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diff --git a/13766-0.txt b/13766-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c178377 --- /dev/null +++ b/13766-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1595 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13766 *** + +COBWEBS OF THOUGHT + +by + +"ARACHNE" + +London + + + + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER + + I. OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES + + II. CONTRASTS + +III. MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET + + IV. AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY + + V. IMPRESSIONS OF GEORGE SAND + + + + +MOTTO. + + +"The first philosophers, whether Chaldeans or Egyptians, said there +must be something within us which produces our thought. That something +must be very subtle: it is breath; it is fire, it is ether; it is a +quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intelechia; it is a +number; it is harmony; lastly, according to the divine Plato, it is a +compound of the _same_ and the _other_! It is atoms which think in us, +said Epicurus after Democritus. But, my friend, how does an atom +think? Acknowledge that thou knowest nothing of the matter." + --VOLTAIRE. + + + + +I. + + + +OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES. + + +Self-Analysis, apart from its scientific uses, has seldom rewarded +those who have practised it. To probe into the inner world of motive +and desire has proved of small benefit to any one, whether hermit, +monk or nun, indeed it has been altogether mischievous in result, +unless the mind that probed, was especially healthy. Bitter has been +the dissatisfaction, both with the process, and with what came of it, +for being miserably superficial it could lead to no real knowledge of +self, but simply centred self on self, producing instead of +self-knowledge, self-consciousness, and often the beginnings of mental +disease. + +For fruitful self analysis it is apparently necessary then to have a +clear, definite aim outside self--such as achieving the gain of some +special piece of knowledge, and we find such definite aims in +psychology, and certain systems of philosophy--Greek, English, and +German, in Plato Locke, Kant, and in the meditations of Descartes, and +many others. Self-analysis is the basis of psychological knowledge, +but the science has been chiefly used to explain the methods by which +we obtain knowledge of the outer world in relation to ourselves. When +a philosopher centres self on self, in order to know self as a result +of introspection, the results have been disastrous, and have +contributed nothing to knowledge, properly so-called. If religious +self-examination has its dangers, so also has philosophical +self-analysis for its own sake. It is a fascinating study for those +who care for thought for thought's sake--the so-called Hamlets of the +world, who are for ever revolving round the axes of their own ideas +and dreams, and who never progress towards any clear issue. Amiel's +"Vie Intime" is a study of this kind. It adds nothing to any clear +knowledge of self, absorbing and interesting as the record is. It is +suggestive to a great degree, and in that lies its value, but it is as +vague, as it is sad. It appeals deeply to those who live apart in a +world of their own, in thoughtful imaginative reverie, but its effects +on the mind were deplored even by Amiel himself in words which are +acutely pathetic. The pain which consumed him arose from the +concentration of self on self. Self was monopolised by self, +self-consciousness was produced, though without a touch of selfish +egoism. + +Out of this self-conscious introspection, grew that sterility of soul +and mind, that dwindling of capacity, and individuality, which Amiel +felt was taking place within him. A constant, aimless, inevitable +habit of self-introspection was killing his mental life, before the +end came physically. + +Another philosophical victim to the same habit was John Stuart Mill, +at one time of his life. His father analysed almost everything, except +himself, and John Stuart Mill had grown up in this logical atmosphere +of analysis, and to much profit as his works show. But when he turned +the microscope on his own states of feeling, and on the aims of his +life, the result was melancholia--almost disease of mind. His grandly +developed faculty of analysis when devoted to definite knowledge +outside himself, produced splendid results, as in his Logic, and his +Essays, but when he analysed himself, he gained no additional +knowledge, but a strange morbid horror that all possible musical +changes might be exhausted, and that there might be no means of +creating fresh ones. He also feared that should all the reforms he, +and others, worked for, be accomplished, the lives of the reformers +would become meaningless and blank, since they were working for means, +not ends in themselves. Out of this hopeless mental condition there +was only one outlet possible, and that was to leave self-analysis of +this sort alone for ever, and to throw himself into its direct +contrary, the unconscious life of the emotions. John Stuart Mill did +this, and it saved him. In Wordsworth's poetry he found sanity and +healing. Happily for him that was not the age of Browning's "Fifine at +the Fair." Had he fallen in with dialectical analysis in the garb of +poetry, it must have killed him! + +And yet "Know thyself" has always been considered supremely excellent +advice, as true for our time, as for the age of Socrates. It certainly +is disregarded by most of us, as fully as it was by many of the +Greeks, whom Socrates interrogated so ruthlessly. Is there then a sort +of self-analysis, which can be carried out for its own sake, and which +can be, at the same time, of vital use? Is all self-analysis when +practised for its own sake necessarily harmful, and unprofitable? It +is time to ask these questions if we are ever to know how to analyse +ourselves with profit, if we are ever to know ourselves. And we none +of us do. As students, we are content with every other knowledge but +this. After all the self probing of the religious and philosophical, +during long centuries, what have we learned? Truly to ourselves, we +are enigmas. To know everything else except the self that knows, what +a strange position! But it is our condition. The one thing that we do +not know--that we feel as if we never could know is the Self in us. +Our characters, our powers, our natures, our being--what are they? Our +faculties--what can we do? And what can we not do? What is the reason +of this faculty, or that want of faculty? We have never reached an +understanding of ourselves, which makes us not only know, but perceive +what we are capable of knowing; which makes us aware, not only that we +can do something, but why we can do it. We are an unknown quantity to +ourselves. We can calculate on a given action in a machine, but we +cannot calculate on our own, much less on our moods. If we would but +take half the trouble to understand ourselves that we take to study a +science or art--if we could learn to depend on the sequence of our own +thoughts as an engineer can on the sequence of movements in his steam +engine--if we could dig, and penetrate into the depths of our own +being, as a miner penetrates into a seam of coal--we might then +cultivate with some profit our own special lines of thought, our own +gifts, that portion of individuality, which we each possess. But it is +so difficult to get to know it--we are always on the surface of +ourselves. What power will unearth our self and make us really know +what we are and what we can do? It is because we do not know +ourselves, that we fail so hopelessly to give the things which are of +incalculably real worth to the world, such as fresh individuality, and +reality of character. Among millions of beings how few exist who +possess strong original minds! We are _not_ individual for the most +part, and we are _not_ real. Our lives _are_ buried lives; we are +unconscious absorbers, and reproducers, under other words of that +which we have imbibed elsewhere. We need not only fresh expressions of +old statements, but actually new ideas, and new conceptions. (The +fresh _subjects_ people talk about, are really fresh _conceptions_ of +subjects.) We shall never get this bloom of freshness, and this sense +of reality and individuality of view unless we cultivate their +soil--to have fresh ideas, we must encourage the right atmosphere in +which alone they can live. We must not let our own personality, +however slight, be suppressed, or be discouraged, or interfered with +by a more powerful, or a more excellent personality. + +Individuality is so weak and pliable a thing in most of us that it is +very easily checked--it requires watchfulness and care, and not to be +overborne, for the smallest individual thought of a mind of any +originality, is more worth to the world than any re-expression of the +thought of some other mind, however great. + +Even the "best hundred books" may have a disastrous effect upon us. +They may kill some aspirations, if they kindle others. Persons of +mature age may surely at some time have made the discovery that much +has been lost through the dominating influence of a superior mind. +Many persons, for instance, have felt the great influence of Carlyle, +and Ruskin, in their youth. Carlyle could do incalculable good to some +minds by his ethics of work, but irremediable harm to others; minds +have actually become stunted and sterile through that part of his +teaching, which was unsuited to them. Carlyle's temperament checked +their proper development. Youth has a beautiful capacity for trust and +belief, and it accepts everything as equal in goodness and truth from +an author it reverences. The young do not know enough of themselves, +and they do not trust enough to their own instincts to discriminate. +They are dominated and unconsciously suppressed. Ruskin, in his +ethical views of art, and strange doctrines about some old masters, +has done nearly as much harm to susceptible minds as Carlyle. Ruskin +restricted and perverted their art ideals on certain lines as Carlyle +crushed ethical discrimination. Mind have been kept imprisoned for +years, and their development on the lines nature intended them to +take, has been arrested, by the want of belief in their own +initiative. What was inevitable for Ruskin's unique mind was yet wrong +for readers, who agreed to all his theories under the influence of his +fascinating personality, and through the power of his individuality. +In life, we sometimes find we have made a series of mistakes of this +sort, before at last we get glimmerings of what we were intended to +be, and we learn at last the need of having known ourselves, and the +vital necessity of cultivating the atmosphere and colour of that mind +of ours, which has been used merely as a tool to know everything else. + +Spiritualists and Theosophists talk of a Dominant Self, and an Astral +body, and of gleams of heavensent insight. Gleams of insight and +dreams do come to us, and teach us truths, which "never can be +proved," and without some such intuitions the soul of man would indeed +be poor, + + The soul that rises with us, our life's star, + Hath had elsewhere its setting, + And cometh from afar. + +But the value of the intuitions is relative to the soul which has +them; they cannot be conveyed to any one else, or demonstrated; they +can never become Truths valid to all minds. And these last are the +truths we want if we would make some orderly progress towards a given +issue. And so we resort after all, to science, to see if it can solve +the intellectual riddle of our being. What can it do for us? If we +would really know ourselves, we want a depth of self-analysis; not a +pitiful search for motives, not the superficial probings of a +moralist, not the boundless, limitless, self-absorbed speculations on +the nature of self of the philosopher, not the sympathetic noting of +each emotion that crosses the horizon of the soul--the introspection +of the Poet; these will never teach us the reason why we think and +feel on certain lines, and not on others--these will never explain to +us what the mind is, that is in us--what that strange thing is, which +we have tried so vainly to understand. And without this knowledge how +worthless is the work of the moralist; of what practical use is it for +him to endeavour to alter a man's character, when he does not even +know the ingredients that constitute character, still less the cause +why character is good or bad. Mr. Robert Buchanan said in one of his +essays: "I can advance no scientific knowledge for seeing a great +genius in Robert Browning, or a fine painstaking talent in George +Eliot, for thinking George Meredith almost alone in his power of +expressing personal passion, and Walt Whitman supreme in his power of +conveying moral stimulation. I can take a skeleton to pieces +scientifically, but not a living soul. I am helpless before Mr. +Swinburne, or any authentic poet, but quite at my ease before Macaulay +or Professor Aytoun." Mr. Buchanan could presumably take the last two +to pieces and analyse them as if they were skeletons; but before +Swinburne, "the living soul," he is helpless. Now we want a scientific +reason for all this; we want to analyse, not the skeleton, that has +been done often enough, but "the living soul." We want to know the +ingredients of character that constituted Mr. Buchanan's preferences. +What composition gave him his special temper and character? Why did +his mind tend towards Robert Browning, and away from George Eliot? Why +in short did his mind work in the way it did? The more original the +mind, the more its investigation would repay us. But it must be +self-investigation; what we want are facts of mind, mental data and in +order to get them, we must investigate the living mind All the usual +explanations of Temperament, Nature, Heredity, Education are the same +difficulties, expressed in different words. Heredity is a +circumstance, which has to be reckoned with, but we have to +investigate, not circumstances, but results. Here is a living complex +mind, no matter how I inherit it, here it is; now then, how does it +work, what can I do with it? And then comes the further inevitable +question--What is it? What is this thing, this me, which tends to feel +and act in a certain direction--to admire spontaneously, this, and to +despise with as perfect ease, that. What we need for scientific +investigation into the ME is "to utilise minds so as to form a living +laboratory" _Mind_ vivisection without torture, cruelty or the knife. +What we want to know definitely from science is: How does this thing +which I call my mind work? Science regards mind as the sum of +sensations, which are the necessary results of antecedent causes. It +endeavours to know how and in what way these sensations can be trained +and perfected. Nearly twenty years ago, a writer in the Psychological +Journal "Mind"[1] Mr. J. Jacobs, attempted to form a Society for the +purpose of experimental psychology. Thinkers and scientific men have +carried out this work, but the general public has not been greatly +interested or interested for any length of time. No such society +exists among the English public. The greater number of enthusiastic +students is to be found in Italy and America. But Germany has +furnished great individual workers, such as Fechner, Helmholtz, and +Wundt. Collective investigation was necessary to separate individual +peculiarities from general laws. Science of course aims at changing +the study of individual minds/into "a valid science of mind." Mr. J. +Jacobs wished a Society to be organised for the purpose of measuring +mind, measuring our senses, and for testing our mental powers as +accurately as weight and height are tested now, and also for +experimenting on will practice. He believed it possible to train the +will on one thing until we got it perfectly under control, and in so +doing we should modify character immensely. If this proved possible, +we ought to persevere until conduct becomes an art, education a +principle, and mind is known as a science is known. Mr. Jacobs wanted +systematic enquiries to be made into powers of attention, such as "Can +we listen and read at the same time, and reproduce what we have read +and heard." And into the faculties of observation and memory, with +after images, and the capacity for following trains of reasoning, +&c., &c., "When we read a novel, do we actually have pictures of the +scenes before our minds?" Mr. Jacobs wished for enquiries into every +kind of intelligence ordinary and extraordinary; out of all +ingredients of character, out of early impressions, out of classified +emotions to build up an answer to the question: "Is there a science +of mind?" Since he wrote, much has been done in experiment by the +scientific. Children's minds are constantly being investigated, and +the results given to the public. Mr. Galton has to some extent +popularised this sort of investigation. But it is still generally +unpopular. Novelists, and artists, leisured people, women, everyone +could be of use, if they would investigate themselves, or offer their +minds for investigation. But after all that the scientific French, +German, American, Italian, and English workers have done, we are as +yet only on the threshold of mind knowledge--of what we might know--if +we had ardour enough to push self-analysis in to the remotest corner +of the brain, noting down, comparing, tabulating the most involuntary +and ethereal sublimities that appear to flit through the mind, the +most subtle emotion that hardly finds expression in language. We must +push on and on till we arrive at the knowledge of a mind science. Our +scientific enquirers want, as we all do, more ardour, they are dulled +by a cold, uninterested public. Psychologists now seem to despair of +obtaining any large results from the science. Mr. E.W. Scripture in +"The New Psychology" says, in 1897, "It cannot dissect the mind with a +scalpel, it cannot hope to find a startling principle of mental life." +If psychological experiment could be presented somewhat apart from its +technicalities, and if minds could play freely round its discoveries, +how much more interesting it would be felt to be by the general +public! The great experimental worker, Mr. J. Mck Cattell has given[2] +some clear idea of the results he obtained by analysing and measuring +sensations. The physical processes, which accompany sensations of +sound and light for instance, unlike as they must be to sensations, +being facts of matter in motion, yet share with them this +characteristic, that sensations also have each an _order in time_, the +mental processes can be measured, equally with the physical. Of course +measuring sensations is only measuring "the outside of the mind"--but +it produces among others one very suggestive result: "that as time is +relative, if all things moved much more slowly or quickly than at +present, we should not feel any change at all. But if our objective +measures of time moved twice as fast, whilst physiological movements +and mental processes went on at the same rate as now, the days of our +years would be seven score, instead of three score years and ten, yet +we should not be any the older, or live any the longer. If on the +other hand the rate of our physiological and mental motions was +doubled and we lived exactly as many years as before, we should feel +as if we lived twice as long and were twice as old as now." This is a +suggestion for Mr. Well's "Anticipations" Is evolution leading us in +this direction or the other? Is it retarding or "quickening the +molecular arrangements of the nervous system?" Are we becoming "more +delicately balanced so that physical changes proceed more quickly as +thoughts become more comprehensive, feelings more intense, and will, +stronger." Does the time it needs to think, feel, and will become +less? And we may add are the physical and mental processes of the +intelligent brain, quicker, or slower than the unintelligent? For if +it is the sensitive quick witted organisation, which is destined to +live twice as long as it does now, how will it bear the burden of such +added years? Leaving aside inquiries into Time, and Space Sense--(and +what enormous faculty our minds must have that can supply these)--let +us go on to Mr. J. McKeen Cattell's analysis of memory--which is +perhaps the most interesting of all to the student of mind--the +analysis of memory, attention and association of ideas. Just as the +eye can only see (attend to) a certain number of vibrations, for if +the requisite amount is added to, the result is blankness, darkness, +so the mind can only attend to a certain amount of complexity--add to +the complexity and attention ceases, but, a certain degree of +complexity is necessary to produce any conscious attention at all. In +experiments with a Metronome and the ticking of a watch, it is found +the attention at certain intervals gets weaker--from 2 to 3 seconds. +The impression produced by the ticking of the watch is less distinct, +it seems to disappear and then is heard again. "This is not from +fatigue in the sense organ," but apparently represents "a natural +rhythm in consciousness or attention," which interferes with the +accuracy of attention. What a suggestive fact this is! Have we not all +at times, felt an inexplicable difficulty in listening and attending +to certain speakers, which may perhaps be explained by a difference +between the rhythm of our own consciousness, and that of the voice of +the speaker. In Association of Ideas the time that it takes for one +idea to suggest another has been determined, but of course, it must be +the average time, for people differ enormously in the speed in which +ideas occur to them. It is impossible to allude here to more points, +but in the same interesting article Mr. Mck Cattell considers it +proved that "experimental methods can be applied to the study of mind, +and that the positive results are significant," and he hopes, "one +day, we shall have as accurate and complete a knowledge of mind as we +have of the physical world." Beyond this knowledge of mind as a +machine, the Psychologist goeth not. He ends, and what do we know more +as to what mind is? Philosophy properly so-called, begins here or +ought to begin. In science we experiment widely and constantly with +mind and arrive at some knowledge of its workings and capacities; we +learn occupation with the mind itself as a subject for observation, +and we practise a self-analysis, which adds to the sum of general +knowledge. Through this study we know more about our senses and their +faculties, more of our own tendencies and idiosyncrasies, and in what +direction they tend. We are on the way to solve some such problems as: +"the influences of early impressions, the ingredients of character, +the varying susceptibility to mental anguish, the conquest of the +will," and many another. These are beginnings--there is much more to +attain to, if we would know mind even scientifically, for we have only +attacked its breast works, but we are on the right road, as we +believe, towards this most interesting of all sciences--Mind Science. +From Philosophy we do not as yet know definitely that mind _is_, or +what it is, or why it is. The psychologist accepts the word mind, but +it is not accepted as a _philosophical_ term; it is called +Consciousness, Being, Ego, and anything else but mind. Notwithstanding, +we all feel what we mean by the word. Though the senses divide the +non-ego, the world outside us, into five separate parcels, things +seen, things heard, things smelt, things touched, things tasted, +there is a faculty of unifying, a sensation of unity in us, which +makes us conscious of all these separate sensations as forming a +whole in any object which comes into our consciousness. Kant has +given this unifying faculty, or sensation, a long name, which does +not make it any clearer. What is this inner power, which unifies +sensations and how does it come? In some way the mind supplies it to +its mental states or consciousness. And _within_ us this unifying +faculty, which we call Mind, is felt through the infinite number of +modifications of sensations or mental states, for we are aware that +what we call a mind exists in us. It is this consciousness of unity in +complexity, which makes memory and identity possible. The exploded +idea of mental substance and its attributes, held by the School men, +was probably suggested to them by the consciousness of this mental +unity. In our mentality there is something which makes each one say +"My mind," not "My minds." Now it is this unity of sensations, which +is lost, and the mind with it, if the ego is divided as Professor W. +James divides it into many egos such as--the inner self--the complex +self--the social self--the intellectual self--and so on. For how does +that help us? It is the same unknown quantity in different +circumstances. The self that ponders in thought, knows itself as the +same that talks in society. The strange power of being able to analyse +ourselves at all is one of the strangest things about us. What a world +of difference lies between the unconscious self of the animal and this +conscious self of man! Professor James' brilliantly written chapter of +investigation into the self leaves us amused rather than enlightened. +Against all arguments to the contrary, we should refuse to give up the +word mind, whether it is considered vague or defective in any or every +way. Mind in all its complexity, is what we have to investigate +scientifically. Mind in all its complexity is what the philosopher has +to explain, not mind, analysed into simple acts of consciousness. The +hypnotist talks of double, treble and quadruple personalities with +totally different characteristics "under suggestion," but it helps us +little for we have not yet defined mind on its sane and normal sides. +Considering the acuteness and the sanity of the French mind, it is +somewhat strange that the French psychologists should devote +themselves chiefly to the study of the insane and hysterical. +Philosophy, though it gives us soaring thoughts, grand speculations, +and metaphysical schemes, from Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, +to Herbert Spencer, and Mr. Mallock, cannot give us any knowledge in +which they mutually agree. Mr. Mallock sums up philosophy as a +necessity to the mind. We _must_ believe in some theory of mind, some +religion, some philosophy, else life is dreary and unlivable. This +appears to be the result of his book "The Veil of the Temple," and +this is simply the doctrine of utility. But no philosopher, can tell +us why mind works on certain lines and not on others, because they +cannot tell us definitely that they _know_ what mind is. Mind is a +function of _Matter: Matter_ is a function of thought: Mind is +Noumenon the unseen and unknown, as contrasted with Phenomena the seen +and known; the universe, the creation of the mind; the mind, the +product of the universe. All these ideas and many others so widely +differing can none of them receive a demonstrable proof;--these +contrary statements show how far we are from possessing any real +knowledge of what mind is. After all that has been written, elaborated +and imagined, do we actually _know_ more than Omar Khayam knew? + + "There was the door to which I found no key; + There was the veil through which I could not see; + Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee + There was--and then no more of Thee and Me." + +Philosophy is still powerless to tell us what mind is; the self, the +ego always vanishes as we seem to be nearing it, it always eludes our +deepest probings--we only demonstrate our failure in regard to our +knowledge of it. All this is true, but should we therefore despair? If +we are born with the record on the brain of the inexorable desire to +_know_, the very failure should stimulate us to further, and greater, +and more fruitful questionings. + + + + +II. + + + +CONTRASTS. + + +CARLYLE, GEORGE ELIOT, MAZZINI, BROWNING, + +All contrasts drawn between writers, and thinkers should have for aim +the setting forth of some striking and fundamental difference in +thought, and it would be hard to find anywhere a greater and a more +vivid contrast than that between Carlyle and George Eliot. For George +Eliot's philosophy was centred in the well-being of the Race. + +Carlyle's was summed up in the worth of the Individual. + +George Eliot teaches in prose and still more in poetry that +Personality, with its hopes, loves, faiths, aspirations, must all be +relinquished, and its agonies and pains endured, should Humanity gain +by the sacrifice and the endurance. + +She considers the Individual as part of collective humanity, and that +he does not live for himself, he has no continuance of personal life, +he has no permanence, except as a living influence on the Race. This +is the Positivist creed, the Racial Creed. + +Beyond the influence that it exerts, spiritual personality is doomed. +It is not humanity in God but humanity in itself which is to exist +from age to age, solely in the memory of succeeding generations. + + "Oh may I join the Choir Invisible + Of those immortal dead, who live again + In minds made better by their presence." + +Permanence and continuance and immortality are in the race alone. +George Eliot's strong accentuation of the race is the Gospel of +annihilation to the individual. Yet the most personal and imaginative +of poets has treated this lofty altruism in his strange, sad, +beautiful poem of "The Pilgrims," with a fervour greater even than +that of George Eliot. + +Here are two stanzas: + + "And ye shall die before your thrones be won. + Yea, and the changed world and the liberal sun + Shall move and shine without us and we lie + Dead; but if she too move on earth and live, + But if the old world with the old irons rent, + Laugh and give thanks, shall we not be content? + Nay we shall rather live, we shall not die, + Life being so little and Death so good to give." + + "Pass on then and pass by us, and let us be. + For what life think ye after life to see? + And if the world fare better will ye know? + And if men triumph, who shall seek you and say?" + + "Enough of light is this for one life's span. + That all men born are mortal, but not Man: + And we men bring death lives by night to sow, + That man may reap and eat and live by day." + --SWINBURNE. + +Turning from the moral grandeur of self-abnegation that fills the +philosophy of humanity, we feel the contrast of strong human +personality, which animates us with an inspiring sensation as we +listen to the prophet of individualism. + +Few can have read Carlyle's writings in their youth, without having +experienced an indescribable and irresistible stimulation, to +accomplish some real work, to make some strenuous endeavour "before +the night cometh." Carlyle's contempt for sloth, stings; his bitter +words are a tonic, they scourge, encourage, and at times plead with +poetic fervour. "Think of living. Thy life wert thou the pitifullest +of all the sons of earth is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. _It +is thy own; it is all thou hast to front Eternity with._ Work then +like a star unhasting and unresting." + +The man's soul, naked through sloth, or clothed through works, has to +meet its doom, and to bear it as it best can. For Carlyle ignored the +collective view of mankind, the single soul had to prostrate itself +before the Supreme Power. This Supreme Power was almost as vague (to +him) as George Eliot's Permanent Influence is to us. For Carlyle did +not believe "that the Soul could enter into any relations with God, +and in the sight of God it was nothing." There is nothing singular in +this. The religious, but independent-minded Joubert thought "it was +not hard to know God, provided one did not force oneself to define +Him," and deprecated "bringing into the domain of reason, that which +belongs to our innermost feeling." + +This very well represented Carlyle's view, but it occupies but a small +place in his writings. All his books, his letters, pamphlets, +histories, essays show his profound living belief in the worth of +individual men, as the salt of the earth, and the young are always +greatly influenced by strong personalities. But the mature mind that +struggles after catholicity of taste, and wide admiration, receives +some rude shocks from Carlyle's treatment of humanity, as Dr. Garnett +has well shown in his excellent biography of Carlyle; indeed it has +led with some to the parting of the ways. For the hopes and +inspirations of poet, reformer, teacher, became in great part to him +as "the idle chatter of apes" and "the talk of Fools." + +Mazzini's world-wide sympathies, his life of many deaths for his +country, were unintelligible to Carlyle, who also described, as "a +sawdust kind of talk," John Stuart Mill's expression of belief and +interest in reforming and raising the whole social mass of toiling +millions. + +Bracing and stimulating, as is Carlyle's strong, stern doctrine of +independence, of work, and of adherence to Truth for its own sake, we +feel the loss his character sustained, through the contempt that grew +upon him for the greater part of humanity. The Nemesis of contempt was +shown in his inability at last to see even in individuals, the +greatest things. Physical force came to be admired by him for itself. +From hero-worship, he passed "to strong rulers, and saviours of +society." + +The worth of the individual, withered and changed, and Carlyle's hopes +rested finally on strength alone, just as George Eliot's thoughts +centred on the influence human beings exercised on each other, and +there is extraordinary beauty in this idea. How striking is her +conception of the good we all receive from even the simplest lives, if +they have been true lives. "The growing good of the world is partly +dependent upon unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with +you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who +lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs." But some +who read her books feel an underlying tone of sadness--a melancholy +whisper as of a finality, an inevitable end to all future development, +even of the greatest personalities. Many other writers have believed +that men live in the world's memory only by what they have done in the +world, but George Eliot is definite that this memory is all, that +personality has no other chance of surviving. Her hopes rested on +being: + + "The sweet presence of a good diffused, + And in diffusion ever more intense, + So shall I join the Choir Invisible + Whose music is the gladness of the world." + +Both George Eliot and Carlyle over accentuated one the race, the other +the individual. + +Mazzini's place in thought was exactly between the two. + +He believed in God _and_ Collective Humanity. Humanity in God. He +said: "We cannot relate ourselves to the Divine, but through +collective humanity. Mr. Carlyle comprehends only the individual; the +true sense of the unity of the race escapes him. He sympathises with +men, but it is with the separate life of each man, and not their +collective life."[3] + +Collective labour, according to an educational plan, designed by +Providence, was, Mazzini believed, the only possible development of +Humanity. + +He could never have trusted in any good and effective development from +Humanity alone. + +Nationality, he reverenced, and widened the idea, until it embraced +the whole world. He said it was the mission, the special vocation of +all who felt the mutual responsibility of men. But nationality of +Italy meant to Carlyle, only "the glory of having produced Dante and +Columbus," and he cared for them not for the national thought they +interpreted, but as gigantic men. Mazzini cared for "the progressive +history of mankind," Carlyle for "the Biography of great men." + +Carlyle's sadness "unending sadness," came, Mazzini thought from +looking at human life only from the individual point of view. And a +poem by Browning, "Cleon" would have afforded him another example of +"the disenchantment and discouragement of life," from individualism. + +Browning was as great an individualist as Carlyle; he stood as far +apart from belief in Collective Humanity, and Democracy as Carlyle +did, though in Italy, he felt the thrill of its nationality, as +Carlyle did not. But Mazzini might have said also truly of Browning, +that, with the exception of Italy, "he sympathised with the separate +life of each man and not with their collective life." The sadness +Mazzini attributed to Carlyle's strong individualistic point of view, +ought logically then to have been the heritage of Browning also. _If_ +Mazzini's explanation was the true one, it is another proof of the +difficulty of tabulating humanity, or of making a science of human +nature. For the Individualist Browning, far from being remarkable for +sadness, was the greatest of optimists amongst English poets. He had a +far wider range of sympathies, than Carlyle, for failure attracted +him, as much as victory, the Conquered equally with the Conqueror, +indeed every shade of character interested him. Perhaps he expresses +through "Cleon" some of his own strongest feelings, his insistence on +the worth of individuality, his craving for deeper joy, fuller life +than this world gives, and his horror of the destruction of +personality. Cleon, the Greek Artist, is indeed "the other side" to +the poetic altruism of "The Pilgrims" and "The Choir Invisible." Never +was the yearning for Personal Continuance more vividly and more +humanly presented. The Greek Artist, without any knowledge of, or +belief in Immortality, hungers after it. Browning represents him as +writing to and arguing with the King, who has said: + + "My life...... + Dies altogether with my brain, and arm,...... + ....triumph Thou, who dost _not_ go." + +And Cleon says if Sappho and Æschylus survive because we sing her +songs, and read his plays, let them come, "drink from thy cup, speak +in my place." + +Instead of rejoicing in his works surviving he feels the horror of the +contrast, the life within his works, the decay within his heart. He +compares his sense of joy growing more acute and his soul's power and +insight more enlarged and keen, while his bodily powers decay. His +hairs fall more and more, his hand shakes, and the heavy years +increase. + +He realises:-- + + "The horror quickening.... + The consummation coming past escape, + When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy-- + When all my works wherein I prove my worth, + Being present still to mock me in men's mouths, + Alive still, in the phrase of such as thou, + I, I, the feeling, thinking, acting man, + The man who loved his life so over much, + Shall sleep in my Urn. . . It is so horrible." + +He imagines in his need some future state may be revealed by Zeus. + + "Unlimited in capability + For joy, as this is in desire for joy, + To seek which the joy hunger forces us:" + +He speculates that this life may have been made straight, "to make +sweet the life at large." + +And that we are: "freed by the throbbing impulse we call Death." But +he ends by fearing that were it possible Zeus must have revealed it. + +This passionate pathetic longing for joy, and life beyond death finds +an echo in many hearts, which yet can admire the grand altruism of +"The Pilgrims" and the selfless spirit of the Impersonal Martyr. After +considering all this clash of thought, it seems as if it all resolved +itself into the individual temperament which settles and modifies and +adapts to itself the forms of our philosophies and religions, our +Hopes and Faiths, and Despairs. + +For from whence comes the real power thinkers possess over us? It is +not in their forms of thought, as Matthew Arnold said most truly, but +in the tendencies, in the spirit which led them to adopt those +formulas. Every thinker has some secret, an exact object at which he +aims, which is "the cause of all his work, and the reason of his +attraction" to some readers, and his repulsion to others. + +What was the secret aim then in George Eliot which made her believe so +firmly in the permanent influence of Humanity, and in the annihilation +of personal existence? Was the tendency of temperament developed by +her life and circumstances? + +What was it that developed so strong an Individualism in Carlyle and +Browning and awoke in Browning such unlimited hope, and in Carlyle +such "unending sadness?" + +Why did the darkness and the storm of his life give Mazzini so +passionate a belief in Humanity, and such an intimate faith in God? +These and such-like are the problems we should have in our minds as we +study the works of Great Writers, if we would penetrate into the +innermost core of their nature, in short, if we would really +understand them. + + + + +III. + + + +MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET. + + +Maeterlinck, in his first essay, "The Treasure of the Humble," is, +undoubtedly, mystical. He does not argue, or define, or explain, he +asserts, but even in that book and far more so in his second, "Wisdom +and Destiny," it is real life which absorbs him as Alfred de Sutro his +translator points out. In this book "he endeavours in all simplicity +to tell what he sees." He is a Seer. + +Maeterlinck's aim is to show that contrary to the usual idea, what we +call Fate, Destiny, is not something apart from ourselves, which +exercises power over us, but is the product of our own souls. + +He takes many examples to prove this, of which Hamlet is one. Man, +said Maeterlinck, is his own Fate in an inner sense; he is superior to +all circumstances, when he refuses to be conquered by them. When his +soul is wise and has initiative power, it cannot be conquered by +external events, and happiness is inevitable to such a soul. +Maeterlinck asks: Where do we find the fatality in Hamlet? Would the +evil of Claudius and Queen Gertrude have spread its influence if a +wise man had been in the Palace? If a dominant, all powerful soul--a +Jesus--had been in Hamlet's palace at Elsinore, would the tragedy of +four deaths have happened? Can you conceive any wise man living in the +unnatural gloom that overhung Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet +induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in +revenge alone? And revenge never can be a duty. Hamlet thinks much, +continues Maeterlinck, but is by no means wise. Destiny can withstand +lofty thoughts but not simple, good, tender and loyal thoughts. We +only triumph over destiny by doing the reverse of the evil she would +have us commit. _No tragedy is inevitable_. But at Elsinore no one had +vision--no one saw--hence the catastrophe. The soul that saw would +have made others see. Because of Hamlet's pitiful blindness, Laertes, +Ophelia, the King, Queen, and Hamlet die. Was his blindness +inevitable? A single thought had sufficed to arrest all the forces of +murder. Hamlet's ignorance puts the seal on his unhappiness, and his +shadow lay on Horatio, who lacked the courage to shake himself free. +Had there been one brave soul to cry out the truth, the history of +Elsinore had not been shrouded in horror. All depended not on destiny, +but on the wisdom of the wisest, and this Hamlet was; therefore he was +the centre of the drama of Elsinore, for he had no one wiser than +himself on whom to depend. + +Maeterlinck's doctrine of the soul and its power over Destiny is very +captivating, but it is doubtful if he was fortunate in his choice of +Hamlet as an example of ignorance and blindness, and of failure to +conquer fate, through lack of soul-power. + +How Hamlet should have acted is not told us, but that it was his duty +to have given up revenge is clearly suggested. We might, perhaps, sum +up Hamlet's right course, from the hints Maeterlinck has given us, in +a sentence. Had he relinquished all idea of revenge and forgiven his +uncle and mother, he would have ennobled his soul, gained inward +happiness, spread a gracious calm around and have so deeply influenced +his wicked relations, that they would have become repentant and +reformed. Thus his evil Destiny would have been averted and we should +have had no tragedy of Hamlet. This explanation sounds rather +conventional and tract-like put into ordinary language, but, indeed, +Maeterlinck's doctrine might be compressed into a syllogism:-- + + All the wise are serene, + Hamlet was not serene, + Hamlet was not wise. + +That is the simple syllogism by which Maeterlinck tests human nature. +But Hamlet's nature cannot be packed into a syllogism. A Theorist, who +tries to fit into his theory a peculiar nature cannot always afford to +understand that nature. The external event that froze Hamlet's soul +with horror, and deprived it of "transforming power" was a +supernatural event, not "disease, accident, or sudden death!" The +mandate laid on his soul was a supernatural mandate, and as Judge Webb +said in a suggestive and interesting paper: "The Genuine text of +Shakespeare," October number of the "National Review, 1903," "it was +utterly impossible for that soul to perform it," or it might be added, +to cast it aside. He was betrayed by the apparition "into consequences +as deep as those into which Macbeth was betrayed by the instruments of +darkness--the witches." We cannot reason about Maeterlinck's thought +that if expressed "would have arrested all the forces of murder" +because we do not know what the thought was, nor can any one gauge or +estimate rightly the power of Hamlet's soul to conquer external +events, without taking into careful account that the Vision from +another world came to Hamlet, when he was outraged at the re-marriage +of his mother and full of emotion that the sudden death of his father +called forth in his meditative mind.[4] But Maeterlinck never refers +to anything of this sort. He does not seem to realise what the effects +of the vision must have been on a complicated character--on "a great +gentleman in whom the courtier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, were +all united." Hamlet was _not_ an example of the normal type of the +irresolute man--but the mandate laid upon his nature, it could not +perform. The vision was his destiny--for Destiny lay in the nature of +the mandate, as well as the nature of the man, and unhappiness was +inevitable; yet Maeterlinck says, "No tragedy is inevitable, the wise +man can be superior to all circumstances by the initiative of the +soul. To be able to curb the blind force of instinct is to be able to +curb external destiny." Did not Hamlet curb his instincts of love for +Ophelia, and love for books and philosophy, under pressure of the +great commandment laid upon him? He could not curb the power of his +intellect--it was too subtle and supreme, but he concealed all else. +Yet Hamlet could not escape his Destiny, by curbing his instincts. The +initiative of his soul worked against the duty he had to perform. And +it was through his "simple, tender, good," thoughts of, and love for +his father that he kept to his task, and could not "withstand his +complicated destiny." Maeterlinck is surely wrong, too, in saying +Hamlet was moved by a fanatical impulse to revenge for he spent his +life in weighing _pros_, and _cons_, and in combating the idea that he +must fulfil the duty laid upon him. So unfanatical was he that he even +doubted at times whether the apparition was his father's spirit. But +supposing there had been "one brave soul to cry out the truth" +(Maeterlinck does not say what the truth was); we will suppose that +Hamlet had resolved to forgive fully and generously, would he, then, +have gained the fortitude and serenity, which Maeterlinck evidently +means by inner happiness? Not if he kept a shred of his inner nature. +Hamlet "saw no course clear enough to satisfy his understanding." +Could such a nature be serene? But was it unwise? Judicious, wise, and +witty when at ease; he could not escape the dark moods that made him +indifferent to the visible world. + +"If OEdipus had had the inner refuge of a Marcus Aurelius, what could +Destiny have done to him?" asks Maeterlinck. Fate we suppose would +have had no power over him, if he had calmly reasoned over the +terrible circumstances in which he found himself involved, and if he +preserved his equanimity to the end, as M. Aurelius would have done. +Does this prove more than that the two men may have had very different +temperaments? But, individuality cannot be made to agree with theory, +and can be tabulated in no _science_ book of humanity. When +Maeterlinck says, "Hamlet's ignorance puts the seal on his +unhappiness," we may well ask ignorance of what? Was it ignorance of +the power of will? Certainly his intellect was greater than his will. +"He would have been greater had he been less great." The +"concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity" was in +Hamlet. Except the gifts of serenity and calmness, what did he lack? +And because he was not inwardly serene, Maeterlinck considers him +blind and ignorant. It is strange to connect blindness and ignorance +with a wit of intellectual keenness, an imagination of a poet, and the +unflinching questioning of the philosopher. Maeterlinck says: "Hamlet +thinks much but is by no means wise." How does Hamlet show he had not +the wisdom of life? Maeterlinck, no doubt, would dwell on his varying +moods, his subtle melancholy, his nature baffled by a supernatural +command. If he was not wise how strange he should have said so many +words of truest wisdom both of Life and Death, "If it be now, 'tis not +to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet +it will come; the readiness is all." We feel that Hamlet was "a being +with springs of thought and feeling and action deeper than we can +search." But the elements in his nature could not resolve themselves +into an inner life of calm. Therefore, according to Maeterlinck, he +was not wise, for he could not conquer his inner fatality--destiny in +himself. Maeterlinck's ideas are very beautiful, and he writes +delightfully, but his test of wisdom is questionable, for Hamlet's +thoughts have captured and invaded and influenced the best minds and +experiences of thinkers for centuries, How many a Shakespearean reader +has _felt_ that Hamlet is one of the very wisest of men as well as one +of the most lovable and attractive! Not his ignorance, but his wisdom +has borne the test of study and time. He did not bear the tragedy of +life when the supernatural entered it, with an unshaken soul, but +ourselves and the realities of life become clearer to us, the more we +read his thoughts. If "it is _we_ who are Hamlet," as Hazlitt said, it +is a great tribute to his universality--but a greater one to +ourselves. Indeed, we learn wisdom, not only from the lucubrations of +the serene and calm, or from Hamlet, magnificent in thought, acute and +playful, but also from Hamlet in his mortal struggles, in his deep +questionings, and his melancholy. + + For wisdom "dwells not in the light alone + But in the darkness and the cloud." + + + + +IV. + + + +AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY. + + +Philosophers talk of a philosophy of art, ancient and modern. But this +is unnecessary. Art is always art, or never art, as the case may be; +whether it is art in the days of Pheidias and Praxitiles, of Rafael, +or of Turner, or whether it is not art as in the days of its +degeneration in Greece and Italy. The outward expression of course, +changes, but it changes through individual and national aptitudes, not +from Chronology. That indispensable and indescribable thing which is +of the essence of art, is the same in all times and countries; for art +is ever young, there is no old, no new, and here is its essential +difference from science. In its essence, art is neither ancient or +modern, because it is incapable of progress, it is the expression of +an illimitable idea. We find before the Christian Era more beautiful +sculpture than after it. "Ah!" Victor Hugo says in his "William +Shakespeare," "You call yourself Dante, well! But that one calls +himself Homer. The beauty of art consists in not being susceptible of +improvement. A _chef d'oeuvre_ exists once and for ever. The first +Poet who arrives, arrives at the summit. From Pheidias to Rembrandt +there is no onward movement. A Savant may out-lustre a Savant, a Poet +never throws a Poet into the shade. Hippocrates is outrun, Archimides, +Paracelsus, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, La Place, Pindar not; +Pheidias not. Pascal, the Savant, is out-run, Pascal, the Writer, not. +There is movement in art, but not progress. The Frescoes of the +Sistine Chapel are absolutely nothing to the Metopes of the Parthenon. +Retrace your steps as much as you like from the Palace of Versailles +to the Castle of Heidelberg. From the Castle of Heidelberg to the +Notre Dame of Paris. From the Notre Dame to the Alhambra. From the +Alhambra to St. Sophia. From St. Sophia to the Coliseum. From the +Coliseum to the Propyleans. You may recede with ages, you do not +recede in art. The Pyramids and the Iliad stand on a fore plan. +Masterpieces have the same level--the Absolute. Once the Absolute is +reached, all is reached." And Schopenhauer says, "Only true works of +art have eternal youth and enduring power like nature and life +themselves. For they belong to no age, but to humanity--they cannot +grow old, but appear to us ever fresh and new, down to the latest +ages." Let us disclaim then any such word as Modern in relation to +art, particularly in relation to a philosophy which has to do with the +principle and essence of art. Is a Philosophy of Art possible? There +must be some who will think it is impossible. Have we a philosophy +that explains such an apparently simple thing as how one knows +anything--or of simple consciousness? Every philosopher that has +attempted to explain consciousness or how we know, takes refuge in +assumptions. At any Philosophical Society, if you ask for the +explanation of simple Consciousness, the avalanche of answers, each +differing from the other, will bewilder you. We know the outward +appearance of an object, of which we say that we know it, but what is +it _in itself_? Of that we are as much in the dark as we are of the +mind that knows. We say, each of us--I know, but in philosophy we are +not clear whether there is a thing that knows. We know we are +conscious, but we know nothing but that bare fact. We do not know how +an object swims into our consciousness. We do not know in the +scientific meaning of knowledge, how we come to know any object. Our +abysmal ignorance is this, that, of the thing known, and of that which +knows, and of the process of knowing, we know nothing. Who can tell us +how the movement of matter in the brain causes what we call thought. +Is it a cause, or merely a concurrence? When we can know this much, +then art may have a philosophy in which we can all agree. But, what +signs are there of even the beginnings of agreement? Certainly art is +not known as we know a science--perhaps we do not wish it ever to be +so. And the process of art is as indescribable as the process of +knowing. The advance we have made in philosophy seems to be this, that +whereas one philosopher after another according to his temperament has +thought he knew and has supplied us with hypotheses, and with +successive clues to the mystery of Being, and with many systems of +thought, we know now that none of them were adequate to supply even +initial steps, and so, for the most part, we fall back on the +knowledge that comes to us from living, from being, from knowing +appearances, from action, and from feeling; on that position in short +which Schopenhauer thought so despicable in a human being, _i.e._, +Refuge in the common sense attitude, and practically the giving up of +philosophy. The outcome of all the brain work on philosophy, since the +time of the Greeks, is that despair has entered into our minds of ever +achieving any knowledge of the _Real_, beneath and beyond Phenomena, +of a knowledge which _commands_ assent. Can even a Hegel write a +convincing Philosophy of Art--which implies a philosophy of complex +knowing and feeling; the feeling or emotion, or sensation, which +vibrates in music and colour and poetry. Could Hegel himself answer +this objection: that poetry eludes all tests--that that which you can +thoroughly explain in any way is not poetry, as Swinburne has said? It +is the inexplicable, then, which lies at the essence of art and it is +this, which if there is to be a Philosophy of Art must be its object. +The Inexplicable must be the object for the thinker with his orderly +sequences, his logical search for causes and results. It is not that +artistic feeling is too subtle as a subject; it is that we cannot get +hold of it at all. It is where? Here, in our emotion, our feeling, our +imagination; it flies from us and it comes again. + +We do not ask for a philosophy of artistic _creations_ (whatever they +may be, in music, painting, or poetry), for a Philosophy of Art must +be a philosophy of the artistic _faculty_ that creates, and that +admires and understands and is absorbed in the creations. Philosophy +of Art is the philosophy of the creative--receptive qualities. We feel +these qualities, but we are not able to explain them, we cannot even +help another to feel them. The capacity comes from within. In +ourselves is a nameless response to Beauty. All art is an expression +of the artist thrown out towards a reproduction of some intuitive Idea +within, and what artist has ever satisfied his inward aspiration? Why +tell us that harmonies of art may be traced down to the simplest +lines, and, that at the root, lies an aim of edification? Simplify the +lines, as we will, let the basis of edification lie at the root of all +beauty, still the initial question remains unanswered. Why do certain +lines in a poem, curves of beauty in a statue, colour in a picture, +produce in us the feelings of beauty and delight? Why does +edification, if it is such, produce in me, the sense of a nameless +beauty? + +There is that in us which we call the sense or Idea of beauty, and we +recognise it in works of art. What causes it in us? It is a sentiment, +but it is more than a sentiment. It is indissolubly connected with +expression, but it is more than expression. It raises all kinds of +associations, but it is more than associations. It thrills the nerves, +it stimulates the intellect, but it is more than a thrill, and other +than the intellect; it is treatment, but who can give laws for it? The +answer which explained the sense of beauty that we feel in works of +art would go straight to the revelation of the essence of beauty. All +that æsthetic teachers tell us is, that certain lines and colours and +arrangements are harmonious, and the philosopher fails in telling us +why they are harmonious. Does Hegel? Even if we are told there is an +Idea in us which is also an Idea in Nature, and, therefore, we can +understand the Idea, because We are It, does that throw light on what +the Idea really is? We are the human side of nature, and have the same +human difficulty as before in interpreting the Idea. Yet there is one +philosopher, as many readers must have felt, who has brought us nearer +to the interpretation of the artistic attitude, than any other, and +this is Schopenhauer on what we may call his mystical side in his book +of "Will and Idea." Perhaps most philosophers have erred in too rigid +an exclusion of feeling and imagination. It is impossible to help +feeling that his philosophy is largely moulded and created by his +feeling for art--and by his oriental mysticism. He can be curiously +prosaic at the same time, and this is another proof of the infinite +complexity of the mind:--he can be inartistic and unpoetic so that he +almost staggers us, as in his unillumining remarks on Landscape Art. +Vegetation, according to Schopenhauer's theory, is on a lower grade of +Will Objectification or Manifestation, than men and animals are, and +landscape painting is, therefore, altogether on a different plane. +Through his theories he loses the power of seeing that art is +concerned with treatment, with conception and expression, that beauty +depends not on the object, but on the treatment of the object. + +But if we turn to his mystical theory of the Unconscious, we do get a +beautiful description of the absorption, that is, of the essence of +the artistic nature. He shows how the artist loses his own personality +in the object of contemplation, so completely that he identifies +himself mentally with it. Schopenhauer describes the artistic mind +when it is affected by the beautiful and the sublime. By losing all +sense of individuality and personality the artist is so possessed by +his object of thought and vision that he is absorbed in it and feels +the Idea, which it represents. This theory put into ordinary language, +is that the artist has in him the sense of a great Idea, such as +Beauty, and in his power of vision into objects of beauty he lives in +the sense of Beauty, which they represent. They represent to him the +Idea of Beauty itself. He lives in the Idea, is isolated in it, +absorbed in it, and by the privilege of genius can keep the sense of +the inner world of beauty and can produce beautiful works of art. + +With joy and innocence, his whole soul absorbed in the beautiful forms +which he creates, he represents the ideas within him, and he loses the +sense of life and consciousness and Will, which, according to +Schopenhauer, is to be freed from constant demands, and strivings. He +is no longer bound to the wheel of desire--he has no personal +interests--no subjectivity. + +He is a "pure will-less, time-less subject of knowledge" of "pure +knowing," which means complete absorption. He excites and suggests in +others the knowledge of the Ideas, which, beautiful objects represent. +Thus, through the works of Genius, others may reach an exalted frame +of mind, for, indeed, if we had not some artistic capacity for seeing +and feeling the Ideas which works of art represent, we should be +incapable of feeling or enjoying them. Perhaps, to make this abstract +thought clearer, it would be well to endeavour to find some examples +which will illustrate Schopenhauer's meaning. And Shakespeare offers +us incomparable examples. In his great tragedies--such as Othello, for +instance--we feel the knowledge or Idea of Life, in all its varied +human manifestations. Life, manifold, diverse, and abundant--and all +felt intuitively from within. Into his creations, Shakespeare pours +wide and overflowing knowledge of life; there is nothing narrow or +shut in, in his conceptions, but every character is alive in the great +sense, illustrating no narrow precept or trite morality, no cut and +dried scheme of a petty out-look on life, but the great morals of life +itself, as varied, as intangible and as inexplicable. He represents +this sense of varied life as manifested or objectified in his +creations, _i.e._, his characters. In _Othello_, for instance, we have +suggestions of love and jealousy that go down to the very depth of the +heart, through imaginative insight. And what we are brought close to, +is the vivid intense life of feeling that Shakespeare's creations +hold, and that we, ourselves, are capable of holding in our own +hearts. In this presentation, Shakespeare flashes the sense of life +with all its complexities of heart and brain into us. He does not +stand, as it were aside, as a commentator on the faults or weaknesses +of his characters, but he wafts us out of our circumscribed lives, out +of our limitation of thought, we know not how, into an atmosphere +quivering with passion, and felt by us all the keener, because we +recognise that the Poet never thought about _us_ at all. He excites +our sympathies by his own intuitions into the clashing ideas, which he +represents in the tragedy of a passionately loving and a jealous +nature. We learn truths, not of fact, but of life, focussed and +arranged as an artist arranges them, and permeated with that strange +sense of wonder which only Life can give. We feel the suggestion of an +inevitable dim something beyond, to explain the unexplainable, the +tragedy of character, and the tragedy of circumstance. + +These make the great crises which break up lives. But the play goes on +with all the wild force of life itself. We feel the Idea of jealousv +forming itself in the noble nature of Othello, and bringing with it +anguish, the bitterer throes of life, those intense and hopeless +moments when struggle only makes the coil close tighter round the +victim. And after we have felt these, no nature remains quite the same +as before. There has entered into us a power of imaginative sympathy +which Art alone can inspire and only when it most inwardly reveals +Life itself. Of all things, the "Too late" and the "Might have been" +are the most sorrowful, and the divine possibility, cruelly realised +too late, gives the sharpest edge to Othello's mental agony, when the +whole truth of Desdemona's life--an "objectification" of loyalty, +love, and purity--is only revealed to him as she lies there dead +before him, killed by his own hand. All that it means rushes then like +a torrent on his soul; when Othello falls on the bed, by Desdemona's +body, the remorse and love that rend him with their talons are beyond +even Shakespeare's power of expression. + +With groans scarcely uttered, Othello gives the only outlet possible +to the blinding, scathing storm of passions within him. There is one +touch, and only the intuitive artist of humanity and of life could +have known it, and given it--only one touch of consolation that could +be left him, and it comes to Othello as he is dying! "I kiss'd thee, +'ere I kill'd thee." + +He fastens on this as a starving man fastens on a crumb of bread. + +Why is this so true as to be almost intolerable--and yet so beautiful? +The characters have art necessities. Schiller said Art has its +categorical Imperatives--its _must_, and Shakespeare's characters +fulfil them. We feel how inevitable is their fate. They make their own +tragedy. The Poet compresses a Life Tragedy into a few pages of +manuscript. He, with the great sense and Idea of Human Life in him, +has to choose what he will portray, and the greater an artist the more +unerring is his selection. Then begins his own absorption in the +characters. Conception and expression come to him and come nobly and +spontaneously--and so spontaneous is his touch--so completely is he +absorbed in, and one with his characters--that it makes our rush of +sympathy as spontaneous as his own. + +We feel the Identification of Shakespeare with Othello--with +Iago--with Desdemona He _is_ them _all_. _He_, William Shakespeare, is +"the will-less--time-less--subject of knowledge," living in "pure +knowing" and absorbed in the creations that represent his varied and +his intuitive knowledge of the great Idea of Life. And he excites and +suggests in us the same absorption in his creations--that is, if we +have the capacity to feel it. + +It is a land of marvel and of mystery when all personal interests and +all consciousness of individual temperaments are lost, fall off from +us, and nothing remains, nothing exists to us but the love, the +betrayal, the agony, and the struggles of the noble nature, that "dies +upon a kiss." We are so much part of it, we become so possessed by it, +that we do not even know or feel that we are knowing or feeling. +Shakespeare _is_ Othello--and so are we, for the time being. +Shakespeare had the insight and power of genius, and so could retain +and reproduce his vision into the inner life. We alas! often cannot; +when the play is over we become again, a link in the chain that binds +us to the ordinary world of consciousness; the veil of illusion has +fallen again between us and real vision, we are again among the +shadows, with some general impressions more or less blurred, but the +vivid vision of the Poet which made us feel in the manifestations he +created, the very Idea of Life itself--has faded from us, we are no +longer in the Ideal world which is the real world. + +We will take one other example, not of a play, but of a picture. The +Ascending Christ for instance at the Pitti Palace, Florence, by Fra +Bartolomeo. + +It is well enough known, with the rapt faces of the four evangelists, +two on either side, gazing at their Master, with more of love for Him +than of understanding even then, in their expression. And the two +lovely little angels beneath, oblivious of everything but the +medallion they are holding, as is the way with old Masters. It is the +Christ alone that rivets our attention. The majestic, noble form, and +the sad, grave, beautiful eyes, revealing the Victor over Life and +Death, as He leaves the earth, triumphant indeed, but with the +solitariness of triumph of the Divine Man, Who knows now the awful +sorrow of humanity. It is Life human and divine in the Artist's +Conception or Idea. How absorbed must he have been in his +representation of this idea since he could suggest, and that +spontaneously, such problems of unutterable thoughts in those divine +eyes. The whole vision of humanity, as it might be in the mind of +Christ, and as it was felt in the artist's vision, is flashed into our +own minds--it is an artistic inspiration. Art suggests, it does not +explain. A picture focusses into a few inches of space a whole drama +of life and thought. We read it there, we feel it, and with no +conscious effort, for this is the gift of Genius. + +And our absorption in a work of genius is untouched even by +consideration of technique. The methods of conveying the impression +may be noted afterwards, and we may delight in form and colour, and +light and shade. But it is the _result_ of all these that the art +lover feels so spontaneously and unconsciously. Learned art critics +and dealers will study the size of ears, the length of noses, the +breadth of thumbs, the manner of curving the little finger in order to +make sure of the authenticity of the artist. It is more important to +them than the enjoyment of the work of art itself. The lover of art +has a receptive nature, so that he does not concern himself much, with +these considerations, he does not even compare pictures. All _that_ +may come afterwards, if he is a student, as well as a lover. But, at +all events, at first, he will find a response simply in his own soul +to the picture, which represents to him an idea. His own personality +and individuality leave him; unconsciously he is possessed. Instead of +getting to understand it, and attacking a work of art as if it were a +mathematical problem, he discovers that the picture is possessing him, +and that is what Schopenhauer means. Art has dæmonic power, it takes +hold of us wholly, and in proportion to our faculty of receptiveness +we understand it more or less fully. Architecture can hold us in this +way, sculpture can, a great city can with its architecture and +associations combined. Rome _does_. The very essence of the artistic +quality hangs round the old walls of Rome. Rome itself can teach us, +enter into us, possess us in a way of its own. The great bond of +similarity between all the arts is their having this _possessing_ +power, this revelation of ideas, in whatever form they are expressed. +Rafael in the exquisite outline of the peasant girl's face, saw +without conscious effort the vision of maternity, as the perfect +form of the Madonna della Seggiola rose before him. This is +idealism--seeing the idea in the object of contemplation. And the +spectator, gazing at the picture, also without consciousness of +effort, is moved into "a passionate tenderness, which he knows not +whether he has given to heavenly beauty or earthly charm"; he feels +motherhood, and to quote again Mr. Henry James in "The Madonna of the +Future," he is intoxicated with the fragrance of the "tenderest +blossom of maternity that ever bloomed on earth." Critics may question +its manner, method and style; but the art lover feels its "graceful +humanity," he does not "praise, or qualify, or measure or explain, or +account for"--he is one with its loveliness--one with the purity and +the truth of the ideal which it represents. + +This may explain something of the attitude towards art in +Schopenhauer's philosophy, though to reproduce and exemplify thought +is always difficult, and abstract philosophical thought is especially +so. The real comprehension of a philosopher's mind depends mainly on +how far we are able to get into the atmosphere of his thought; it +depends upon affinity in fact, and this is why philosophy must be the +study, mainly, of the lonely thinker. Explainers and lecturers +necessarily intrude their own individualities into their explanations, +which have to be discounted. Yet when discounted, certain +individualities do help us in philosophy, and even in poetry. Some +minds may be more akin with the philosopher's or poet's than are our +own, and a thought will become more vivid and clear to us, and a poem +more lovely, when we understand it or view it, through a mind to which +it appeals _directly_, and to us through that other. And now, after +endeavouring to grapple with Schopenhauer's theory of art, what does +it come to at last? Is it more than this that the philosopher explains +it as unconscious absorption in the manifestation of an Idea, and that +it is a refuge from life and its woes _We_ may have _felt_ all that he +has described, and, for a philosopher, Schopenhauer has a great gift +of expression, indeed the love of art and literature glows on almost +every page of his book. But his theory is surely scarcely more than a +re-statement of what we _feel_, and if we ask whence comes the +artistic quality--from the heart or the nerves--or the brain;--what is +the philosophical definition of the _compulsion_ in art; how does +philosophy account for its strange compelling, unique, possessing, +power--we get no answer at all, it eludes all tests. We get no +explanation of what the strange insight is which we find in the man of +Genius, or of the faculty that gives the capacity for absorption and +that excites it in us. The genesis of this wonderful faculty remains +unknown to us, undefined. Unconsciousness is a necessary ingredient in +it, according to Schopenhauer, and this helps us to realise the +difficulty of expressing it. What thinker will reduce the quality to +intellectual symbols? Until that is done, however, Philosophy of Art +must remain a philosophy of the Undefined, and the Undefinable! + + + + +V. + + + +IMPRESSIONS OF GEORGE SAND. + + +Perhaps the keynote to the charm of George Sand's art is given in her +preface to her exquisite novel "La Derniere Aldini." Here is none of +the accuracy and patience of the scientific enquirer into the +"mysterious mixture" man, which we find in George Eliot's preface to +"Middlemarch." Indeed these prefaces sum up the remarkably differing +characteristics of the two writers. George Eliot is occupied with "the +function of knowledge" in regard to the "ardently willing soul." She +explains in her preface that the aim of her book is to trace the fate +of the Saint. Theresas of a past age, in the ordinary environment and +circumstances of our time. The problem was, how were detachment of +mind and spiritual longing and love to find their developments in a +modern prosaic setting. George Eliot brought to bear on this enquiry +all her great powers of observation, discrimination and thought. Each +page of the novel reveals the conscious endeavour of the born thinker +to express in artistic form some conception that would help to clear +the outlook on which the answer to the problem depended. George Sand, +who had also her philosophising, and her analysing moods, was yet +capable of feeling that novels may be romances. She could write under +the sway of pure emotion and apart from theory. George Eliot never +regarded her novels as mere romances. "Romances," said George Sand in +_her_ preface, "are always 'fantasies,' and these fantasies of the +imagination are like the clouds which pass. Whence come the clouds and +whither do they go? In wandering about the Forest of Fontainebleau +tête à tête with my son I have dreamed of everything else but this +book. This book which I wrote that evening in the little inn, and +which I forgot the next morning, that I might occupy myself only with +the flowers and the butterflies. I could tell you exactly every +expedition we made, each amusement we had, but I can not tell you why +my spirit went that evening to Venice. I could easily find a good +reason, but it will be more sincere to confess that I do not remember +it." + +The mind of George Sand, instead of being engaged with a problem, was +like an Æolian harp breathed upon "by every azure breath, + + "That under heaven is blown + To harmonies and hues beneath, + As tender as its own." + +So responsive was she that she gave back in wealth of sentiment and +idea, the beauty wafted to her by the forest winds. So instinct with +emotion, so alive and receptive and creative that a passing impulse +resulted in a work of art of the touching beauty of "La Derniere +Aldini." So unanalytic of self, that she could not remember the +driving impulse that caused her to write the novel. Impulses like +clouds come and go, and the artist soul is the sure recipient of them. +It sees and "follows the gleam"--it feels the mystic influences. This +is the foundation of that inexplicable thing inspiration, genius. This +receptive-creative faculty is the gift George Sand received, and this +preface is the keynote to it. + +It is this gift, which is power, and in George Sand it is a liberating +power; it freed her own soul, and it freed the souls of others. She +herself felt--and she made readers feel, as in "Lelia," that outward +limitations and hindering circumstances were as nothing compared to +the great fact of freedom within, freedom of heart and soul and mind +from "the enthralment of the actual." We are _free_;--it is a great +thing to be as sure and as proud of it as St. Paul was of having been +"Free born." Some of us achieve freedom with sorrow and with bitter +tears and with great effort--sometimes with spasmodic effort, and +George Sand obtained inward freedom in that way. + +But however obtained, the first time a mind feels conscious of it, it +is a revelation, and it may come as an influence from an artist soul. +George Sand had "l'esprit _libre_ et varié." George Eliot "l'esprit +fort et pesant." George Sand was widely, wisely, and eminently human. +She felt deep down in her heart all the social troubles and problems +of her day--and created some herself! But she was true to the artist +soul in her--to the belief in an ideal. Art was dormant when she wrote +disquisitions, and sometimes her social disquisitions are very long +treatises. But her art was not dormant when from her inmost soul she +sketched the fate of the Berri peasant whom she loved so well. In the +introduction to that simple delightful Idyll "La Mare au Diable," +which should be read by all social reformers and by all who really +care for the poor and the causes of poverty, she conveys her +conceptions of the mission of art towards the oppressed unhappy +labourer; oppressed and unhappy, because with form robust and +muscular, with eyes to see, and thoughts that might be cultivated to +understand the beauty and harmony of colour and sounds, delicacy of +tone and grace of outline, in a word, the mysterious beauty of the +world, he, the peasant of Berri, has never under stood the mystery of +the beautiful and his child will never understand it; the result of +excessive toil, and extreme poverty. Imperfect and condemned to +eternal childhood, George Sand recounts his life, touching gently his +errors, and with deep sympathy entering into his trials and griefs. +And a deeper ignorance, she adds, is one that is born of knowledge +which has stifled the sense of beauty. The Berri peasant has no +monopoly in ignorance of beauty, and intimate knowledge of toil and +extreme poverty, but not many of us feel with the peasant's fate, as +George Sand felt it. She never ceased to care for the cause of social +progress, just as she was always heart and soul an artist. George +Eliot has written words "to the reader" about the ruined villages on +the Rhone. In "The Mill on the Floss," she writes, and again the +remarkable difference between the two writers appears as forcibly as +in the two prefaces. "These dead tinted, hollow-eyed skeletons of +villages on the Rhone, oppress me with the feeling that human +life--very much of it--is a narrow ugly grovelling existence, which +even calamity does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its +bare vulgarity of conception, and I have a cruel conviction that the +lives, of which these ruins are the traces were part of a gross sum of +obscure vitality that will be swept into the same oblivion with the +generations of ants and beavers." George Eliot saw in imagination +these unhappy and oppressed peasants with clear, unsparing eyes. She +was right in calling her conviction "Cruel," for she saw merely the +outside of the sordid lives of oppressive narrowness, which seemed to +irritate her, these lives of dull men and women out of keeping with +the earth on which they lived. She never alluded to any possible +explanatory causes, such as excessive toil and extreme poverty, which +if she had realised, as George Sand realised them, would have brought +the tender touch of sympathy with individual lives and griefs that we +find so often in George Eliot's novels. But George Sand could _never_ +have written of any peasants as "part of a gross sum of obscure +vitality," because she could never have felt towards them in that way. +She was too imaginative and tender. She did not look at the peasantry +"en masse"--but individually, and loved the Berri peasants +individually, as they loved and adored her. Her artistic sense and her +humanity illumined her view of them, and she saw their latent +possibilities, and knew why they were only latent. She knew indeed, +many--if not all kinds of humanity. Once it is recorded she said to +Pere Lacordaire, "You have lived with Saints and Angels. I have lived +with men and women, and I could tell you (and we may well think she +could) some things you do not know." She had indeed run through the +gamut of feeling, and it was in one of those moments when her +experiences of life were overwhelming her--that she exclaimed "J'ai +trop bu la vie." But her gift of genius kept her always vivifying. She +never depresses. From her first years at Nohant to the end of her long +life, she was always _alive_. In the political troubles of 1848, when +she wrote of herself as "navré jusqu 'au fond de l'ame par les orages +exterieurs," and as trying to find in solitude if not calm and +philosophy, at least a faith in ideas, her soul shrank from blood shed +on both sides. "It needed a Dante," she thought, "with his nerves, and +temper, and tears to write a drama full of groans and tortures. It +needed a soul tempered with iron, and with fire, to linger in the +imagination over horrors of a symbolic Hell, when before one's very +eyes is the purgatory of desolation on the earth." But "as a weaker +and gentler artist," George Sand saw what her mission was in those +evil times;--it was to distract the imagination from them, towards +"tenderer sentiments of confidence, of friendship, and of kindness." +Her political and social hopes and aims were always dear to her, but +to interpret nature, to live the quiet life of the affections were the +phases of her middle life. And so she wrote a "sweet song" in prose, +one of the most delightful of her Bergeries, "La Petite Fadette." It +was her contribution to the hatreds and agitations of the time--she +gave a refuge to the souls that could accept it--an "Ideal of calmness +and innocence and reverie." "La Petite Fadette" and "Le Meunier +d'Angibault" reveal her fascinating intelligence and her idyllic +imagination. "Le Meunier d'Angibault," she tells us, was the result of +a walk, a meeting, a day of leisure, an hour of _far niente_, followed +by Reverie, that play of the imagination which, clothes with beauty +and perfects, and interprets, the isolated and small events and facts +of life. There are books of hers in early life that are simply +self-revelations--outpourings of her indignations. She is not at her +best in these. "Indiana," written in her age of revolt, is too +obviously a pamphlet to reveal her passionate hatred of marriage. In +it she looked on marriage as "un malheur insupportable." But +"Consuelo," "La Comtesse de Rudolstadt," "Lettres d'un voyageur," +Lelia, Spiridion, Valvédre, Valentine, "History of her Life and +letters," and many other books reveal her agonies and agitations, her +hope and power, her love of beauty both outward and inward as +represented in Consuelo herself, who is contrasted with the mere +beautiful "animal" Anzoleto, the artist in his lowest form. He cared +only for physical loveliness, he was a great child, who needed nothing +but amusement, emotion and beauty. But George Sand herself felt the +delight of existence. She says of Joy "It is the great uplifter of +men, the great upholder. For life to be fruitful, life must be felt as +a blessing." In all she wrote we feel the rare charm of perfect ease +and naturalness, combined with the cadences of beauty. We never feel +that she is "posing." And yet the author of the bitter attack "Lui et +elle," accused her of continual "posing." Edonard de Musset wrote with +an envenomed pen, (but we must remember he was defending a brother), +in that strange literary duel between him and George Sand. Alfred de +Musset had accused her of assuming the maternal "pose" towards poets +and musicians who adored her, whilst she absorbed their loves and +lives and then deserted them. It is certainly very striking how her +strong vitality seemed to sway and overpower some of those with whom +she came in contact. She was the oak, and the others were the ivy. +When they were torn apart, the oak was scarred but not irreparably +injured, it was the ivy that was destroyed. In, "Elle et Lui," George +Sand claims that hers was a protecting love for the wayward, gifted +child of art, the poet whose ingratitude she bore with, whose nerves +she soothed, and whom she cared for and nursed in illness. Kindly time +throws a softening veil over the acutest differences, and the clash of +temperaments, even where they remain inexplicable. But the answer to +Alfred de Musset's reproaches must be looked for not in one book, but +in the whole tenor of her life. Does this show that her maternal +attitude was a "pose." It is often said that women are born wives or +born mothers. George Sand was undeniably a born _mother_. Mrs. +Oliphant resembled her in this respect. They both show the deep +passion of maternity in books and autobiographies and letters. Both +were devoted to their children, there was no company they cared for in +comparison, and they spared neither trouble or time in their +interests. But George Sand cared much, not only for her children but +for the peasants--for the poor and oppressed. Yes, and for the poets, +the painters--the singers and the musicians, with their temperaments +of genius, their loves, jealousies, and their shattered nerves. For +upwards of six years she treated Chopin with a mother's care; she had +the passion of maternity in her towards them all, with whatever +feelings it may have been complicated in her life of manifold +experiences and with her artist temperament. She may have leant +heavily on it at times, it may have served as a weapon of defence when +she was attacked, and used thus it may well have suggested a "pose." +But however used, whatever the purpose--that the maternal instinct was +strong in her there is no denying. To explain definitely her social +and personal moral standards requires a biography that has not yet +been written. Socially she had a hatred of feudalism, of religious and +military despotism. She sympathised with and helped the aspirations +towards a wider, a more humane view of a social system, and fraternal +equality and social liberty were to her holy doctrines. Perhaps fully +to understand George Sand from within may require the genius of a +French mind and one of her own generation; for the French of the +present day neither study her, or appear to care much for her books. +Her letters should aid in giving a discriminating record of her +intense and intricate life as viewed from within, and the ideas on +which that life was lived. What then were the leading principles, and +what was the force in George Sand, which while conquering life and +harmonising it enabled her to realise herself? If heredity influences +moral standards the mystery certainly is whence George Eliot derived +not her morality, but her "fire of insurgency." It is not difficult to +account for it in George Sand when we remember her mother's life and +temperament, and her own early years. Her father was a good soldier, +but had also many literary gifts. George Sand herself said: "Character +is hereditary, if my readers wish to know me, they must know my +father." George Eliot's creed and pervading view of life was the +supreme responsibility of it, and the inevitableness of the struggles +of the spirit warring against the senses. Her ideal is attainment +through great trial. George Sand, the born hater of conventions, +developed life into a harmony. We feel ultimately in her, a sense of +peculiar serenity and peace, of self realisation, more akin perhaps to +Plato's ideal of a character in harmony with itself, whose various +impulses are so attuned that they form practically a single desire and +this desire satisfies all the forces of the nature. What was this +desire that was involved in the whole aim or system of George Sand's +life? The ethical poet who affirmed emphatically that "conduct was +three-fourths of life," expressed the highest admiration of George +Sand's aims and ethics, and according to Matthew Arnold, her ruling +idea was, that this ordinary human life of love and suffering was +destined to be raised, into an ideal life, and _that_ ideal life is +our real life. Matthew Arnold has written one of his most beautiful +and eloquent and touching essays in this record of his impressions and +estimate of George Sand. Well does he say that "her passions and her +errors have been abundantly talked of." She left them behind her, and +men's memory of them will leave them behind also. + +There will remain the sense of benefit and stimulus from that large +and frank nature, that large and pure utterance. Matthew Arnold gives +three principal elements in her strain. Instead of the hopeless echo +of unrealised ideas we hear from her the evolution of character: "1, +Through agony, and revolt; 2, Through consolation from nature and +beauty; 3, Through sense of the Divine ('Je fus toujours tourmenté des +choses divines') and social renewal, she passes into the great life +motif of her existence;" that the sentiment of the ideal life is none +other than man's normal life as we shall one day know it. Matthew +Arnold saw George Sand in his enthusiastic youth when she was in the +serenity and dignity of middle age at Nohant. + +Browning came across her in her journalistic career in Paris, and he +was not touched with the same admiration. + +Mr. Chesterton suggests in his biography of the poet that Browning was +conventional by nature--and through the greatness of his brain he +developed. He certainly developed on many sides, but his development +did not include admiration for George Sand and her circle. It was +social tone, his biographer believes, more than _opinions_, which +created this strong aversion in the author of "The Statue and the +Bust." + +But Mrs. Browning, though her life had been mainly one long seclusion +on her sofa, was unhampered by these conventional barriers. What she +felt was the attraction of the massive and fascinating brain and heart +of the great French woman, what she heard was "that eloquent voice," +what she saw was "that noble, that speaking head." She had warm, quick +sympathies and intuitional appreciations of genius. In regard to so +wide and so complicated a character as George Sand's, we cannot be +astonished at finding very different judgments and impressions; indeed +we are prepared to feel in all of them some note of inadequacy and of +incompleteness. But in our relation to her as a Great Writer, of this, +as readers, we are assured, we _know_ that it is no common matter to +have come into contact with so gifted and great a nature, with a +genius that possessed "a current of true and living ideas," and which +produced "amid the inspiration of them." + + + + +NOTES: + + + +[1: 1886. "Mind" Vol. 11. "The need of a Society for experimental +Psychology."] + +[2: 1888. "Mind" Vol. 13. "The Psychological Laboratory at Leipsic."] + +[3: Essays. On the genius and tendency of the writings of Thomas +Carlyle. "The Camelot Series."] + +[4: See supplementary notice of "Hamlet" in Charles Knight's Pictorial +Edition of Shakespeare.] + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13766 *** |