to plunge\nhim into the pleasure or pain which there awaits him; to punish or\nreward him in a manner and in a degree incalculable and incomprehensible\nby us; to disrobe him at once from all that intertexture of good\nand evil with which Nature seems to have clothed every form of\nindividual existence, is to inflict on him the doom of death.\n\nA certain degree of pain and terror usually accompany the infliction\nof death. This degree is infinitely varied by the infinite variety\nin the temperament and opinions of the sufferers.  As a measure of\npunishment, strictly so considered, and as an exhibition, which, by\nits known effects on the sensibility of the sufferer, is intended\nto intimidate the spectators from incurring a similar liability,\nit is singularly inadequate.\n\nFirstly, Persons of energetic character, in whom, as in men who\nsuffer for political crimes, there is a large mixture of enterprise,\nand fortitude, and disinterestedness, and the elements, though\nmisguided and disarranged, by which the strength and happiness of a\nnation might have been cemented, die in such a manner, as to make\ndeath appear not evil, but good. The death of what is called a\ntraitor, that is, a person who, from whatever motive, would abolish\nthe government of the day, is as often a triumphant exhibition\nof suffering virtue, as the warning of a culprit. The multitude,\ninstead of departing with a panic-stricken approbation of the laws\nwhich exhibited such a spectacle, are inspired with pity, admiration\nand sympathy; and the most generous among them feel an emulation\nto be the authors of such flattering emotions, as they experience\nstirring in their bosoms.  Impressed by what they see and feel,\nthey make no distinctive between the motives which incited the\ncriminals to the action for which they suffer, or the heroic courage\nwith which they turned into good that which their judges awarded\nto them as evil or the purpose itself of those actions, though that\npurpose may happen to be eminently pernicious. The laws in this\ncase lose their sympathy, which it ought to be their chief object\nto secure, and in a participation of which consists their chief\nstrength in maintaining those sanctions by which the parts of the\nsocial union are bound together, so as to produce, as nearly as\npossible, the ends for which it is instituted.\n\nSecondly,--Persons of energetic character, in communities not\nmodelled with philosophical skill to turn all the energies which\nthey contain to the purposes of common good, are prone also to fall\ninto the temptation of undertaking, and are peculiarly fitted for\ndespising the perils attendant upon consummating, the most enormous\ncrimes. Murder, rapes, extensive schemes of plunder are the actions\nof persons belonging to this class; and death is the penalty of\nconviction. But the coarseness of organization, peculiar to men\ncapable of committing acts wholly selfish, is usually found to\nbe associated with a proportionate insensibility to fear or pain.\nTheir sufferings communicate to those of the spectators, who may be\nliable to the commission of similar crimes a sense of the lightness\nof that event, when closely examined which, at a distance, as\nuneducated persons are accustomed to do, probably they regarded with\nhorror. But a great majority of the spectators are so bound up in\nthe interests and the habits of social union that no temptation\nwould be sufficiently strong to induce them to a commission of the\nenormities to which this penalty is assigned. The more powerful, and\nthe richer among them,--and a numerous class of little tradesmen are\nricher and more powerful than those who are employed by them, and\nthe employer, in general, bears this relation to the employed,--regard\ntheir own wrongs as, in some degree, avenged, and their own rights\nsecured by this punishment, inflicted as the penalty of whatever\ncrime. In cases of murder or mutilation, this feeling is almost\nuniversal. In those, therefore, whom this exhibition does not\nawaken to the sympathy which extenuates crime and discredits the\nlaw which restrains it, it produces feelings more directly at war\nwith the genuine purposes of political society.  It excites those\nemotions which it is the chief object of civilization to extinguish\nfor ever, and in the extinction of which alone there can be any\nhope of better institutions than those under which men now misgovern\none another. Men feel that their revenge is gratified, and that\ntheir security is established by the extinction and the sufferings\nof beings, in most respects resembling themselves; and their daily\noccupations constraining them to a precise form in all their thoughts,\nthey come to connect inseparably the idea of their own advantage\nwith that of the death and torture of others. It is manifest that\nthe object of sane polity is directly the reverse; and that laws\nfounded upon reason, should accustom the gross vulgar to associate\ntheir ideas of security and of interest with the reformation, and\nthe strict restraint, for that purpose alone, of those who might\ninvade it.\n\nThe passion of revenge is originally nothing more than an habitual\nperception of the ideas of the sufferings of the person who inflicts\nan injury, as connected, as they are in a savage state, or in such\nportions of society as are yet undisciplined to civilization, with\nsecurity that that injury will not be repeated in future. This\nfeeling, engrafted upon superstition and confirmed by habit, at\nlast loses sight of the only object for which it may be supposed\nto have been implanted, and becomes a passion and a duty to be\npursued and fulfilled, even to the destruction of those ends to\nwhich it originally tended. The other passions, both good and evil.\nAvarice, Remorse, Love, Patriotism, present a similar appearance;\nand to this principle of the mind over-shooting the mark at which\nit aims, we owe all that is eminently base or excellent in human\nnature; in providing for the nutriment or the extinction of which,\nconsists the true art of the legislator. [Footnote: The savage and\nthe illiterate are but faintly aware of the distinction between\nthe future and the past; they make actions belonging to periods so\ndistinct, the subjects of similar feelings; they live only in the\npresent, or in the past, as it is present. It is in this that the\nphilosopher excels one of the many; it is this which distinguishes\nthe doctrine of philosophic necessity from fatalism; and that\ndetermination of the will, by which it is the active source of future\nevents, from that liberty or indifference, to which the abstract\nliability of irremediable actions is attached, according to the\nnotions of the vulgar.\n\nThis is the source of the erroneous excesses of Remorse and Revenge;\nthe one extending itself over the future, and the other over the\npast; provinces in which their suggestions can only be the sources\nof evil. The purpose of a resolution to act more wisely and virtuously\nin future, and the sense of a necessity of caution in repressing\nan enemy, are the sources from which the enormous superstitions\nimplied in the words cited have arisen.]\n\nNothing is more clear than that the infliction of punishment in\ngeneral, in a degree which the reformation and the restraint of\nthose who transgress the laws does not render indispensable, and\nnone more than death, confirms all the inhuman and unsocial impulses\nof men. It is almost a proverbial remark, that those nations in which\nthe penal code has been particularly mild, have been distinguished\nfrom all others by the rarity of crime.  But the example is to be\nadmitted to be equivocal. A more decisive argument is afforded by\na consideration of the universal connexion of ferocity of manners,\nand a contempt of social ties, with the contempt of human life.\nGovernments which derive their institutions from the existence of\ncircumstances of barbarism and violence, with some rare exceptions\nperhaps, are bloody in proportion as they are despotic, and form\nthe manners of their subjects to a sympathy with their own spirit.\n\nThe spectators who feel no abhorrence at a public execution, but\nrather a self-applauding superiority, and a sense of gratified\nindignation, are surely excited to the most inauspicious emotions. The\nfirst reflection of such a one is the sense of his own internal and\nactual worth, as preferable to that of the victim, whom circumstances\nhave led to destruction. The meanest wretch is impressed with a\nsense of his own comparative merit. He is one of those on whom the\ntower of Siloam fell not--he is such a one as Jesus Christ found\nnot in all Samaria, who, in his own soul, throws the first stone at\nthe woman taken in adultery.  The popular religion of the country\ntakes its designation from that illustrious person whose beautiful\nsentiment I have quoted.  Any one who has stript from the doctrines\nof this person the veil of familiarity, will perceive how adverse\ntheir spirit is to feelings of this nature.\n\n\n\n\n\nSPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS\n\nI--THE MIND\n\nIt is an axiom in mental philosophy, that we can think of nothing\nwhich we have not perceived. When I say that we can think of nothing,\nI mean, we can imagine nothing, we can reason of nothing, we can\nremember nothing, we can foresee nothing.  The most astonishing\ncombinations of poetry, the subtlest deductions of logic and\nmathematics, are no other than combinations which the intellect\nmakes of sensations according to its own laws.  A catalogue of all\nthe thoughts of the mind, and of all their possible modifications,\nis a cyclopedic history of the universe.\n\nBut, it will be objected, the inhabitants of the various planets of\nthis and other solar systems; and the existence of a Power bearing\nthe same relation to all that we perceive and are, as what we\ncall a cause does to what we call effect, were never subjects of\nsensation, and yet the laws of mind almost universally suggest,\naccording to the various disposition of each, a conjecture,\na persuasion, or a conviction of their existence. The reply is\nsimple; these thoughts are also to be included in the catalogue\nof existence; they are modes in which thoughts are combined; the\nobjection only adds force to the conclusion, that beyond the limits\nof perception and thought nothing can exist.\n\nThoughts, or ideas, or notions, call them what you will, differ\nfrom each other, not in kind, but in force. It has commonly been\nsupposed that those distinct thoughts which affect a number of\npersons, at regular intervals, during the passage of a multitude\nof other thoughts, which are called REAL or EXTERNAL OBJECTS,\nare totally different in kind from those which affect only a few\npersons, and which recur at irregular intervals, and are usually\nmore obscure and indistinct, such as hallucinations, dreams, and the\nideas of madness. No essential distinction between any one of these\nideas, or any class of them, is founded on a correct observation of\nthe nature of things, but merely on a consideration of what thoughts\nare most invariably subservient to the security and happiness of\nlife; and if nothing more were expressed by the distinction, the\nphilosopher might safely accommodate his language to that of the\nvulgar. But they pretend to assert an essential difference, which\nhas no foundation in truth, and which suggests a narrow and false\nconception of universal nature, the parent of the most fatal errors\nin speculation. A specific difference between every thought of the\nmind, is, indeed, a necessary consequence of that law by which it\nperceives diversity and number; but a generic and essential difference\nis wholly arbitrary. The principle of the agreement and similarity\nof all thoughts, is, that they are all thoughts; the principle\nof their disagreement consists in the variety and irregularity of\nthe occasions on which they arise in the mind. That in which they\nagree, to that in which they differ, is as everything to nothing.\nImportant distinctions, of various degrees of force, indeed, are to\nbe established between them, if they were, as they may be, subjects\nof ethical and economical discussion; but that is a question\naltogether distinct. By considering all knowledge as bounded by\nperception, whose operations may be indefinitely combined, we arrive\nat a conception of Nature inexpressibly more magnificent, simple\nand true, than accords with the ordinary systems of complicated and\npartial consideration. Nor does a contemplation of the universe,\nin this comprehensive and synthetical view, exclude the subtlest\nanalysis of its modifications and parts.\n\nA scale might be formed, graduated according to the degrees\nof a combined ratio of intensity, duration, connexion, periods of\nrecurrence, and utility, which would be the standard, according to\nwhich all ideas might be measured, and an uninterrupted chain of\nnicely shadowed distinctions would be observed, from the faintest\nimpression on the senses, to the most distinct combination of those\nimpressions; from the simplest of those combinations, to that mass\nof knowledge which, including our own nature, constitutes what we\ncall the universe.\n\nWe are intuitively conscious of our own existence, and of that\nconnexion in the train of our successive ideas, which we term our\nidentity. We are conscious also of the existence of other minds;\nbut not intuitively. Our evidence, with respect to the existence of\nother minds, is founded upon a very complicated relation of ideas,\nwhich it is foreign to the purpose of this treatise to anatomize.\nThe basis of this relation is, undoubtedly, a periodical recurrence\nof masses of ideas, which our voluntary determinations have, in\none peculiar direction, no power to circumscribe or to arrest, and\nagainst the recurrence of which they can only imperfectly provide.\nThe irresistible laws of thought constrain us to believe that the\nprecise limits of our actual ideas are not the actual limits of\npossible ideas; the law, according to which these deductions are\ndrawn, is called analogy; and this is the foundation of all our\ninferences, from one idea to another, inasmuch as they resemble\neach other.\n\nWe see trees, houses, fields, living beings in our own shape, and\nin shapes more or less analogous to our own. These are perpetually\nchanging the mode of their existence relatively to us. To express\nthe varieties of these modes, we say, WE MOVE, THEY MOVE; and as this\nmotion is continual, though not uniform, we express our conception\nof the diversities of its course by--IT HAS BEEN, IT IS, IT SHALL\nBE. These diversities are events or objects, and are essential,\nconsidered relatively to human identity, for the existence of the\nhuman mind. For if the inequalities, produced by what has been\ntermed the operations of the external universe, were levelled by the\nperception of our being, uniting and filling up their interstices,\nmotion and mensuration, and time, and space; the elements of the\nhuman mind being thus abstracted, sensation and imagination cease.\nMind cannot be considered pure.\n\nII--WHAT METAPHYSICS ARE. ERRORS IN THE USUAL METHODS OF CONSIDERING\nTHEM\n\nWe do not attend sufficiently to what passes within ourselves. We\ncombine words, combined a thousand times before. In our minds we\nassume entire opinions; and in the expression of those opinions,\nentire phrases, when we would philosophize. Our whole style of\nexpression and sentiment is infected with the tritest plagiarisms.\nOur words are dead, our thoughts are cold and borrowed.\n\nLet us contemplate facts; let us, in the great study of ourselves,\nresolutely compel the mind to a rigid consideration of itself. We\nare not content with conjecture, and inductions, and syllogisms,\nin sciences regarding external objects. As in these, let us also,\nin considering the phenomena of mind, severely collect those\nfacts which cannot be disputed. Metaphysics will thus possess this\nconspicuous advantage over every other science, that each student,\nby attentively referring to his own mind, may ascertain the\nauthorities upon which any assertions regarding it are supported.\nThere can thus be no deception, we ourselves being the depositaries\nof the evidence of the subject which we consider.\n\nMetaphysics may be defined as an inquiry concerning those things\nbelonging to, or connected with, the internal nature of man.\n\nIt is said that mind produces motion; and it might as well have\nbeen said, that motion produces mind.\n\nIII--DIFFICULTY OF ANALYSING THE HUMAN MIND\n\nIf it were possible that a person should give a faithful history of\nhis being, from the earliest epochs of his recollection, a picture\nwould be presented such as the world has never contemplated before.\nA mirror would be held up to all men in which they might behold\ntheir own recollections, and, in dim perspective, their shadowy hopes\nand fears,--all that they dare not, or that, daring and desiring,\nthey could not expose to the open eyes of day. But thought can\nwith difficulty visit the intricate and winding chambers which it\ninhabits. It is like a river whose rapid and perpetual stream flows\noutwards;--like one in dread who speeds through the recesses of\nsome haunted pile, and dares not look behind. The caverns of the\nmind are obscure, and shadowy; or pervaded with a lustre, beautifully\nbright indeed, but shining not beyond their portals. If it were\npossible to be where we have been, vitally and indeed--if, at the\nmoment of our presence there, we could define the results of our\nexperience,--if the passage from sensation to reflection--from a\nstate of passive perception to voluntary contemplation, were not\nso dizzying and so tumultuous, this attempt would be less difficult.\n\nIV--HOW THE ANALYSIS SHOULD BE CARRIED ON\n\nMost of the errors of philosophers have arisen from considering\nthe human being in a point of view too detailed and circumscribed\nHe is not a moral, and an intellectual,--but also, and pre-eminently,\nan imaginative being. His own mind is his law; his own mind is all\nthings to him. If we would arrive at any knowledge which should be\nserviceable from the practical conclusions to which it leads, we\nought to consider the mind of man and the universe as the great\nwhole on which to exercise our speculations. Here, above all,\nverbal disputes ought to be laid aside, though this has long been\ntheir chosen field of battle. It imports little to inquire whether\nthought be distinct from the objects of thought. The use of the\nwords EXTERNAL and INTERNAL, as applied to the establishment of this\ndistinction, has been the symbol and the source of much dispute.\nThis is merely an affair of words, and as the dispute deserves, to\nsay, that when speaking of the objects of thought, we indeed only\ndescribe one of the forms of thought--or that, speaking of thought,\nwe only apprehend one of the operations of the universal system of\nbeings.\n\nV--CATALOGUE OF THE PHENOMENA OF DREAMS, AS CONNECTING SLEEPING\nAND WAKING\n\n1. Let us reflect on our infancy, and give as faithfully as possible\na relation of the events of sleep.\n\nAnd first I am bound to present a faithful picture of my own peculiar\nnature relatively to sleep. I do not doubt that were every individual\nto imitate me, it would be found that among many circumstances\npeculiar to their individual nature, a sufficiently general\nresemblance would be found to prove the connexion existing between\nthose peculiarities and the most universal phenomena. I shall employ\ncaution, indeed, as to the facts which I state, that they contain\nnothing false or exaggerated. But they contain no more than certain\nelucidations of my own nature; concerning the degree in which\nit resembles, or differs from, that of others, I am by no means\naccurately aware. It is sufficient, however, to caution the reader\nagainst drawing general inferences from particular instances.\n\nI omit the general instances of delusion in fever or delirium, as\nwell as mere dreams considered in themselves. A delineation of this\nsubject, however inexhaustible and interesting, is to be passed\nover. What is the connexion of sleeping and of waking?\n\n2. I distinctly remember dreaming three several times, between\nintervals of two or more years, the same precise dream.  It was\nnot so much what is ordinarily called a dream; the single image,\nunconnected with all other images, of a youth who was educated at\nthe same school with myself, presented itself in sleep. Even now,\nafter the lapse of many years, I can never hear the name of this\nyouth, without the three places where I dreamed of him presenting\nthemselves distinctly to my mind.\n\n3. In dreams, images acquire associations peculiar to dreaming; so\nthat the idea of a particular house, when it recurs a second time\nin dreams, will have relation with the idea of the same house, in\nthe first time, of a nature entirely different from that which the\nhouse excites, when seen or thought of in relation to waking ideas.\n\n4. I have beheld scenes, with the intimate and unaccountable\nconnexion of which with the obscure parts of my own nature, I\nhave been irresistibly impressed. I have beheld a scene which has\nproduced no unusual effect on my thoughts. After the lapse of many\nyears I have dreamed of this scene. It has hung on my memory, it\nhas haunted my thoughts, at intervals, with the pertinacity of an\nobject connected with human affections. I have visited this scene\nagain. Neither the dream could be dissociated from the landscape,\nnor the landscape from the dream, nor feelings, such as neither\nsingly could have awakened, from both.\n\nBut the most remarkable event of this nature, which ever occurred\nto me, happened five years ago at Oxford. I was walking with\na friend, in the neighbourhood of that city, engaged in earnest\nand interesting conversation. We suddenly turned the corner of a\nlane, and the view, which its high banks and hedges had concealed,\npresented itself. The view consisted of a wind-mill, standing\nin one among many plashy meadows, inclosed with stone walls; the\nirregular and broken ground, between the wall and the road on which\nwe stood; a long low hill behind the windmill, and a grey covering\nof uniform cloud spread over the evening sky. It was that season\nwhen the last leaf had just fallen from the scant and stunted ash.\nThe scene surely was a common scene; the season and the hour little\ncalculated to kindle lawless thought; it was a tame uninteresting\nassemblage of objects, such as would drive the imagination for\nrefuge in serious and sober talk, to the evening fireside, and the\ndessert of winter fruits and wine. The effect which it produced on\nme was not such as could have been expected. I suddenly remembered\nto have seen that exact scene in some dream of long--. [Footnote:\nHere I was obliged to leave off, overcome by thrilling horror.]\n\n[1815; publ. 1840]\n\n\n\n\nSPECULATIONS ON MORALS\n\nI--PLAN OF A TREATISE ON MORALS\n\nThat great science which regards nature and the operations of\nthe human mind, is popularly divided into Morals and Metaphysics.\nThe latter relates to a just classification, and the assignment\nof distinct names to its ideas; the former regards simply the\ndetermination of that arrangement of them which produces the greatest\nand most solid happiness. It is admitted that a virtuous or moral\naction, is that action which, when considered in all its accessories\nand consequences, is fitted to produce the highest pleasure to the\ngreatest number of sensitive beings. The laws according to which\nall pleasure, since it cannot be equally felt by all sensitive\nbeings, ought to be distributed by a voluntary agent, are reserved\nfor a separate chapter.\n\nThe design of this little treatise is restricted to the development\nof the elementary principles of morals. As far as regards that\npurpose, metaphysical science will be treated merely so far as a\nsource of negative truth; whilst morality will be considered as a\nscience, respecting which we can arrive at positive conclusions.\n\nThe misguided imaginations of men have rendered the ascertaining of\nwhat IS NOT TRUE, the principal direct service which metaphysical\nscience can bestow upon moral science. Moral science itself is the\ndoctrine of the voluntary actions of man, as a sentient and social\nbeing. These actions depend on the thoughts in his mind. But there\nis a mass of popular opinion, from which the most enlightened persons\nare seldom wholly free, into the truth or falsehood of which it\nis incumbent on us to inquire, before we can arrive at any firm\nconclusions as to the conduct which we ought to pursue in the\nregulation of our own minds, or towards our fellow beings; or before\nwe can ascertain the elementary laws, according to which these\nthoughts, from which these actions flow, are originally combined.\n\nThe object of the forms according to which human society is administered,\nis the happiness of the individuals composing the communities which\nthey regard, and these forms are perfect or imperfect in proportion\nto the degree in which they promote this end.\n\nThis object is not merely the quantity of happiness enjoyed by\nindividuals as sensitive beings, but the mode in which it should\nbe distributed among them as social beings. It is not enough, if\nsuch a coincidence can be conceived as possible, that one person\nor class of persons should enjoy the highest happiness, whilst\nanother is suffering a disproportionate degree of misery. It is\nnecessary that the happiness produced by the common efforts, and\npreserved by the common care, should be distributed according to\nthe just claims of each individual; if not, although the quantity\nproduced should be the same, the end of society would remain\nunfulfilled. The object is in a compound proportion to the quantity\nof happiness produced, and the correspondence of the mode in which\nit is distributed, to the elementary feelings of man as a social\nbeing.\n\nThe disposition in an individual to promote this object is called\nvirtue; and the two constituent parts of virtue, benevolence and\njustice, are correlative with these two great portions of the only\ntrue object of all voluntary actions of a human being. Benevolence\nis the desire to be the author of good, and justice the apprehension\nof the manner in which good ought to be done.\n\nJustice and benevolence result from the elementary laws of the\nhuman mind.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I ON THE NATURE OF VIRTUE\n\nSECT. 1. General View of the Nature and Objects of Virtue.--2.  The\nOrigin and Basis of Virtue, as founded on the Elementary Principles\nof Mind.--3. The Laws which flow from the nature of Mind regulating\nthe application of those principles to human actions;--4. Virtue,\na possible attribute of man.\n\nWe exist in the midst of a multitude of beings like ourselves, upon\nwhose happiness most of our actions exert some obvious and decisive\ninfluence.\n\nThe regulation of this influence is the object of moral science.\nWe know that we are susceptible of receiving painful or pleasurable\nimpressions of greater or less intensity and duration. That is called\ngood which produces pleasure; that is called evil which produces\npain. These are general names, applicable to every class of causes,\nfrom which an overbalance of pain or pleasure may result. But when\na human being is the active instrument of generating or diffusing\nhappiness, the principle through which it is most effectually\ninstrumental to that purpose, is called virtue. And benevolence,\nor the desire to be the author of good, united with justice, or\nan apprehension of the manner in which that good is to be done,\nconstitutes virtue.\n\nBut wherefore should a man be benevolent and just? The immediate\nemotions of his nature, especially in its most inartificial state,\nprompt him to inflict pain, and to arrogate dominion. He desires\nto heap superfluities to his own store, although others perish with\nfamine. He is propelled to guard against the smallest invasion of\nhis own liberty, though he reduces others to a condition of the most\npitiless servitude. He is revengeful, proud and selfish. Wherefore\nshould he curb these propensities?\n\nIt is inquired, for what reason a human being should engage\nin procuring the happiness, or refrain from producing the pain of\nanother? When a reason is required to prove the necessity of adopting\nany system of conduct, what is it that the objector demands? He\nrequires proof of that system of conduct being such as will most\neffectually promote the happiness of mankind.  To demonstrate this,\nis to render a moral reason. Such is the object of virtue.\n\nA common sophism, which, like many others, depends on the abuse of\na metaphorical expression to a literal purpose, has produced much\nof the confusion which has involved the theory of morals. It is said\nthat no person is bound to be just or kind, if, on his neglect, he\nshould fail to incur some penalty. Duty is obligation. There can\nbe no obligation without an obliger. Virtue is a law, to which it\nis the will of the lawgiver that we should conform; which will we\nshould in no manner be bound to obey, unless some dreadful punishment\nwere attached to disobedience. This is the philosophy of slavery\nand superstition.\n\nIn fact, no person can be BOUND or OBLIGED, without some power\npreceding to bind and oblige. If I observe a man bound hand and\nfoot, I know that some one bound him. But if I observe him returning\nself-satisfied from the performance of some action, by which he has\nbeen the willing author of extensive benefit, I do not infer that\nthe anticipation of hellish agonies, or the hope of heavenly reward,\nhas constrained him to such an act.\n\n       .      .      .      .      .       .       .\n\nIt remains to be stated in what manner the sensations which\nconstitute the basis of virtue originate in the human mind; what\nare the laws which it receives there; how far the principles of\nmind allow it to be an attribute of a human being; and, lastly,\nwhat is the probability of persuading mankind to adopt it as a\nuniversal and systematic motive of conduct.\n\nBENEVOLENCE\n\nThere is a class of emotions which we instinctively avoid. A human\nbeing, such as is man considered in his origin, a child a month\nold, has a very imperfect consciousness of the existence of other\nnatures resembling itself. All the energies of its being are\ndirected to the extinction of the pains with which it is perpetually\nassailed. At length it discovers that it is surrounded by natures\nsusceptible of sensations similar to its own. It is very late before\nchildren attain to this knowledge. If a child observes, without\nemotion, its nurse or its mother suffering acute pain, it is\nattributable rather to ignorance than insensibility. So soon as\nthe accents and gestures, significant of pain, are referred to the\nfeelings which they express, they awaken in the mind of the beholder\na desire that they should cease. Pain is thus apprehended to be evil\nfor its own sake, without any other necessary reference to the mind\nby which its existence is perceived, than such as is indispensable\nto its perception. The tendencies of our original sensations, indeed,\nall have for their object the preservation of our individual being.\nBut these are passive and unconscious. In proportion as the mind\nacquires an active power, the empire of these tendencies becomes\nlimited. Thus an infant, a savage, and a solitary beast, is selfish,\nbecause its mind is incapable of receiving an accurate intimation\nof the nature of pain as existing in beings resembling itself.\nThe inhabitant of a highly civilized community will more acutely\nsympathize with the sufferings and enjoyments of others, than\nthe inhabitant of a society of a less degree of civilization. He\nwho shall have cultivated his intellectual powers by familiarity\nwith the highest specimens of poetry and philosophy, will usually\nsympathize more than one engaged in the less refined functions\nof manual labour. Every one has experience of the fact, that to\nsympathize with the sufferings of another, is to enjoy a transitory\noblivion of his own.\n\nThe mind thus acquires, by exercise, a habit, as it were, of\nperceiving and abhorring evil, however remote from the immediate\nsphere of sensations with which that individual mind is conversant.\nImagination or mind employed in prophetically imaging forth its\nobjects, is that faculty of human nature on which every gradation\nof its progress, nay, every, the minutest, change, depends. Pain\nor pleasure, if subtly analysed, will be found to consist entirely\nin prospect. The only distinction between the selfish man and the\nvirtuous man is, that the imagination of the former is confined within\na narrow limit, whilst that of the latter embraces a comprehensive\ncircumference. In this sense, wisdom and virtue may be said to be\ninseparable, and criteria of each other. Selfishness is the offspring\nof ignorance and mistake; it is the portion of unreflecting infancy,\nand savage solitude, or of those whom toil or evil occupations\nhave blunted or rendered torpid; disinterested benevolence is the\nproduct of a cultivated imagination, and has an intimate connexion\nwith all the arts which add ornament, or dignity, or power,\nor stability to the social state of man. Virtue is thus entirely\na refinement of civilized life; a creation of the human mind; or,\nrather, a combination which it has made, according to elementary\nrules contained within itself, of the feelings suggested by the\nrelations established between man and man.\n\nAll the theories which have refined and exalted humanity, or those\nwhich have been devised as alleviations of its mistakes and evils,\nhave been based upon the elementary emotions of disinterestedness,\nwhich we feel to constitute the majesty of our nature. Patriotism,\nas it existed in the ancient republics, was never, as has been\nsupposed, a calculation of personal advantages. When Mutius Scaevola\nthrust his hand into the burning coals, and Regulus returned\nto Carthage, and Epicharis sustained the rack silently, in the\ntorments of which she knew that she would speedily perish, rather\nthan betray the conspirators to the tyrant [Footnote: Tacitus.];\nthese illustrious persons certainly made a small estimate of their\nprivate interest. If it be said that they sought posthumous fame;\ninstances are not wanting in history which prove that men have even\ndefied infamy for the sake of good. But there is a great error in\nthe world with respect to the selfishness of fame. It is certainly\npossible that a person should seek distinction as a medium of\npersonal gratification. But the love of fame is frequently no more\nthan a desire that the feelings of others should confirm, illustrate,\nand sympathize with, our own. In this respect it is allied with all\nthat draws us out of ourselves. It is the 'last infirmity of noble\nminds'. Chivalry was likewise founded on the theory of self-sacrifice.\nLove possesses so extraordinary a power over the human heart, only\nbecause disinterestedness is united with the natural propensities.\nThese propensities themselves are comparatively impotent in cases\nwhere the imagination of pleasure to be given, as well as to be\nreceived, does not enter into the account. Let it not be objected\nthat patriotism, and chivalry, and sentimental love, have been the\nfountains of enormous mischief. They are cited only to establish the\nproposition that, according to the elementary principles of mind,\nman is capable of desiring and pursuing good for its own sake.\n\n\nJUSTICE\n\nThe benevolent propensities are thus inherent in the human mind.\nWe are impelled to seek the happiness of others. We experience\na satisfaction in being the authors of that happiness. Everything\nthat lives is open to impressions or pleasure and pain. We are\nled by our benevolent propensities to regard every human being\nindifferently with whom we come in contact. They have preference\nonly with respect to those who offer themselves most obviously\nto our notice. Human beings are indiscriminating and blind; they\nwill avoid inflicting pain, though that pain should be attended\nwith eventual benefit; they will seek to confer pleasure without\ncalculating the mischief that may result. They benefit one at the\nexpense of many.\n\nThere is a sentiment in the human mind that regulates benevolence\nin its application as a principle of action. This is the sense of\njustice. Justice, as well as benevolence, is an elementary law of\nhuman nature. It is through this principle that men are impelled\nto distribute any means of pleasure which benevolence may suggest\nthe communication of to others, in equal portions among an equal\nnumber of applicants. If ten men are shipwrecked on a desert island,\nthey distribute whatever subsistence may remain to them, into equal\nportions among themselves. If six of them conspire to deprive the\nremaining four of their share, their conduct is termed unjust.\n\nThe existence of pain has been shown to be a circumstance which the\nhuman mind regards with dissatisfaction, and of which it desires\nthe cessation. It is equally according to its nature to desire that\nthe advantages to be enjoyed by a limited number of persons should\nbe enjoyed equally by all. This proposition is supported by the\nevidence of indisputable facts. Tell some ungarbled tale of a number\nof persons being made the victims of the enjoyments of one, and he\nwho would appeal in favour of any system which might produce such\nan evil to the primary emotions of our nature, would have nothing\nto reply. Let two persons, equally strangers, make application for\nsome benefit in the possession of a third to bestow, and to which\nhe feels that they have an equal claim. They are both sensitive\nbeings; pleasure and pain affect them alike.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nIt is foreign to the general scope of this little treatise to encumber\na simple argument by controverting any of the trite objections of\nhabit or fanaticism. But there are two; the first, the basis of all\npolitical mistake, and the second, the prolific cause and effect\nof religious error, which it seems useful to refute.\n\nFirst, it is inquired, 'Wherefore should a man be benevolent and\njust?' The answer has been given in the preceding chapter.\n\nIf a man persists to inquire why he ought to promote the happiness\nof mankind, he demands a mathematical or metaphysical reason for\na moral action. The absurdity of this scepticism is more apparent,\nbut not less real than the exacting a moral reason for a mathematical\nor metaphysical fact. If any person should refuse to admit that all\nthe radii of a circle are of equal length, or that human actions\nare necessarily determined by motives, until it could be proved that\nthese radii and these actions uniformly tended to the production of\nthe greatest general good, who would not wonder at the unreasonable\nand capricious association of his ideas?\n\nThe writer of a philosophical treatise may, I imagine, at this\nadvanced era of human intellect, be held excused from entering into\na controversy with those reasoners, if such there are, who would\nclaim an exemption from its decrees in favour of any one among those\ndiversified systems of obscure opinion respecting morals, which,\nunder the name of religions, have in various ages and countries\nprevailed among mankind. Besides that if, as these reasoners have\npretended, eternal torture or happiness will ensue as the consequence\nof certain actions, we should be no nearer the possession of a\nstandard to determine what actions were right and wrong, even if this\npretended revelation, which is by no means the case, had furnished\nus with a complete catalogue of them. The character of actions as\nvirtuous or vicious would by no means be determined alone by the\npersonal advantage or disadvantage of each moral agent individually\nconsidered. Indeed, an action is often virtuous in proportion to\nthe greatness of the personal calamity which the author willingly\ndraws upon himself by daring to perform it. It is because an\naction produces an overbalance of pleasure or pain to the greatest\nnumber of sentient beings, and not merely because its consequences\nare beneficial or injurious to the author of that action, that it\nis good or evil. Nay, this latter consideration has a tendency to\npollute the purity of virtue, inasmuch as it consists in the motive\nrather than in the consequences of an action. A person who should\nlabour for the happiness of mankind lest he should be tormented\neternally in Hell, would, with reference to that motive, possess as\nlittle claim to the epithet of virtuous, as he who should torture,\nimprison, and burn them alive, a more usual and natural consequence\nof such principles, for the sake of the enjoyments of Heaven.\n\nMy neighbour, presuming on his strength, may direct me to perform\nor to refrain from a particular action; indicating a certain arbitrary\npenalty in the event of disobedience within power to inflict.\nMy action, if modified by his menaces, can no degree participate\nin virtue. He has afforded me no criterion as to what is right or\nwrong. A king, or an assembly of men, may publish a proclamation\naffixing any penalty to any particular action, but that is not\nimmoral because such penalty is affixed. Nothing is more evident\nthan that the epithet of virtue is inapplicable to the refraining\nfrom that action on account of the evil arbitrarily attached to it.\nIf the action is in itself beneficial, virtue would rather consist\nin not refraining from it, but in firmly defying the personal\nconsequences attached to its performance.\n\nSome usurper of supernatural energy might subdue the whole globe\nto his power; he might possess new and unheard-of resources for\nenduing his punishments with the most terrible attributes or pain.\nThe torments of his victims might be intense in their degree,\nand protracted to an infinite duration. Still the 'will of the\nlawgiver' would afford no surer criterion as to what actions were\nright or wrong. It would only increase the possible virtue of those\nwho refuse to become the instruments of his tyranny.\n\n\nII--MORAL SCIENCE CONSISTS IN CONSIDERING THE DIFFERENCE, NOT THE\nRESEMBLANCE, OF PERSONS\n\nThe internal influence, derived from the constitution of the mind\nfrom which they flow, produces that peculiar modification of actions,\nwhich makes them intrinsically good or evil.\n\nTo attain an apprehension of the importance of this distinction,\nlet us visit, in imagination, the proceedings of some metropolis.\nConsider the multitude of human beings who inhabit it, and survey,\nin thought, the actions of the several classes into which they are\ndivided. Their obvious actions are apparently uniform: the stability\nof human society seems to be maintained sufficiently by the uniformity\nof the conduct of its members, both with regard to themselves,\nand with regard to others.  The labourer arises at a certain hour,\nand applies himself to the task enjoined him. The functionaries\nof government and law are regularly employed in their offices and\ncourts. The trader holds a train of conduct from which he never\ndeviates. The ministers of religion employ an accustomed language,\nand maintain a decent and equable regard. The army is drawn forth,\nthe motions of every soldier are such as they were expected to be;\nthe general commands, and his words are echoed from troop to troop.\nThe domestic actions of men are, for the most part, undistinguishable\none from the other, at a superficial glance. The actions which\nare classed under the general appellation of marriage, education,\nfriendship, &c., are perpetually going on, and to a superficial\nglance, are similar one to the other.\n\nBut, if we would see the truth of things, they must be stripped of\nthis fallacious appearance of uniformity. In truth, no one action\nhas, when considered in its whole extent, any essential resemblance\nwith any other. Each individual, who composes the vast multitude\nwhich we have been contemplating, has a peculiar frame of mind,\nwhich, whilst the features of the great mass of his actions remain\nuniform, impresses the minuter lineaments with its peculiar hues.\nThus, whilst his life, as a whole, is like the lives of other men,\nin detail, it is most unlike; and the more subdivided the actions\nbecome; that is, the more they enter into that class which have\na vital influence on the happiness of others and his own, so much\nthe more are they distinct from those of other men.\n\n      Those little, nameless, unremembered acts\n          Of kindness and of love,\n\nas well as those deadly outrages which are inflicted by a look,\na word--or less--the very refraining from some faint and most\nevanescent expression of countenance; these flow from a profounder\nsource than the series of our habitual conduct, which, it has\nbeen already said, derives its origin from without. These are the\nactions, and such as these, which make human life what it is, and\nare the fountains of all the good and evil with which its entire\nsurface is so widely and impartially overspread; and though they are\ncalled minute, they are called so in compliance with the blindness\nof those who cannot estimate their importance. It is in the due\nappreciating the general effects of their peculiarities, and in\ncultivating the habit of acquiring decisive knowledge respecting\nthe tendencies arising out of them in particular cases, that the\nmost important part of moral science consists. The deepest abyss\nof these vast and multitudinous caverns, it is necessary that we\nshould visit.\n\nThis is the difference between social and individual man. Not that\nthis distinction is to be considered definite, or characteristic\nof one human being as compared with another; it denotes rather two\nclasses of agency, common in a degree to every human being. None\nis exempt, indeed, from that species of influence which affects, as\nit were, the surface of his being, and gives the specific outline\nto his conduct. Almost all that is ostensible submits to that\nlegislature created by the general representation of the past\nfeelings of mankind--imperfect as it is from a variety of causes,\nas it exists in the government, the religion, and domestic habits.\nThose who do not nominally, yet actually, submit to the same power.\nThe external features of their conduct, indeed, can no more escape\nit, than the clouds can escape from the stream of the wind; and\nhis opinion, which he often hopes he has dispassionately secured\nfrom all contagion of prejudice and vulgarity, would be found, on\nexamination, to be the inevitable excrescence of the very usages\nfrom which he vehemently dissents. Internally all is conducted\notherwise; the efficiency, the essence, the vitality of actions,\nderives its colour from what is no ways contributed to from any\nexternal source. Like the plant which while it derives the accident\nof its size and shape from the soil in which it springs, and is\ncankered, or distorted, or inflated, yet retains those qualities\nwhich essentially divide it from all others; so that hemlock\ncontinues to be poison, and the violet does not cease to emit its\nodour in whatever soil it may grow.\n\nWe consider our own nature too superficially. We look on all that\nin ourselves with which we can discover a resemblance in others;\nand consider those resemblances as the materials of moral knowledge.\nIt is in the differences that it actually consists.\n\n[1815; publ. 1840]\n\n\n\n\nESSAY ON THE LITERATURE, THE ARTS, AND THE MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS\n\nA FRAGMENT\n\nThe period which intervened between the birth of Pericles and the\ndeath of Aristotle, is undoubtedly, whether considered in itself,\nor with reference to the effects which it has produced upon\nthe subsequent destinies of civilized man, the most memorable in\nthe history of the world. What was the combination of moral and\npolitical circumstances which produced so unparalleled a progress\nduring that period in literature and the arts;--why that progress,\nso rapid and so sustained, so soon received a check, and became\nretrograde,--are problems left to the wonder and conjecture of\nposterity. The wrecks and fragments of those subtle and profound\nminds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the\ngrandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language--a type\nof the understandings of which it was the creation and the image--in\nvariety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels\nevery other language of the western world. Their sculptures are\nsuch as we, in our presumption, assume to be the models of ideal\ntruth and beauty, and to which no artist of modern times can\nproduce forms in any degree comparable. Their paintings, according\nto Pliny and Pausanias, were full of delicacy and harmony; and some\neven were powerfully pathetic, so as to awaken, like tender music\nor tragic poetry, the most overwhelming emotions. We are accustomed\nto conceive the painters of the sixteenth century, as those who\nhave brought their art to the highest perfection, probably because\nnone of the ancient paintings have been preserved. For all the\ninventive arts maintain, as it were, a sympathetic connexion between\neach other, being no more than various expressions of one internal\npower, modified by different circumstances, either of an individual,\nor of society; and the paintings of that period would probably bear\nthe same relation as is confessedly borne by the sculptures to all\nsucceeding ones. Of their music we know little; but the effects\nwhich it is said to have produced, whether they be attributed to\nthe skill of the composer, or the sensibility of his audience, are\nfar more powerful than any which we experience from the music of\nour own times; and if, indeed, the melody of their compositions\nwere more tender and delicate, and inspiring, than the melodies of\nsome modern European nations, their superiority in this art must\nhave been something wonderful, and wholly beyond conception.\n\nTheir poetry seems to maintain a very high, though not so\ndisproportionate a rank, in the comparison. Perhaps Shakespeare, from\nthe variety and comprehension of his genius, is to be considered,\non the whole, as the greatest individual mind, of which we have\nspecimens remaining. Perhaps Dante created imaginations of greater\nloveliness and energy than any that are to be found in the ancient\nliterature of Greece. Perhaps nothing has been discovered in the\nfragments of the Greek lyric poets equivalent to the sublime and\nchivalric sensibility of Petrarch.--But, as a poet. Homer must be\nacknowledged to excel Shakespeare in the truth, the harmony, the\nsustained grandeur, the satisfying completeness of his images, their\nexact fitness to the illustration, and to that to which they belong.\nNor could Dante, deficient in conduct, plan, nature, variety, and\ntemperance, have been brought into comparison with these men, but\nfor those fortunate isles laden with golden fruit, which alone\ncould tempt any one to embark in the misty ocean of his dark and\nextravagant fiction.\n\nBut, omitting the comparison of individual minds, which can afford\nno general inference, how superior was the spirit and system of\ntheir poetry to that of any other period! So that had any other\ngenius equal in other respects to the greatest that ever enlightened\nthe world, arisen in that age, he would have been superior to all,\nfrom this circumstance alone--that had conceptions would have assumed\na more harmonious and perfect form. For it is worthy of observation,\nthat whatever the poet of that age produced is as harmonious and\nperfect as possible. In a drama, for instance, were the composition\nof a person of inferior talent, it was still homogeneous and free\nfrom inequalities it was a whole, consistent with itself. The\ncompositions of great minds bore throughout the sustained stamp of\ntheir greatness. In the poetry of succeeding ages the expectations\nare often exalted on Icarian wings, and fall, too much disappointed\nto give a memory and a name to the oblivious pool in which they\nfell.\n\nIn physical knowledge Aristotle and Theophrastus had already--no\ndoubt assisted by the labours of those of their predecessor whom\nthey criticize--made advances worthy of the maturity of science.\nThe astonishing invention of geometry, that series of discoveries\nwhich have enabled man to command the element and foresee future\nevents, before the subjects of his ignorant wonder, and which have\nopened as it were the doors of the mysteries of nature, had already\nbeen brought to great perfection. Metaphysics, the science of man's\nintimate nature, and logic, or the grammar and elementary principles\nof that science received from the latter philosophers of the Periclean\nage a firm basis. All our more exact philosophy is built upon the\nlabours of these great men, and many of the words which we employ\nin metaphysical distinctions were invented by them to give accuracy\nand system to their reasonings. The science of morals, or the\nvoluntary conduct of men in relation to themselves or others, dates\nfrom this epoch. How inexpressibly bolder and more pure were the\ndoctrines of those great men, in comparison with the timid maxims\nwhich prevail in the writings of the most esteemed modern moralists!\nThey were such as Phocion, and Epaminondas, and Timoleon, who formed\nthemselves on their influence, were to the wretched heroes of our\nown age.\n\nTheir political and religious institutions are more difficult to\nbring into comparison with those of other times. A summary idea\nmay be formed of the worth of any political and religious system,\nby observing the comparative degree of happiness and of intellect\nproduced under its influence. And whilst many institution and\nopinions, which in ancient Greece were obstacles to the improvement\nof the human race, have been abolished among modern nations, how\nmany pernicious superstitions and new contrivances of misrule, and\nunheard-of complications of public mischief, have not been invented\namong them by the ever-watchful spirit of avarice and tyranny!\n\nThe modern nations of the civilized world owe the progress which\nthey have made--as well in those physical sciences in which they\nhave already excelled their masters, as in the moral and intellectual\ninquiries, in which, with all the advantage of the experience of\nthe latter, it can scarcely be said that they have yet equalled\nthem,--to what is called the revival of learning; that is, the study\nof the writers of the age which preceded and immediately followed\nthe government of Pericles, or of subsequent writers, who were,\nso to speak, the rivers flowing from those immortal fountains.\nAnd though there seems to be a principle in the modern world,\nwhich, should circumstances analogous to those which modelled\nthe intellectual resources of the age to which we refer, into so\nharmonious a proportion, again arise, would arrest and perpetuate\nthem, and consign their results to a more equal, extensive, and\nlasting improvement of the condition of man--though justice and\nthe true meaning of human society are, if not more accurately, more\ngenerally understood; though perhaps men know more, and therefore\nare more, as a mass, yet this principle has never been called into\naction, and requires indeed a universal and an almost appalling change\nin the system of existing things. The study of modern history is\nthe study of kings, financiers, statesmen, and priests. The history\nof ancient Greece is the study of legislators, philosophers,\nand poets; it is the history of men, compared with the history of\ntitles. What the Greeks were, was a reality, not a promise. And what\nwe are and hope to be, is derived, as it were, from the influence\nand inspiration of these glorious generations.\n\nWhatever tends to afford a further illustration of the manners and\nopinions of those to whom we owe so much, and who were perhaps, on\nthe whole, the most perfect specimens of humanity of whom we have\nauthentic record, were infinitely valuable. Let us see their errors,\ntheir weaknesses, their daily actions, their familiar conversation,\nand catch the tone of their society. When we discover how far the\nmost admirable community ever framed was removed from that perfection\nto which human society is impelled by some active power within each\nbosom to aspire, how great ought to be our hopes, how resolute our\nstruggles! For the Greeks of the Periclean age were widely different\nfrom us. It is to be lamented that no modern writer has hitherto\ndared to show them precisely as they were. Barthelemi cannot\nbe denied the praise of industry and system; but he never forgets\nthat he is a Christian and a Frenchman. Wieland, in his delightful\nnovels, makes indeed a very tolerable Pagan, but cherishes too many\npolitical prejudices, and refrains from diminishing the interest of\nhis romances by painting sentiments in which no European of modern\ntimes can possibly sympathize. There is no book which shows the\nGreeks precisely as they were; they seem all written for children\nwith the caution that no practice or sentiment, highly inconsistent\nwith our present manners, should be mentioned, lest those manners\nshould receive outrage and violation. But there are many to whom\nthe Greek language is inaccessible, who ought not to be excluded by\nthis prudery from possessing an exact and comprehensive conception\nof the history of man; for there is no knowledge concerning what man\nhas been and may be, from partaking of which a person can depart,\nwithout becoming in some degree more philosophical, tolerant, and\njust.\n\nOne of the chief distinctions between the manners of ancient Greece\nand modern Europe, consisted in the regulations and the sentiments\nrespecting sexual intercourse. Whether this difference arises from\nsome imperfect influence of the doctrines of Jesus, who alleges\nthe absolute and unconditional equality of all human beings, or\nfrom the institutions of chivalry, or from a certain fundamental\ndifference of physical nature existing in the Celts, or from a\ncombination of all or any of these causes acting on each other, is\na question worthy of voluminous investigation. The fact is, that\nthe modern Europeans have in this circumstance, and in the abolition\nof slavery, made an improvement the most decisive in the regulation\nof human society; and all the virtue and the wisdom of the Periclean\nage arose under other institutions, in spite of the diminution\nwhich personal slavery and the inferiority of women, recognized by\nlaw and opinion, must have produced in the delicacy, the strength,\nthe comprehensiveness, and the accuracy of their conceptions, in\nmoral, political, and metaphysical science, and perhaps in every\nother art and science.\n\nThe women, thus degraded, became such as it was expected they\nwould become. They possessed, except with extraordinary exceptions,\nthe habits and the qualities of slaves. They were probably not\nextremely beautiful; at least there was no such disproportion in\nthe attractions of the external form between the female and male\nsex among the Greeks, as exists among the modern Europeans. They\nwere certainly devoid of that moral and intellectual loveliness\nwith which the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of\nsentiment animates, as with another life of overpowering grace,\nthe lineaments and the gestures of every form which they inhabit.\nTheir eyes could not have been deep and intricate from the workings\nof the mind, and could have entangled no heart in soul-enwoven\nlabyrinths.\n\nLet it not be imagined that because the Greeks were deprived of\nits legitimate object, they were incapable of sentimental love; and\nthat this passion is the mere child of chivalry and the literature of\nmodern times. This object or its archetype for ever exists in the\nmind, which selects among those who resemble it that which most\nresembles it; and instinctively fills up the interstices of the\nimperfect image, in the same manner as the imagination moulds and\ncompletes the shapes in clouds, or in the fire, into the resemblances\nof whatever form, animal, building, &c., happens to be present to\nit. Man is in his wildest state a social being: a certain degree\nof civilization and refinement ever produces the want of sympathies\nstill more intimate and complete; and the gratification of the\nsenses is no longer all that is sought in sexual connexion. It\nsoon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated\nsentiment, which we call love, which is rather the universal thirst\nfor a communion not only of the senses, but of our whole nature,\nintellectual, imaginative and sensitive, and which, when individualized,\nbecomes an imperious necessity, only to be satisfied by the complete\nor partial, actual or supposed fulfilment of its claims. This want\ngrows more powerful in proportion to the development which our\nnature receives from civilization, for man never ceases to be a\nsocial being. The sexual impulse, which is only one, and often a\nsmall part of those claims, serves, from its obvious and external\nnature, as a kind of type or expression of the rest, a common basis,\nan acknowledged and visible link. Still it is a claim which even\nderives a strength not its own from the accessory circumstances\nwhich surround it, and one which our nature thirsts to satisfy. To\nestimate this, observe the degree of intensity and durability of\nthe love of the male towards the female in animals and savages and\nacknowledge all the duration and intensity observable in the love\nof civilized beings beyond that of savages to be produced from\nother causes. In the susceptibility of the external senses there\nis probably no important difference.\n\nAmong the ancient Greeks the male sex, one half of the human race,\nreceived the highest cultivation and refinement: whilst the other,\nso far as intellect is concerned, were educated as slaves and were\nraised but few degrees in all that related to moral of intellectual\nexcellence above the condition of savages. The gradations in the\nsociety of man present us with slow improvement in this respect.\nThe Roman women held a higher consideration in society, and were\nesteemed almost as the equal partners with their husbands in the\nregulation of domestic economy and the education of their children.\nThe practices and customs of modern Europe are essentially different\nfrom and incomparably less pernicious than either, however remote\nfrom what an enlightened mind cannot fail to desire as the future\ndestiny of human beings.\n\n[1818; publ. 1840]\n\n\n\n\nON THE SYMPOSIUM, OR PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO\n\nA FRAGMENT\n\nThe dialogue entitled The Banquet was selected by the translator\nas the most beautiful and perfect among all the works of Plato.\n[Footnote: The Republic, though replete with considerable errors\nof speculation, is, indeed, the greatest repository of important\ntruths of all the works of Plato. This, perhaps, is because it is\nthe longest. He first, and perhaps last, maintained that a state\nought to be governed, not by the wealthiest, or the most ambitious,\nor the most cunning, but by the wisest; the method of selecting\nsuch rulers, and the laws by which such a selection is made, must\ncorrespond with and arise out of the moral freedom and refinement\nof the people.] He despairs of having communicated to the English\nlanguage any portion of the surpassing graces of the composition,\nor having done more than present an imperfect shadow of the language\nand the sentiment of this astonishing production.\n\nPlato is eminently the greatest among the Greek philosophers, and\nfrom, or, rather, perhaps through him, his master Socrates, have\nproceeded those emanations of moral and metaphysical knowledge,\non which a long series and an incalculable variety of popular\nsuperstitions have sheltered their absurdities from the slow contempt\nof mankind. Plato exhibits the rare union of close and subtle logic\nwith the Pythian enthusiasm of poetry, melted by the splendour\nand harmony of his periods into one irresistible stream of musical\nimpressions, which hurry the persuasions onward, as in a breathless\ncareer. His language is that of an immortal spirit, rather than\na man. Lord Bacon is, perhaps, the only writer, who, in these\nparticulars, can be compared with him: his imitator, Cicero, sinks\nin the comparison into an ape mocking the gestures of a man.  His\nviews into the nature of mind and existence are often obscure, only\nbecause they are profound; and though his theories respecting the\ngovernment of the world, and the elementary laws of moral action,\nare not always correct, yet there is scarcely any of his treatises\nwhich do not, however stained by puerile sophisms, contain the\nmost remarkable intuitions into all that can be the subject of the\nhuman mind. His excellence consists especially in intuition, and\nit is this faculty which raises him far above Aristotle, whose\ngenius, though vivid and various, is obscure in comparison with\nthat of Plato.\n\nThe dialogue entitled the Banquet, is called [word in Greek], or\na Discussion upon Love, and is supposed to have taken place at the\nhouse of Agathon, at one of a series of festivals given by that\npoet, on the occasion of his gaining the prize of tragedy at the\nDionysiaca. The account of the debate on this occasion is supposed\nto have been given by Apollodorus, a pupil of Socrates, many\nyears after it had taken place, to a companion who was curious to\nhear it.  This Apollodorus appears, both from the style in which\nhe is represented in this piece, as well as from a passage in the\nPhaedon, to have been a person of an impassioned and enthusiastic\ndisposition; to borrow an image from the Italian painters, he seems\nto have been the St. John of the Socratic group. The drama (for so\nthe lively distinction of character and the various and well-wrought\ncircumstances of the story almost entitle it to be called) begins\nby Socrates persuading Aristodemus to sup at Agathon's, uninvited.\nThe whole of this introduction affords the most lively conception\nof refined Athenian manners.\n\n[1818; publ. 1840] [UNFINISHED]\n\n\n\n\nA DEFENCE OF POETRY\n\n\nI\n\nAccording to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental\naction, which are called reason and imagination, the former may be\nconsidered as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought\nto another, however produced; and the latter, as mind acting upon\nthose thoughts so as to colour them with its own light, and composing\nfrom them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within\nitself the principle of its own integrity. The one is the [word\nin Greek], or the principle of synthesis, and has for its objects\nthose forms which are common to universal nature and existence\nitself; the other is the [word in Greek], or principle of analysis,\nand its action regards the relations of things, simply as relations;\nconsidering thoughts, not in their integral unity, but as the\nalgebraical representations which conduct to certain general results.\nReason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination\nis the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately\nand as a whole. Reason respects the differences, and imagination\nthe similitudes of things.  Reason is to the imagination as the\ninstrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow\nto the substance.\n\nPoetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression\nof the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man.\nMan is an instrument over which a series of external and internal\nimpressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing\nwind over an Aeolian lyre, which move it by their motion to\never-changing melody. But there is a principle within the human\nbeing, and perhaps within all sentient beings, which acts otherwise\nthan in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harmony,\nby an internal adjustment of the sounds or motions thus excited\nto the impressions which excite them. It is as if the lyre could\naccommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them,\nin a determined proportion of sound; even as the musician can\naccommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play\nby itself will express its delight by its voice and motions; and\nevery inflexion of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation\nto a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions which\nawakened it; it will be the reflected image of that impression;\nand as the lyre trembles and sounds after the wind has died away,\nso the child seeks, by prolonging in its voice and motions the\nduration of the effect, to prolong also a consciousness of the\ncause. In relation to the objects which delight a child, these\nexpressions are, what poetry is to higher objects. The savage (for\nthe savage is to ages what the child is to years) expresses the\nemotions produced in him by surrounding objects in a similar manner;\nand language and gesture, together with plastic or pictorial imitation,\nbecome the image of the combined effect of those objects, and of\nhis apprehension of them. Man in society, with all his passions and\nhis pleasures, next becomes the object of the passions and pleasures\nof man; an additional class of emotions produces an augmented\ntreasure of expressions; and language, gesture, and the imitative\narts, become at once the representation and the medium, the pencil\nand the picture, the chisel and the statue, the chord and the\nharmony. The social sympathies, or those laws from which, as from\nits elements, society results, begin to develop themselves from\nthe moment that two human beings coexist; the future is contained\nwithin the present, as the plant within the seed; and equality,\ndiversity, unity, contrast, mutual dependence, become the principles\nalone capable of affording the motives according to which the\nwill of a social being is determined to action, inasmuch as he is\nsocial; and constitute pleasure in sensation, virtue in sentiment,\nbeauty in art, truth in reasoning, and love in the intercourse of\nkind. Hence men, even in the infancy of society, observe a certain\norder in their words and actions, distinct from that of the objects\nand the impressions represented by them, all expression being\nsubject to the laws of that from which it proceeds. But let us\ndismiss those more general considerations which might involve an\ninquiry into the principles of society itself, and restrict our\nview to the manner in which the imagination is expressed upon its\nforms.\n\nIn the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural\nobjects, observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain\nrhythm or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they\nobserve not the same order, in the motions of the dance, in the\nmelody of the song, in the combinations of language, in the series\nof their imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain\norder or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic\nrepresentation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive\nan intenser and purer pleasure than from any other: the sense\nof an approximation to this order has been called taste by modern\nwriters.  Every man in the infancy of art observes an order which\napproximates more or less closely to that from which this highest\ndelight results: but the diversity is not sufficiently marked, as\nthat its gradations should be sensible, except in those instances\nwhere the predominance of this faculty of approximation to the\nbeautiful (for so we may be permitted to name the relation between\nthis highest pleasure and its cause) is very great. Those in whom\nit exists in excess are poets, in the most universal sense of the\nword; and the pleasure resulting from the manner in which they\nexpress the influence of society or nature upon their own minds,\ncommunicates itself to others, and gathers a sort or reduplication\nfrom that community. Their language is vitally metaphorical; that\nis, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and\nperpetuates their apprehension, until the words which represent\nthem become, through time, signs for portions or classes of thoughts\ninstead of pictures of integral thoughts; and then if no new poets\nshould arise to create afresh the associations which have been thus\ndisorganized, language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of\nhuman intercourse. These similitudes or relations are finely said\nby Lord Bacon to be 'the same footsteps of nature impressed upon\nthe various subjects of the world'; [Footnote: De Augment. Scient.,\ncap. i, lib.  iii.] and he considers the faculty which perceives\nthem as the storehouse of axioms common to all knowledge. In the\ninfancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because\nlanguage itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the\ntrue and the beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the\nrelation, subsisting, first between existence and perception, and\nsecondly between perception and expression. Every original language\nnear to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the\ncopiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the\nworks of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of\nthe creations of poetry.\n\nBut poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible\norder, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the\ndance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the\ninstitutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the\ninventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a\ncertain propinquity with the beautiful and the true, that partial\napprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is\ncalled religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or\nsusceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of\nfalse and true. Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and\nnation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs\nof the world, legislators, or prophets: a poet essentially comprises\nand unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely\nthe present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which\npresent things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in\nthe present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the\nfruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in\nthe gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the form as\nsurely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence\nof superstition, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy,\nrather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates\nin the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to\nhis conceptions, time and place and number are not. The grammatical\nforms which express the moods of time, and the difference of persons,\nand the distinction of place, are convertible with respect to the\nhighest poetry without injuring it as poetry; and the choruses of\nAeschylus, and the book of Job, and Dante's Paradise, would afford,\nmore than any other writings, examples of this fact, if the limits\nof this essay did not forbid citation. The creations of sculpture,\npainting, and music, are illustrations still more decisive.\n\nLanguage, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of action,\nare all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may be called\npoetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a\nsynonym of the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses\nthose arrangements of language, and especially metrical language,\nwhich are created by that imperial faculty; whose throne is curtained\nwithin the invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature\nitself of language, which is a more direct representation of the\nactions and passions of our internal being, and is susceptible\nof more various and delicate combinations, than colour, form, or\nmotion, and is more plastic and obedient to the control of that\nfaculty of which it is the creation. For language is arbitrarily\nproduced by the imagination and has relation to thoughts alone;\nbut all other materials, instruments and conditions of art, have\nrelations among each other, which limit and interpose between\nconception and expression The former is as a mirror which reflects,\nthe latter as a cloud which enfeebles, the light of which both are\nmediums of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors, painters,\nand musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great masters\nof these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have\nemployed language as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never\nequalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term, as\ntwo performers of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a\nguitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and founders of religions,\nso long as their institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of\npoets in the restricted sense; but it can scarcely be a question,\nwhether, if we deduct the celebrity which their flattery of the\ngross opinions of the vulgar usually conciliates, together with\nthat which belonged to them in their higher character of poets,\nany excess will remain.\n\nWe have thus circumscribed the word poetry within the limits of that\nart which is the most familiar and the most perfect expression of\nthe faculty itself. It is necessary, however, to make the circle\nstill narrower, and to determine the distinction between measured\nand unmeasured language; for the popular division into prose and\nverse is inadmissible in accurate philosophy.\n\nSounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other\nand towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order\nof those relations has always been found connected with a perception\nof the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language of\npoets has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence\nof sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely\nless indispensable to the communication of its influence, than the\nwords themselves, without reference to that peculiar order. Hence\nthe vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a\ncrucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour\nand odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the\ncreations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed,\nor it will bear no flower--and this is the burthen of the curse of\nBabel.\n\nAn observation of the regular mode of the recurrence of harmony\nin the language of poetical minds, together with its relation to\nmusic, produced metre, or a certain system of traditional forms of\nharmony and language. Yet it is by no means essential that a poet\nshould accommodate his language to this traditional form, so that the\nharmony, which is its spirit, be observed. The practice is indeed\nconvenient and popular, and to be preferred, especially in such\ncomposition as includes much action: but every great poet must\ninevitably innovate upon the example of his predecessors in the\nexact structure of his peculiar versification. The distinction\nbetween poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. The distinction\nbetween philosophers and poets has been anticipated. Plato was\nessentially a poet--the truth and splendour of his imagery, and the\nmelody of his language, are the most intense that it is possible\nto conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic, dramatic, and\nlyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts\ndivested of shape and action, and he forbore to invent any regular\nplan of rhythm which would include, under determinate forms, the\nvaried pauses of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence\nof his periods, but with little success. Lord Bacon was a poet.\n[Footnote: See the Filum Labyrinthi, and the Essay on Death\nparticularly]. His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which\nsatisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom\nof his philosophy satisfies the intellect; it is a strain which\ndistends, and then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind,\nand pours itself forth together with it into the universal element\nwith which it has perpetual sympathy. All the authors of revolutions\nin opinion are not only necessarily poets as they are inventors,\nnor even as their words unveil the permanent analogy of things\nby images which participate in the life of truth; but as their\nperiods are harmonious and rhythmical, and contain in themselves\nthe elements of verse; being the echo of the eternal music. Nor are\nthose supreme poets, who have employed traditional forms of rhythm\non account of the form and action of their subjects, less capable\nof perceiving and teaching the truth of things, than those who\nhave omitted that form. Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton (to confine\nourselves to modern writers) are philosophers of the very loftiest\npower.\n\nA poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth.\nThere is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story\nis a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connexion\nthan time, place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the\ncreation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human\nnature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself\nthe image of all other minds. The one is partial, and applies only\nto a definite period of time, and a certain combination of events\nwhich can never again recur; the other is universal, and contains\nwithin itself the germ of a relation to whatever motives or actions\nhave place in the possible varieties of human nature. Time, which\ndestroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular facts,\nstripped of the poetry which should invest them, augments that of\npoetry, and for ever develops new and wonderful applications of the\neternal truth which it contains. Hence epitomes have been called\nthe moths of just history; they eat out the poetry of it. A story\nof particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that\nwhich should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful\nthat which is distorted.\n\nThe parts of a composition may be poetical, without the composition\nas a whole being a poem. A single sentence may be a considered as\na whole, though it may be found in the midst of a series of unassimilated\nportions: a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable\nthought. And thus all the great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch,\nLivy, were poets; and although, the plan of these writers, especially\nthat of Livy, restrained them; from developing this faculty in\nits highest degree, they made copious and ample amends for their\nsubjection, by filling all the interstices of their subjects with\nliving images.\n\nHaving determined what is poetry, and who are poets, let us proceed\nto estimate its effects upon society.\n\nPoetry is ever accompanied with pleasure: all spirits on which it\nfalls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with\nits delight. In the infancy of the world, neither poets themselves\nnor their auditors are fully aware of the excellence of poetry:\nfor it acts in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and above\nconsciousness; and it is reserved for future generations to contemplate\nand measure the mighty cause and effect in all the strength and\nsplendour of their union. Even in modern times, no living poet ever\narrived at the fullness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgement\nupon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed\nof his peers: it must be impanelled by Time from the selectest of\nthe wise of many generations. A poet is a nightingale, who sits\nin darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds;\nhis auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen\nmusician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not\nwhence or why. The poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the\ndelight of infant Greece; they were the elements of that social\nsystem which is the column upon which all succeeding civilization\nhas reposed. Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age in\nhuman character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses\nwere awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector,\nand Ulysses the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and\npersevering devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in\nthese immortal creations: the sentiments of the auditors must have\nbeen refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely\nimpersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation\nthey identified themselves with the objects of their admiration.\nNor let it be objected, that these characters are remote from moral\nperfection, and that they can by no means be considered as edifying\npatterns for general imitation. Every epoch, under names more\nor less specious, has deified its peculiar errors; Revenge is the\nnaked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age; and Self-deceit\nis the veiled image of unknown evil, before which luxury and satiety\nlie prostrate. But a poet considers the vices of his contemporaries\nas a temporary dress in which his creations must be arrayed, and\nwhich cover without concealing the eternal proportions of their\nbeauty. An epic or dramatic personage is understood to wear them\naround his soul, as he may the ancient armour or the modern uniform\naround his body; whilst it is easy to conceive a dress more graceful\nthan either. The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far\nconcealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its\nform shall communicate itself to the very disguise, and indicate\nthe shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic\nform and graceful motions will express themselves through the most\nbarbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of the highest class\nhave chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conceptions in its\nnaked truth and splendour; and it is doubtful whether the alloy\nof costume, habit, &c., be not necessary to temper this planetary\nmusic for mortal ears.\n\nThe whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry rests\nupon a misconception of the manner in which poetry acts to produce\nthe moral improvement of man. Ethical science arranges the elements\nwhich poetry has created, and propounds schemes and proposes\nexamples of civil and domestic life: nor is it for want of admirable\ndoctrines that men hate, and despise, and censure, and deceive,\nand subjugate one another. But poetry acts in another and diviner\nmanner. It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it\nthe receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought.\nPoetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes\nfamiliar objects be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all\nthat it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian\nlight stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once\ncontemplated them as memorials of that gentle and exalted content\nwhich extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it\ncoexists. The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our\nown nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful\nwhich exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man,\nto be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he\nmust put himself in the place of another and of many others; the\npains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great\ninstrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers\nto the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the\ncircumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thought of\never new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating\nto their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals\nand interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food. Poetry\nstrengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature\nof man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. A poet\ntherefore would do ill to embody his own conceptions of right and\nwrong, which are usually those of his place and time, in his poetical\ncreations, which participate in neither By this assumption of the\ninferior office of interpreting the effect in which perhaps after\nall he might acquit himself but imperfectly, he would resign a\nglory in a participation in the cause. There was little danger that\nHomer, or any of the eternal poets should have so far misunderstood\nthemselves as to have abdicated this throne of their widest dominion.\nThose in whom the poetical faculty, though great, is less intense,\nas Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have frequently affected a\nmoral aim, and the effect of their poetry is diminished in exact\nproportion to the degree in which they compel us to advert to this\npurpose.\n\n\nHomer and the cyclic poets were followed at a certain interval\nby the dramatic and lyrical poets of Athens, who flourished\ncontemporaneously with all that is most perfect in the kindred\nexpressions of the poetical faculty; architecture, painting, music\nthe dance, sculpture, philosophy, and, we may add, the forms of\ncivil life. For although the scheme of Athenian society was deformed\nby many imperfections which the poetry existing in chivalry and\nChristianity has erased from the habits and institutions of modern\nEurope; yet never at any other period has so much energy, beauty,\nand virtue, been developed; never was blind strength and stubborn\nform so disciplined and rendered subject to the will of man, or\nthat will less repugnant to the dictates of the beautiful and the\ntrue, as during the century which preceded the death of Socrates.\nOf no other epoch in the history of our species have we records\nand fragments stamped so visibly with the image of the divinity in\nman. But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, or in language,\nwhich has rendered this epoch memorable above all others, and the\nstorehouse of examples to everlasting time. For written poetry\nexisted at that epoch simultaneously with the other arts, and it is\nan idle inquiry to demand which gave and which received the light,\nwhich all, as from a common focus, have scattered over the darkest\nperiods of succeeding time. We know no more of cause and effect than\na constant conjunction of events: poetry is ever found to coexist\nwith whatever other arts contribute to the happiness and perfection\nof man. I appeal to what has already been established to distinguish\nbetween the cause and the effect.\n\nIt was at the period here adverted to, that the drama had its birth;\nand however a succeeding writer may have equalled or surpassed\nthose few great specimens of the Athenian drama which have been\npreserved to us, it is indisputable that the art itself never was\nunderstood or practised according to the true philosophy of it,\nas at Athens. For the Athenians employed language, action, music,\npainting, the dance, and religious institutions, to produce a common\neffect in the representation of the highest idealisms of passion\nand of power; each division in the art was made perfect in its kind\nby artists of the most consummate skill, and was disciplined into\na beautiful proportion and unity one towards the other. On the modern\nstage a few only of the elements capable of expressing the image\nof the poet's conception are employed at once. We have tragedy\nwithout music and dancing; and music and dancing without the highest\nimpersonations of which they are the fit accompaniment, and both\nwithout religion and solemnity. Religious institution has indeed\nbeen usually banished from the stage. Our system of divesting the\nactor's face of a mask, on which the many expressions appropriated\nto his dramatic character might be moulded into one permanent\nand unchanging expression, is favourable only to a partial and\ninharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but a monologue, where\nall the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal\nmimicry. The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy,\nthough liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly\nan extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be\nas in KING LEAR, universal, ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps the\nintervention of this principle which determines the balance in\nfavour of KING LEAR against the OEDIPUS TYRANNUS or the AGAMEMNON,\nor, if you will, the trilogies with which they are connected; unless\nthe intense power of the choral poetry, especially that of the\nlatter, should be considered as restoring the equilibrium. KING\nLEAR, if it can sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the\nmost perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world;\nin spite of the narrow conditions to which the poet was subjected\nby the ignorance of the philosophy of the drama which has prevailed\nin modern Europe. Calderon, in his religious AUTOS, has attempted\nto fulfil some of the high conditions of dramatic representation\nneglected by Shakespeare; such as the establishing a relation\nbetween the drama and religion and the accommodating them to music\nand dancing; but he omits the observation of conditions still\nmore important, and more is lost than gained by the substitution\nof the rigidly-defined and ever-repeated idealisms of a distorted\nsuperstition for the living impersonations of the truth of human\npassion.\n\nBut I digress.--The connexion of scenic exhibitions with the\nimprovement or corruption of the manners of men, has been universally\nrecognized: in other words, the presence or absence of poetry in\nits most perfect and universal form, has been found to be connected\nwith good and evil in conduct or habit. The corruption which has\nbeen imputed to the drama as an effect, begins when the poetry\nemployed in its constitution ends: I appeal to the history of manners\nwhether the periods of the growth of the one and the decline of the\nother have not corresponded with an exactness equal to any example\nof moral cause and effect.\n\nThe drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it may have approached\nto its perfection, ever co-existed with the moral and intellectual\ngreatness of the age. The tragedies of the Athenian poets are\nas mirrors in which the spectator beholds himself, under a thin\ndisguise of circumstance, stript of all but that ideal perfection\nand energy which every one feels to be the internal type of all that\nhe loves, admires, and would become. The imagination is enlarged\nby a sympathy with pains and passions so mighty, that they distend\nin their conception the capacity of that by which they are conceived;\nthe good affections are strengthened by pity, indignation, terror,\nand sorrow; and an exalted calm is prolonged from the satiety of\nthis high exercise of them into the tumult of familiar life: even\ncrime is disarmed of half its horror and all its contagion by being\nrepresented as the fatal consequence of the unfathomable agencies\nof nature; error is thus divested of its wilfulness; men can no\nlonger cherish it as the creation of their choice. In a drama of\nthe highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it\nteaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eye\nnor the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that which it\nresembles. The drama, so long as it continues to express poetry, is\nas a prismatic and many-sided mirror, which collects the brightest\nrays of human nature and divides and reproduces them from the\nsimplicity of these elementary forms, and touches them with majesty\nand beauty, and multiplies all that it reflects, and endows it with\nthe power of propagating its like wherever it may fall.\n\nBut in periods of the decay of social life, the drama sympathizes\nwith that decay. Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the form of\nthe great masterpieces of antiquity, divested of all harmonious\naccompaniment of the kindred arts; and often the very form\nmisunderstood, or a weak attempt to teach certain doctrines, which\nthe writer considers as moral truths; and which are usually no\nmore than specious flatteries of some gross vice or weakness, with\nwhich the author, in common with his auditors, are infected. Hence\nwhat has been called the classical and domestic drama. Addison's\nCATO is a specimen of the one; and would it were not superfluous\nto cite examples of the other! To such purposes poetry cannot be\nmade subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed,\nwhich consumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we\nobserve that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative\nin a singular degree; they affect sentiment and passion, which,\ndivested of imagination, are other names for caprice and appetite.\nThe period in our own history of the grossest degradation of the\ndrama is the reign of Charles II, when all forms in which poetry\nhad been accustomed to be expressed became hymns to the triumph of\nkingly power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone illuminating\nan age unworthy of him. At such periods the calculating principle\npervades all the forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases\nto be expressed upon them. Comedy loses its ideal universality:\nwit succeeds to humour; we laugh from self-complacency and triumph,\ninstead of pleasure; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt, succeed to\nsympathetic merriment; we hardly laugh, but we Obscenity, which\nis ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from\nthe very veil which it assumes, more active if less disgusting: it\nis a monster for which the corruption of society for ever brings\nforth new food, which it devours in secret.\n\nThe drama being that form under which a greater number of modes\nof expression of poetry are susceptible of being combined than any\nother, the connexion of poetry and social good is more observable\nin the drama than in whatever other form. And it is indisputable\nthat the highest perfection of human society has ever corresponded\nwith the highest dramatic excellence; and that the corruption or the\nextinction of the drama in a nation where it has once flourished,\nis a mark of a corruption of manners and an extinction of the\nenergies which sustain the soul of social life. But, as Machiavelli\nsays of political institutions, that life may be preserved and\nrenewed, if men should arise capable of bringing back the drama\nto its principles. And this is true with respect to poetry in its\nmost extended sense: all language, institution and form, require not\nonly to be produced but to be sustained: the office and character\nof a poet participates in the divine nature as regards providence,\nno less than as regards creation.\n\nCivil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal predominance first of\nthe Macedonian, and then of the Roman arms, were so many symbols\nof the extinction or suspension of the creative faculty in Greece.\nThe bucolic writers, who found patronage under the lettered tyrants\nof Sicily and Egypt, were the latest representatives of its most\nglorious reign. Their poetry is intensely melodious, like the odour\nof the tuberose, it overcomes and sickens the spirit with excess\nof sweetness; whilst the poetry of the preceding age was as a\nmeadow-gale of June, which mingles the fragrance all the flowers\nof the field, and adds a quickening and harmonizing spirit of its\nown, which endows the sense with a power of sustaining its extreme\ndelight. The bucolic and erotic delicacy in written poetry is\ncorrelative with that softness in statuary, music and the kindred\narts, and even in manners and institutions, which distinguished the\nepoch to which I now refer. Nor is it the poetical faculty itself,\nor any misapplication of it, to which this want of harmony is to\nbe imputed. An equal sensibility to the influence of the senses\nand the affections is to be found in the writings of Homer and\nSophocles: the former, especially, has clothed sensual and pathetic\nimages with irresistible attractions. Their superiority over these\nsucceeding writers consists in the presence of those thoughts which\nbelong to the inner faculties of our nature, not in the absence\nof those which are connected with the external: their incomparable\nperfection consists in a harmony of the union of all.  It is not\nwhat the erotic poets have, but what they have not, in which their\nimperfection consists. It is not inasmuch as they were poets, but\ninasmuch as they were not poets, that they can be considered with\nany plausibility as connected with the corruption of their age. Had\nthat corruption availed so as to extinguish in them the sensibility\nto pleasure, passion, and natural scenery, which is imputed to them\nas an imperfection, the last triumph of evil would have been achieved.\nFor the end of social corruption is to destroy all sensibility\nto pleasure; and, therefore, it is corruption. It begins at the\nimagination and the intellect as at the core, and distributes itself\nthence as a paralysing venom, through the affections into the very\nappetites, until all become a torpid mass in which hardly sense\nsurvives. At the approach of such a period, poetry ever addresses\nitself to those faculties which are the last to be destroyed, and\nits voice is heard, like the footsteps of Astraea, departing from\nthe world. Poetry ever communicates all the pleasure which men\nare capable of receiving: it is ever still the light of life; the\nsource of whatever of beautiful or generous or true can have place\nin an evil time. It will readily be confessed that those among the\nluxurious citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria, who were delighted\nwith the poems of Theocritus, were less cold, cruel, and sensual\nthan the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must utterly have\ndestroyed the fabric of human society before poetry can ever cease.\nThe sacred links of that chain have never been entirely disjoined,\nwhich descending through the minds of many men is attached to those\ngreat minds, whence as from a magnet the invisible effluence is\nsent forth, which at once connects, animates, and sustains the life\nof all. It is the faculty which contains within itself the seeds\nat once of its own and of social renovation.  And let us not\ncircumscribe the effects of the bucolic and erotic poetry within\nthe limits of the sensibility of those to whom it was addressed.\nThey may have perceived the beauty of those immortal compositions,\nsimply as fragments and isolated portions: those who are more\nfinely organized, or born in a happier age, may recognize them as\nepisodes to that great poem, which all poets, like the cooperating\nthoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of\nthe world.\n\nThe same revolutions within a narrower sphere had place in ancient\nRome; but the actions and forms of its social life never seem to\nhave been perfectly saturated with the poetical element. The Romans\nappear to have considered the Greeks as the selectest treasuries\nof the selectest forms of manners and of nature, and to have\nabstained from creating in measured language, sculpture, music, or\narchitecture, anything which might bear a particular relation to\ntheir own condition, whilst it should bear a general one to the\nuniversal constitution of the world. But we judge from partial\nevidence, and we judge perhaps partially Ennius, Varro, Pacuvius,\nand Accius, all great poets, have been lost. Lucretius is in the\nhighest, and Virgil in a very high sense, a creator. The chosen\ndelicacy of expressions of the latter, are as a mist of light which\nconceal from us the intense and exceeding truth of his conceptions\nof nature. Livy is instinct with poetry. Yet Horace, Catullus,\nOvid, and generally the other great writers of the Virgilian age,\nsaw man and nature in the mirror of Greece. The institutions also,\nand the religion of Rome were less poetical than those of Greece,\nas the shadow is less vivid than the substance. Hence poetry in\nRome, seemed to follow, rather than accompany, the perfection of\npolitical and domestic society. The true poetry of Rome lived in\nits institutions; for whatever of beautiful, true, and majestic,\nthey contained, could have sprung only from the faculty which creates\nthe order in which they consist. The life of Camillus, the death of\nRegulus; the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state,\nof the victorious Gauls: the refusal of the republic to make peace\nwith Hannibal, after the battle of Cannae, were not the consequences\nof a refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to\nresult from such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those\nwho were at once the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas.\nThe imagination beholding the beauty of this order, created it out\nof itself according to its own idea; the consequence was empire,\nand the reward everliving fame. These things are not the less poetry\nquid carent vate sacro. They are the episodes of that cyclic poem\nwritten by Time upon the memories of men. The Past, like an inspired\nrhapsodist, fills the theatre of everlasting generations with their\nharmony.\n\nAt length the ancient system of religion and manners had fulfilled\nthe circle of its revolutions. And the world would have fallen into\nutter anarchy and darkness, but that there were found poets among\nthe authors of the Christian and chivalric systems of manners and\nreligion, who created forms of opinion and action never before\nconceived; which, copied into the imaginations of men, become as\ngenerals to the bewildered armies of their thoughts. It is foreign\nto the present purpose to touch upon the evil produced by these\nsystems: except that we protest, on the ground of the principles\nalready established, that no portion of it can be attributed to\nthe poetry they contain.\n\nIt is probable that the poetry of Moses, Job, David, Solomon, and\nIsaiah, had produced a great effect upon the mind of Jesus and his\ndisciples. The scattered fragments preserved to us by the biographers\nof this extraordinary person, are all instinct with the most vivid\npoetry. But his doctrines seem to have been quickly distorted.\nAt a certain period after the prevalence of a system of opinions\nfounded upon those promulgated by him, the three forms into which\nPlato had distributed the faculties of mind underwent a sort of\napotheosis, and became the object of the worship of the civilized\nworld. Here it is to be confessed that 'Light seems to thicken,'\nand\n\n       The crow makes wing to the rooky wood,\n       Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,\n       And night's black agents to their preys do rouze.\n\nBut mark how beautiful an order has sprung from the dust and\nblood of this fierce chaos! how the world, as from a resurrection,\nbalancing itself on the golden wings of knowledge and of hope, has\nreassumed its yet unwearied flight into the heaven of time. Listen\nto the music, unheard by outward ears, which is as a ceaseless and\ninvisible wind, nourishing its everlasting course with strength\nand swiftness.\n\nThe poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and the mythology and\ninstitutions of the Celtic conquerors of the Roman empire, outlived\nthe darkness and the convulsions connected with their growth and\nvictory, and blended themselves in a new fabric of manners and\nopinion. It is an error to impute the ignorance of the dark ages to\nthe Christian doctrines or the predominance of the Celtic nations.\nWhatever of evil their agencies may have contained sprang from the\nextinction of the poetical principle, connected with the progress\nof despotism and superstition. Men, from causes too intricate to be\nhere discussed, had become insensible and selfish: their own will\nhad become feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence the\nslaves of the will of others: lust, fear, avarice, cruelty, and\nfraud, characterized a race amongst whom no one was to be found\ncapable of CREATING in form, language, or institution. The moral\nanomalies of such a state of society are not justly to be charged\nupon any class of events immediately connected with them, and those\nevents are most entitled to our approbation which could dissolve\nit most expeditiously. It is unfortunate for those who cannot\ndistinguish words from thoughts, that many of these anomalies have\nbeen incorporated into our popular religion.\n\nIt was not until the eleventh century that the effects of the\npoetry of the Christian and chivalric systems began to manifest\nthemselves.  The principle of equality had been discovered and\napplied by Plato in his Republic, as the theoretical rule of the\nmode in which the materials of pleasure and of power, produced by\nthe common skill and labour of human beings, ought to be distributed\namong them. The limitations of this rule were asserted by him\nto be determined only by the sensibility of each, or the utility\nto result to all. Plato, following the doctrines of Timaeus and\nPythagoras, taught also a moral and intellectual system of doctrine,\ncomprehending at once the past, the present, and the future condition\nof man. Jesus Christ divulged the sacred and eternal truths contained\nin these views to mankind, and Christianity, in its abstract purity,\nbecame the exoteric expression of the esoteric doctrines of the\npoetry and wisdom of antiquity. The incorporation of the Celtic\nnations with the exhausted population of the south, impressed\nupon it the figure of the poetry existing in their mythology and\ninstitutions. The result was a sum of the action and reaction of\nall the causes included in it; for it may be assumed as a maxim that\nno nation or religion can supersede any other without incorporating\ninto itself a portion of that which it supersedes. The abolition of\npersonal and domestic slavery, and the emancipation of women from\na great part of the degrading restraints of antiquity, were among\nthe consequences of these events.\n\nThe abolition of personal slavery is the basis of the highest\npolitical hope that it can enter into the mind of man to conceive.\nThe freedom of women produced the poetry of sexual love.  Love\nbecame a religion, the idols of whose worship were ever present.\nIt was as if the statues of Apollo and the Muses had been endowed\nwith life and motion, and had walked forth among their worshippers;\nso that earth became peopled by the inhabitants of a diviner world.\nThe familiar appearance and proceedings of life became wonderful\nand heavenly, and a paradise was created as out of the wrecks of\nEden. And as this creation itself is poetry, so its creators were\npoets; and language was the instrument of their art: 'Galeotto fu\nil libro, e chi lo scrisse.' The Provencal Trouveurs, or inventors,\npreceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells, which unseal the\ninmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is in the grief of\nlove. It is impossible to feel them without becoming a portion of\nthat beauty which we contemplate: it were superfluous to explain\nhow the gentleness and the elevation of mind connected with these\nsacred emotions can render men more amiable, more generous and wise,\nand lift them out of the dull vapours of the little world of self.\nDante understood the secret things of love even more than Petrarch.\nHis Vita Nuova is an inexhaustible fountain of purity of sentiment\nand language: it is the idealized history of that period, and those\nintervals of his life which were dedicated to love. His apotheosis\nof Beatrice in Paradise, and the gradations of his own love and her\nloveliness, by which as by steps he feigns himself to have ascended\nto the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious imagination\nof modern poetry. The acutest critics have justly reversed the\njudgement of the vulgar, and the order of the great acts of the\n'Divine Drama', in the measure of the admiration which they accord\nto the Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The latter is a perpetual\nhymn of everlasting love. Love, which found a worthy poet in Plato\nalone of all the ancients, has been celebrated by a chorus of the\ngreatest writers of the renovated world; and the music has penetrated\nthe caverns of society, and its echoes still drown the dissonance\nof arms and superstition. At successive intervals, Ariosto, Tasso,\nShakespeare, Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau, and the great writers\nof our own age, have celebrated the dominion of love, planting\nas it were trophies in the human mind of that sublimest victory\nover sensuality and force. The true relation borne to each other\nby the sexes into which human kind is distributed, has become\nless misunderstood; and if the error which confounded diversity\nwith inequality of the powers of the two sexes has been partially\nrecognized in the opinions and institutions of modern Europe, we\nowe this great benefit to the worship of which chivalry was the\nlaw, and poets the prophets.\n\nThe poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over\nthe stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The\ndistorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival\nMilton have idealized, are merely the mask and the mantle in which\nthese great poets walk through eternity enveloped and disguised.\nIt is a difficult question to determine how far they were conscious\nof the distinction which must have subsisted in their minds between\ntheir own creeds and that of the people. Dante at least appears to\nwish to mark the full extent of it by placing Riphaeus, whom Virgil\ncalls justissimns unus, in Paradise, and observing a most heretical\ncaprice in his distribution of rewards and punishments. And Milton's\npoem contains within itself a philosophical refutation of that\nsystem, of which by a strange and natural antithesis, it has been\na chief popular support. Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence\nof the character of Satan as expressed in Paradise Lost. It is a\nmistake to suppose that he could ever have been intended for the\npopular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning,\nand a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest\nanguish on an enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial\nin a slave are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed\nby much that ennobles his defeat in one subdued, are marked by\nall that dishonours his conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil as\na moral being is as far superior to his God, as one who perseveres\nin some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of\nadversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted\ntriumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from\nany mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in\nenmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve\nnew torments. Milton has so far violated the popular creed (if this\nshall be judged to be a violation) as to have alleged no superiority\nof moral virtue to his God over his Devil. And this bold neglect of\na direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy\nof Milton's genius.  He mingled as it were the elements of human\nnature as colours upon a single pallet, and arranged them in the\ncomposition of his great picture according to the laws of epic\ntruth; that is, according to the laws of that principle by which a\nseries of actions of the external universe and of intelligent and\nethical beings is calculated to excite the sympathy of succeeding\ngenerations of mankind. The Divina Commedia and Paradise Lost have\nconferred upon modern mythology a systematic form; and when change\nand time shall have added one more superstition to the mass of\nthose which have arisen and decayed upon the earth, commentators\nwill be learnedly employed in elucidating the religion of ancestral\nEurope, only not utterly forgotten because it will have been stamped\nwith the eternity of genius.\n\nHomer was the first and Dante the second epic poet: that is,\nthe second poet, the series of whose creations bore a defined and\nintelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion\nof the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it:\ndeveloping itself in correspondence with their development. For\nLucretius had limed the wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of\nthe sensible world; and Virgil, with a modesty that ill became his\ngenius, had affected the fame of an imitator, even whilst he created\nanew all that he copied; and none among the flock of mock-birds,\nthough their notes were sweet, Apollonius Rhodius, Quintus Calaber,\nNonnus, Lucan, Statius, or Claudian, have sought even to fulfil\na single condition of epic truth. Milton was the third epic poet.\nFor if the title of epic in its highest sense be refused to the\nAeneid, still less can it be conceded to the Orlando Furioso, the\nGerusalemme Liberata, the Lusiad, or the Fairy Queen.\n\nDante and Milton were both deeply penetrated with the ancient\nreligion of the civilized world; and its spirit exists in their\npoetry probably in the same proportion as its forms survived in\nthe unreformed worship of modern Europe. The one preceded and the\nother followed the Reformation at almost equal intervals. Dante\nwas the first religious reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather\nin the rudeness and acrimony, than in the boldness of his censures\nof papal usurpation. Dante was the first awakener of entranced\nEurope; he created a language, in itself music and persuasion, out\nof a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms. He was the congregator of\nthose great spirits who presided over the resurrection of learning;\nthe Lucifer of that starry flock which in the thirteenth century\nshone forth from republican Italy, as from a heaven, into the\ndarkness of the benighted world. His very words are instinct with\nspirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable\nthought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, and\npregnant with a lightning which has yet found no conductor. All\nhigh poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained\nall oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, and the\ninmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. A great poem\nis a fountain for ever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and\ndelight; and after one person and one age has exhausted all its\ndivine effluence which their peculiar relations enable them to\nshare, another and yet another succeeds, and new relations are ever\ndeveloped, the source of an unforeseen and an unconceived delight.\n\nThe age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, Petrarch, and\nBoccaccio, was characterized by a revival of painting, sculpture,\nand architecture. Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the\nsuperstructure of English literature is based upon the materials\nof Italian invention.\n\nBut let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical history\nof poetry and its influence on society. Be it enough to have pointed\nout the effects of poets, in the large and true sense of the word,\nupon their own and all succeeding times.\n\nBut poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners\nand mechanists, on another plea. It is admitted that the exercise\nof the imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged that that\nof reason is more useful. Let us examine as the grounds of this\ndistinction, what is here meant by utility. Pleasure or good, in a\ngeneral sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive and\nintelligent being seeks, and in which, when found, it acquiesces.\nThere are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, universal and\npermanent; the other transitory and particular. Utility may either\nexpress the means of producing the former or the latter. In the\nformer sense, whatever strengthens and purifies the affections,\nenlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful. But\na narrower meaning may be assigned to the word utility, confining\nit to express that which banishes the importunity of the wants of\nour animal nature, the surrounding men with security of life, the\ndispersing the grosser delusions of superstition, and the conciliating\nsuch a degree of mutual forbearance among men as may consist with\nthe motives of personal advantage.\n\nUndoubtedly the promoters of utility, in this limited sense, have\ntheir appointed office in society. They follow the footsteps of\npoets, and copy the sketches of their creations into the book of\ncommon life. They make space, and give time. Their exertions are\nof the highest value, so long as they confine their administration\nof the concerns of the inferior powers of our nature within the\nlimits due to the superior ones. But whilst the sceptic destroys\ngross superstitions, let him spare to deface, as some of the\nFrench writers have defaced, the eternal truths charactered upon\nthe imaginations of men. Whilst the mechanist abridges, and the\npolitical economist combines labour, let them beware that their\nspeculations, for want of correspondence with those first principles\nwhich belong to the imagination, do not tend, as they have in\nmodern England, to exasperate at once the extremes of luxury and\nwant. They have exemplified the saying, 'To him that hath, more\nshall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath\nshall be taken away.' The rich have become richer, and the poor\nhave become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between\nthe Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Such are the\neffects which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise of the\ncalculating faculty.\n\nIt is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense; the\ndefinition involving a number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an\ninexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature,\nthe pain of the inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures\nof the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish,\ndespair itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approximation\nto the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this\nprinciple; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure\nwhich exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy\nwhich is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that\nis in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself. And\nhence the saying, 'It is better to go to the house of mourning, than\nto the house of mirth.' Not that this highest species of pleasure\nis necessarily linked with pain. The delight of love and friendship,\nthe ecstasy of the admiration of nature, the joy of the perception\nand still more of the creation of poetry, is often wholly unalloyed.\n\nThe production and assurance of pleasure in this highest sense\nis true utility. Those who produce and preserve this pleasure are\npoets or poetical philosophers.\n\nThe exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, [Footnote:\nAlthough Rousseau has been thus classed, he was essentially a\npoet. The others, even Voltaire, were mere reasoners.] and their\ndisciples, in favour of oppressed and deluded humanity, are entitled\nto the gratitude of mankind. Yet it is easy to calculate the degree\nof moral and intellectual improvement which the world would have\nexhibited, had they never lived. A little more nonsense would have\nbeen talked for a century or two; and perhaps a few more men, women,\nand children, burnt as heretics. We might not at this moment have\nbeen congratulating each other on the abolition of the Inquisition\nin Spain. But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what would have\nbeen the moral condition of the world if neither Dante, Petrarch,\nBoccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton,\nhad ever existed; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been\nborn; if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if a revival\nof the study of Greek literature had never taken place; if no\nmonuments of ancient sculpture had been handed down to us; and if\nthe poetry of the religion of the ancient world had been extinguished\ntogether with its belief. The human mind could never, except by\nthe intervention of these excitements, have been awakened to the\ninvention of the grosser sciences, and that application of analytical\nreasoning to the aberrations of society, which it is now attempted\nto exalt over the direct expression of the inventive and creative\nfaculty itself.\n\nWe have more moral, political and historical wisdom, than we know\nhow to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economical\nknowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the\nproduce which it multiplies. The poetry in these systems of thought,\nis concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes.\nThere is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best\nin morals, government, and political economy, or at least, what\nis wiser and better than what men now practise and endure. But we\nlet '_I_ DARE NOT wait upon I WOULD, like the poor cat in the adage.'\nWe want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we\nwant the generous impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the\npoetry of life: our calculations have outrun conception; we have\neaten more than we can digest. The cultivation of those sciences\nwhich have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the\nexternal world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally\ncircumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved\nthe elements, remains himself a slave. To what but a cultivation\nof the mechanical arts in a degree disproportioned to the presence\nof the creative faculty, which is the basis of all knowledge,\nis to be attributed the abuse of all invention for abridging and\ncombining labour, to the exasperation of the inequality of mankind?\nFrom what other cause has it arisen that the discoveries which should\nhave lightened, have added a weight to the curse imposed on Adam?\nPoetry, and the principle of Self, of which money is the visible,\nincarnation, are the God and Mammon of the world.\n\nThe functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold; by one it\ncreates new materials of knowledge and power and pleasure; by the\nother it engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange\nthem according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called\nthe beautiful and the good. The cultivation of poetry is never more\nto be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish\nand calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of\nexternal life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them\nto the internal laws of human nature. The body has then become too\nunwieldy for that which animates it.\n\nPoetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and\ncircumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science,\nand that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same\ntime the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is\nthat from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that\nwhich, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds\nfrom the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the\nscions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface\nand bloom of all things; it is as the odour and the colour of the\nrose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as the form\nand splendour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and\ncorruption. What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship--what\nwere the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what\nwere our consolations on this side of the grave--and what were our\naspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and\nfire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of\ncalculation dare not ever soar?  Poetry is not like reasoning, a\npower to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A\nman cannot say, 'I will compose poetry.' The greatest poet even cannot\nsay it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some\ninvisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory\nbrightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a\nflower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious\nportions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or\nits departure.  Could this influence be durable in its original\npurity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the\nresults; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the\ndecline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated\nto the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions\nof the poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day,\nwhether it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of\npoetry are produced by labour and study. The toil and the delay\nrecommended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no more\nthan a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial\nconnexion of the spaces between their suggestions by the intertexture\nof conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by the\nlimitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived\nthe Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions; We\nhave his own authority also for the muse having 'dictated' to him\nthe 'unpremeditated song'. And let this be an answer to those who\nwould allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of\nthe Orlando Furioso. Compositions so produced are to poetry what\nmosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical\nfaculty, is still more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts;\na great statue or picture grows under the power of the artist as\na child in the mother's womb; and the very mind which directs the\nhands in formation is incapable of accounting to itself for the\norigin, the gradations, or the media of the process.\n\nPoetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest\nand best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought\nand feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes\nregarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen\nand departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all\nexpression; so that even in the desire and regret they leave, there\ncannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature\nof its object. It is as it were the interpenetration of a diviner\nnature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind\nover the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain\nonly, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corresponding\nconditions of being are experienced principally by those of the\nmost delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the\nstate of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire.\nThe enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship,\nis essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last,\nself appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not\nonly subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined\norganization, but they can colour all that they combine with the\nevanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the\nrepresentation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted\nchord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these\nemotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past.\nPoetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in\nthe world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the\ninterlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form,\nsends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy\nto those with whom their sisters abide--abide, because there is\nno portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they\ninhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the\nvisitations of the divinity in man.\n\nPoetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that\nwhich is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most\ndeformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure,\neternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke,\nall irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and\nevery form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed\nby wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it\nbreathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous\nwaters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of\nfamiliarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping\nbeauty, which is the spirit of its forms.\n\nAll things exist as they are perceived; at least in relation to\nthe percipient. 'The mind is its own place, and of itself can make\na heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' But poetry defeats the curse\nwhich binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding\nimpressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain,\nor withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it\nequally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us the\ninhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos.\nIt reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and\npercipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity\nwhich obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to\nfeel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It\ncreates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our\nminds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration.\nIt justifies the bold and true words of Tasso: Non merita nome di\ncreatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta.\n\nA poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure,\nvirtue and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the\nbest, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory,\nlet time be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other\ninstitutor of human life be comparable to that of a poet.  That\nhe is the wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is\na poet, is equally incontrovertible: the greatest poets have been\nmen of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence,\nand, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most\nfortunate of men: and the exceptions, as they regard those who\npossessed the poetic faculty in a high yet inferior degree, will\nbe found on consideration to confine rather than destroy the rule.\nLet us for a moment stoop to the arbitration of popular breath, and\nusurping and uniting in our own persons the incompatible characters\nof accuser, witness, judge, and executioner, let us decide without\ntrial, testimony, or form, that certain motives of those who are\n'there sitting where we dare not soar', are reprehensible. Let\nus assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer,\nthat Horace was a coward, that Tasso a madman, that Lord Bacon was\na peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet\nlaureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject\nto cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to the\ngreat names now referred to. Their errors have been weighed and found\nto have been dust in the balance; if their sins 'were as scarlet,\nthey are now white as snow'; they have been washed in the blood of\nthe mediator and redeemer, Time. Observe in what a ludicrous chaos\nthe imputation of real or fictitious crime have been confused in\nthe contemporary calumnies against poetry and poets; consider how\nlittle is, as it appears--or appears, as it is; look to your own\nmotives, and judge not, lest ye be judged.\n\nPoetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that\nit is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind,\nand that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connexion with\nthe consciousness or will. It is presumptuous  to determine that\nthese are the necessary conditions of all mental causation, when\nmental effects are experienced unsusceptible of being referred to\nthem. The frequent recurrence of the poetical power, it is obvious\nto suppose, may produce in the mind a habit of order and harmony\ncorrelative with its own nature and its effects upon other minds.\nBut in the intervals of inspiration, and they may be frequent\nwithout being durable, a poet becomes a man, and is abandoned to\nthe sudden reflux of the influences under which others habitually\nlive.  But as he is more delicately organized than other men, and\nsensible to pain and pleasure, both his own and that of others, in\na degree unknown to them, he will avoid the one and pursue the other\nwith an ardour proportioned to this difference. And he renders\nhimself obnoxious to calumny, when he neglects to observe the\ncircumstances under which these objects of universal pursuit and\nflight have disguised themselves in one another's garments.\n\nBut there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, and thus\ncruelty, envy, revenge, avarice, and the passions purely evil, have\nnever formed any portion of the popular imputations on the lives\nof poets.\n\nI have thought it most favourable to the cause of truth to set down\nthese remarks according to the order in which they were suggested\nto my mind, by a consideration of the subject itself, instead of\nobserving the formality of a polemical reply; but if the view which\nthey contain be just, they will be found to involve a refutation\nof the arguers against poetry, so far at least as regards the first\ndivision of the subject. I can readily conjecture what should have\nmoved the gall of some learned and intelligent writers who quarrel\nwith certain versifiers; I confess myself, like them, unwilling\nto be stunned, by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day.\nBavius and Maevius undoubtedly are, as they ever were, insufferable\npersons. But it belongs to a philosophical critic to distinguish\nrather than confound.\n\nThe first part of these remarks has related to poetry in its\nelements and principles; and it has been shown, as well as the narrow\nlimits assigned them would permit, that what is called poetry, in\na restricted sense, has a common source with all other forms of order\nand of beauty, according to which the materials of human life are\nsusceptible of being arranged, and which is poetry in a universal\nsense.\n\nThe second part will have for its object an application of these\nprinciples to the present state of the cultivation of poetry, and\na defence of the attempt to idealize the modern forms of manners and\nopinions, and compel them into a subordination to the imaginative\nand creative faculty. For the literature of England, an energetic\ndevelopment of which has ever preceded or accompanied a great and\nfree development of the national will, has arisen as it were from a\nnew birth. In spite of the low-thoughted envy which would undervalue\ncontemporary merit, our own will be a memorable age in intellectual\nachievements, and we live among such philosophers and poets\nas surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared since the last\nnational struggle for civil and religious liberty. The most unfailing\nherald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people\nto work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry.\nAt such periods there is an accumulation of the power of communicating\nand receiving intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man\nand nature. The persons in whom this power resides may often, as far\nas regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent\ncorrespondence with that spirit of good of which they are\nthe ministers. But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet\ncompelled to serve, the power which is seated on the throne of\ntheir own soul. It is impossible to read the compositions of the\nmost celebrated writers of the present day without being startled\nwith the electric life which burns within their words. They measure\nthe circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a\ncomprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves\nperhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for\nit is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are the\nhierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the\ngigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words\nwhich express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing\nto battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is\nmoved not, but moves.  Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of\nthe world.\n\nTHE END","title":"A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":28582}