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diff --git a/35612-0.txt b/35612-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..beb9bab --- /dev/null +++ b/35612-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5304 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of Three Philosophical Poets, by George Santayana + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: Three Philosophical Poets + Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe + +Author: George Santayana + +Release Date: March 18, 2011 [eBook #35612] +[Most recently updated: October 16, 2021] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Marc D’Hooghe + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE PHILOSOPHICAL POETS *** + + + + +THREE PHILOSOPHICAL POETS + +LUCRETIUS, DANTE, AND GOETHE + +BY + +GEORGE SANTAYANA + + +PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY + + +HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE + +VOLUME I + + +CAMBRIDGE + +HARVARD UNIVERSITY + +1910 + + + + +PREFACE + + +The present volume is composed, with a few additions, of six lectures +read at Columbia University in February, 1910, and repeated in April of +the same year, at the University of Wisconsin. These lectures, in turn, +were based on a regular course which I had been giving for some time at +Harvard College. Though produced under such learned auspices, my book +can make no great claims to learning. It contains the impressions of an +amateur, the appreciations of an ordinary reader, concerning three great +writers, two of whom at least might furnish matter enough for the +studies of a lifetime, and actually have academies, libraries, and +university chairs especially consecrated to their memory. I am no +specialist in the study of Lucretius; I am not a Dante scholar nor a +Goethe scholar. I can report no facts and propose no hypotheses about +these men which are not at hand in their familiar works, or in +well-known commentaries upon them. My excuse for writing about them, +notwithstanding, is merely the human excuse which every new poet has for +writing about the spring. They have attracted me; they have moved me to +reflection; they have revealed to me certain aspects of nature and of +philosophy which I am prompted by mere sincerity to express, if anybody +seems interested or willing to listen. What I can offer the benevolent +reader, therefore, is no learned investigation. It is only a piece of +literary criticism, together with a first broad lesson in the history of +philosophy--and, perhaps, in philosophy itself. + + G.S. + + +_Harvard College_ + +_June, 1910_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I + +INTRODUCTION + +_Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe sum up the chief phases of European +philosophy,--naturalism, supernaturalism, and romanticism--Ideal +relation between philosophy and poetry._ + +II + +LUCRETIUS + +_Development of Greek cosmology--Democritus--Epicurean moral +sentiment--Changes inspired by it in the system of +Democritus--Accidental alliance of materialism with +hedonism--Imaginative value of naturalism: The Lucretian Venus, or the +propitious movement in nature--The Lucretian Mars, or the destructive +movement--Preponderant melancholy, and the reason for it--Materiality +of the soul--The fear of death and the fear of life--Lucretius a true +poet of nature--Comparison with Shelley and Wordsworth--Things he might +have added consistently: Indefeasible worth of his insight and +sentiment._ + +III + +DANTE + +_Character of Platonism--Its cosmology a parable--Combination of this +with Hebraic philosophy of history--Theory of the Papacy and the Empire +adopted by Dante--His judgement on Florence--Dante as a lyric +poet--Beatrice the woman, the symbol, and the reality--Love, magic, and +symbolism constitutive principles of Dante’s universe--Idea of the +Divine Comedy--The scheme of virtues and vices--Retributive theory of +rewards and punishments--Esoteric view of this, which makes even +punishment intrinsic to the sins--Examples--Dantesque cosmography--The +genius of the poet--His universal scope--His triumphant execution of the +Comedy--His defects, in spite of which he remains the type of a supreme +poet._ + +IV + +GOETHE’S FAUST _Page_ + +_The romantic spirit--The ideals of the Renaissance--Expression of both +in the legendary Faust--Marlowe’s version--Tendency to vindicate +Faust--Contrast with Calderon’s “Wonder-working Magician”--The original +Faust of Goethe,--universal ambition and eternal dissatisfaction +--Modifications--The series of experiments in living--The story of +Gretchen fitted in--Goethe’s naturalistic theory of life and +rejuvenation: Helen--The classic manner and the judgement on +classicism--Faust’s last ambition--The conflict over his soul and his +ascent to heaven symbolical--Moral of the whole._ + +V + +CONCLUSION + +_Comparison of the three poets--Their relative rank--Ideal of a +philosophic or comprehensive poet--Untried possibilities of art._ + + + + +I + + +INTRODUCTION + + +The sole advantage in possessing great works of literature lies in what +they can help us to become. In themselves, as feats performed by their +authors, they would have forfeited none of their truth or greatness if +they had perished before our day. We can neither take away nor add to +their past value or inherent dignity. It is only they, in so far as they +are appropriate food and not poison for us, that can add to the present +value and dignity of our minds. Foreign classics have to be retranslated +and reinterpreted for each generation, to render their old naturalness +in a natural way, and keep their perennial humanity living and capable +of assimilation. Even native classics have to be reapprehended by every +reader. It is this continual digestion of the substance supplied by the +past that alone renders the insights of the past still potent in the +present and for the future. Living criticism, genuine appreciation, is +the interest we draw from year to year on the unrecoverable capital of +human genius. + +Regarded from this point of view, as substances to be digested, the +poetic remains of Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe (though it is his _Faust_ +only that I shall speak of) afford rather a varied feast. In their +doctrine and genius they may seem to be too much opposed to be at all +convergent or combinable in their wisdom. Some, who know and care for +one, perhaps, of these poets, may be disposed to doubt whether they have +anything vital to learn from the other two. Yet it is as a pupil--I hope +a discriminating pupil--of each in turn that I mean to speak; and I +venture to maintain that in what makes them great they are compatible; +that without any vagueness or doubleness in one’s criterion of taste one +may admire enthusiastically the poetry of each in turn; and that one may +accept the essential philosophy, the positive intuition, of each, +without lack of definition or system in one’s own thinking. + +Indeed, the diversity of these three poets passes, if I may use the +Hegelian dialect, into a unity of a higher kind. Each is typical of an +age. Taken together they sum up all European philosophy. Lucretius +adopts the most radical and the most correct of those cosmological +systems which the genius of early Greece had devised. He sees the world +to be one great edifice, one great machine, all its parts reacting upon +one another, and growing out of one another in obedience to a general +pervasive process or life. His poem describes the nature, that is, the +birth and composition, of all things. It shows how they are compounded +out of elements, and how these elements, which he thinks are atoms in +perpetual motion, are being constantly redistributed, so that old +things perish and new things arise. Into this view of the world he fits +a view of human life as it ought to be led under such conditions. His +materialism is completed by an aspiration towards freedom and quietness +of spirit. Allowed to look once upon the wonderful spectacle, which is +to repeat itself in the world for ever, we should look and admire, for +to-morrow we die; we should eat, drink, and be merry, but moderately and +with much art, lest we die miserably, and die to-day. + +This is one complete system of philosophy,--materialism in natural +science, humanism in ethics. Such was the gist of all Greek philosophy +before Socrates, of that philosophy which was truly Hellenic and +corresponded with the movement which produced Greek manners, Greek +government, and Greek art--a movement towards simplicity, autonomy, and +reasonableness in everything, from dress to religion. Such is the gist +also of what may be called the philosophy of the Renaissance, the +reassertion of science and liberty in the modern world, by Bacon, by +Spinoza, by the whole contemporary school that looks to science for its +view of the facts, and to the happiness of men on earth for its ideal. +This system is called naturalism; and of this Lucretius is the +unrivalled poet. + +Skip a thousand years and more, and a contrasting spectacle is before +us. All minds, all institutions, are dominated by a religion that +represents the soul as a pilgrim upon earth; the world is fallen and +subject to the devil; pain and poverty are considered normal, happiness +impossible here and to be hoped for only in a future life, provided the +snares and pleasures of the present life have not entrapped us. Meantime +a sort of Jacob’s ladder stretches from the stone on which the wayfarer +lays his head into the heaven he hopes for; and the angels he sees +ascending and descending upon it are beautiful stories, wonderful +theories, and comforting rites. Through these he partakes, even on +earth, of what will be his heavenly existence. He partly understands his +destiny; his own history and that of the world are transfigured before +him and, without ceasing to be sad, become beautiful. The raptures of a +perfect conformity with the will of God, and of union with Him, overtake +him in his prayers. This is supernaturalism, a system represented in +Christendom chiefly by the Catholic Church, but adopted also by the +later pagans, and widespread in Asia from remote antiquity down to the +present time. Little as the momentary temper of Europe and America may +now incline to such a view, it is always possible for the individual, or +for the race, to return to it. Its sources are in the solitude of the +spirit and in the disparity, or the opposition, between what the spirit +feels it is fitted to do, and what, in this world, it is condemned to +waste itself upon. The unmatched poet of this supernaturalism is Dante. + +Skip again some five hundred years, and there is another change of +scene. The Teutonic races that had previously conquered Europe have +begun to dominate and understand themselves. They have become +Protestants, or protesters against the Roman world. An infinite fountain +of life seems to be unlocked within their bosom. They turn successively +to the Bible, to learning, to patriotism, to industry, for new objects +to love and fresh worlds to conquer; but they have too much vitality, or +too little maturity, to rest in any of these things. A demon drives them +on; and this demon, divine and immortal in its apparent waywardness, is +their inmost self. It is their insatiable will, their radical courage. +Nay, though this be a hard saying to the uninitiated, their will is the +creator of all those objects by which it is sometimes amused, and +sometimes baffled, but never tamed. Their will summons all opportunities +and dangers out of nothing to feed its appetite for action; and in that +ideal function lies their sole reality. Once attained, things are +transcended. Like the episodes of a spent dream, they are to be smiled +at and forgotten; the spirit that feigned and discarded them remains +always strong and undefiled; it aches for new conquests over new +fictions. This is romanticism. It is an attitude often found in English +poetry, and characteristic of German philosophy. It was adopted by +Emerson and ought to be sympathetic to Americans; for it expresses the +self-trust of world-building youth, and mystical faith in will and +action. The greatest monument to this romanticism is Goethe’s _Faust._ + +Can it be an accident that the most adequate and probably the most +lasting exposition of these three schools of philosophy should have been +made by poets? Are poets, at heart, in search of a philosophy? Or is +philosophy, in the end, nothing but poetry? Let us consider the +situation. + +If we think of philosophy as an investigation into truth, or as +reasoning upon truths supposed to be discovered, there is nothing in +philosophy akin to poetry. There is nothing poetic about the works of +Epicurus, or St. Thomas Aquinas, or Kant; they are leafless forests. In +Lucretius and in Dante themselves we find passages where nothing is +poetical except the metre, or some incidental ornament. In such passages +the form of poetry is thrown over the substance of prose, as Lucretius +himself confesses where he says: “As when physicians would contrive to +administer loathsome wormwood to little boys they first moisten the rim +of the cup round about with sweet and golden honey, that the children’s, +unsuspecting youth may be beguiled--to the lips, but no further--while +they drink down the bitter potion, by deception not betrayed, but +rather by that stratagem made whole and restored;... so I have willed to +set forth our doctrine before thee in sweet-sounding Pierian song, and +to smear it, as it were, with the Muses’ honey.”[1] + +But poetry cannot be spread upon things like butter; it must play upon +them like light, and be the medium through which we see them. Lucretius +does himself an injustice. If his philosophy had been wormwood to him, +he could not have said, as he does just before this passage: “Like a +sharp blow of the thyrsus, a great hope of praise vibrates through my +heart and fills my breast with tender love of the Muses, whereby now, +instinct with flowering fancy, I traverse pathless haunts of the +Pierides, by no man’s foot trodden before. It is joy to reach undefiled +fountains and quaff; it is joy to gather fresh flowers and weave a +matchless crown for my head of those bays with which never yet the Muses +veiled the brow of any man; first, in that I teach sublime truths and +come to free the soul from the strangling knots of superstition; then, +in that on so dark a theme I pour forth so clear a song, suffusing all +with poetic beauty,... if haply by such means I might keep thy mind +intent upon my verses, until thine eye fathoms the whole structure of +nature, and the fixed form that makes it beautiful.”[2] + +Here, I think, we have the solution to our doubt. The reasonings and +investigations of philosophy are arduous, and if poetry is to be linked +with them, it can be artificially only, and with a bad grace. But the +vision of philosophy is sublime. The order it reveals in the world is +something beautiful, tragic, sympathetic to the mind, and just what +every poet, on a small or on a large scale, is always trying to catch. + +In philosophy itself investigation and reasoning are only preparatory +and servile parts, means to an end. They terminate in insight, or what +in the noblest sense of the word may be called _theory, θεωρία_,--a +steady contemplation of all things in their order and worth. Such +contemplation is imaginative. No one can reach it who has not enlarged +his mind and tamed his heart. A philosopher who attains it is, for the +moment, a poet; and a poet who turns his practised and passionate +imagination on the order of all things, or on anything in the light of +the whole, is for that moment a philosopher. + +Nevertheless, even if we grant that the philosopher, in his best +moments, is a poet, we may suspect that the poet has his worst moments +when he tries to be a philosopher, or rather, when he succeeds in being +one. Philosophy is something reasoned and heavy; poetry something +winged, flashing, inspired. Take almost any longish poem, and the parts +of it are better than the whole. A poet is able to put together a few +words, a cadence or two, a single interesting image. He renders in that +way some moment of comparatively high tension, of comparatively keen +sentiment. But at the next moment the tension is relaxed, the sentiment +has faded, and what succeeds is usually incongruous with what went +before, or at least inferior. The thought drifts away from what it had +started to be. It is lost in the sands of versification. As man is now +constituted, to be brief is almost a condition of being inspired. + +Shall we say, then,--and I now broach an idea by which I set some +store,--that poetry is essentially short-winded, that what is poetic is +necessarily intermittent in the writings of poets, that only the +fleeting moment, the mood, the episode, can be rapturously felt, or +rapturously rendered, while life as a whole, history, character, and +destiny are objects unfit for imagination to dwell on, and repellent to +poetic art? I cannot think so. If it be a fact, as it often is, that we +find little things pleasing and great things arid and formless, and if +we are better poets in a line than in an epic, that is simply due to +lack of faculty on our part, lack of imagination and memory, and above +all to lack of discipline. + +This might be shown, I think, by psychological analysis, if we cared to +rely on something so abstract and so debatable. For in what does the +short-winded poet himself excel the common unimaginative person who +talks or who stares? Is it that he thinks even less? Rather, I suppose, +in that he feels more; in that his moment of intuition, though fleeting, +has a vision, a scope, a symbolic something about it that renders it +deep and expressive. Intensity, even momentary intensity, if it can be +expressed at all, comports fullness and suggestion compressed into that +intense moment. Yes, everything that comes to us at all must come to us +at some time or other. It is always the fleeting moment in which we +live. To this fleeting moment the philosopher, as well as the poet, is +actually confined. Each must enrich it with his endless vistas, vistas +necessarily focused, if they are to be disclosed at all, in the eye of +the observer, here and now. What makes the difference between a moment +of poetic insight and a vulgar moment is that the passions of the poetic +moment have more perspective. Even the short-winded poet selects his +words so that they have a magic momentum in them which carries us, we +know not how, to mountain-tops of intuition. Is not the poetic quality +of phrases and images due to their concentrating and liberating the +confused promptings left in us by a long experience? When we feel the +poetic thrill, is it not that we find sweep in the concise and depth in +the clear, as we might find all the lights of the sea in the water of a +jewel? And what is a philosophic thought but such an epitome? + +If a short passage is poetical because it is pregnant with suggestion of +a few things, which stretches our attention and makes us rapt and +serious, how much more poetical ought a vision to be which was pregnant +with all we care for? Focus a little experience, give some scope and +depth to your feeling, and it grows imaginative; give it more scope and +more depth, focus all experience within it, make it a philosopher’s +vision of the world, and it will grow imaginative in a superlative +degree, and be supremely poetical. The difficulty, after having the +experience to symbolize, lies only in having enough imagination to hold +and suspend it in a thought; and further to give this thought such +verbal expression that others maybe able to decipher it, and to be +stirred by it as by a wind of suggestion sweeping the whole forest of +their memories. + +Poetry, then, is not poetical for being short-winded or incidental, but, +on the contrary, for being comprehensive and having range. If too much +matter renders it heavy, that is the fault of the poet’s weak intellect, +not of the outstretched world. A quicker eye, a more synthetic +imagination, might grasp a larger subject with the same ease. The +picture that would render this larger subject would not be flatter and +feebler for its extent, but, on the contrary, deeper and stronger, since +it would possess as much unity as the little one with greater volume. As +in a supreme dramatic crisis all our life seems to be focused in the +present, and used in colouring our consciousness and shaping our +decisions, so for each philosophic poet the whole world of man is +gathered together; and he is never so much a poet as when, in a single +cry, he summons all that has affinity to him in the universe, and +salutes his ultimate destiny. It is the acme of life to understand life. +The height of poetry is to speak the language of the gods. + +But enough of psychological analysis and of reasoning in the void. +Three historical illustrations will prove my point more clearly and more +conclusively. + + + * * * * * + +[1] Lucretius, I. 936-47: + + Veluti pueris absinthia tetra medentes + Cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circura + Contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore, + Ut puerorum aetas improvida ludificetur + Labrorum tenus, interea perpotet amarum + Absinthi laticem, deceptaque non capiatur, + Sed potius tali pacto recreata valescat: + Sic ego nunc ... volui tibi suaviloquenti + Carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostram, + Et quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle. + + +[2] Lucretius, i. 922-34, 948-50: + + Acri + Percussit thyrso laudis spes magna meum cor + Et simul incussit suavem mi in pectus amorem + Musarum, quo nunc instinctus mente vigenti + Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante + Trita solo: iuvat integros accedere fontes, + Atque haurire; iuvatque novos decerpere flores, + Insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam, + Unde prius nulli velarint tempora musae. + Primum, quod magnis doceo de rebus, et artis + Religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo: + Deinde, quod obscura de re tam lucida pango + Carmina, musaeo contingens cuncta lepore.... + Si tibi forte animum tali ratione tenere + Versibus in nostris possem, dum perspicis omnem + Naturam rerum, qua constet compta figura. + + + + + +II + + +LUCRETIUS + + + +There is perhaps no important poem the antecedents of which can be +traced so exhaustively as can those of the work of Lucretius, _De Rerum +Natura_. These antecedents, however, do not lie in the poet himself. If +they did, we should not be able to trace them, since we know nothing, or +next to nothing, about Lucretius the man. In a chronicon, compiled by +St. Jerome largely out of Suetonius, in which miscellaneous events are +noted which occurred in each successive year, we read for the year 94 +B.C.: “Titus Lucretius, poet, is born. After a love-philtre had turned +him mad, and he had written, in the intervals of his insanity, several +books which Cicero revised, he killed himself by his own hand in the +forty-fourth year of his age.” + +The love-philtre in this report sounds apocryphal; and the story of the +madness and suicide attributes too edifying an end to an atheist and +Epicurean not to be suspected. If anything lends colour to the story it +is a certain consonance which we may feel between its tragic incidents +and the genius of the poet as revealed in his work, where we find a +strange scorn of love, a strange vehemence, and a high melancholy. It is +by no means incredible that the author of such a poem should have been +at some time the slave of a pathological passion, that his vehemence +and inspiration should have passed into mania, and that he should have +taken his own life. But the untrustworthy authority of St. Jerome cannot +assure us whether what he repeats is a tradition founded on fact or an +ingenious fiction. + +Our ignorance of the life of Lucretius is not, I think, much to be +regretted. His work preserves that part of him which he himself would +have wished to preserve. Perfect conviction ignores itself, proclaiming +the public truth. To reach this no doubt requires a peculiar genius +which is called intelligence; for intelligence is quickness in seeing +things as they are. But where intelligence is attained, the rest of a +man, like the scaffolding to a finished building, becomes irrelevant. We +do not wish it to intercept our view of the solid structure, which alone +was intended by the artist--if he was building for others, and was not a +coxcomb. It is his intellectual vision that the naturalist in particular +wishes to hand down to posterity, not the shabby incidents that preceded +that vision in his own person. These incidents, even if they were by +chance interesting, could not be repeated in us; but the vision into +which the thinker poured his faculties, and to which he devoted his +vigils, is communicable to us also, and may become a part of ourselves. + +Since Lucretius is thus identical for us with his poem, and is lost in +his philosophy, the antecedents of Lucretius are simply the stages by +which his conception of nature first shaped itself in the human mind. To +retrace these stages is easy; some of them are only too familiar; yet +the very triteness of the subject may blind us to the grandeur and +audacity of the intellectual feat involved. A naturalistic conception of +things is a great work of imagination,--greater, I think, than any +dramatic or moral mythology: it is a conception fit to inspire great +poetry, and in the end, perhaps, it will prove the only conception able +to inspire it. + +We are told of the old Xenophanes that he looked up into the round +heaven and cried, “The All is One.” What is logically a truism may often +be, imaginatively, a great discovery, because no one before may have +thought of the obvious analogy which the truism registers. So, in this +case, the unity of all things is logically an evident, if barren, truth; +for the most disparate and unrelated worlds would still be a multitude, +and so an aggregate, and so, in some sense, a unity. Yet it was a great +imaginative feat to cast the eye deliberately round the entire horizon, +and to draw mentally the sum of all reality, discovering that reality +makes such a sum, and may be called one; as any stone or animal, though +composed of many parts, is yet called one in common parlance. It was +doubtless some prehistoric man of genius, long before Xenophanes, who +first applied in this way to all things together that notion of unity +and wholeness which everybody had gained by observation of things +singly, and who first ventured to speak of “the world.” To do so is to +set the problem for all natural philosophy, and in a certain measure to +anticipate the solution of that problem; for it is to ask how things +hang together, and to assume that they do hang together in one way or +another. + +To cry “The All is One,” and to perceive that all things are in one +landscape and form a system by their juxtaposition, is the rude +beginning of wisdom in natural philosophy. But it is easy to go farther, +and to see that things form a unity in a far deeper and more mysterious +way. One of the first things, for instance, that impresses the poet, the +man of feeling and reflection, is that these objects that people the +world all pass away, and that the place there-of knows them no more. +Yet, when they vanish, nothingness does not succeed; other things arise +in their stead. Nature remains always young and whole in spite of death +at work everywhere; and what takes the place of what continually +disappears is often remarkably like it in character. Universal +instability is not incompatible with a great monotony in things; so that +while Heraclitus lamented that everything was in flux, Ecclesiastes, who +was also entirely convinced of that truth, could lament that there was +nothing new under the sun. + +This double experience of mutation and recurrence, an experience at once +sentimental and scientific, soon brought with it a very great thought, +perhaps the greatest thought that mankind has ever hit upon, and which +was the chief inspiration of Lucretius. It is that all we observe about +us, and ourselves also, may be so many passing forms of a permanent +substance. This substance, while remaining the same in quantity and in +inward quality, is constantly redistributed; in its redistribution it +forms those aggregates which we call things, and which we find +constantly disappearing and reappearing. All things are dust, and to +dust they return; a dust, however, eternally fertile, and destined to +fall perpetually into new, and doubtless beautiful, forms. This notion +of substance lends a much greater unity to the outspread world; it +persuades us that all things pass into one another, and have a common +ground from which they spring successively, and to which they return. + +The spectacle of inexorable change, the triumph of time, or whatever we +may call it, has always been a favourite theme for lyric and tragic +poetry, and for religious meditation. To perceive universal mutation, to +feel the vanity of life, has always been the beginning of seriousness. +It is the condition for any beautiful, measured, or tender philosophy. +Prior to that, everything is barbarous, both in morals and in poetry; +for until then mankind has not learned to renounce anything, has not +outgrown the instinctive egotism and optimism of the young animal, and +has not removed the centre of its being, or of its faith, from the will +to the imagination. + +To discover substance, then, is a great step in the life of reason, even +if substance be conceived quite negatively as a term that serves merely +to mark, by contrast, the unsubstantiality, the vanity, of all +particular moments and things. That is the way in which Indian poetry +and philosophy conceived substance. But the step taken by Greek physics, +and by the poetry of Lucretius, passes beyond. Lucretius and the Greeks, +in observing universal mutation and the vanity of life, conceived behind +appearance a great intelligible process, an evolution in nature. The +reality became interesting, as well as the illusion. Physics became +scientific, which had previously been merely spectacular. + +Here was a much richer theme for the poet and philosopher, who was +launched upon the discovery of the ground and secret causes of this gay +or melancholy flux. The understanding that enabled him to discover these +causes did for the European what no Indian mystic, what no despiser of +understanding anywhere, suffers himself to do; namely, to dominate, +foretell, and transform this changing show with a virile, practical +intelligence. The man who discovers the secret springs of appearances +opens to contemplation a second positive world, the workshop and busy +depths of nature, where a prodigious mechanism is continually supporting +our life, and making ready for it from afar by the most exquisite +adjustments. The march of this mechanism, while it produces life and +often fosters it, yet as often makes it difficult and condemns it to +extinction. This truth, which the conception of natural substance first +makes intelligible, justifies the elegies which the poets of illusion +and disillusion have always written upon human things. It is a truth +with a melancholy side; but being a truth, it satisfies and exalts the +rational mind, that craves truth as truth, whether it be sad or +comforting, and wishes to pursue a possible, not an impossible, +happiness. + +So far, Greek science had made out that the world was one, that there +was a substance, that this was a physical substance, distributed and +moving in space. It was matter. The question remained, What is the +precise nature of matter, and how does it produce the appearances we +observe? The only answer that concerns us here is that given by +Lucretius; an answer he accepted from Epicurus, his master in +everything, who in turn had accepted it from Democritus. Now Democritus +had made a notable advance over the systems that selected one obvious +substance, like water, or collected all the obvious substances, as +Anaxagoras had done, and tried to make the world out of them. +Democritus thought that the substance of everything ought not to have +any of the qualities present in some things and absent in others; it +ought to have only the qualities present in all things. It should be +_merely_ matter. Materiality, according to him, consisted of extension, +figure, and solidity; in the thinnest ether, if we looked sharp enough, +we should find nothing but particles possessing these properties. All +other qualities of things were apparent only, and imputed to them by a +convention of the mind. The mind was a born mythologist, and projected +its feelings into their causes. Light, colour, taste, warmth, beauty, +excellence, were such imputed and conventional qualities; only space and +matter were real. But empty space was no less real than matter. +Consequently, although the atoms of matter never changed their form, +real changes could take place in nature, because their position might +change in a real space. + +Unlike the useless substance of the Indians, the substance of Democritus +could offer a calculable ground for the flux of appearances; for this +substance was distributed unequally in the void, and was constantly +moving. Every appearance, however fleeting, corresponded to a precise +configuration of substance; it arose with that configuration and +perished with it. This substance, accordingly, was physical, not +metaphysical. It was no dialectical term, but a scientific anticipation, +a prophecy as to what an observer who should be properly equipped would +discover in the interior of bodies. Materialism is not a system of +metaphysics; it is a speculation in chemistry and physiology, to the +effect that, if analysis could go deep enough, it would find that all +substance was homogeneous, and that all motion was regular. + +Though matter was homogeneous, the forms of the ultimate particles, +according to Democritus, were various; and sundry combinations of them +constituted the sundry objects in nature. Motion was not, as the vulgar +(and Aristotle) supposed, unnatural, and produced magically by some +moral cause; it had been eternal and was native to the atoms. On +striking, they rebounded; and the mechanical currents or vortices which +these contacts occasioned formed a multitude of stellar systems, called +worlds, with which infinite space was studded. + +Mechanism as to motion, atomism as to structure, materialism as to +substance, that is the whole system of Democritus. It is as wonderful in +its insight, in its sense for the ideal demands of method and +understanding, as it is strange and audacious in its simplicity. Only +the most convinced rationalist, the boldest prophet, could embrace it +dogmatically; yet time has largely given it the proof. If Democritus +could look down upon the present state of science, he would laugh, as he +was in the habit of doing, partly at the confirmation we can furnish to +portions of his philosophy, and partly at our stupidity that cannot +guess the rest. + +There are two maxims in Lucretius that suffice, even to this day, to +distinguish a thinker who is a naturalist from one who is not. +“Nothing,” he says, “arises in the body in order that we may use it, but +what arises brings forth its use.”[1] This is that discarding of final +causes on which all progress in science depends. The other maxim runs: +“One thing will grow plain when compared with another: and blind night +shall not obliterate the path for thee, before thou hast thoroughly +scanned the ultimate things of nature; so much will things throw light +on things.”[2] Nature is her own standard; and if she seems to us +unnatural, there is no hope for our minds. + +The ethics of Democritus, in so far as we may judge from scanty +evidence, were merely descriptive or satirical. He was an aristocratic +observer, a scorner of fools. Nature was laughing at us all; the wise +man considered his fate and, by knowing it, raised himself in a measure +above it. All living things pursued the greatest happiness they could +see their way to; but they were marvellously short-sighted; and the +business of the philosopher was to foresee and pursue the greatest +happiness that was really possible. This, in so rough a world, was to be +found chiefly in abstention and retrenchment. If you asked for little, +it was more probable that the event would not disappoint you. It was +important not to be a fool, but it was very hard. + +The system of Democritus was adopted by Epicurus, but not because +Epicurus had any keenness of scientific vision. On the contrary, +Epicurus, the Herbert Spencer of antiquity, was in his natural +philosophy an encyclopaedia of second-hand knowledge. Prolix and minute, +vague and inconsistent, he gathered his scientific miscellany with an +eye fixed not on nature, but on the exigencies of an inward faith,--a +faith accepted on moral grounds, deemed necessary to salvation, and +defended at all costs, with any available weapon. It is instructive that +materialism should have been adopted at that juncture on the same +irrelevant moral grounds on which it has usually been rejected. + +Epicurus, strange as it may sound to those who have heard, with horror +or envy, of wallowing in his sty, Epicurus was a saint. The ways of the +world filled him with dismay. The Athens of his time, which some of us +would give our eyes to see, retained all its splendour amid its +political decay; but nothing there interested or pleased Epicurus. +Theatres, porches, gymnasiums, and above all the agora, reeked, to his +sense, with vanity and folly. Retired in his private garden, with a few +friends and disciples, he sought the ways of peace; he lived +abstemiously; he spoke gently; he gave alms to the poor; he preached +against wealth, against ambition, against passion. He defended free-will +because he wished to exercise it in withdrawing from the world, and in +not swimming with the current. He denied the supernatural, since belief +in it would have a disquieting influence on the mind, and render too +many things compulsory and momentous. There was no future life: the art +of living wisely must not be distorted by such wild imaginings. + +All things happened in due course of nature; the gods were too remote +and too happy, secluded like good Epicureans, to meddle with earthly +things. Nothing ruffled what Wordsworth calls their “voluptuous +unconcern.” Nevertheless, it was pleasant to frequent their temples. +There, as in the spaces where they dwelt between the worlds, the gods +were silent and beautiful, and wore the human form. Their statues, when +an unhappy man gazed at them, reminded him of happiness; he was +refreshed and weaned for a moment from the senseless tumult of human +affairs. From those groves and hallowed sanctuaries the philosopher +returned to his garden strengthened in his wisdom, happier in his +isolation, more friendly and more indifferent to all the world. Thus the +life of Epicurus, as St. Jerome bears witness, was “full of herbs, +fruits, and abstinences.” There was a hush in it, as of bereavement. His +was a philosophy of the decadence, a philosophy of negation, and of +flight from the world. + +Although science for its own sake could not interest so monkish a +nature, yet science might be useful in buttressing the faith, or in +removing objections to it. Epicurus therefore departed from the reserve +of Socrates, and looked for a natural philosophy that might support his +ethics. Of all the systems extant--and they were legion--he found that +of Democritus the most helpful and edifying. Better than any other it +would persuade men to renounce the madness that must be renounced and to +enjoy the pleasures that may be enjoyed. But, since it was adopted on +these external and pragmatic grounds, the system of Democritus did not +need to be adopted entire. In fact, one change at least was imperative. +The motion of the atoms must not be wholly regular and mechanical. +Chance must be admitted, that Fate might be removed. Fate was a +terrifying notion. It was spoken of by the people with superstitious +unction. Chance was something humbler, more congenial to the man in the +street. If only the atoms were allowed to deflect a little now and then +from their courses, the future might remain unpredictable, and free-will +might be saved. Therefore, Epicurus decreed that the atoms deflected, +and fantastic arguments were added to show that this intrusion of chance +would aid in the organization of nature; for the declension of the +atoms, as it is called, would explain how the original parallel downpour +of them might have yielded to vortices, and so to organized bodies. Let +us pass on. + +Materialism, like any system of natural philosophy, carries with it no +commandments and no advice. It merely describes the world, including the +aspirations and consciences of mortals, and refers all to a material +ground. The materialist, being a man, will not fail to have preferences, +and even a conscience, of his own; but his precepts and policy will +express, not the logical implications of his science, but his human +instincts, as inheritance and experience may have shaped them. Any +system of ethics might accordingly coexist with materialism; for if +materialism declares certain things (like immortality) to be impossible, +it cannot declare them to be undesirable. Nevertheless, it is not likely +that a man so constituted as to embrace materialism will be so +constituted as to pursue things which he considers unattainable. There +is therefore a psychological, though no logical, bond between +materialism and a homely morality. + +The materialist is primarily an observer; and he will probably be such +in ethics also; that is, he will have no ethics, except the emotion +produced upon him by the march of the world. If he is an _esprit fort_ +and really disinterested, he will love life; as we all love perfect +vitality, or what strikes us as such, in gulls and porpoises. This, I +think, is the ethical sentiment psychologically consonant with a +vigorous materialism: sympathy with the movement of things, interest in +the rising wave, delight at the foam it bursts into, before it sinks +again. Nature does not distinguish the better from the worse, but the +lover of nature does. He calls better what, being analogous to his own +life, enhances his vitality and probably possesses some vitality of its +own. This is the ethical feeling of Spinoza, the greatest of modern +naturalists in philosophy; and we shall see how Lucretius, in spite of +his fidelity to the ascetic Epicurus, is carried by his poetic ecstasy +in the same direction. + +But mark the crux of this union: the materialist will love the life of +nature when he loves his own life; but if he should hate his own life, +how should the life of nature please him? Now Epicurus, for the most +part, hated life. His moral system, called hedonism, recommends that +sort of pleasure which has no excitement and no risk about it. This +ideal is modest, and even chaste, but it is not vital. Epicurus was +remarkable for his mercy, his friendliness, his utter horror of war, of +sacrifice, of suffering. These are not sentiments that a genuine +naturalist would be apt to share. Pity and repentance, Spinoza said, +were vain and evil; what increased a man’s power and his joy increased +his goodness also. The naturalist will believe in a certain hardness, as +Nietzsche did; he will incline to a certain scorn, as the laughter of +Democritus was scornful. He will not count too scrupulously the cost of +what he achieves; he will be an imperialist, rapt in the joy of +achieving something. In a word, the moral hue of materialism in a +formative age, or in an aggressive mind, would be aristocratic and +imaginative; but in a decadent age, or in a soul that is renouncing +everything, it would be, as in Epicurus, humanitarian and timidly +sensual. + +We have now before us the antecedents and components of Lucretius’ poem +on nature. There remains the genius of the poet himself. The greatest +thing about this genius is its power of losing itself in its object, its +impersonality. We seem to be reading not the poetry of a poet about +things, but the poetry of things themselves. That things have their +poetry, not because of what we make them symbols of, but because of +their own movement and life, is what Lucretius proves once for all to +mankind. + +Of course, the poetry we see in nature is due to the emotion the +spectacle produces in us; the life of nature might be as romantic and +sublime as it chose, it would be dust and ashes to us if there were +nothing sublime and romantic in ourselves to be stirred by it to +sympathy. But our emotion may be ingenuous; it may be concerned with +what nature really is and does, has been and will do for ever. It need +not arise from a selfish preoccupation with what these immense realities +involve for our own persons or may be used to suggest to our +self-indulgent fancy. No, the poetry of nature may be discerned merely +by the power of intuition which it awakens and the understanding which +it employs. These faculties, more, I should say, than our moodiness or +stuffy dreams, draw taut the strings of the soul, and bring out her full +vitality and music. Naturalism is a philosophy of observation, and of an +imagination that extends the observable; all the sights and sounds of +nature enter into it, and lend it their directness, pungency, and +coercive stress. At the same time, naturalism is an intellectual +philosophy; it divines substance behind appearance, continuity behind +change, law behind fortune. It therefore attaches all those sights and +sounds to a hidden background that connects and explains them. So +understood, nature has depth as well as surface, force and necessity as +well as sensuous variety. Before the sublimity of this insight, all +forms of the pathetic fallacy seem cheap and artificial. Mythology, that +to a childish mind is the only possible poetry, sounds like bad rhetoric +in comparison. The naturalistic poet abandons fairy land, because he has +discovered nature, history, the actual passions of man. His imagination +has reached maturity; its pleasure is to dominate, not to play. + +Poetic dominion over things as they are is seen best in Shakespeare for +the ways of men, and in Lucretius for the ways of nature. Unapproachably +vivid, relentless, direct in detail, he is unflinchingly grand and +serious in his grouping of the facts. It is the truth that absorbs him +and carries him along. He wishes us to be convinced and sobered by the +fact, by the overwhelming evidence of thing after thing, raining down +upon us, all bearing witness with one voice to the nature of the world. + +Suppose, however,--and it is a tenable supposition,--that Lucretius is +quite wrong in his science, and that there is no space, no substance, +and no nature. His poem would then lose its pertinence to our lives and +personal convictions; it would not lose its imaginative grandeur. We +could still conceive a world composed as he describes. Fancy what +emotions those who lived in such a world would have felt on the day when +a Democritus or a Lucretius revealed to them their actual situation. How +great the blindness or the madness dissipated, and how wonderful the +vision gained! How clear the future, how intelligible the past, how +marvellous the swarming atoms, in their unintentional, perpetual +fertility! What the sky is to our eyes on a starry night, that every +nook and cranny of nature would resemble, with here and there the +tentative smile of life playing about those constellations. Surely that +universe, for those who lived in it, would have had its poetry. It would +have been the poetry of naturalism. Lucretius, thinking he lived in such +a world, heard the music of it, and wrote it down. + +And yet, when he set himself to make his poem out of the system of +Epicurus, the greatness of that task seems to have overwhelmed him. He +was to unfold for the first time, in sonorous but unwieldy Latin, the +birth and nature of all things, as Greek subtlety had discerned them. He +was to dispel superstition, to refute antagonists, to lay the sure +foundations of science and of wisdom, to summon mankind compellingly +from its cruel passions and follies to a life of simplicity and peace. +He was himself combative and distracted enough--as it is often our +troubles, more than our attainments, that determine our ideals. Yet in +heralding the advent of human happiness, and in painting that of the +gods, he was to attain his own, soaring upon the strong wings of his +hexameters into an ecstasy of contemplation and enthusiasm. When it is +so great an emotion to read these verses, what must it have been to +compose them? Yet could he succeed? Could such great things fall to his +lot? Yes, they might, if only the creative forces of nature, always +infinite and always at hand, could pass into his brain and into his +spirit; if only the seeds of corruption and madness, which were always +coursing through the air, could be blown back for a moment; and if the +din of civil conflicts could be suspended while he thought and wrote. To +a fortunate conjunction of atoms, a child owes his first being. To a +propitious season and atmosphere, a poet owes his inspiration and his +success. Conscious that his undertaking hangs upon these chance +conjunctions, Lucretius begins by invoking the powers he is about to +describe, that they may give him breath and genius enough to describe +them. And at once these powers send him a happy inspiration, perhaps a +happy reminiscence of Empedocles. There are two great perspectives which +the moralist may distinguish in the universal drift of atoms,—a creative +movement, producing what the moralist values, and a destructive +movement, abolishing the same. Lucretius knows very well that this +distinction is moral only, or as people now say, subjective. No one else +has pointed out so often and so clearly as he that nothing arises in +this world not helped to life by the death of some other thing;[3] so +that the destructive movement creates and the creative movement +destroys. Yet from the point of view of any particular life or interest, +the distinction between a creative force and a destructive force is real +and all-important. To make it is not to deny the mechanical structure of +nature, but only to show how this mechanical structure is fruitful +morally, how the outlying parts of it are friendly or hostile to me or +to you, its local and living products. + +This double colouring of things is supremely interesting to the +philosopher; so much so that before his physical science has reached the +mechanical stage, he will doubtless regard the double aspect which +things present to him as a dual principle in these things themselves. So +Empedocles had spoken of Love and Strife as two forces which +respectively gathered and disrupted the elements, so as to carry on +between them the Penelope’s labour of the world, the one perpetually +weaving fresh forms of life, and the other perpetually undoing them.[4] + +It needed but a slight concession to traditional rhetoric in order to +exchange these names, Love and Strife, which designated divine powers +in Empedocles, into the names of Venus and Mars, which designated the +same influences in Roman mythology. The Mars and Venus of Lucretius are +not moral forces, incompatible with the mechanism of atoms; they are +this mechanism itself, in so far as it now produces and now destroys +life, or any precious enterprise, like this of Lucretius in composing +his saving poem. Mars and Venus, linked in each other’s arms, rule the +universe together; nothing arises save by the death of some other thing. +Yet when what arises is happier in itself, or more congenial to us, than +what is destroyed, the poet says that Venus prevails, that she woos her +captive lover to suspend his unprofitable raging. At such times it is +spring on earth; the storms recede (I paraphrase the opening +passage),[5] the fields are covered with flowers, the sunshine floods +the serene sky, and all the tribes of animals feel the mighty impulse of +Venus in their hearts. + +The corn ripens in the plains, and even the sea bears in safety the +fleets that traverse it. + +Not least, however, of these works of Venus is the Roman people. Never +was the formative power of nature better illustrated than in the +vitality of this race, which conquered so many other races, or than in +its assimilative power, which civilized and pacified them. Legend had +made Venus the mother of Aeneas, and Aeneas the progenitor of the +Romans. Lucretius seizes on this happy accident and identifies the Venus +of fable with the true Venus, the propitious power in all nature, of +which Rome was indeed a crowning work. But the poet’s work, also, if it +is to be accomplished worthily, must look to the same propitious +movement for its happy issue and for its power to persuade. Venus must +be the patron of his art and philosophy. She must keep Memmius from the +wars, that he may read, and be weaned from frivolous ambitions; and she +must stop the tumult of constant sedition, that Lucretius may lend his +undivided mind to the precepts of Epicurus, and his whole heart to a +sublime friendship, which prompts him to devote to intense study all the +watches of the starry night, plotting the course of each invisible atom, +and mounting almost to the seat of the gods.[6] + +This impersonation in the figure of Venus of whatever makes for life +would not be legitimate--it would really contradict a mechanical view of +nature--if it were not balanced by a figure representing the opposite +tendency, the no less universal tendency towards death. + +The Mars of the opening passage, subdued for a moment by the +blandishments of love, is raging in all the rest of the poem in his +irrepressible fury. These are the two sides of every transmutation, that +in creating, one thing destroys another; and this transmutation being +perpetual,--nothing being durable except the void, the atoms, and their +motion,--it follows that the tendency towards death is, for any +particular thing, the final and victorious tendency. The names of Venus +and Mars, not being essential to the poet’s thought, are allowed to drop +out, and the actual processes they stand for are described nakedly; yet, +if the poem had ever been finished, and Lucretius had wished to make the +end chime with the beginning, and represent, as it were, one great +cycle of the world, it is conceivable that he might have placed at the +close a mythical passage to match that at the beginning; and we might +have seen Mars aroused from his luxurious lethargy, reasserting his +immortal nature, and rushing, firebrand in hand, from the palace of love +to spread destruction throughout the universe, till all things should +burn fiercely, and be consumed together. Yet not quite all; for the +goddess herself would remain, more divine and desirable than ever in her +averted beauty. Instinctively into her bosom the God of War would sink +again, when weary and drunk with slaughter; and a new world would arise +from the scattered atoms of the old. + +These endless revolutions, taken in themselves, exactly balance; and I +am not sure that, impartially considered, it is any sadder that new +worlds should arise than that this world should always continue. +Besides, nature cannot take from us more than she has given, and it +would be captious and thankless in us to think of her as destructive +only, or destructive essentially, after the unspeculative fashion of +modern pessimists. She destroys to create, and creates to destroy, her +interest (if we may express it so) being not in particular things, nor +in their continuance, but solely in the movement that underlies them, in +the flux of substance beneath. Life, however, belongs to form, and not +to matter; or in the language of Lucretius, life is an _eventum_, a +redundant ideal product or incidental aspect, involved in the +equilibration of matter; as the throw of sixes is an _eventum,_ a +redundant ideal product or incidental aspect, occasionally involved in +shaking a dice-box. Yet, as this throw makes the acme and best possible +issue of a game of dice, so life is the acme and best possible issue of +the dance of atoms; and it is from the point of view of this _eventum_ +that the whole process is viewed by us, and is judged. Not until that +happy chance has taken place, do we exist morally, or can we reflect or +judge at all. The philosopher is at the top of the wave, he is the foam +in the rolling tempest; and as the wave must have risen before he bursts +into being, all that he lives to witness is the fall of the wave. The +decadence of all he lives by is the only prospect before him; his whole +philosophy must be a prophecy of death. Of the life that may come after, +when the atoms come together again, he can imagine nothing; the life he +knows and shares, all that is life to him, is waning and almost spent. + +Therefore Lucretius, who is nothing if not honest, is possessed by a +profound melancholy. Vigorous and throbbing as are his pictures of +spring, of love, of ambition, of budding culture, of intellectual +victory, they pale before the vivid strokes with which he paints the +approach of death--fatigue of the will, lassitude in pleasure, +corruption and disintegration in society, the soil exhausted, the wild +animals tamed or exterminated, poverty, pestilence, and famine at hand; +and for the individual, almost at once, the final dissipation of the +atoms of his soul, escaping from a relaxed body, to mingle and lose +themselves in the universal flow. Nothing comes out of nothing, nothing +falls back into nothing, if we consider substance; but everything comes +from nothing and falls back into nothing if we consider things--the +objects of love and of experience. Time can make no impression on the +void or on the atoms; nay, time is itself an _eventum_ created by the +motion of atoms in the void; but the triumph of time is absolute over +persons, and nations, and worlds.[7] + +In treating of the soul and of immortality Lucretius is an imperfect +psychologist and an arbitrary moralist. His zeal to prove that the soul +is mortal is inspired by the wish to dispel all fear of future +punishments, and so to liberate the mind for the calm and tepid +enjoyment of this world. There is something to be gained in this +direction, undoubtedly, especially if tales about divine vengeance to +come are used to sanction irrational practices, and to prevent poor +people from improving their lot. At the same time, it is hardly fair to +assume that hell is the only prospect which immortality could possibly +open to any of us; and it is also unfair not to observe that the +punishments which religious fables threaten the dead with are, for the +most part, symbols for the actual degradation which evil-doing brings +upon the living; so that the fear of hell is not more deterrent or +repressive than experience of life would be if it were clearly brought +before the mind. + +There is another element in this polemic against immortality which, +while highly interesting and characteristic of a decadent age, betrays a +very one-sided and, at bottom, untenable ideal. This element is the fear +of life. Epicurus had been a pure and tender moralist, but +pusillanimous. He was so afraid of hurting and of being hurt, so afraid +of running risks or tempting fortune, that he wished to prove that human +life was a brief business, not subject to any great transformations, nor +capable of any great achievements. He taught accordingly that the atoms +had produced already all the animals they could produce, for though +infinite in number the atoms were of few kinds. Consequently the +possible sorts of being were finite and soon exhausted; this world, +though on the eve of destruction, was of recent date. The worlds around +it, or to be produced in future, could not afford anything essentially +different. All the suns were much alike, and there was nothing new under +them. We need not, then, fear the world; it is an explored and domestic +scene,--a home, a little garden, six feet of earth for a man to stretch +in. If people rage and make a great noise, it is not because there is +much to win, or much to fear, but because people are mad. Let me not be +mad, thought Epicurus; let me be reasonable, cultivating sentiments +appropriate to a mortal who inhabits a world morally comfortable and +small, and physically poor in its infinite monotony. The well-known +lines of Fitzgerald echo this sentiment perfectly: + + _A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,_ + _A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou_ + _Beside me singing in the Wilderness--_ + _Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!_ + +But what if the shadow of incalculable possibilities should fall across +this sunny retreat? What if after death we should awake in a world to +which the atomic philosophy might not in the least apply? Observe that +this suggestion is not in the least opposed to any of the arguments by +which science might prove the atomic theory to be correct. All that +Epicurus taught about the universe now before us might be perfectly true +of it; but what if to-morrow a new universe should have taken its +place? The suggestion is doubtless gratuitous, and no busy man will be +much troubled by it; yet when the heart is empty it fills itself with +such attenuated dreams. The muffled pleasures of the wise man, as +Epicurus conceived him, were really a provocation to supernaturalism. +They left a great void; and before long supernaturalism--we shall see it +in Dante--actually rushed in to quicken the pulses of life with fresh +hopes and illusions, or at least (what may seem better than nothing) +with terrors and fanatical zeal. With such tendencies already afoot as +the myths and dogmas of Plato had betrayed, it was imperative for +Epicurus to banish anxiously all thought of what might follow death. To +this end are all his arguments about the material nature of the soul and +her incapacity to survive the body. + +To say that the soul is material has a strange and barbarous sound to +modern ears. We live after Descartes, who taught the world that the +essence of the soul was consciousness; and to call consciousness +material would be to talk of the blackness of white. But ancient usage +gave the word soul a rather different meaning. The essence of the soul +was not so much to be conscious as to govern the formation of the body, +to warm, move, and guide it. And if we think of the soul exclusively in +this light, it will not seem a paradox, it may even seem a truism, to +say that the soul must be material. For how are we to conceive that +preexisting consciousness should govern the formation of the body, move, +warm, or guide it? A spirit capable of such a miracle would in any case +not be human, but altogether divine. The soul that Lucretius calls +material should not, then, be identified with consciousness, but with +the ground of consciousness, which is at the same time the cause of life +in the body. This he conceives to be a swarm of very small and volatile +atoms, a sort of ether, resident in all living seeds, breathed in +abundantly during life and breathed out at death. + +Even if this theory were accepted, however, it would not prove the point +which Lucretius has chiefly at heart, namely, that an after-life is +impossible. The atoms of the soul are indestructible, like all atoms; +and if consciousness were attached to the fortunes of a small group of +them, or of one only (as Leibniz afterwards taught), consciousness would +continue to exist after these atoms had escaped from the body and were +shooting through new fields of space. Indeed, they might be the more +aroused by that adventure, as a bee might find the sky or the garden +more exciting than the hive. All that Lucretius urges about the +divisibility of the soul, its diffused bodily seat, and the perils it +would meet outside fails to remove the ominous possibility that troubles +him. + +To convince us that we perish at death he has to rely on vulgar +experience and inherent probability: what changes is not indestructible; +what begins, ends; mental growth, health, sanity, accompany the fortunes +of the body as a whole (not demonstrably those of the soul-atoms); the +passions are relevant to bodily life and to an earthly situation; we +should not be ourselves under a different mask or in a new setting; we +remember no previous existence if we had one, and so, in a future +existence, we should not remember this. These reflections are +impressive, and they are enforced by Lucretius with his usual vividness +and smack of reality. Nothing is proved scientifically by such a +deliverance, yet it is good philosophy and good poetry; it brings much +experience together and passes a lofty judgment upon it. The artist has +his eye on the model; he is painting death to the life. + +If these considerations succeed in banishing the dread of an after-life, +there remains the distress which many feel at the idea of extinction; +and if we have ceased to fear death, like Hamlet, for the dreams that +may come after it, we may still fear death instinctively, like a stuck +pig. Against this instinctive horror of dying Lucretius has many brave +arguments. Fools, he says to us, why do you fear what never can touch +you? While you still live, death is absent; and when you are dead, you +are so dead that you cannot know you are dead, nor regret it. You will +be as much at ease as before you were born. Or is what troubles you the +childish fear of being cold in the earth, or feeling its weight stifling +you? But you will not be there; the atoms of your soul--themselves +unconscious--will be dancing in some sunbeam far away, and you yourself +will be nowhere; you will absolutely not exist. Death is by definition a +state that excludes experience. If you fear it, you fear a word. + +To all this, perhaps, Memmius, or some other recalcitrant reader, might +retort that what he shrank from was not the metaphysical state of being +dead, but the very real agony of dying. Dying is something ghastly, as +being born is something ridiculous; and, even if no pain were involved +in quitting or entering this world, we might still say what Dante’s +Francesca says of it: _Il modo ancor m’offende_,--“I shudder at the way +of it.” Lucretius, for his part, makes no attempt to show that +everything is as it should be; and if our way of coming into this life +is ignoble, and our way of leaving it pitiful, that is no fault of his +nor of his philosophy. If the fear of death were merely the fear of +dying, it would be better dealt with by medicine than by argument. There +is, or there might be, an art of dying well, of dying painlessly, +willingly, and in season,--as in those noble partings which Attic +gravestones depict,--especially if we were allowed, as Lucretius would +allow us, to choose our own time. + +But the radical fear of death, I venture to think, is something quite +different. It is the love of life. Epicurus, who feared life, seems to +have missed here the primordial and colossal force he was fighting +against. Had he perceived that force, he would have been obliged to meet +it in a more radical way, by an enveloping movement, as it were, and an +attack from the rear. The love of life is not something rational, or +founded on experience of life. It is something antecedent and +spontaneous. It is that Venus Genetrix which covers the earth with its +flora and fauna. It teaches every animal to seek its food and its mate, +and to protect its offspring; as also to resist or fly from all injury +to the body, and most of all from threatened death. It is the original +impulse by which good is discriminated from evil, and hope from fear. + +Nothing could be more futile, therefore, than to marshal arguments +against that fear of death which is merely another name for the energy +of life, or the tendency to self-preservation. Arguments involve +premises, and these premises, in the given case, express some particular +form of the love of life; whence it is impossible to conclude that death +is in no degree evil and not at all to be feared. For what is most +dreaded is not the agony of dying, nor yet the strange impossibility +that when we do not exist we should suffer for not existing. What is +dreaded is the defeat of a present will directed upon life and its +various undertakings. Such a present will cannot be argued away, but it +may be weakened by contradictions arising within it, by the irony of +experience, or by ascetic discipline. To introduce ascetic discipline, +to bring out the irony of experience, to expose the self-contradictions +of the will, would be the true means of mitigating the love of life; and +if the love of life were extinguished, the fear of death, like smoke +rising from that fire, would have vanished also. + +Indeed, the force of the great passage against the fear of death, at the +end of the third book of Lucretius, comes chiefly from the picture it +draws of the madness of life. His philosophy deprecates covetousness, +ambition, love, and religion; it takes a long step towards the surrender +of life, by surrendering all in life that is ardent, on the ground that +it is painful in the end and ignominious. To escape from it all is a +great deliverance. And since genius must be ardent about something, +Lucretius pours out his enthusiasm on Epicurus, who brought this +deliverance and was the saviour of mankind. Yet this was only a +beginning of salvation, and the same principles carried further would +have delivered us from the Epicurean life and what it retained that was +Greek and naturalistic: science, friendship, and the healthy pleasures +of the body. Had it renounced these things also, Epicureanism would have +become altogether ascetic, a thorough system of mortification, or the +pursuit of death. To those who sincerely pursue death, death is no evil, +but the highest good. No need in that case of elaborate arguments to +prove that death should not be feared, because it is nothing; for in +spite of being nothing--or rather because it is nothing--death can be +loved by a fatigued and disillusioned spirit, just as in spite of being +nothing--or rather because it is nothing--it must be hated and feared by +every vigorous animal. + +One more point, and I have done with this subject. Ancient culture was +rhetorical. It abounded in ideas that are verbally plausible, and pass +muster in a public speech, but that, if we stop to criticize them, prove +at once to be inexcusably false. One of these rhetorical fallacies is +the maxim that men cannot live for what they cannot witness. What does +it matter to you, we may say in debate, what happened before you were +born, or what may go on after you are buried? And the orator who puts +such a challenge may carry the audience with him, and raise a laugh at +the expense of human sincerity. Yet the very men who applaud are proud +of their ancestors, care for the future of their children, and are very +much interested in securing legally the execution of their last will and +testament. What may go on after their death concerns them deeply, not +because they expect to watch the event from hell or heaven, but because +they are interested ideally in what that event shall be, although they +are never to witness it. Lucretius himself, in his sympathy with nature, +in his zeal for human enlightenment, in his tears for Iphigenia, long +since dead, is not moved by the hope of observing, or the memory of +having observed, what excites his emotion. He forgets himself. He sees +the whole universe spread out in its true movement and proportions; he +sees mankind freed from the incubus of superstition, and from the havoc +of passion. The vision kindles his enthusiasm, exalts his imagination, +and swells his verse into unmistakable earnestness. + +If we follow Lucretius, therefore, in narrowing the sum of our personal +fortunes to one brief and partial glimpse of earth, we must not suppose +that we need narrow at all the sphere of our moral interests. On the +contrary, just in proportion as we despise superstitious terrors and +sentimental hopes, and as our imagination becomes self-forgetful, we +shall strengthen the direct and primitive concern which we feel in the +world and in what may go on there, before us, after us, or beyond our +ken. If, like Lucretius and every philosophical poet, we range over all +time and all existence, we shall forget our own persons, as he did, and +even wish them to be forgotten, if only the things we care for may +subsist or arise. He who truly loves God, says Spinoza, cannot wish that +God should love him in return. One who lives the life of the universe +cannot be much concerned for his own. After all, the life of the +universe is but the locus and extension of ours. The atoms that have +once served to produce life remain fit to reproduce it; and although the +body they might animate later would be a new one, and would have a +somewhat different career, it would not, according to Lucretius, be of a +totally new species; perhaps not more unlike ourselves than we are +unlike one another, or than each of us is unlike himself at the various +stages of his life. + +The soul of nature, in the elements of it, is then, according to +Lucretius, actually immortal; only the human individuality, the chance +composition of those elements, is transitory; so that, if a man could +care for what happens to other men, for what befell him when young or +what may overtake him when old, he might perfectly well care, on the +same imaginative principle, for what may go on in the world for ever. +The finitude and injustice of his personal life would be broken down; +the illusion of selfishness would be dissipated; and he might say to +himself, I have imagination, and nothing that is real is alien to me. + + * * * * * + +The word nature has many senses; but if we preserve the one which +etymology justifies, and which is the most philosophical as well, nature +should mean the principle of birth or genesis, the universal mother, the +great cause, or system of causes, that brings phenomena to light. If we +take the word nature in this sense, it may be said that Lucretius, more +than any other man, is the poet of nature. Of course, being an ancient, +he is not particularly a poet of landscape. He runs deeper than that; he +is a poet of the source of landscape, a poet of matter. A poet of +landscape might try to suggest, by well-chosen words, the sensations of +light, movement, and form which nature arouses in us; but in this +attempt he would encounter the insuperable difficulty which Lessing long +ago pointed out, and warned poets of: I mean the unfitness of language +to render what is spatial and material; its fitness to render only what, +like language itself, is bodiless and flowing,--action, feeling, and +thought. + +It is noticeable, accordingly, that poets who are fascinated by pure +sense and seek to write poems about it are called not impressionists, +but symbolists; for in trying to render some absolute sensation they +render rather the field of association in which that sensation lies, or +the emotions and half-thoughts that shoot and play about it in their +fancy. They become--against their will, perhaps--psychological poets, +ringers of mental chimes, and listeners for the chance overtones of +consciousness. Hence we call them symbolists, mixing perhaps some shade +of disparagement in the term, as if they were symbolists of an empty, +super-subtle, or fatuous sort. For they play with things luxuriously, +making them symbols for their thoughts, instead of mending their +thoughts intelligently, to render them symbols for things. + +A poet might be a symbolist in another sense,--if he broke up nature, +the object suggested by landscape to the mind, and reverted to the +elements of landscape, not in order to associate these sensations lazily +together, but in order to build out of them in fancy a different nature, +a better world, than that which they reveal to reason. The elements of +landscape, chosen, emphasized, and recombined for this purpose, would +then be symbols for the ideal world they were made to suggest, and for +the ideal life that might be led in that paradise. Shelley is a symbolic +landscape poet in this sense. To Shelley, as Francis Thompson has said, +nature was a toy-shop; his fancy took the materials of the landscape and +wove them into a gossamer world, a bright ethereal habitation for +new-born irresponsible spirits. Shelley was the musician of landscape; +he traced out its unrealized suggestions; transformed the things he saw +into the things he would fain have seen. In this idealization it was +spirit that guided him, the bent of his wild and exquisite imagination, +and he fancied sometimes that the grosser landscapes of earth were +likewise the work of some half-spiritual stress, of some restlessly +dreaming power. In this sense, earthly landscape seemed to him the +symbol of the earth spirit, as the starlit crystal landscapes of his +verse, with their pensive flowers, were symbols in which his own fevered +spirit was expressed, images in which his passion rested. + +Another sort of landscape poetry is to be found in Wordsworth, for whom +the title of poet of nature might perhaps be claimed. To him the +landscape is an influence. What he renders, beyond such pictorial +touches as language is capable of, is the moral inspiration which the +scene brings to him. This moral inspiration is not drawn at all from the +real processes of nature which every landscape manifests in some aspect +and for one moment. Such would have been the method of Lucretius; he +would have passed imaginatively from the landscape to the sources of the +landscape; he would have disclosed the poetry of matter, not of spirit. +Wordsworth, on the contrary, dwells on adventitious human matters. He is +no poet of genesis, evolution, and natural force in its myriad +manifestations. Only a part of the cosmic process engages his interest, +or touches his soul--the strengthening or chastening of human purposes +by the influences of landscape. These influences are very real; for as +food or wine keeps the animal heart beating, or quickens it, so large +spaces of calm sky, or mountains, or dells, or solitary stretches of +water, expand the breast, disperse the obsessions that cramp a man’s +daily existence, and even if he be less contemplative and less virtuous +than Wordsworth, make him, for the moment, a friend to all things, and a +friend to himself. + +Yet these influences are vague and for the most part fleeting. +Wordsworth would hardly have felt them so distinctly and so constantly +had he not found a further link to bind landscape to moral sentiment. +Such a link exists. The landscape is the scene of human life. Every +spot, every season, is associated with the sort of existence which falls +to men in that environment. Landscape for Wordsworth’s age and in his +country was seldom without figures. At least, some visible trace of man +guided the poet and set the key for his moral meditation. Country life +was no less dear to Wordsworth than landscape was; it fitted into every +picture; and while the march of things, as Lucretius conceived it, was +not present to Wordsworth’s imagination, the revolutions of society--the +French Revolution, for instance--were constantly in his thoughts. In so +far as he was a poet of human life, Wordsworth was truly a poet of +nature. In so far, however, as he was a poet of landscape, he was still +fundamentally a poet of human life, or merely of his personal +experience. When he talked of nature he was generally moralizing, and +altogether subject to the pathetic fallacy; but when he talked of man, +or of himself, he was unfolding a part of nature, the upright human +heart, and studying it in its truth. + +Lucretius, a poet of universal nature, studied everything in its truth. +Even moral life, though he felt it much more narrowly and coldly than +Wordsworth did, was better understood and better sung by him for being +seen in its natural setting. It is a fault of idealists to misrepresent +idealism, because they do not view it as a part of the world. Idealism +_is_ a part of the world, a small and dependent part of it. It is a +small and dependent part even in the life of men. This fact is nothing +against idealism taken as a moral energy, as a faculty of idealization +and a habit of living in the familiar presence of an image of what +would, in everything, be best. But it is the ruin of idealism taken as a +view of the central and universal power in the world. For this reason +Lucretius, who sees human life and human idealism in their natural +setting, has a saner and maturer view of both than has Wordsworth, for +all his greater refinement. Nature, for the Latin poet, is really +nature. He loves and fears her, as she deserves to be loved and feared +by her creatures. Whether it be a wind blowing, a torrent rushing, a +lamb bleating, the magic of love, genius achieving its purpose, or a +war, or a pestilence, Lucretius sees everything in its causes, and in +its total career. One breath of lavish creation, one iron law of change, +runs through the whole, making all things kin in their inmost elements +and in their last end. Here is the touch of nature indeed, her largeness +and eternity. Here is the true echo of the life of matter. + +Any comprehensive picture of nature and destiny, if the picture be +credited, must arouse emotion, and in a reflective and vivid mind must +inspire poetry--for what is poetry but emotion, fixing and colouring the +objects from which it springs? The sublime poem of Lucretius, expounding +the least poetical of philosophies, proves this point beyond a doubt. +Yet Lucretius was far from exhausting the inspiration which a poet might +draw from materialism. In the philosophy of Epicurus, even, which had +but a sickly hold on materialism, there were two strains which Lucretius +did not take up, and which are naturally rich in poetry, the strain of +piety and the strain of friendship. It is usual and, in one sense, +legitimate to speak of the Epicureans as atheists, since they denied +providence and any government of God in the world. Yet they admitted the +existence of gods, living in the quiet spaces between those celestial +whirlpools which form the various worlds. To these gods they attributed +the human form, and the serene life to which Epicurus aspired. Epicurus +himself was so sincere in this belief, and so much affected by it, that +he used to frequent the temples, keep the feasts of the gods, and often +spend hours before their images in contemplation and prayer. + +In this, as in much else, Epicurus was carrying out to its logical +conclusion the rational and reforming essence of Hellenism. In Greek +religion, as in all other religions, there was a background of vulgar +superstition. Survivals and revivals of totem-worship, taboo, magic, +ritual barter, and objectified rhetoric are to be found in it to the +very end; yet if we consider in Greek religion its characteristic +tendency, and what rendered it distinctively Greek, we see that it was +its unprecedented ideality, disinterestedness, and aestheticism. To the +Greek, in so far as he was a Greek, religion was an aspiration to grow +like the gods by invoking their companionship, rehearsing their story, +feeling vicariously the glow of their splendid prerogatives, and placing +them, in the form of beautiful and very human statues, constantly before +his eyes. This sympathetic interest in the immortals took the place, in +the typical Greek mind, of any vivid hope of human immortality; perhaps +it made such a hope seem superfluous and inappropriate. Mortality +belonged to man, as immortality to the gods; and the one was the +complement of the other. Imagine a poet who, to the freedom and +simplicity of Homer, should have added the more reverent idealism of a +later age; and what an inexhaustible fund of poetry might he not have +found in this conception of the immortals leading a human life, without +its sordid contrarieties and limitations, eternally young, and frank, +and different! + +Hints of such poetry are to be found in Plato, myths that present the +ideal suggestions of human life in pictures. These he sometimes leaves +general and pale, calling them ideas; but at other times he embodies +them in deities, or in detailed imaginary constructions, like that of +his _Republic_. This Platonic habit of mind might have been carried +further by some franker and less reactionary poet than Plato was, or +tended to become, as the years turned his wine into vinegar. But the +whole world was then getting sour. Imagination flagged, or was diverted +from the Greek into the Hebrew channel. Nevertheless, the hymns of +modern poets to the ancient gods, and the irrepressible echoes of +classic mythology in our literature, show how easy it would have been +for the later ancients themselves, had they chosen, to make immortal +poetry out of their dying superstitions. The denials of Epicurus do not +exclude this ideal use of religion; on the contrary, by excluding all +the other uses of it--the commercial, the mock-scientific, and the +selfish--they leave the moral interpretative aspect of religion standing +alone, ready to the poet’s hand, if any poet could be found pure and +fertile enough to catch and to render it. Rationalized paganism might +have had its Dante, a Dante who should have been the pupil not of Virgil +and Aquinas, but of Homer and Plato. Lucretius was too literal, +positivistic, and insistent for such a delicate task. He was a Roman. +Moral mythology and ideal piety, though his philosophy had room for +them, formed no part of his poetry. + +What the other neglected theme, friendship, might have supplied, we may +see in the tone of another Epicurean, the poet Horace. Friendship was +highly honoured in all ancient states; and the Epicurean philosophy, in +banishing so many traditional forms of sentiment, could only intensify +the emphasis on friendship. It taught men that they were an accident in +the universe, comrades afloat on the same raft together with no fate not +common to them all, and no possible helpers but one another. Lucretius +does speak, in a passage to which I have already referred,[8] about the +hope of sweet friendship that supports him in his labours; and +elsewhere[9] he repeats the Epicurean idyl about picnicking together on +the green grass by a flowing brook; but the little word “together” is +all he vouchsafes us to mark what must be the chief ingredient in such +rural happiness. + +Horace, usually so much slighter than Lucretius, is less cursory here. +Not only does he strike much oftener the note of friendship, but his +whole mind and temper breathe of friendliness and expected agreement. +There is, in the very charm and artifice of his lines, a sort of +confidential joy in tasting with the kindred few the sweet or pungent +savour of human things. To be brief and gently ironical is to assume +mutual intelligence; and to assume mutual intelligence is to believe in +friendship. In Lucretius, on the other hand, zeal is mightier than +sympathy, and scorn mightier than humour. Perhaps it would be asking too +much of his uncompromising fervour that he should have unbent now and +then and shown us in some detail what those pleasures of life may be +which are without care and fear. Yet, if it was impossible for him not +to be always serious and austere, he might at least have noted the +melancholy of friendship--for friendship, where nature has made minds +isolated and bodies mortal, is rich also in melancholy. This again we +may find in Horace, where once or twice he lets the “something bitter” +bubble up from the heart even of this flower, when he feels a vague need +that survives satiety, and yearns perversely for the impossible.[10] +Poor Epicureans, when they could not learn, like their master, to be +saints! + +So far the decadent materialism of Epicurus might have carried a poet; +but a materialist in our days might find many other poetic themes to +weave into his system. To the picture which Lucretius sketches of +primitive civilization, we might add the whole history of mankind. To a +consistent and vigorous materialism all personal and national dramas, +with the beauties of all the arts, are no less natural and interesting +than are flowers or animal bodies. The moral pageantry of this world, +surveyed scientifically, is calculated wonderfully to strengthen and +refine the philosophy of abstention suggested to Epicurus by the flux of +material things and by the illusions of vulgar passion. Lucretius +studies superstition, but only as an enemy; and the naturalistic poet +should be the enemy of nothing. His animus blinds him to half the +object, to its more beautiful half, and makes us distrust his version of +the meaner half he is aware of. Seen in its totality, and surrounded by +all the other products of human imagination, superstition is not only +moving in itself, a capital subject for tragedy and for comedy, but it +reinforces the materialistic way of thinking, and shows that it may be +extended to the most complex and emotional spheres of existence. At the +same time, a naturalism extended impartially over moral facts brings +home a lesson of tolerance, scepticism, and independence which, without +contradicting Epicurean principles, would very much enlarge and +transform Epicurean sentiment. History would have opened to the +Epicurean poet a new dimension of nature and a more varied spectacle of +folly. His imagination would have been enriched and his maxims +fortified. + +The emotions which Lucretius associated with his atoms and void, with +his religious denials and his abstentions from action, are emotions +necessarily involved in life. They will exist in any case, though not +necessarily associated with the doctrines by which this poet sought to +clarify them. They will remain standing, whatever mechanism we put in +the place of that which he believed in,--that is, if we are serious, and +not trying to escape from the facts rather than to explain them. If the +ideas embodied in a philosophy represent a comprehensive survey of the +facts, and a mature sentiment in the presence of them, any new ideas +adopted instead will have to acquire the same values, and nothing will +be changed morally except the language or euphony of the mind. + +Of course one theory of the world must be true and the rest false, at +least if the categories of any theory are applicable to reality; but the +true theory like the false resides in imagination, and the truth of it +which the poet grasps is its truth to life. If there are no atoms, at +least there must be habits of nature, or laws of evolution, or +dialectics of progress, or decrees of providence, or intrusions of +chance; and before these equally external and groundless powers we must +bow, as Lucretius bowed to his atoms. It will always be important and +inevitable to recognize _something_ external, something that generates +or surrounds us; and perhaps the only difference between materialism and +other systems in this respect is that materialism has studied more +scrupulously the detail and method of our dependence. + +Similarly, even if Lucretius was wrong, and the soul is immortal, it is +nevertheless steadily changing its interests and its possessions. Our +lives are mortal if our soul is not; and the sentiment which reconciled +Lucretius to death is as much needed if we are to face many deaths, as +if we are to face only one. The gradual losing of what we have been and +are, Emerson says: + + _This losing is true dying;_ + _This is lordly maris down-lying,_ + _This his slow but sure reclining,_ + _Star by star his world resigning._ + +The maxim of Lucretius, that nothing arises save by the death of +something else, meets us still in our crawling immortality. And his art +of accepting and enjoying what the conditions of our being afford also +has a perennial application. Dante, the poet of faith, will tell us that +we must find our peace in the will that gives us our limited portion. +Goethe, the poet of romantic experience, will tell us that we must +renounce, renounce perpetually. Thus wisdom clothes the same moral +truths in many cosmic parables. The doctrines of philosophers disagree +where they are literal and arbitrary,--mere guesses about the unknown; +but they agree or complete one another where they are expressive or +symbolic, thoughts wrung by experience from the hearts of poets. Then +all philosophies alike are ways of meeting and recording the same flux +of images, the same vicissitudes of good and evil, which will visit all +generations, while man is man. + + + * * * * * + +[1] Lucretius, iv. 834, 835: + + Nil ... natumst in corpore, ut uti + Possemus, sed quod natumst id procreat usum. + + +[2] Ibid., I. 1115-18: + + Alid ex alio clarescet, nec tibi caeca + Nox iter eripiet, quin ultima naturai + Pervideas: ita res accendent lumina rebus. + + +[3] Lucretius, i. 264, 265: + + Alid ex alio reficit natura, nec ullam + Rem gigni patitur, nisi morte adiuta aliena. + + +[4] An excellent expression of this view is put by Plato into the mouth +of the physician Eryximachus in the _Symposium_, pp. 186-88. + + +[5] Lucretius, i. 1-13: + + Æneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, + Alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa + Quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis + Concelebras; per te quoniam genus omne animantum + Concipitur, visitque exortum lumina solis: + Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli, + Adventumque tuum: tibi suaves daedala tellus + Submittit flores; tibi rident aequora ponti, + Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum. + Nam simul ac species patefactast verna diei, + Et reserata viget genitabilis aura favoni; + Aëriae primum volucres te, diva, tuumque + Significant initum, perculsae corda tua vi. + + +[6] Lucretius, i. 24, 28-30, 41-43, 140-44: + + Te sociam studeo scribendis versibus esse.... + Quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva, leporem: + Effice, ut interea fera moenera militiai + Per maria ac terras omnes sopita quiescant.... + Nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo + Possumus aequo animo, nec Memmi clara propago + Talibus in rebus communi desse saluti.... + Sed tua me virtus tamen, et sperata voluptas + Suavis amicitiae, quemvis sufferre laborem + Suadet, et inducit noctes vigilare serenas, + Quaerentem, dictis quibus et quo carmine demum + Clara tuae possim praepandere lumina menti. + + +[7] Lucretius, ii. 1139-41, 1148-49, 1164-74: + + Omnia debet enim cibus integrare novando, + Et fulcire cibus, cibus omnia sustentare. + Nequidquam,... + Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi + Expugnata dabunt labem putrisque ruinas.... + Iamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator + Crebrius incassum manuum cecidisse laborem: + Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert + Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis,... + Nec tenet, omnia paulatim tabescere et ire + Ad capulum, spatio aetatis defessa vetusto. + + +[8] Cf. pages 41, 49. + +[9] Lucretius, ii. 29-33: + + Inter se prostrati in gramine molli + Propter aquae rivum, sub ramis arboris altae, + Non magnis opibus iucunde corpora curant: + Praesertim cum tempestas arridet, et anni + Tempa conspergunt viridantis floribus herbas. + + +[10] Horace, _Odes_, iv. 1: + + Iam nec spes animi credula mutui... + Sed cur, heu! Ligurine, cur + Manat rara meas lacrima per genas? + + + + + +III + + +DANTE + + +In the _Phaedo_ of Plato there is an incidental passage of supreme +interest to the historian. It foreshadows, and accurately defines, the +whole transition from antiquity to the middle age, from naturalism to +supernaturalism, from Lucretius to Dante. Socrates, in his prison, is +addressing his disciples for the last time. The general subject is +immortality; but in a pause in the argument Socrates says: “In my youth +... I heard some one reading, as he said, from a book of Anaxagoras, +that Reason was the disposer and cause of all, and I was delighted at +this notion, which appeared quite admirable, and I said to myself: ‘If +Reason is the disposer, Reason will dispose all for the best, and put +each particular in the best place;’ and I argued that if any desired to +find out the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of +anything, he must find out what ... was best for that thing.... And I +rejoiced to think that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes +of existence such as I desired, and I imagined that he would tell me +first whether the earth is flat or round; and whichever was true, he +would proceed ... to show the nature of the best, and show that this was +best; and if he said that the earth was in the centre [of the universe], +he would further explain that this position was the best, and I should +be satisfied with the explanation given, and not want any other sort of +cause.... For I could not imagine that when he spoke of Reason as the +disposer of things, he would give any other account of their being, +except that this was best.... These hopes I would not have sold for a +large sum of money, and I seized the books and read them as fast as I +could, in my eagerness to know the better and the worse. + +“What expectations I had formed and how grievously was I disappointed! +As I proceeded, I found my philosopher altogether forsaking Reason or +any other principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and +water, and other eccentricities.... Thus one man makes a vortex all +round, and steadies the earth by the heaven; another gives the air as a +support to the earth, which is a sort of broad trough. Any power which +in arranging them as they are arranges them for the best never enters +into their minds; and instead of finding any superior strength in it, +they rather expect to discover another Atlas of the world who is +stronger and more everlasting and more containing than the good; of the +obligatory and containing power of the good they think nothing; and yet +this is the principle which I would fain learn if anyone would teach +me.”[1] + +Here we have the programme of a new philosophy. Things are to be +understood by their uses or purposes, not by their elements or +antecedents; as the fact that Socrates sits in his prison, when he might +have escaped to Euboea, is to be understood by his allegiance to his +notion of what is best, of his duty to himself and to his country, and +not by the composition of his bones and muscles. Such reasons as we give +for our actions, such grounds as might move the public assembly to +decree this or that, are to be given in explanation of the order of +nature. The world is a work of reason. It must be interpreted, as we +interpret the actions of a man, by its motives. And these motives we +must guess, not by a fanciful dramatic mythology, such as the poets of +old had invented, but by a conscientious study of the better and the +worse in the conduct of our own lives. For instance, the highest +occupation, according to Plato, is the study of philosophy; but this +would not be possible for man if he had to be continually feeding, like +a grazing animal, with its nose to the ground. Now, to obviate the +necessity of eating all the time, long intestines are useful; therefore +the cause of long intestines is the study of philosophy. Again, the +eyes, nose, and mouth are in the front of the head, because (says Plato) +the front is the nobler side,--as if the back would not have been the +nobler side (and the front side) had the eyes, nose, and mouth been +there! This method is what Molière ridicules in _Le Malade Imaginaire_, +when the chorus sings that opium puts people to sleep because it has a +dormitive virtue, the nature of which is to make the senses slumber. + +All this is ridiculous physics enough; but Plato knew--though he forgot +sometimes--that his physics were playful. What it is important for us +now to remember is rather that, under this childish or metaphorical +physics, there is a serious morality. After all, the _use_ of opium is +that it is a narcotic; no matter why, physically, it is one. The _use_ +of the body _is_ the mind, whatever the origin of the body may be. And +it seems to dignify and vindicate these uses to say that they are the +“causes” of the organs that make them possible. What is true of +particular organs or substances is true of the whole frame of nature. +Its _use_ is to serve the good--to make life, happiness, and virtue +possible. Therefore, speaking in parables, Plato says with his whole +school: Discover the right principle of action, and you will have +discovered the ruling force in the universe. Evoke in your rapt +aspiration the essence of a supreme good, and you will have understood +why the spheres revolve, why the earth is fertile, and why mankind +suffers and exists. Observation must yield to dialectic; political art +must yield to aspiration. + +It took many hundred years for the revolution to work itself out; Plato +had a prophetic genius, and looked away from what he was (for he was a +Greek) to what mankind was to become in the next cycle of civilization. +In Dante the revolution is complete, not merely intellectually (for it +had been completed intellectually long before, in the Neoplatonists and +the Fathers of the Church), but complete morally and poetically, in that +all the habits of the mind and all the sanctions of public life had been +assimilated to it. There had been time to reinterpret everything, +obliterating the natural lines of cleavage in the world, and +substituting moral lines of cleavage for them. Nature was a compound of +ideal purposes and inert matter. Life was a conflict between sin and +grace. The environment was a battle-ground between a host of angels and +a legion of demons. The better and the worse had actually become, as +Socrates desired, the sole principles of understanding. + +Having become Socratic, the thinking part of mankind devoted all its +energies henceforward to defining good and evil in all their grades, and +in their ultimate essence; a task which Dante brings to a perfect +conclusion. So earnestly and exclusively did they speculate about moral +distinctions that they saw them in almost visible shapes, as Plato had +seen his ideas. They materialized the terms of their moral philosophy +into existing objects and powers. The highest good--in Plato still +chiefly a political ideal, the aim of policy and art--became God, the +creator of the world. The various stages or elements of perfection +became persons in the Godhead, or angelic intelligences, or aerial +demons, or lower types of the animal soul. Evil was identified with +matter. The various stages of imperfection were ascribed to the +grossness of various bodies, which weighted and smothered the spark of +divinity that animated them. This spark, however, might be released; +then it would fly up again to its parent fire and a soul would be saved. + +This philosophy was not a serious description of nature or evolution; +but it was a serious judgement upon them. The good, the better, the +best, had been discerned; and a mythical bevy of powers, symbolizing +these degrees of excellence, had been first talked of and then believed +in. Myth, when another man has invented it, can pass for history; and +when this man is a Plato, and has lived long ago, it can pass for +revelation. In this way moral values came to be regarded as forces +working in nature. But if they worked in nature, which was a compound of +evil matter and perfect form, they must exist outside: for the ideal of +excellence beckons from afar; it is what we pine for and are not. The +forces that worked in nature were accordingly supernatural virtues, +dominations, and powers; each natural thing had its supernatural +incubus, a guardian angel, or a devil that possessed it. The +supernatural--that is, something moral or ideal regarded as a power and +an existence--was all about us. Everything in the world was an effect of +something beyond the world; everything in life was a step to something +beyond life. + +Into this system Christianity fitted easily. It enriched it by adding +miraculous history to symbolic cosmology. The Platonists had conceived a +cosmos in which there were higher and lower beings, marshalled in +concentric circles, around this vile but pivotal lump of earth. The +Christians supplied a dramatic action for which that stage seemed +admirably fitted, a story in which the whole human race, or the single +soul, passed successively through these higher and lower stages. There +had been a fall, and there might be a salvation. In a sense, even this +conception of descent from the good, and ascent towards it again, was +Platonic. According to the Platonists, the good eternally shed its vital +influence, like light, and received (though unawares and without +increase of excellence to itself) reflected rays that, in the form of +love and thought, reverted to it from the ends of the universe. But +according to the Platonist this radiation of life and focusing of +aspiration were both perpetual. The double movement was eternal. The +history of the world was monotonous; or rather the world had no +significant history, but only a movement like that of a fountain playing +for ever, or like the circulation of water that is always falling from +the clouds in rain and always rising again in vapour. This fall, or +emanation of the world from the deity, was the origin of evil for the +Platonists; evil consisted merely infinitude, materiality, or otherness +from God. If anything besides God was to exist, it had to be imperfect; +instability and conflict were essential to finitude and to existence. +Salvation, on the other hand, was the return current of aspiration on +the part of the creature to revert to its source; an aspiration which +was expressed in various types of being, fixed in the eternal,--types +which led up, like the steps of a temple, to the ineffable good at the +top. + +In the Christian system this cosmic circulation became only a figure or +symbol expressing the true creation, the true fall, and the true +salvation; all three being really episodes in a historical drama, +occurring only once. The material world was only a scene, a +stage-setting, designed expressly to be appropriate for the play; and +this play was the history of mankind, especially of Israel and of the +Church. The persons and events of this history had a philosophic import; +each played some part in a providential plan. Each illustrated creation, +sin, and salvation in some degree, and on some particular level. + +The Jews had never felt uncomfortable at being material; even in the +other world they hoped to remain so, and their immortality was a +resurrection of the flesh. It did not seem plausible to them that this +excellent frame of things should be nothing but a faint, troubled, and +unintended echo of the good. On the contrary, they thought this world so +good, intrinsically, that they were sure God must have made it +expressly, and not by an unconscious effluence of his virtue, as the +Platonists had believed. Their wonder at the power and ingenuity of the +deity reached its maximum when they thought of him as the cunning +contriver of nature, and of themselves. Nevertheless the work seemed to +show some imperfections; indeed, its moral excellence was potential +rather than actual, a suggestion of what might be, rather than an +accomplished fact. And so, to explain the unexpected flaws in a creation +which they thought essentially good, they put back at the beginning of +things an experience they had daily in the present, namely, that trouble +springs from bad conduct. + +The Jews were intent watchers of fortune and of its vicissitudes. The +careers of men were their meditation by day and by night; and it takes +little attention to perceive that frivolity, indifference, knavery, and +debauchery do not make for well-being in this world. And like other +hard-pressed peoples, the ancient Jews had a pathetic admiration for +safety and plenty. How little they must have known these things, to +think of them so rapturously and so poetically! Not merely their +personal prudence, but their corporate and religious zeal made them +abhor that bad conduct which defeated prosperity. It was not mere folly, +but wickedness and the abomination of desolation. With the lessons of +conduct continually in mind, they framed the theory that all suffering, +and even death, were the wages of sin. Finally they went so far as to +attribute evil in all creation to the casual sin of a first man, and to +the taint of it transmitted to his descendants; thus passing over the +suffering and death of all creatures that are not human with an +indifference that would have astonished the Hindoos. + +The imperfection of things, in the Hebraic view, was due to accidents in +their operation; not, as in the Platonic view, to their essential +separation from their source and their end. It is in harmony with this +that salvation too should come by virtue of some special act, like the +incarnation or death of Christ. Just so, the Jews had conceived +salvation as a revival of their national existence and greatness, to be +brought about by the patience and fidelity of the elect, with tremendous +miracles supervening to reward these virtues. + +Thus their conception of the fall and of the redemption was historical. +And this was a great advantage to a man of imagination inheriting their +system; for the personages and the miracles that figured in their +sacred histories afforded a rich subject for fancy to work upon, and for +the arts to depict. The patriarchs from Adam down, the kings and +prophets, the creation, Eden, the deluge, the deliverance out of Egypt, +the thunders and the law of Sinai, the temple, the exile--all this and +much more that fills the Bible was a rich fund, a familiar tradition +living in the Church, on which Dante could draw, as he drew at the same +time from the parallel classic tradition which he also inherited. To +lend all these Biblical persons and incidents a philosophical dignity he +had only to fit them, as the Fathers of the Church had done, into the +Neoplatonic cosmology, or, as the doctors of his own time were doing, +into the Aristotelian ethics. + +So interpreted, sacred history acquired for the philosopher a new +importance besides that which it had seemed to have to Israel in exile, +or to the Christian soul conscious of sin. Every episode became the +symbol for some moral state or some moral principle. Every preacher in +Christendom, as he repeated his homily on the gospel of the day, was +invited to rear a structure of spiritual interpretations upon the +literal sense of the narrative, which nevertheless he was always to hold +and preserve as a foundation for the others.[2] In a world made by God +for the illustration of his glory, things and events, though real, must +be also symbolical; for there is intention and propriety behind them. +The creation, the deluge, the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection +of Christ, the coming of the Holy Ghost with flames of fire and the gift +of tongues, were all historical facts. The Church was heir to the chosen +people; it was an historic and political institution, with a destiny in +this world, in which all her children should share, and for which they +should fight. At the same time all those facts, were mysteries and +sacraments for the private soul; they were channels for the same moral +graces that were embodied in the order of the heavenly spheres, and in +the types of moral life on earth. Thus the Hebrew tradition brought to +Dante’s mind the consciousness of a providential history, a great +earthly task,--to be transmitted from generation to generation,--and a +great hope. The Greek tradition brought him natural and moral +philosophy. These contributions, joined together, had made Christian +theology. + +Although this theology was the guide to Dante’s imagination, and his +general theme, yet it was not his only interest; or rather he put into +the framework of orthodox theology theories and visions of his own, +fusing all into one moral unity and one poetical enthusiasm. The fusion +was perfect between the personal and the traditional elements. He threw +politics and love into the melting-pot, and they, too, lost their +impurities and were refined into a philosophic religion. Theology +became, to his mind, the guardian of patriotism, and, in a strangely +literal sense, the angel of love. + +The political theory of Dante is a sublime and largely original one. It +suffers only from its extreme ideality, which makes it inapplicable, and +has caused it to be studied less than it deserves. + +A man’s country, in the modern sense, is something that arose yesterday, +that is constantly changing its limits and its ideals; it is something +that cannot last for ever. It is the product of geographical and +historical accidents. The diversities between our different nations are +irrational; each of them has the same right, or want of right, to its +peculiarities. A man who is just and reasonable must nowadays, so far as +his imagination permits, share the patriotism of the rivals and enemies +of his country,--a patriotism as inevitable and pathetic as his own. +Nationality being an irrational accident, like sex or complexion, a +man’s allegiance to his country must be conditional, at least if he is a +philosopher. His patriotism has to be subordinated to rational +allegiance to such things as justice and humanity. + +Very different was the situation in Dante’s case. For him the love of +country could be something absolute, and at the same time something +reasonable, deliberate, and moral. What he found claiming his allegiance +was a political body quite ideal, providential, and universal. This +political body had two heads, like the heraldic eagle,--the pope and the +emperor. Both were, by right, universal potentates; both should have +their seat in Rome; and both should direct their government to the same +end, although by different means and in different spheres. The pope +should watch over the faith and discipline of the Church. He should bear +witness, in all lands and ages, to the fact that life on earth was +merely a preliminary to existence in the other world, and should be a +preparation for that. The emperor, on the other hand, should guard peace +and justice everywhere, leaving to free cities or princes the regulation +of local affairs. These two powers had been established by God through +special miracles and commissions. An evident providential design, +culminating in them, ran through all history. + +To betray or resist these divine rights, or to confound them, was +accordingly a sin of the first magnitude. The evils from which society +suffered were the consequence of such transgressions. The pope had +acquired temporal power, which was alien to his purely spiritual office; +besides, he had become a tool of the French king, who was (what no king +should be) at war with the emperor, and rebellious against the supreme +imperial authority; indeed, the pope had actually been seen to abandon +Rome for Avignon,--an act which was a sort of satanic sacrament, the +outward sign of an inward disgrace. The emperor, in his turn, had +forgotten that he was King of the Romans and Caesar, and was fond of +loitering in his native Germany, among its forests and princelings, as +if the whole world were not by right his country, and the object of his +solicitude. + +And here the larger, theoretical patriotism of Dante, as a Catholic and +a Roman, passed into his narrower and actual patriotism as a Florentine. +Had Florence been true to its duties and worthy of its privileges, under +the double authority of the Church and the Empire? Florence was a Roman +colony. Had it maintained the purity of its Roman stock, and a Roman +simplicity and austerity in its laws? Alas, Etruscan immigrants had +contaminated its blood, and this taint was responsible, Dante thought, +for the prevalent corruption of manners. All that has made Florence +great in the history of the world was then only just beginning,--its +industry, refinements, arts, and literature. But to Dante that budding +age seemed one of decadence and moral ruin. He makes his ancestor, the +crusader Cacciaguida, praise the time when the narrow circuit of the +walls held only one-fifth of its later inhabitants. “Then the city +abided in peace, sober and chaste.”[3] The women plied the distaff, or +rocked the cradle, and prattled to their children of the heroic legends +of Troy, Fiesole, and Rome. A woman could turn from her glass with her +face unpainted; she wore no girdle far more deserving of admiration than +her own person. The birth of a daughter did not frighten a good burgher; +her dowry would not have to be excessive, nor her marriage premature. No +houses were empty, their masters being in exile; none were disgraced by +unmentionable orgies.[4] This was not all; for if luxury was a great +curse to Florence, faction was a greater. Florence, an imperial city, +far from assisting in the restitution of the emperors to their universal +rights, had fought against them traitorously, in alliance with the +French invader and the usurping pontiff. It had thus undermined the only +possible foundation of its own peace and dignity. + +These were the theoretical sorrows that loomed behind the personal +sorrows of Dante in his poverty and exile. They helped him to pour forth +the intense bitterness of his heart with the breath of prophetic +invective. They made his hatred of the actual popes and of the actual +Florence so much fervid zeal for what the popes and Florence ought to +have been. His political passions and political hopes were fused with a +sublime political ideal; that fusion sublimated them, and made it +possible for the expression of them to rise into poetry. + +Here is one iron string on which Dante played, and which gave a tragic +strength to his music. He recorded the villainies of priests, princes, +and peoples. He upbraided them for their infidelity to the tasks +assigned to them by God,--tasks which Dante conceived with a Biblical +definiteness and simplicity. He lamented the consequences of this +iniquity, wasted provinces, corrupted cities, and the bodies of heroes +rolling unburied down polluted streams. These vigorous details were +exalted by the immense significance that Dante infused into them. His +ever-present definite ideal quickened his eye for the ebb and flow of +things, rendered the experience of them singly more poignant, and the +vision of them together more sustained and cumulative. Dante read +contemporary Italy as the Hebrew prophets read the signs of their times; +and whatever allowance our critical judgement may make for generous +illusions on the part of either, there can be no doubt that their +wholeness of soul, and the prophetic absoluteness of their judgements, +made their hold on particular facts very strong, and their sense for +impending weal or woe quite over-powering. + +Nor does it seem that at bottom Dante’s political philosophy, any more +than that of the Hebrew prophets, missed the great causes and the great +aims of human progress. Behind mythical and narrow conceptions of +history, he had a true sense for the moral principles that really +condition our well-being. A better science need subtract nothing from +the insight he had into the difference between political good and evil. +What in his day seemed a dream--that mankind should be one great +commonwealth--is now obvious to the idealist, the socialist, the +merchant. Science and trade are giving, in a very different form, to be +sure, a practical realization to that idea. And the other half of his +theory, that of the Catholic Church, is maintained literally by that +church itself to this day; and the outsider might see in that ideal of a +universal spiritual society a symbol or premonition of the right of the +mind to freedom from legal compulsions, or of the common allegiance of +honest minds to science, and to their common spiritual heritage and +destiny. + +On the other hand, the sting of Dante’s private wrongs, like the +enthusiasm of his private loves, lent a wonderful warmth and clearness +to the great objects of his imagination. We are too often kept from +feeling great things greatly for want of power to assimilate them to the +little things which we feel keenly and sincerely. Dante had, in this +respect, the art of a Platonic lover: he could enlarge the object of his +passion, and keep the warmth and ardour of it undiminished. He had been +banished unjustly--_Florentinus exul immeritus_, he liked to call +himself. That injustice rankled, but it did not fester, in his heart; +for his indignation spread to all wrong, and thundered against Florence, +Europe, and mankind, in that they were corrupt and perfidious. Dante had +loved. The memory of that passion remained also, but it did not +degenerate into sentimentality; for his adoration passed to a larger +object and one less accidental. His love had been a spark of that “love +which moves the sun and the other stars.”[5] He had known, in that +revelation, the secret of the universe. The spheres, the angels, the +sciences, were henceforth full of sweetness, comfort, and light. + +Of this Platonic expansion of emotion, till it suffuses all that +deserves to kindle it, we have a wonderful version in Dante’s _Vita +Nuova_. This book, on the surface, is an account of Dante’s meeting, at +the age of nine, with Beatrice, a child even a little younger; of +another meeting with her at the age of eighteen; of an overwhelming +mystic passion which the lover wished to keep secret, so much so that he +feigned another attachment as a blind; of a consequent estrangement; and +of the death of Beatrice, whereupon the poet resolved not to speak +publicly of her again, until he could praise her in such wise as no +woman had ever been praised before. + +This story is interspersed with poems of the most exquisite delicacy, +both in sentiment and in versification. They are dreamlike, allegorical, +musical meditations, ambiguous in their veiled meanings, but absolutely +clear and perfect in their artful structure, like a work of tracery and +stained glass, geometrical, mystical, and tender. A singular limpidity +of accent and image, a singular naïveté, is strangely combined in these +pieces with scholastic distinctions and a delight in hiding and hinting, +as in a charade. + +The learned will dispute for ever on the exact basis and meaning of +these confessions of Dante. The learned are perhaps not those best +fitted to solve the problem. It is a matter for literary tact and +sympathetic imagination. It must be left to the delicate intelligence +of the reader, if he has it; and if he has not, Dante does not wish to +open his heart to him. His enigmatical manner is his protection against +the intrusion of uncongenial minds. + +Without passing beyond the sphere of learned criticism, I think we may +say this: the various interpretations, in this matter, are not mutually +exclusive. Symbolism and literalness, in Dante’s time, and in his +practice, are simultaneous. For instance, in any history of mediaeval +philosophy you may read that a great subject of dispute in those days +was the question whether universal terms or natures, such as man, or +humanity, existed before the particulars, in the particulars, or after +the particulars, by abstraction of what was common to them all. Now, +this matter was undoubtedly much disputed about; but there is one +comprehensive and orthodox solution, which represents the true mind of +the age, above the peculiar hobbies or heresies of individuals. This +solution is that universal terms or natures exist before the +particulars, _and_ in the particulars, _and_ after the particulars: for +God, before he made the world, knew how he intended to make it, and had +eternally in his mind the notions of a perfect man, horse, etc., after +which the particulars were to be modelled, or to which, in case of +accident, they were to be restored, either by the healing and +recuperative force of nature, or by the ministrations of grace. But +universal terms or natures existed also _in_ the particulars, since the +particulars illustrated them, shared in them, and were what they were by +virtue of that participation. Nevertheless, the universals existed also +after the particulars: for the discursive mind of man, surveying the +variety of natural things, could not help noticing and abstracting the +common types that often recur in them; and this _ex postfacto_ idea, in +the human mind, is a universal term also. To deny any of the three +theories, and not to see their consistency, is to miss the mediaeval +point of view, which, in every sense of the word, was Catholic. + +Just such a solution seems to me natural in the case of Beatrice. We +have it on independent documentary evidence that in Dante’s time there +actually lived in Florence a certain Bice Portinari; and there are many +incidents in the _Vita Nuova_ and in the _Commedia_ which hardly admit +of an allegorical interpretation; such as the death of Beatrice, and +especially that of her father, on which occasion Dante writes a +sympathetic poem.[6] can see no reason why this lady, as easily as any +other person, should not have called forth the dreamful passion of our +poet. That he had loved some one is certain. Most people have; and why +should Dante, in particular, have found the language of love a natural +veil for his philosophy, if the passion and the language of love had not +been his mother-tongue? The language of love is no doubt usual in the +allegories of mystics, and was current in the conventional poetry of +Dante’s time; but mystics themselves are commonly crossed or potential +lovers; and the troubadours harped on the string of love simply because +it was the most responsive string in their own natures, and that which +could most easily be made to vibrate in their hearers. Dante was not +less sensitive than the average man of his generation; and if he +followed the fashion of minstrels and mystics, it was because he shared +their disposition. The beautiful, the unapproachable, the divine, had +passed before him in some visible form; it matters nothing whether this +vision came once only, and in the shape of the actual Beatrice, or +continuously, and in every shape through which a divine influence may +seem to come to a poet. No one would deserve this name of poet--and who +deserves it more than Dante?--if real sights and sounds never impressed +him; and he would hardly deserve it either, if they impressed him only +physically, and for what they are in themselves. His sensibility creates +his ideal. + +If to deny the existence of an historical Beatrice seems violent and +gratuitous, it would be a much worse misunderstanding not to perceive +that Beatrice is _also_ a symbol. On one occasion, as we read in the +_Vita Nuova_,[7] Dante found himself, in a church, in the presence of +Beatrice. His eyes were inevitably fixed upon her; but as he wished to +conceal his profound passion from the gossiping crowd, he chose another +lady, who happened to stand in the direct line of vision between him and +Beatrice, and pretended to be gazing at her, in reality looking beyond +her to Beatrice. This intervening lady, _la donna gentile_, became the +screen to his true love.[8] But his attentions to her were so assiduous +that they were misinterpreted. Beatrice herself observed them, and +thinking he was going too far and not with an honourable purpose, showed +her displeasure by refusing to greet him as he passed. This sounds real +and earthly enough: but what is our surprise when we read expressly, in +the _Convito_, that the _donna gentile,_ the screen to Dante’s true +love, is philosophy.[9] If the _donna gentile_ is philosophy, the +_donna gentilissima,_ Beatrice, must be something of the same sort, only +nobler. She must be theology, and theology Beatrice undoubtedly is. Her +very name is played upon, if not selected, to mean that she is what +renders blessed, what shows the path of salvation. + +Now the scene in the church becomes an allegory throughout. The young +Dante, we are given to understand, was at heart a religious and devout +soul, looking for the highest wisdom. But intervening between his human +reason and revealed truth (which he really was in love with, and wished +to win and to understand) he found philosophy or, as we should say, +science. To science he gave his preliminary attention; so much so that +the mysteries of theology were momentarily obscured in his mind; and his +faith, to his great sorrow, refused to salute him as he passed. He had +fallen into materialistic errors; he had interpreted the spots on the +moon as if they could be due to physical, not to Socratic, causes; and +his religious philosophy had lost its warmth, even if his religious +faith had not actually been endangered. It is certain, then, that +Beatrice, besides being a woman, was also a symbol. + +But this is not the end. If Beatrice is a symbol for theology, theology +itself is not-final. It, too, is an avenue, an interpretation. The eyes +of Beatrice reflect a supernal light. It is the ineffable vision of +God, the beatific vision, that alone can make us happy and be the reason +and the end of our loves and our pilgrimages. + +A supreme ideal of peace and perfection which moves the lover, and which +moves the sky, is more easily named than understood. In the last canto +of the _Paradiso_, where Dante is attempting to describe the beatific +vision, he says many times over that our notion of this ideal must be +vague and inadequate. The value of the notion to a poet or a philosopher +does not lie in what it contains positively, but in the attitude which +it causes him to assume towards real experience. Or perhaps it would be +better to say that to have an ideal does not mean so much to have any +image in the fancy, any Utopia more or less articulate, but rather to +take a consistent moral attitude towards all the things of this world, +to judge and coordinate our interests, to establish a hierarchy of goods +and evils, and to value events and persons, not by a casual personal +impression or instinct, but according to their real nature and tendency. +So understood, an ultimate ideal is no mere vision of the philosophical +dreamer, but a powerful and passionate force in the poet and the orator. +It is the voice of his love or hate, of his hope or sorrow, idealizing, +challenging, or condemning the world. + +It is here that the feverish sensibility of the young Dante stood him in +good stead; it gave an unprecedented vigour and clearness to his moral +vision; it made him the classic poet of hell and of heaven. At the same +time, it helped to make him an upright judge, a terrible accuser, of the +earth. Everything and everybody in his day and generation became to him, +on account of his intense loyalty to his inward vision, an instance of +divine graciousness or of devilish perversity. Doubtless this keenness +of soul was not wholly due to the gift of loving, or to the discipline +of love; it was due in part also to pride, to resentment, to theoretical +prejudices. But figures like that of Francesca di Rimini and Manfred, +and the light and rapture vibrating through the whole _Paradiso,_ could +hardly have been evoked by a merely irritated genius. The background and +the starting-point of everything in Dante is the _intelletto d’amore_, +the genius of love. + +Everybody has heard that God is love and that love makes the world go +round; and those who have traced this latter notion back to its source +in Aristotle may have some notion of what it means. It means, as we saw +in the beginning, that we should not try to explain motion and life by +their natural antecedents, for these run back _in infinitum_. We should +explain motion and life rather by their purpose or end, by that +unrealized ideal which moving and living things seem to aspire to, and +may be said to love. What justifies itself is not any fact or law; for +why should these not have been different? What justifies itself is what +is good, what is as it ought to be. But things in motion, Aristotle +conceived, declare, as it were, that they are not satisfied, and ought +to be in some different condition. They look to a fulfilment which is as +yet ideal. This fulfilment, if it included motion and life, could +include them inwardly only; it would consist in a sustained activity, +never lapsing nor suffering change. Such an activity is the unchanging +goal towards which life advances and by which its different stages are +measured: But since the purpose of things, and not their natural +causes, is that which explains them, we may call this eventual activity +their reason for being. It will be their unmoved mover. + +But how, we may ask,--how can the unchanging, the ideal, the eventual, +initiate anything or determine the disposition and tendency of what +actually lives and moves? The answer, or rather the impossibility of +giving an answer, may be expressed in a single word: magic. It is magic +when a good or interesting result, because it would prove good or +interesting, is credited with marshalling the conditions and evoking the +beings that are to realize it. It is natural that I should be hungry, +and natural that there should be things suitable for me to eat--for +otherwise I should not be hungry long; but if my hunger, in case it is +sharp enough, should be able of itself to produce the food it calls +for, that would be magic. Nature would be evoked by the incantations of +the will. + +I do not forget that Aristotle, with Dante after him, asserts that the +goal of life is a separate being already existing, namely, the mind of +God, eternally realizing what the world aspires to. The influence of +this mind, however, upon the world is no less magical than would be that +of a non-existent ideal. For its operation is admittedly not transitive +or physical. It itself does not change in working. No virtue leaves it; +it does not, according to Aristotle and Plotinus, even know that it +works. Indeed, it works only because other things are disposed to pursue +it as their ideal; let things keep this disposition, and they will +pursue and frame their ideal no less if it nowhere has an actual +existence, than if by chance it exists elsewhere in its own person. It +works only in its capacity of ideal; therefore, even if it exists, it +works only by magic. The matter beneath feels the spell of its presence, +and catches something of its image, as the waves of the sea might +receive and reflect tremblingly the light shed by the moon. The world +accordingly is moved and vivified in every fibre by magic, by the magic +of the goal to which it aspires. + +But this magic, on earth, bore the name of love. The life of the world +was a love, produced by the magic attraction of a good it has never +possessed and, so long as it remains a world, is incapable of +possessing. Actual things were only suggestions of what the elements in +that ulterior existence ought to be: they were mere symbols. The acorn +was a mere prophecy--an existing symbol--for the ideal oak; because when +the acorn falls into good ground it will be corrupted, but the idea of +the oak will arise and be manifested in its place. The acorn was a sort +of reliquary in which the miraculous power of the idea was somehow +enshrined. In the vulgar attribution of causes we, like Anaxagoras, +resemble a superstitious relic-worshipper who should forget that the +intercession and merits of the saint really work the miracle, and should +attribute it instead to the saint’s bones and garments in their material +capacity. Similarly, we should attribute the power which things exerted +over us, not to the rarer or denser substance, but to the eternal ideas +that they existed by expressing, and existed to express. Things merely +localized--like the saint’s relics--the influences which flowed to us +from above. In the world of values they were mere symbols, accidental +channels for divine energy; and since divine energy, by its magic +assimilation of matter, had created these things, in order to express +itself, they were symbols altogether not merely in their use, but in +their origin and nature. + +A mind persuaded that it lives among things that, like words, are +essentially significant, and that what they signify is the magic +attraction, called love, which draws all things after it, is a mind +poetic in its intuition, even if its language be prose. The science and +philosophy of Dante did not have to be put into verse in order to become +poetry: they were poetry fundamentally and in their essence. When Plato +and Aristotle, following the momentous precept of Socrates, decreed that +observation of nature should stop and a moral interpretation of nature +should begin, they launched into the world a new mythology, to take the +place of the Homeric one which was losing its authority. The power the +poets had lost of producing illusion was possessed by these philosophers +in a high degree; and no one was ever more thoroughly under their spell +than Dante. He became to Platonism and Christianity what Homer had been +to Paganism; and if Platonism and Christianity, like Paganism, should +ever cease to be defended scientifically, Dante will keep the poetry and +wisdom of them alive; and it is safe to say that later generations will +envy more than they will despise his philosophy. When the absurd +controversies and factious passions that in some measure obscure the +nature of this system have completely passed away, no one will think of +reproaching Dante with his bad science, and bad history, and minute +theology. These will not seem blemishes in his poetry, but integral +parts of it. + +A thousand years after Homer, Alexandrian critics were expounding his +charming myths as if they were a revealed treatise of physics and +morals. A thousand years after Dante we may hope that his conscientious +vision of the universe, where all is love, magic, and symbolism, may +charm mankind exclusively as poetry. So conceived, the _Divine Comedy_ +marks high noon in that long day-dream of which Plato’s dialogues mark +the beginning: a pause of two thousand years in the work of political +reason, during which the moral imagination spun out of itself an +allegorical philosophy, as a boy, kept at home during a rainy day with +books too hard and literal for his years, might spin his own romance out +of his father’s histories, and might define, with infantile precision, +his ideal lady-love, battles, and kingdoms. The middle age saw the good +in a vision. It is for the new age to translate those delightful symbols +into the purposes of manhood. + + * * * * * + +In a letter which tradition assigns to Dante, addressed to his +protector, Cangrande della Scala, lord of Verona and Vicenza, are these +words about the _Divine Comedy_: “The subject of the whole work, taken +merely in its literal sense, is the state of souls after death, +considered simply as a fact. But if the work is understood in its +allegorical intention, the subject of it is man, according as, by his +deserts and demerits in the use of his free-will, he is justly open to +rewards and punishments.” This by no means exhausts, however, the +significations which we may look for in a work of Dante’s. How many +these may be is pointed out to us in the same letter, and illustrated by +the beginning of the one hundred and fourteenth Psalm: “When Israel went +out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; +Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.” Here, Dante tells us, +“if we look to the _letter_ only, what is conveyed to us is the +deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt in the time of Moses; +if we look to the _allegory_ of it, what is signified is our redemption +accomplished through Christ; if we consider the _moral sense_, what is +signified is the conversion of the soul from her present grief and +wretchedness to a state of grace; and if we consider the _anagogical +sense_ [that is, the revelation contained concerning our highest +destiny], what is signified is the passing of the sanctified soul from +the bondage of earthly corruption to the freedom of everlasting glory.” + +When people brooded so much over a simple text as to find all these +meanings in it, we may expect that their own works, when meant to be +profound, should have stage above stage of allegorical application. So +in the first canto of the _Inferno_ we find a lion that keeps Dante from +approaching a delectable mountain; and this lion, besides what he is in +the landscape of the poem, is a symbol for pride or power in general, +for the king of France in particular, and for whatever political +ambitions in Dante’s personal life may have robbed him of happiness or +distracted him from faith and from piety. Thus, throughout the _Divine +Comedy_, meaning and meaning lurk beneath the luminous pictures; and the +poem, besides being a description of the other world, and of the rewards +and punishment meted out to souls, is a dramatic view of human passions +in this life; a history of Italy and of the world; a theory of Church +and State; the autobiography of an exile; and the confessions of a +Christian, and of a lover, conscious of his sins and of the miracle of +divine grace that intervenes to save him. + +The subject-matter of the _Divine Comedy_ is accordingly the moral +universe in all its levels,--romantic, political, religious. To present +these moral facts in a graphic way, the poet performed a double work of +imagination. First he chose some historical personage that might +plausibly illustrate each condition of the soul. Then he pictured this +person in some characteristic and symbolic attitude of mind and of body, +and in an appropriate, symbolic environment. To give material embodiment +to moral ideas by such a method would nowadays be very artificial, and +perhaps impossible; but in Dante’s time everything was favourable to the +attempt. We are accustomed to think of goods and evils as functions of +a natural life, sparks struck out in the chance shock of men with things +or with one another. For Dante, it was a matter of course that moral +distinctions might be discerned, not merely as they arise incidentally +in human experience, but also, and more genuinely, as they are displayed +in the order of creation. The Creator himself was a poet producing +allegories. The material world was a parable which he had built out in +space, and ordered to be enacted. History was a great charade. The +symbols of earthly poets are words or images; the symbols of the divine +poet were natural things and the fortunes of men. They had been devised +for a purpose; and this purpose, as the Koran, too, declares, had been +precisely to show forth the great difference there is in God’s sight +between good and evil. + +In Platonic cosmology, the concentric spheres were bodies formed and +animated by intelligences of various orders. The nobler an intelligence, +the more swift and outward, or higher, was the sphere it moved; whence +the identification of “higher” with better, which survives, absurdly, to +this day. And while Dante could not attribute literal truth to his +fancies about hell, purgatory, and heaven, he believed that an actual +heaven, purgatory, and hell had been fashioned by God on purpose to +receive souls of varying deserts and complexion; so that while the +poet’s imagination, unless it reechoed divine revelation, was only +human and not prophetic, yet it was a genuine and plausible imagination, +moving on the lines of nature, and anticipating such things as +experience might very well realize. Dante’s objectification of morality, +his art of giving visible forms and local habitations to ideal virtues +and vices, was for him a thoroughly serious and philosophical exercise. +God had created nature and life on that very principle. The poet’s +method repeated the magic of Genesis. His symbolical imagination +mirrored this symbolical world; it was a sincere anticipation of fact, +no mere laboured and wilful allegory. + +This situation has a curious consequence. Probably for the first and +last time in the history of the world a classification worked out by a +systematic moralist guided the vision of a great poet. Aristotle had +distinguished, named, and classified the various virtues, with their +opposites. But observe: if the other world was made on purpose--as it +was--to express and render palpable those moral distinctions which were +eternal, and to express and render them palpable in great detail, with +all their possible tints and varieties; and if Aristotle had correctly +classified moral qualities, as he had--then it follows that Aristotle +(without knowing it) must have supplied the ground-plan, as it were, of +hell and of heaven. Such was Dante’s thought. With Aristotle’s _Ethics_ +open before him, with a supplementary hint, here and there, drawn from +the catechism, and with an ingrained preference (pious and almost +philosophic) for the number three and its multiples, he needed not to +voyage without a chart. The most visionary of subjects, life after +death, could be treated with scientific soberness and deep sincerity. +This vision was to be no wanton dream. It was to be a sober meditation, +a philosophical prophecy, a probable drama,--the most poignant, +terrible, and consoling of all possible truths. + +The good--this was the fundamental thought of Aristotle and of all Greek +ethics,--the good is the end at which nature aims. The demands of life +cannot be radically perverse, since they are the judges of every +excellence. No man, as Dante says, could hate his own soul; he could not +at once be, and contradict, the voice of his instincts and emotions. Nor +could a man hate God; for if that man knew himself, he would see that +God was, by definition, his natural good, the ultimate goal of his +actual aspirations.[10] Since it was impossible, according to his +insight, that our faculties should be intrinsically evil, all evil had +to arise from the disorder into which these faculties fall, their too +great weakness or strength in relation to one another. If the animal +part of man was too strong for his reason, he fell into +incontinence,--that is, into lust, gluttony, avarice, wrath, or pride. +Incontinence came from an excessive or ill-timed pursuit of something +good, of a part of what nature aims at; for food, children, property, +and character are natural goods. These sins are accordingly the most +excusable and the least odious. Dante puts those who have sinned through +love in the first circle of hell, nearest to the sunlight, or in the +topmost round of purgatory, nearest to the earthly paradise. Below the +lovers, in each case, are the gluttons,--where a northern poet would +have been obliged to place his drunkards. Beneath these again are the +misers,--worse because less open to the excuse of a merely childish lack +of self-control. + +The disorder of the faculties may arise, however, in another way. The +combative or spirited element, rather than the senses, may get out of +hand, and lead to crimes of violence. Violence, like incontinence, is +spontaneous enough in its personal origin, and would not be odious if it +did not inflict, and intend to inflict, harm on others; so that besides +incontinence, there is malice in it. Ill-will to others may arise from +pride, because one loves to be superior to them, or from envy, because +one abhors that they should seem superior to oneself; or through desire +for vengeance, because one smarts under some injury. Sins of these kinds +are more serious than those of foolish incontinence; they complicate the +moral world more; they introduce endless opposition of interests, and +perpetual, self-propagating crimes. They are hateful. Dante feels less +pity for those who suffer by them: he remembers the sufferings these +malefactors have themselves caused, and he feels a sort of joy in +joining the divine justice, and would gladly lash them himself. + +Worse still than violence, however, is guile: the sin of those who in +the service of their intemperance or their malice have abused the gift +of reason. _Corruptio optimi pessima_; and to turn reason, the faculty +that establishes order, into a means of organizing disorder, is a +perversity truly satanic: it turns evil into an art. But even this +perversity has stages; and Dante distinguishes ten sorts of dishonesty +or simple fraud, as well as three sorts of treachery. + +Besides these positive transgressions there is a possibility of general +moral sluggishness and indifference. This Dante, with his fervid nature, +particularly hates. He puts the Laodiceans in the fringe of his hell; +within the gate, that they may be without hope, but outside of limbo, +that they may have torments to endure, and be stung by wasps and +hornets into a belated activity.[11] + +To these vices, known to Aristotle, the Catholic moralist was obliged to +add two others: original sin, of which spontaneous disbelief is one +consequence, and heresy, or misbelief, after a revelation has been given +and accepted. Original sin, and the paganism that goes with it, if they +lead to nothing worse, are a mere privation of excellence and involve, +in eternity merely a privation of joy: they are punished in limbo. There +sighs are heard, but no lamentation, and the only sorrow is to live in +desire without hope. This fate is most appropriately imputed to the +noble and clear-sighted in the hereafter, since it is so often their +experience here. Dante was never juster than in this stroke.[12] Heresy, +on the other hand, is a kind of passion when honest, or a kind of fraud +when politic; and it is punished as pride in fiery tombs,[13] or as +faction by perpetual gaping wounds and horrible mutilations.[14] + +So far, with these slight additions, Dante is following Aristotle; but +here a great divergence sets in. If a pagan poet had conceived the idea +of illustrating the catalogue of vices and virtues in poetic scenes, he +would have chosen suitable episodes in human life, and painted the +typical characters that figured in them in their earthly environment; +for pagan morality is a plant of earth. Not so with Dante. His poem +describes this world merely in retrospect; the foreground is occupied by +the eternal consequences of what time had brought forth. These +consequences are new facts, not merely, as for the rationalist, the old +facts conceived in their truth; they often reverse, in their emotional +quality, the events they represent. Such a reversal is made possible by +the theory that justice is partly retributive; that virtue is not its +own sufficient reward, nor vice its own sufficient punishment. According +to this theory, this life contains a part of our experience only, yet +determines the rest. The other life is a second experience, yet it does +not contain any novel adventures. It is determined altogether by what we +have done on earth; as the tree falleth so it lieth, and souls after +death have no further initiative. + +The theory Dante adopts mediates between two earlier views; in so far as +it is Greek, it conceives immortality ideally, as something timeless; +but in so far as it is Hebraic, it conceives of a new existence and a +second, different taste of life. Dante thinks of a second experience, +but of one that is wholly retrospective and changeless. It is an +epilogue which sums up the play, and is the last episode in it. The +purpose of this epilogue is not to carry on the play indefinitely: such +a romantic notion of immortality never entered Dante’s mind. The purpose +of the epilogue is merely to vindicate (in a more unmistakable fashion +than the play, being ill acted, itself could do) the excellence of +goodness and the misery of vice. Were this life all, he thinks the +wicked might laugh. If not wholly happy, at least they might boast that +their lot was no worse than that of many good men. Nothing would make an +overwhelming difference. Moral distinctions would be largely impertinent +and remarkably jumbled. If I am a simple lover of goodness, I may +perhaps put up with this situation. I may say of the excellences I prize +what Wordsworth says of his Lucy: there may be none to praise and few to +love them, but they make all the difference to me. + +Dante, however, was not merely a simple lover of excellence: he was also +a keen hater of wickedness, one that took the moral world tragically +and wished to heighten the distinctions he felt into something absolute +and infinite. Now any man who is _enragé_ in his preferences will +probably say, with Mohammed, Tertullian, and Calvin, that good is +dishonoured if those who contemn it can go scot-free, and never repent +of their negligence; that the more horrible the consequences of +evil-doing, the more tolerable the presence of evil-doing is in the +world; and that the everlasting shrieks and contortions of the damned +alone will make it possible for the saints to sit quiet, and be +convinced that there is perfect harmony in the universe. On this +principle, in the famous inscription which Dante places over the gate of +hell, we read that primal love, as well as justice and power, +established that torture-house; primal love, that is, of that good +which, by the extreme punishment of those who scorn it, is honoured, +vindicated, and made to shine like the sun. The damned are damned for +the glory of God. + +This doctrine, I cannot help thinking, is a great disgrace to human +nature. It shows how desperate, at heart, is the folly of an egotistic +or anthropocentric philosophy. This philosophy begins by assuring us +that everything is obviously created to serve our needs; it then +maintains that everything serves our ideals; and in the end, it reveals +that everything serves our blind hatreds and superstitious qualms. +Because my instinct taboos something, the whole universe, with insane +intensity, shall taboo it for ever. This infatuation was inherited by +Dante, and it was not uncongenial to his bitter and intemperate spleen. +Nevertheless, he saw beyond it at times. Like many other Christian +seers, he betrays here and there an esoteric view of rewards and +punishments, which makes them simply symbols for the intrinsic quality +of good and evil ways. The punishment, he then seems to say, is nothing +added; it is what the passion itself pursues; it is a fulfilment, +horrifying the soul that desired it. + +For instance, spirits newly arrived in hell require no devil with his +prong to drive them to their punishment. They flit towards it eagerly, +of their own accord.[15] Similarly, the souls in purgatory are kept by +their own will at the penance they are doing. No external force retains +them, but until they are quite purged they are not able, because they +are not willing, to absolve themselves.[16] The whole mountain, we are +told, trembles and bursts into psalmody when any one frees himself and +reaches heaven. Is it too much of a gloss to say that these souls change +their prison when they change their ideal, and that an inferior state of +soul is its own purgatory, and determines its own duration? In one +place, at any rate, Dante proclaims the intrinsic nature of punishment +in express terms. Among the blasphemers is a certain king of Thebes, who +defied the thunderbolts of Jupiter. He shows himself indifferent to his +punishment and says: “Such as I was alive, such I am dead.” Whereupon +Virgil exclaims, with a force Dante had never found in his voice before: +“In that thy pride is not mortified, thou art punished the more. No +torture, other than thy own rage, would be woe enough to match thy +fury.”[17] And indeed, Dante’s imagination cannot outdo, it cannot even +equal, the horrors which men have brought upon themselves in this world. +If we were to choose the most fearful of the scenes in the _Inferno_, we +should have to choose the story of Ugolino, but this is only a pale +recital of what Pisa had actually witnessed. + +A more subtle and interesting instance, if a less obvious one, may be +found in the punishment of Paolo and Francesca di Rimini. What makes +these lovers so wretched in the Inferno? They are still together. Can an +eternity of floating on the wind, in each other’s arms, be a punishment +for lovers? That is just what their passion, if left to speak for +itself, would have chosen. It is what passion stops at, and would gladly +prolong for ever. Divine judgement has only taken it at its word. This +fate is precisely what Aucassin, in the well-known tale, wishes for +himself and his sweetheart Nicolette,--not a heaven to be won by +renunciation, but the possession, even if it be in hell, of what he +loves and fancies. And a great romantic poet, Alfred de Musset, actually +upbraids Dante for not seeing that such an eternal destiny as he has +assigned to Paolo and Francesca would be not the ruin of their love,[18] +but the perfect fulfilment of it. This last seems to be very true; but +did Dante overlook the truth of it? If so, what instinct guided him to +choose just the fate for these lovers that they would have chosen for +themselves? + +There is a great difference between the apprentices in life, and the +masters,--Aucassin and Alfred de Musset were among the apprentices; +Dante was one of the masters. He could feel the fresh promptings of life +as keenly as any youngster, or any romanticist; but he had lived these +things through, he knew the possible and the impossible issue of them; +he saw their relation to the rest of human nature, and to the ideal of +an ultimate happiness and peace. He had discovered the necessity of +saying continually to oneself: Thou shalt renounce. And for this reason +he needed no other furniture for hell than the literal ideals and +fulfilments of our absolute little passions. The soul that is possessed +by any one of these passions nevertheless has other hopes in abeyance. +Love itself dreams of more than mere possession; to conceive happiness, +it must conceive a life to be shared in a varied world, full of events +and activities, which shall be new and ideal bonds between the lovers. +But unlawful love cannot pass out into this public fulfilment. It is +condemned to be mere possession--possession in the dark, without an +environment, without a future. It is love among the ruins. And it is +precisely this that is the torment of Paolo and Francesca--love among +the ruins of themselves and of all else they might have had to give to +one another. Abandon yourself, Dante would say to us,--abandon yourself +altogether to a love that is nothing but love, and you are in hell +already. Only an inspired poet could be so subtle a moralist. Only a +sound moralist could be so tragic a poet. + +The same tact and fine feeling that appear in these little moral dramas +appear also in the sympathetic landscape in which each episode is set. +The poet actually accomplishes the feat which he attributes to the +Creator; he evokes a material world to be the fit theatre for moral +attitudes. Popular imagination and the precedents of Homer and Virgil +had indeed carried him halfway in this symbolic labour, as tradition +almost always carries a poet who is successful. Mankind, from remotest +antiquity, had conceived a dark subterranean hell, inhabited by unhappy +ghosts. In Christian times, these shades had become lost souls, +tormented by hideous demons. But Dante, with the Aristotelian chart of +the vices before him, turned those vague windy caverns into a +symmetrical labyrinth. Seven concentric terraces descended, step by +step, towards the waters of the Styx, which in turn encircled the brazen +walls of the City of Dis, or Pluto. Within these walls, two more +terraces led down to the edge of a prodigious precipice--perhaps a +thousand miles deep--which formed the pit of hell. At the bottom of +this, still sinking gently towards the centre, were ten concentric +furrows or ditches, to hold ten sorts of rogues; and finally a last +sheer precipice fell to the frozen lake of Cocytus, at the very centre +of the earth, in the midst of which Lucifer was congealed amongst lesser +traitors. + +Precision and horror, graphic and moral truth, were never so wonderfully +combined as in the description of this hell. Yet the conception of +purgatory is more original, and perhaps more poetical. The very approach +to the place is enchanting. We hear of it first in the fatal adventure +ascribed to Ulysses by Dante. Restless at Ithaca after his return from +Troy, the hero had summoned his surviving companions for a last voyage +of discovery. He had sailed with them past the Pillars of Hercules, +skirting the African shore; until after three months of open sea, he saw +a colossal mountain, a great truncated cone, looming before him. This +was the island and hill of purgatory, at the very antipodes of +Jerusalem. Yet before Ulysses could land there, a squall overtook him; +and his galley sank, prow foremost, in that untraversed sea, within +sight of a new world. So must the heathen fail of salvation, though some +oracular impulse bring them near the goal. + +How easy is success, on the other hand, to the ministers of grace! From +the mouth of the Tiber, where the souls of Christians congregate after +death, a light skiff, piloted by an angel, and propelled only by his +white wings, skims the sea swiftly towards the mountain of purgatory, +there deposits the spirits it carries, and is back at the mouth of the +Tiber again on the same day. So much for the approach to purgatory. When +a spirit lands it finds the skirts of the mountain broad and spreading, +but the slope soon becomes hard and precipitous. When he has passed the +narrow gate of repentance, he must stay upon each of the ledges that +encircle the mountain at various heights, until one of his sins is +purged, and then upon the next ledge above, if he has been guilty also +of the sin that is atoned for there. The mountain is so high as to lift +its head into the sphere of the moon, above the reach of terrestrial +tempests. The top, which is a broad circular plain, contains the Garden +of Eden, watered by the rivers Lethe and Eunoe, one to heal all painful +memories, and the other to bring all good thoughts to clearness. From +this place, which literally touches the lowest heaven, the upward flight +is easy from sphere to sphere. + +The astronomy of Dante’s day fell in beautifully with his poetic task. +It described and measured a firmament that would still be identified +with the posthumous heaven of the saints. The whirling invisible spheres +of that astronomy had the earth for their centre. The sublime +complexities of this Ptolemaic system were day and night before Dante’s +mind. He loves to tell us in what constellation the sun is rising or +setting, and what portion of the sky is then over the antipodes; he +carries in his mind an orrery that shows him, at any given moment, the +position of every star. + +Such a constant dragging in of astronomical lore may seem to us puerile +or pedantic; but for Dante the astronomical situation had the charm of a +landscape, literally full of the most wonderful lights and shadows; and +it also had the charm of a hard-won discovery that unveiled the secrets +of nature. To think straight, to see things as they are, or as they +might naturally be, interested him more than to fancy things impossible; +and in this he shows, not want of imagination, but true imaginative +power and imaginative maturity. It is those of us who are too feeble to +conceive and master the real world, or too cowardly to face it, that run +away from it to those cheap fictions that alone seem to us fine enough +for poetry or for religion. In Dante the fancy is not empty or +arbitrary; it is serious, fed on the study of real things. It adopts +their tendency and divines their true destiny. His art is, in the +original Greek sense, an imitation or rehearsal of nature, an +anticipation of fate. For this reason curious details of science or +theology enter as a matter of course into his verse. With the +straightforward faith and simplicity of his age he devours these +interesting images, which help him to clarify the mysteries of this +world. + +There is a kind of sensualism or aestheticism that has decreed in our +day that theory is not poetical; as if all the images and emotions that +enter a cultivated mind were not saturated with theory. The prevalence +of such a sensualism or aestheticism would alone suffice to explain the +impotence of the arts. The life of theory is not less human or less +emotional than the life of sense; it is more typically human and more +keenly emotional. Philosophy is a more intense sort of experience than +common life is, just as pure and subtle music, heard in retirement, is +something keener and more intense than the howling of storms or the +rumble of cities. For this reason philosophy, when a poet is not +mindless, enters inevitably into his poetry, since it has entered into +his life; or rather, the detail of things and the detail of ideas pass +equally into his verse, when both alike lie in the path that has led him +to his ideal. To object to theory in poetry would be like objecting to +words there; for words, too, are symbols without the sensuous character +of the things they stand for; and yet it is only by the net of new +connections which words throw over things, in recalling them, that +poetry arises at all. Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of +crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm’s +length. + +Never before or since has a poet lived in so large a landscape as Dante; +for our infinite times and distances are of little poetic value while we +have no graphic image of what may fill them. Dante’s spaces were +filled; they enlarged to the limits of human imagination, the +habitations and destinies of mankind. Although the saints did not +literally inhabit the spheres, but the empyrean beyond, yet each spirit +could be manifested in that sphere the genius of which was most akin to +his own. In Dante’s vision spirits appear as points of light, from which +voices also flow sometimes, as well as radiance. Further than reporting +their words (which are usually about the things of earth) Dante tells us +little about them. He has indeed, at the end, a vision of a celestial +rose; tier upon tier of saints are seated as in an amphitheatre, and the +Deity overarches them in the form of a triple rainbow, with a semblance +of man in the midst. But this is avowedly a mere symbol, a somewhat +conventional picture to which Dante has recourse unwillingly, for want +of a better image to render his mystical intention. What may perhaps +help us to divine this intention is the fact, just mentioned, that +according to him the celestial spheres are not the real seat of any +human soul; that the pure rise through them with increasing ease and +velocity, the nearer they come to God; and that the eyes of +Beatrice--the revelation of God to man--are only mirrors, shedding +merely reflected beauty and light. + +These hints suggest the doctrine that the goal of life is the very +bosom of God; not any finite form of existence, however excellent, but a +complete absorption and disappearance in the Godhead. So the +Neoplatonists had thought, from whom all this heavenly landscape is +borrowed; and the reservations that Christian orthodoxy requires have +not always remained present to the minds of Christian mystics and poets. +Dante broaches this very point in the memorable interview he has with +the spirit of Piccarda, in the third canto of the _Paradiso_. She is in +the lowest sphere of heaven, that of the inconstant moon, because after +she had been stolen from her convent and forcibly married, she felt no +prompting to renew her earlier vows. Dante asks her if she never longs +for a higher station in paradise, one nearer to God, the natural goal of +all aspiration. She answers that to share the will of God, who has +established many different mansions in his house, is to be truly one +with him. The wish to be nearer God would actually carry the soul +farther away, since it would oppose the order he has established.[19] + +Even in heaven, therefore, the Christian saint was to keep his essential +fidelity, separation, and lowliness. He was to feel still helpless and +lost in himself, like Tobias, and happy only in that the angel of the +Lord was holding him by the hand. For Piccarda to say that she accepts +the will of God means not that she shares it, but that she submits to +it. She would fain go higher, for her moral nature demands it, as +Dante--incorrigible Platonist--perfectly perceived; but she dare not +mention it, for she knows that God, whose thoughts are not her thoughts, +has forbidden it. The inconstant sphere of the moon does not afford her +a perfect happiness; but, chastened as she is, she says it brings her +happiness enough; all that a broken and a contrite heart has the courage +to hope for. + +Such are the conflicting inspirations beneath the lovely harmonies of +the _Paradiso_. It was not the poet’s soul that was in conflict here; it +was only his traditions. The conflicts of his own spirit had been left +behind in other regions; on that threshing-floor of earth which, from +the height of heaven, he looked back upon with wonder,[20] surprised +that men should take so passionately this trouble of ants, which he +judges best, says Dante, who thinks least of it. + +In this saying the poet is perhaps conscious of a personal fault; for +Dante was far from perfect, even as a poet. He was too much a man of his +own time, and often wrote with a passion not clarified into judgement. +So much does the purely personal and dramatic interest dominate us as we +read of a Boniface or an Ugolino that we forget that these historical +figures are supposed to have been transmuted into the eternal, and to +have become bits in the mosaic of Platonic essences. Dante himself +almost forgets it. The modern reader, accustomed to insignificant, +wayward fictions, and expecting to be entertained by images without +thoughts, may not notice this lack of perspective, or may rejoice in it. +But, if he is judicious, he will not rejoice in it long. The Bonifaces +and the Ugolinos are not the truly deep, the truly lovely figures of the +_Divine Comedy_. They are, in a relative sense, the vulgarities in it. +We feel too much, in these cases, the heat of the poet’s prejudice or +indignation. He is not just, as he usually is; he does not stop to +think, as he almost always does. He forgets that he is in the eternal +world, and dips for the moment into a brawl in some Italian +market-place, or into the council-chamber of some factious +_condottiere_. The passages--such as those about Boniface and +Ugolino--which Dante writes in this mood are powerful and vehement, but +they are not beautiful. They brand the object of their invective more +than they reveal it; they shock more than they move the reader. + +This lower kind of success--for it is still a success in rhetoric--falls +to the poet because he has abandoned the Platonic half of his +inspiration and has become for the moment wholly historical, wholly +Hebraic or Roman. He would have been a far inferior mind if he had +always moved on this level. With the Platonic spheres and the +Aristotelian ethics taken out, his _Comedy_ would not have been divine. +Persons and incidents, to be truly memorable, have to be rendered +significant; they have to be seen in their place in the moral world; +they have to be judged, and judged rightly, in their dignity and value. +A casual personal sentiment towards them, however passionate, cannot +take the place of the sympathetic insight that comprehends and the wide +experience that judges. + +Again (what is fundamental with Dante) love, as he feels and renders it, +is not normal or healthy love. It was doubtless real enough, but too +much restrained and expressed too much in fancy; so that when it is +extended Platonically and identified so easily with the grace of God and +with revealed wisdom, we feel the suspicion that if the love in question +had been natural and manly, it would have offered more resistance to so +mystical a transformation. The poet who wishes to pass convincingly from +love to philosophy (and that seems a natural progress for a poet) should +accordingly be a hearty and complete lover--a lover like Goethe and his +Faust--rather than like Plato and Dante. Faust, too, passes from +Gretchen to Helen, and partly back again; and Goethe made even more +passages. Had any of them led to something which not only was loved, but +deserved to be loved, which not only could inspire a whole life, but +which ought to inspire it--then we should have had a genuine progress. + +In the next place, Dante talks too much about himself. There is a sense +in which this egotism is a merit, or at least a ground of interest for +us moderns; for egotism is the distinctive attitude of modern philosophy +and of romantic sentiment. In being egotistical Dante was ahead of his +time. His philosophy would have lost an element of depth, and his poetry +an element of pathos, had he not placed himself in the centre of the +stage, and described everything as his experience, or as a revelation +made to himself and made for the sake of his personal salvation. But +Dante’s egotism goes rather further than was requisite, so that the +transcendental insight might not fail in his philosophy. It extended so +far that he cast the shadow of his person not only over the terraces of +purgatory (as he is careful to tell us repeatedly), but over the whole +of Italy and of Europe, which he saw and judged under the evident +influence of private passions and resentments. + +Moreover, the personality thrust forward so obtrusively is not in every +respect worthy of contemplation. Dante is very proud and very bitter; at +the same time, he is curiously timid; and one may tire sometimes of his +perpetual tremblings and tears, of his fainting fits and his intricate +doubts. A man who knows he is under the special protection of God, and +of three celestial ladies, and who has such a sage and magician as +Virgil for a guide, might have looked even upon hell with a little more +confidence. How far is this shivering and swooning philosopher from the +laughing courage of Faust, who sees his poodle swell into a monster, +then into a cloud, and finally change into Mephistopheles, and says at +once: _Das also war des Pudels Kern_! Doubtless Dante was mediaeval, and +contrition, humility, and fear of the devil were great virtues in those +days; but the conclusion we must come to is precisely that the virtues +of those days were not the best virtues, and that a poet who represents +that time cannot be a fair nor an ultimate spokesman for humanity. + +Perhaps we have now reviewed the chief objects that peopled Dante’s +imagination, the chief objects into the midst of which his poetry +transports us; and if a poet’s genius avails to transport us into his +enchanted world, the character of that world will determine the quality +and dignity of his poetry. Dante transports us, with unmistakable power, +first into the atmosphere of a visionary love; then into the history of +his conversion, affected by this love, or by the divine grace identified +with it. The supreme ideal to which his conversion brought him back is +expressed for him by universal nature, and is embodied among men in the +double institution of a revealed religion and a providential empire. To +trace the fortunes of these institutions, we are transported next into +the panorama of history, in its great crises and its great men; and +particularly into the panorama of Italy in the poet’s time, where we +survey the crimes, the virtues, and the sorrows of those prominent in +furthering or thwarting the ideal of Christendom. These numerous persons +are set before us with the sympathy and brevity of a dramatist; yet it +is no mere carnival, no _danse macabre_: for throughout, above the +confused strife of parties and passions, we hear the steady voice, the +implacable sentence, of the prophet that judges them. + +Thus Dante, gifted with the tenderest sense of colour, and the firmest +art of design, has put his whole world into his canvas. Seen there, that +world becomes complete, clear, beautiful, and tragic. It is vivid and +truthful in its detail, sublime in its march and in its harmony. This is +not poetry where the parts are better than the whole. Here, as in some +great symphony, everything is cumulative: the movements conspire, the +tension grows, the volume redoubles, the keen melody soars higher and +higher; and it all ends, not with a bang, not with some casual incident, +but in sustained reflection, in the sense that it has not ended, but +remains by us in its totality, a revelation and a resource for ever. It +has taught us to love and to renounce, to judge and to worship. What +more could a poet do? Dante poetized all life and nature as he found +them. His imagination dominated and focused the whole world. He thereby +touched the ultimate goal to which a poet can aspire; he set the +standard for all possible performance, and became the type of a supreme +poet. This is not to say that he is the “greatest” of poets. The +relative merit of poets is a barren thing to wrangle about. The question +can always be opened anew, when a critic appears with a fresh +temperament or a new criterion. Even less need we say that no greater +poet can ever arise; we may be confident of the opposite. But Dante +gives a successful example of the _highest species_ of poetry. His +poetry covers the whole field from which poetry may be fetched, and to +which poetry may be applied, from the inmost recesses of the heart to +the uttermost bounds of nature and of destiny. If to give imaginative +value to something is the minimum task of a poet, to give imaginative +value to all things, and to the system which things compose, is +evidently his greatest task. + +Dante fulfilled this task, of course under special conditions and +limitations, personal and social; but he fulfilled it, and he thereby +fulfilled the conditions of supreme poetry. Even Homer, as we are +beginning to perceive nowadays, suffered from a certain conventionality +and one-sidedness. There was much in the life and religion of his time +that his art ignored. It was a flattering, a euphemistic art; it had a +sort of pervasive blandness, like that which we now associate with a +fashionable sermon. It was poetry addressed to the ruling caste in the +state, to the conquerors; and it spread an intentional glamour over +their past brutalities and present self-deceptions. No such partiality +in Dante; he paints what he hates as frankly as what he loves, and in +all things he is complete and sincere. If any similar adequacy is +attained again by any poet, it will not be, presumably, by a poet of the +supernatural. Henceforth, for any wide and honest imagination, the +supernatural must figure as an idea in the human mind,--a part of the +natural. To conceive it otherwise would be to fall short of the insight +of this age, not to express or to complete it. Dante, however, for this +very reason, may be expected to remain the supreme poet of the +supernatural, the unrivalled exponent, after Plato, of that phase of +thought and feeling in which the supernatural seems to be the key to +nature and to happiness. This is the hypothesis on which, as yet, moral +unity has been best attained in this world. Here, then, we have the most +complete idealization and comprehension of things achieved by mankind +hitherto. Dante is the type of a consummate poet. + + + * * * * * + +[1] Plato, _Phaedo_,97B-99C, Jowett’s translation. I have changed the +rendering of _νοῡς_ from “mind” to “reason.” + +[2] “Est pro fundamento tenenda veritas historiae et desuper spirituales +expositiones fabricandae.” Thomas Aquinas, _Summa Theologiae_, i. +quaest. 102, conclusio. + +[3] _Paradiso_, xv. 97, 99: + + Fiorenza dentro dalla cerchia antica... + Si stava in pace, sobria e pudica. + + +[4] Ibid., 100-26: + + Non avea catenella, non corona, + Non donne contigiate, non cintura + Che fosse a veder pin che la persona. + Non faceva nascendo ancor paura + La figlia al padre, chè il tempo e la dote + Non fuggan quinci e quindi la misura. + Non avea case di famiglia vote; + Non v’era giunto ancor Sardanapalo + A mostrar ciò che in camera si puote.... + O fortunate! Ciascuna era certa + Delia sua sepoltura, ed ancor nulla + Era per Francia nel letto deserta. + L’ una vegghiava a studio della culla, + E consolando usava l’ idioma + Che prima i padri e le madri trastulla; + L’ altra traendo alia rocca la chioma, + Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia + De’ Troiani, di Fiesole, e di Roma. + + +[5] _Paradiso_, xxxiii. 143-45: + + Volgeva il mio disiro e il _velle,_ + Si come rota ch’ egualmente è mossa, + L’ amor che move il sole e l’ altre stelle. + + +[6] _Vita Nuova_, § 22: Secondo l’ usanza della sopradetta cittade, +donne con donne, e uomini con uomini si adunino a cotale tristizia; +molte donne s’ adunaro colà, ove questa Beatrice piangea pietosamente, +&c. + +Also, _Purgatorio_, xxxi. 50, 51: + + Le belle membra in ch’ io + Rinchiusa fui, e sono in terra sparte. + + +[7] _Vita Nuova_,§ v. + +[8] _Schermo della veritade_,--natural philosophy. + +[9] _Convito_, II. cap. 16: _Faccia che gli occhi d’ esta Donna miri_; +gli occhi di questa Donna sono le sue _dimostrazioni_, le quali dritte +negli occhi dello intelletto inhamorano l’ anima, libera nelle +condizioni. Oh dolcissimi ed ineffabili sembianti, e rubatori subitani +della mente umana, che nelle dimostrazioni negli occhi della Filosofia +apparite, quando essa alli suoi drudi ragiona! Veramente in voi è la +salute, per la quale si fa beato chi vi guarda, e salvo dalla morte +della ignoranza e delli vizi.... E cosi, in fine di questo secondo +Trattato, dico e affermo che la Donna, di cui io innamorai appresso lo +primo amore, fu la bellissima e onestissima figlia dello Imperadore +dell’ universo, alla quale Pittagora pose nome _Filosofia_. + +[10] _Purgatorio_, xvii. 106-11: + + Or perchè mai non può dalla salute + Amor del suo suggetto volger viso, + Dall’ odio proprio son le cose tute: + E perchè intender non si può diviso, + E per sè stante, alcuno esser dal primo, + Da quello odiare ogni affetto è deciso. + + +[11] _Inferno_, iii. 64-66: + + Questi sciaurati, che mai non fur vivi, + Erano ignudi e stimolati molto + Da mosconi e da vespe ch’ erano ivi. + + +[12] _Ibid._, iv. 41, 42: + + Semo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi + Che senza speme vivemo in disio. + +Cf. _Purgatorio_, iii. 37-45, where Virgil says: + + “State contenti, umana gente, al _quia_; + Chè se potuto aveste veder tutto, + Mestier non era partorir Maria; + E disiar vedeste senza frutto + Tai, che sarebbe lor disio quetato, + Ch’eternalmente è dato lor per lutto. + Io dico d’Aristotele e di Plato, + E di molti altri.” E qui chinò la fronte; + E più non disse, e rimase turbato. + + +[13] _Inferno_, ix. 106-33, and x. + +[14] _Ibid_., xxviii. + +[15] _Inferno_, iii. 124-26: + + E pronti sono a trapassar lo rio, + Chè la divina giustizia gli sprona + Si che la tema si volge in disio. + + +[16] _Purgatorio_, xxi. 61-69: + + Della mondizia sol voler fa prova, + Che, tutta libera a mutar convento, + L’alma sorprende, e di voler le giova.... + Ed io che son giaciuto a questa doglia + Cinquecento anni e più, pur mo sentii + Libera volontà di miglior soglia. + + +[17] _Inferno_, xiv. 63-66: + + “O Capaneo, in ciò che non s’ammorza + La tua superbia, se’ tu più punito: + Nullo martirio, fuor che la tua rabbia, + Sarebbe al tuo furor dolor compito.” + + +[18] Alfred de Musset, _Poésies Nouvelles, Souvenir_: + + Dante, pourquoi dis-tu qu’il n’est pire misère + Qu’un souvenir heureux dans les jours de douleur? + Quel chagrin t’a dicté cette parole amère, + Cette offense au malheur? + + ... Ce blasphème vanté ne vient pas de ton cœur. + Un souvenir heureux est peut-être sur terre + Plus vrai que le bonheur.... + + Et c’est à ta Françoise, à ton ange de gloire, + Que tu pouvais donner ces mots à prononcer, + Elle qui s’interrompt, pour conter son histoire, + D’un éternel baiser! + + +[19] _Paradiso_, iii. 73-90: + + “Se disiassimo esser più superne, + Foran discordi li nostri disiri + Dal voler di colui che qui ne cerne,... + E la sua volontate è nostra pace; + Ella è quel mare al qual tutto si move + Ciò ch’ella crea, e che natura face.” + Chiaro mi fu allor com’ ogni dove + In cielo è Paradiso, e sì la grazia + Del sommo ben d’un modo non vi piove. + + +[20] _Paradiso_, xxii. 133-39: + + Col viso ritornai per tutte e quante + Le sette spere, e vidi questo globo + Tal, ch’io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante; + E quel consiglio per migliore approbo + Che l’ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa + Chiamar si puote veramente probo. + + + + + +IV. + + +GOETHE’S FAUST + + + +In approaching the third of our philosophical poets, there is a scruple +that may cross the mind. Lucretius was undoubtedly a philosophical poet; +his whole poem is devoted to expounding and defending a system of +philosophy. In Dante the case is almost as plain. The _Divine Comedy_ is +a moral and personal fable; yet not only are many passages explicitly +philosophical, but the whole is inspired and controlled by the most +definite of religious systems and of moral codes. Dante, too, is +unmistakably a philosophical poet. But was Goethe a philosopher? And is +_Faust_ a philosophical poem? + +If we say so, it must be by giving a certain latitude to our terms. +Goethe was the wisest of mankind; too wise, perhaps, to be a philosopher +in the technical sense, or to try to harness this wild world in a +brain-spun terminology. It is true that he was all his life a follower +of Spinoza, and that he may be termed, without hesitation, a naturalist +in philosophy and a pantheist. His adherence to the general attitude of +Spinoza, however, did not exclude a great plasticity and freedom in his +own views, even on the most fundamental points. Thus Goethe did not +admit the mechanical interpretation of nature advocated by Spinoza. He +also assigned, at least to privileged souls, like his own, a more +personal sort of immortality than Spinoza allowed. Moreover, he +harboured a generous sympathy with the dramatic explanations of nature +and history current in the Germany of his day. Yet such transcendental +idealism, making the world the expression of a spiritual endeavour, was +a total reversal of that conviction, so profound in Spinoza, that all +moral energies are resident in particular creatures, themselves sparks +in an absolutely infinite and purposeless world. In a word, Goethe was +not a systematic philosopher. His feeling for the march of things and +for the significance of great personages and great ideas was indeed +philosophical, although more romantic than scientific. His thoughts upon +life were fresh and miscellaneous. They voiced the genius and learning +of his age. They did not express a firm personal attitude, radical and +unified, and transmissible to other times and persons. For philosophers, +after all, have this advantage over men of letters, that their minds, +being more organic, can more easily propagate themselves. They scatter +less influence, but more seeds. + +If from Goethe we turn to _Faust_--and it is as the author of _Faust_ +only that we shall consider him--the situation is not less ambiguous. In +the play, as the young Goethe first wrote it, philosophy appeared in the +first line,--_Hab nun ach die Philosophey_; but it appeared there, and +throughout the piece, merely as a human experience, a passion or an +illusion, a fund of images or an ambitious art. Later, it is true, under +the spell of fashion and of Schiller, Goethe surrounded his original +scenes with others, like the prologue in heaven, or the apotheosis of +Faust, in which a philosophy of life was indicated; namely, that he who +strives strays, yet in that straying finds his salvation. This idea left +standing all that satirical and Mephistophelian wisdom with which the +whole poem abounds, the later parts no less than the earlier. Frankly, +it was a moral that adorned the tale, without having been the seed of +it, and without even expressing fairly the spirit which it breathes. +_Faust_ remained an essentially romantic poem, written to give vent to a +pregnant and vivid genius, to touch the heart, to bewilder the mind with +a carnival of images, to amuse, to thrill, to humanize; and, if we must +speak of philosophy, there were many express maxims in the poem, and +many insights, half betrayed, that exceeded in philosophic value the +belated and official moral which the author affixed to it, and which he +himself warned us not to take too seriously.[1] + +_Faust_ is, then, no philosophical poem, after an open or deliberate +fashion; and yet it offers a solution to the moral problem of existence +as truly as do the poems of Lucretius and Dante. Heard philosophies are +sweet, but those unheard may be sweeter. They may be more unmixed and +more profound for being adopted unconsciously, for being lived rather +than taught. This is not merely to say what might be said of every work +of art and of every natural object, that it could be made the +starting-point for a chain of inferences that should reveal the whole +universe, like the flower in the crannied wall. It is to say, rather, +that the vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it +dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the +best-chosen words. + +Now _Faust_ is the foam on the top of two great waves of human +aspiration, merging and heaping themselves up together,--the wave of +romanticism rising from the depths of northern traditions and genius, +and the wave of a new paganism coming from Greece over Italy. These are +not philosophies to be read into _Faust_ by the critic; they are +passions seething in the drama. It is the drama of a philosophical +adventure; a rebellion against convention; a flight to nature, to +tenderness, to beauty; and then a return to convention again, with a +feeling that nature, tenderness, and beauty, unless found there, will +not be found at all. Goethe never depicts, as Dante does, the object his +hero is pursuing; he is satisfied with depicting the pursuit. Like +Lessing, in his famous apologue, he prefers the pursuit of the ideal to +the ideal itself; perhaps, as in the case of Lessing, because the hope +of realizing the ideal, and the interest in realizing it, were beginning +to forsake him. + +The case is somewhat as that of Dante would have been if, instead of +recognizing and loving Beatrice at first sight and rising into a vision +of the eternal world, ready-made and perfectly ordered, Dante had passed +from love to love, from _donna gentile_ to _donna gentile_, always +longing for the eyes of Beatrice without ever meeting them. The _Divine +Comedy_ would then have been only human, yet it might have suggested and +required the very consummation that the _Divine Comedy_ depicts; and +without expressing this consummation, our human comedy might have +furnished materials and momentum for it, such that, if ever that +consummation came to be expressed, it would be more deeply felt and more +adequately understood. Dante gives us a philosophical goal, and we have +to recall and retrace the journey; Goethe gives us a philosophic +journey, and we have to divine the goal. + +Goethe is a romantic poet; he is a novelist in verse. He is a +philosopher of experience as it comes to the individual; the philosopher +of life, as action, memory, or soliloquy may put life before each of us +in turn. Now the zest of romanticism consists in taking what you know +is an independent and ancient world as if it were material for your +private emotions. The savage or the animal, who should not be aware of +nature or history at all, could not be romantic about them, nor about +himself. He would be blandly idiotic, and take everything quite +unsuspectingly for what it was in him. The romanticist, then, should be +a civilized man, so that his primitiveness and egotism may have +something paradoxical and conscious about them; and so that his life may +contain a rich experience, and his reflection may play with all +varieties of sentiment and thought. At the same time, in his inmost +genius, he should be a barbarian, a child, a transcendentalist, so that +his life may seem to him absolutely fresh, self-determined, unforeseen, +and unforeseeable. It is part of his inspiration to believe that he +creates a new heaven and a new earth with each revolution in his moods +or in his purposes. He ignores, or seeks to ignore, all the conditions +of life, until perhaps by living he personally discovers them.[2] Like +Faust, he flouts science, and is minded to make trial of magic, which +renders a man’s will master of the universe in which he seems to live. +He disowns all authority, save that mysteriously exercised over him by +his deep faith in himself. He is always honest and brave; but he is +always different, and absolves himself from his past as soon as he has +outgrown or forgotten it. He is inclined to be wayward and foolhardy, +justifying himself on the ground that all experience is interesting, +that the springs of it are inexhaustible and always pure, and that the +future of his soul is infinite. In the romantic hero the civilized man +and the barbarian must be combined; he should be the heir to all +civilization, and, nevertheless, he should take life arrogantly and +egotistically, as if it were an absolute personal experiment. + +This singular combination was strikingly exemplified in Doctor Johannes +Faustus, a figure half historical, half legendary, familiar to Goethe in +his boyhood in puppet-shows and chapbooks. An adventurer in the romantic +as well as in the vulgar sense of the word, somewhat like Paracelsus or +Giordano Bruno, Doctor Faustus had felt the mystery of nature, had +scorned authority, had credited magic, had lived by imposture, and had +fled from the police. His blasphemous boasts and rascally conduct, +together with his magic arts, had made him even in his lifetime a +scandalous and interesting personage. He was scarcely dead when legends +gathered about his name. It was published abroad that he had sold his +soul to the devil, in exchange for twenty-four years of wild pleasures +upon earth. + +This legend purported to offer a terrible and edifying example, a +warning to all Christians to avoid the snares of science, of pleasure, +and of ambition. These things had sent Doctor Faustus into hell-fire; +his corpse, found face downward, could not be turned over upon its back. +Nevertheless, we may suspect that even at the beginning people +recognized in Doctor Faustus a braver brother, a somewhat enviable +reprobate who had dared to relish the good things of this life above the +sad joys vaguely promised for the other. All that the Renaissance valued +was here represented as in the devil’s gift; and the man in the street +might well doubt whether it was religion or worldly life that was +thereby made the more unlovely. Doubtless the Lutheran authors of the +first chapbook felt, and felt rightly, that those fine things which +tempted Faustus were unevangelical, pagan, and popish; yet they could +not cease altogether to admire and even to covet them, especially when +the first ardours of the Old-Christian revival had had time to cool. + +Marlowe, who wrote only a few years later, made a beginning in the +rehabilitation of the hero. His Faustus is still damned, but he is +transformed into the sort of personage that Aristotle approves of for +the hero of tragedy, essentially human and noble, but led astray by some +excusable vice or error. Marlowe’s public would see in Doctor Faustus a +man and a Christian like themselves, carried a bit too far by ambition +and the love of pleasure. He is no radical unbeliever, no natural mate +for the devil, conscienceless and heathen, like the typical villain of +the Renaissance. On the contrary, he has become a good Protestant, and +holds manfully to all those parts of the creed which express his +spontaneous affections. A good angel is often overheard whispering in +his ear; and if the bad angel finally prevails, it is in spite of +continual remorse and hesitation on the Doctor’s part. This excellent +Faustus is damned by accident or by predestination; he is brow-beaten by +the devil and forbidden to repent when he has really repented. The +terror of the conclusion is thereby heightened; we see an essentially +good man, because in a moment of infatuation he had signed away his +soul, driven against his will to despair and damnation. The alternative +of a happy solution lies almost at hand; and it is only a lingering +taste for the lurid and the horrible, ingrained in this sort of +melodrama, that sends him shrieking to hell. + +What makes Marlowe’s conclusion the more violent and the more +unphilosophical is the fact that, to any one not dominated by +convention, the good angel, in the dialogue, seems to have so much the +worse of the argument. All he has to offer is sour admonition and +external warnings: + + _O Faustus, lay that damned book aside,_ + _And gaze not on it lest it tempt thy soul,_ + _And heap God’s heavy wrath upon thy head._ + _Read, read, the Scriptures; that is blasphemy...._ + _Sweet Faustus, think of heaven, and heavenly things._ + +To which the evil angel replies: + + _No, Faustus, think of honour and of wealth._ + +And in another place: + + _Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art,_ + _Wherein all nature’s treasure is contained._ + _Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,_ + _Lord and commander of these elements._ + +There can be no doubt that the devil here represents the natural ideal +of Faustus, or of any child of the Renaissance; he appeals to the vague +but healthy ambitions of a young soul, that would make trial of the +world. In other words, this devil represents the true good, and it is no +wonder if the honest Faustus cannot resist his suggestions. We like him +for his love of life, for his trust in nature, for his enthusiasm for +beauty. He speaks for us all when he cries: + + _Was this the face that launched a thousand ships_ + _And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?_ + +Even his irreverent pranks, being directed against the pope, endear him +the more to an anti-clerical public; and he appeals to courtiers and +cavaliers by his lofty poetical scorn for such crabbed professions as +the law, medicine, or theology. In a word, Marlowe’s Faustus is a martyr +to everything that the Renaissance prized,--power, curious knowledge, +enterprise, wealth, and beauty. + +How thoroughly Marlowe and Goethe are on the way towards reversing the +Christian philosophy of life may be seen if we compare _Faust_ for a +moment (as, in other respects, has often been done) with _The +Wonder-working Magician_ of Calderon. This earlier hero, St. Cyprian of +Antioch, is like Faust in being a scholar, signing away his soul to the +devil, practising magic, embracing the ghost of beauty, and being +ultimately saved. Here the analogy ends. Cyprian, far from being +disgusted with all theory, and particularly with theology, is a pagan +philosopher eagerly seeking God, and working his way, with full faith in +his method, toward Christian orthodoxy. He floors the devil in +scholastic argument about the unity of God, his power, wisdom, and +goodness. He falls in love, and sells his soul merely in the hope of +satisfying his passion. He studies magic chiefly for the same reason; +but magic cannot overrule the free-will of the Christian lady he loves +(a modern and very Spanish one, though supposed to adorn ancient +Antioch). The devil can supply only a false phantasm of her person, and +as Cyprian approaches her and lifts her veil, he finds a hideous +death’s-head beneath; for God can work miracles to cap those of any +magician, and can beat the devil at his own game. Thunderstruck at this +portent, Cyprian becomes a Christian. Half-naked, ecstatic, taken for a +madman, he bears witness loudly and persistently to the power, wisdom, +and goodness of the one true God; and, since the persecution of Decius +is then going on, he is hurried away to martyrdom. His lady, sentenced +also for the same cause, encourages him by her heroic attitude and +words. Their earthly passion is dead; but their souls are united in +death and in immortality. + +In this drama we see magic checkmated by miracles, doubt yielding to +faith, purity resisting temptation, passion transformed into zeal, and +all the glories of the world collapsing before disillusion and +asceticism. These glories are nothing, the poet tells us, but dust, +ashes, smoke, and air. + +The contrast with Goethe’s _Faust_ could not be more complete. Both +poets take the greatest liberties with their chronology, yet the spirit +of their dramas is remarkably true to the respective ages in which they +are supposed to occur. Calderon glorifies the movement from paganism to +Christianity. The philosophy in which that movement culminated--Catholic +orthodoxy--still dominates the poet’s mind, not in a perfunctory way, +but so as to kindle his imagination, and render his personages sublime +and his verses rapturous. Goethe’s _Faust_, on the contrary, glorifies +the return from Christianity to paganism. It shows the spirit of the +Renaissance liberating the soul, and bursting the bonds of traditional +faith and traditional morals. This spirit, after manifesting itself +brilliantly at the time of the historical Faust, had seemed to be +smothered in the great world during the seventeenth century. Men’s +characters and laws had reaffirmed their old allegiance to Christianity, +and the Renaissance survived only abstractly, in scholarship or the fine +arts, to which it continued to lend a certain classic or pseudo-classic +elegance. In Goethe’s time, however, a second Renaissance was taking +place in the souls of men. The love of life, primal and adventurous, was +gathering head in many an individual. In the romantic movement and in +the French Revolution, this love of life freed itself from the politic +compromises and conventions that had been stifling it for two hundred +years. Goethe’s hero embodies this second, romantic emancipation of the +mind, too long an unwilling pupil of Christian tradition. He cries for +air, for nature, for all experience. Cyprian, on the other hand, an +unwilling pupil of paganism, had yearned for truth, for solitude, and +for heaven. + +Such was the legend that, to the great good fortune of mankind, +fascinated the young Goethe, and took root in his fancy. Around it +gathered the experiences and insights of sixty well-filled years: +_Faust_ became the poetical autobiography and the philosophic testament +of Goethe. He stuffed it with every enthusiasm that diversified his own +life, from the great alternative of romantic or classical art, down to +the controversy between Neptunism and Vulcanism in geology, and to his +fatherly admiration for Lord Byron. Yet in spite of the liberties he +took with the legend, and the personal turn he gave it, nothing in its +historical associations escaped him. His life in Frankfort and in +Strassburg had made the mediaeval scene familiar to his fancy; Herder +had communicated to him an imaginative cult for all that was national +and characteristic in art and manners; the spell of Gothic architecture +had fallen on him; and he had learned to feel in Shakespeare the +infinite strength of suggestion in details, in multitudinous glimpses, +in lifelike medleys of sadness and mirth, in a humble realism in +externals, amid lyric and metaphysical outpourings of the passions. The +sense for classic beauty which had inspired Marlowe with immortal lines, +and was later to inspire his own _Helena,_ was as yet dormant; but +instead he had caught the humanitarian craze, then prevalent, for +defending and idealizing the victims of law and society, among others, +the poor girl who, to escape disgrace, did away with her new-born child. +Such a victim of a selfish seducer and a Pharisaical public was to add +a desirable touch of femininity and pathos to the story of Faust: +Gretchen was to take the place, at least for the nonce, of the coveted +Helen. + +This Gretchen was to be no common creature, but one endowed with all the +innocence, sweetness, intelligence, fire, and fortitude which Goethe was +finding, or thought he was finding, in his own Gretchens, Kätchens, and +Frederickes. For the young Goethe, though very learned, was no mere +student of books; to his human competence and power to succeed, he +joined the gusts of feeling, the irresponsible raptures, the sudden +sorrows, of a genuine poet. He was a true lover, and a wayward one. He +could delve into magic with awe, in a Faust-like spirit of adventure; he +could burn offerings in his attic to the rising sun; he could plunge +into Christian mysticism; and there could well up, on occasion, from the +deep store of his unconscious mind, floods of words, of images, and of +tears. He was a genius, if ever there was one; and this genius, in all +its freshness, was poured into the composition of _Faust_,--the most +kindred of themes, the most picturesque and magical of romances. + +In Goethe’s first version of the poem, before the story of Gretchen, we +find the studious Faust, as in Marlowe, soliloquizing on the vanity of +the sciences. They grasp nothing of the genuine truth; they are verbal +shams. They have not even brought Faust fame or riches. Perhaps magic +might do better. The air was full of spirits; could they be summoned to +our aid, possibly the secrets of nature might be unlocked. We might +reach true science, and through it undreamt-of power over the material +world. For Nature, according to Goethe, really has secrets. She is not +all open to eventual inspection; she is no mere mechanism of minute +parts and statable laws. Our last view of her, like our first glimpse, +must be interpreted; from the sum of her manifestations we must divine +her soul. Therefore only a poetic and rhetorical art, like magic, has +any chance of unveiling her, and of bringing us face to face with the +truth. + +In this invocation of spirits, as Goethe’s Faust makes it, there is no +question of selling, or even of risking, the soul. This Faust, unlike +Marlowe’s, has no faith and no fear. From the point of view of the +church he is damned already as an unbeliever; but, as an unbeliever, he +is looking for salvation in another quarter. Like the bolder spirits of +the Renaissance, he is hoping to find in universal nature, infinite, +placid, non-censorious, an escape from the prison-house of Christian +doctrine and Christian law. His magic arts are the sacrament that will +initiate him into his new religion, the religion of nature. He turns to +nature also in another sense, more characteristic of the age of Goethe +than of that of Faust. He longs for grandiose solitudes. He feels that +moonlight, caves, mountains, driving clouds, would be his best medicine +and his best counsellors. The souls of Rousseau, Byron, and Shelley are +pre-incarnate in this Faust, the epitome of all romantic rebellions. +They coexist there with the souls of Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno. The +wild aspects of nature, he thinks, will melt and renew his heart, while +magic reveals the mysteries of cosmic law and helps him to exploit them. + +Full of these hopes, Faust opens his book of magic at the sign of the +Macrocosm: it shows him the mechanism of the world, all forces and +events playing into one another and forming an infinite chain. The +spectacle entrances him; he seems to have attained one of his dearest +ambitions. But here he comes at once upon the other half, or, as Hegel +would call it, the other moment, of the romantic life. Every romantic +ideal, once realized, disenchants. No matter what we attain, our +dissatisfaction must be perpetual. Thus the vision of the universe, +which Faust now has before him, is, he remembers, only a vision; it is a +theory or conception.[3] It is not a rendering of the inner life of the +world as Shakespeare, for instance, feels and renders it. Experience, as +it comes to him who lives and works, is not given by that theoretical +vision; in science experience is turned into so many reviewed events, +the passage of so much substance through so many forms. But Faust does +not want an image or description of reality; he yearns to enact and to +become the reality itself. + +In this new search, he fixes his eye on the sign of the Earth-Spirit, +which seems more propitious to his present wish. This sign is the key to +all experience. All experience tempts Faust; he shrinks from nothing +that any mortal may have endured; he is ready to undertake everything +that any mortal may have done. In all men he would live; and with the +last man he will be content to die.[4] So mighty is his yearning for +experience that the Earth-Spirit is softened and appears at his bidding. +In a red flame he sees its monstrous visage, and his enthusiasm is +turned to horror. Outspread before him is the furious, indiscriminate +cataract of life, the merciless flux, the infinite variety, the absolute +inconstancy of it. This general life is not for any individual to +rehearse; it bursts all bounds of personality. Each man may assimilate +that part only which falls within his understanding, only that aspect +which things wear from his particular angle, and to his particular +interests. _Du gleichst_, the Earth-Spirit cries to him,--_du gleichst +dem Geist den du begreifst, nicht mir._ + +This saying--that the life possible and good for man is the life of +reason, not the life of nature--is a hard one to the romantic, +unintellectual, insatiable Faust. He thinks, like many another +philosopher of feeling, that since his is a part of the sum of +experience, the whole of experience should be akin to his. But in fact +the opposite is far nearer the truth. Man is constituted by his +limitations, by his station contrasted with all other stations, and his +purposes chosen from amongst all other purposes. Any great scope he can +attain must be due to his powers of representation. His understanding +may render him universal; his life never can. Faust, as he hears this +sentence from the departing Earth-Spirit, collapses under it. He feels +impotent to gainsay what the tumult of the world is thundering at him, +but he will not accept on authority so unwelcome and chastening a truth. +All his long experience to come will scarcely suffice to convince him of +it. + +These are the chief philosophical ideas that appear in the two earlier +versions of Goethe’s _Faust_,--the _Urfaust_ and the _Fragment_. What +Mephistopheles says to the young student is only a clever expansion of +what Faust had said in his first monologue about the vanity of science +and of the learned professions. Mephistopheles, too, finds theory +ashen, and the tree of life green and full of golden fruit; only, having +more experience than Faust of the second disenchanting moment in the +romantic dialectic, he foresees that this golden fruit also will turn to +ashes in the mouth, as it did in the garden of Eden. Science is folly, +but life is no better; for after all is not science a part of life? + +When we turn to the first part in its final shape, or to the entire +drama, we find many changes and additions that seem to transform the +romantic picture of the opening scene, and to offer us a rounded +philosophy. The changes, however, are more in expression than in +ultimate substance, and the additions are chiefly new illustrations of +the ancient theme. Critics who study the _Entstehungsgeschichte_ of +works of art help us to analyze them more intelligently and reproduce +more accurately what, at various times, may have been the intention of +their authors. Yet these bits of information would be dearly bought if +we were distracted by them from what gives poetic value and individual +character to the result--its total idiosyncrasy, its place in the moral +world. The place in the moral world of Goethe’s _Faust_ as a whole is +just the place which the opening scene gave it in the beginning. It +fills more space, it touches more historical and poetic matters; but its +centre is the old centre, and its result the old result. It remains +romantic in its pictures and in its philosophy. + +The first addition that promises to throw new light on the idea of the +drama is the _Prologue in Heaven_. In imitation of _The Book of Job_, we +find the morning stars--the three archangels--singing together; and then +follows a very agreeable and humorous conversation between the Lord and +Mephistopheles. The scene is in the style of mediaeval religious plays, +and this circumstance might lead us to suppose that the point at issue +was the salvation of Faust’s soul. But that, in the literal sense, is +far from being the case. As in _Job_, the question is what sentiments +the tempted mortal will maintain during this life, not what fate will +afterwards overtake his disembodied spirit. Dead men, Mephistopheles +observes, do not interest him. He is not a devil from a subterranean +hell, concerned, out of pique or ambition, to increase the population of +tortured shades in that fabulous region. He dwells in the atmosphere of +earth; he knows nothing of the suns or the worlds, the life of man is +his element.[5] He remains--what he was in the first versions of the +play--a part of the Earth-Spirit, one of its embodiments. His particular +office, as we shall see presently, is to precipitate that continual +destruction which is involved in the continual renewal of life. He finds +it very foolish of Faust to demand everything and be satisfied with +nothing; and his wager is that Faust may be brought to demand nothing +and be satisfied with what chance throws in his way, that he shall lick +the dust, and lick it with pleasure,[6] that he shall renounce the +dignity of willing what is not and cannot be, and crawl about, like the +serpent, basking in the comforts of the moment. + +Against this, the Lord pronounces Faust to be his servant,--the servant, +that is, of an ideal,--and declares that whoever strives after an ideal +must needs go astray; yet in his necessary errors, the good man never +misses the right road.[7] In other words, to have an ideal to strive +for, and, like Faust, never to be satisfied, is itself the salvation of +man. Faust does not yet know this. He half believes there is some +concrete and ultimate good beyond, and so is bitter and violent in his +dissatisfaction; but in due season he will come to clearness on this +subject, and understand that only he deserves freedom and life who must +daily win them afresh.[8] Mephistopheles himself, with his mockeries and +seductions, helps to keep the world moving and men wide awake.[9] +Imperfection is all that is possible in the world of action; but the +angels may gather up and fix in thought the perfect forms approached or +suggested by existence.[10] + +In the two earlier versions of _Faust_, Mephistopheles appears without +introduction; we find him amusing himself by giving ambiguous advice to +an innocent scholar, and accompanying Faust in his wanderings. His +mocking tone and miraculous powers mark him at once as the devil of the +legend; but several passages prove that he is a deputy of the +Earth-Spirit evoked by Faust in the beginning. That he should be both +devil and world-demon ought not to surprise the learned.[11] The devils +of popular mediaeval religion were not cut out of whole cloth: they were +simply the Neoplatonic demons of the air, together with the gods of +Olympus and the more ancient chthonic deities, blackened by sectarian +zeal, and degraded by a coarse and timid imagination. Many of these +pagan sprites, indeed, had been originally impish and mischievous, since +not all the aspects of nature are lovely or propitious, nor all the +dreams of men. But as a whole they were without malice in their +irresponsible, elemental life,--winged powers darting through space +between the earth and the moon. They were not dwellers in a subterranean +hell; they were not tormentors nor tormented. Often they swarmed and +sang blithely, as they do in _Faust_ and even in the _Wonder-working +Magician_; and if at other times they croaked or hooted, it was like +frogs and owls, less lovely creatures than humming-birds, but not less +natural. + +One of these less amiable spirits of the atmosphere, especially of its +ambient fire, is the Mephistopheles of Goethe. Why he delighted in evil +rather than in good he himself explains in a profound and ingenious +fashion. Darkness or nothingness, he says, existed alone before the +birth of light. Nothingness or darkness still remains the fundamental +and, to his mind, the better part of that mixture of being and privation +which we call existence. Nothing that exists can be preserved, nor does +it deserve to be; therefore it would have been better if nothing had +ever existed.[12] To deny the value of whatever is, and to wish to +destroy it, according to him, is the only rational ambition; he is the +spirit that denies continually, he is the everlasting No. This +spirit--which we might compare with the Mars of Lucretius--has great +power in the world; every change, in one of its aspects, expresses it, +since in one of its aspects, every change is the destruction of +something. This spirit is always willing evil, for it wills death, with +all the folly, crime, and despair that minister to death. But in willing +evil, it is always accomplishing good; for these evils make for +nothingness, and nothingness is the true good. The famous couplet-- + + _Ein Teil von jener Kraft_ + _Die stets das Böse will, und stets das Gute schafft--_ + +is far from expressing the Hegelian commonplace with which it is usually +identified. It does not mean that destruction serves a good purpose +after all because it clears the way for “something higher.” +Mephistopheles is not one of those philosophers who think change and +evolution a good in themselves. He does not admit that his activity, +while aiming at evil, contributes unintentionally to the good. It +contributes to the good intentionally, because the evil it does is, in +his opinion, less than the evil it cures. He is the cruel surgeon to the +disease of life. + +If he admitted the other interpretation, he would be _ipso facto_ +converted to the view of the Lord in the _Prologue_. His naughtiness +would become, in his own eyes, a needful service in the cause of +life,--a condition of life being really vital and worth living. He might +then continue his sly operations and biting witticisms, without one drop +more of kindness, and yet be sanctioned in everything by the Absolute, +and adopt the smile and halo of the optimist. He would have perceived +that he was the spice of life, the yeast and red pepper of the world, +necessary to the perfect savour of the providential concoction. As it +is, Mephistopheles is far more modest. He says that he wills evil, +because what he wills is contrary to what his victims will; he is the +great contradictor, the blaster of young hopes. Yet he does good, +because these young hopes, if let alone, would lead to misery and +absurdity. His contradiction nips the folly of living in the bud. To be +sure, as he goes on to acknowledge, the destructive power never wins a +decisive victory. While everything falls successively beneath his +sickle, the seeds of life are being scattered perpetually behind his +back. The Lucretian Venus has her innings, as well as the Lucretian +Mars. The eternal see-saw, the ancient flux, continues without end and +without abatement. + +Thus Mephistopheles has a philosophy, and is justified and consistent in +his own eyes; yet in the course of the drama he wears various masks and +has various moods. All he says and does cannot be made altogether +compatible with the essence of his mind, as Goethe finally conceived it. +The dramatic figure of Mephistopheles had been fixed long before in its +graphic characteristics. Mephistopheles, for instance, is extremely old; +he feels older than the universe. There is nothing new for him; he has +no illusions. His feeling for anyone he sees is choked, as happens to +old people, by his feelings for the infinite number of persons he +remembers. He is heartless, because he is impersonal and universal. He +is altogether inhuman; he has not the shames nor the tastes of man. He +often assumes the form of a dog,--it is his favourite mask in this +earthly carnival. He is not averse to the witches’ kitchen, with its +senseless din and obscenity. He puts up good-naturedly with the +grotesque etiquette of the spirit-world, observes all the rules about +signing contracts in blood, knocking thrice, and respecting pentagrams. +Why should he not? Dogs and demons of the air are forms of the +Earth-Spirit as much as man; man has no special dignity that +Mephistopheles should respect. Man’s morality is one of the moralities, +his conventions are not less absurd than the conventions of other +monkeys. Mephistopheles has no prejudice against the snake; he +understands and he despises his cousin, the snake, also. He understands +and he despises himself; he has had time to know himself thoroughly. + +His understanding, however, is not impartial, because he is the advocate +of death; he cannot sympathize with the other half of the Earth-Spirit, +which he does not represent,--the creative, propulsive, enamoured side, +the side that worships the ideal, the love that makes the world go +round. What enchants an ingenuous soul can only amuse Mephistopheles; +what torments it gives him a sardonic satisfaction. Thus he comes to be +in fact a sour and mocking devil. At other times, when he opposes the +silliness and romanticism of Faust, he seems to be the spokesman of all +experience and reason; as when he warns Faust that to be at all you must +be something in particular. Yet even this he says by way of checking and +denying Faust’s passion for the infinite. The soberest truth, when +unwelcome, may seem to the sentimental as diabolical as the most cynical +lie; so that in spite of the very unequal justness of his various +sentiments, Mephistopheles retains his dramatic unity. We recognize his +tone and, under whatever mask, we think him a villain and find him +delightful. + +Such is the spirit, and such are the conditions, in which Faust +undertakes his adventures. He thirsts for all experience, including all +experience of evil; he fears no hell; and he hopes for no happiness. He +trusts in magic; that is, he believes, or is willing to make believe, +that apart from any settled conditions laid down by nature or God, +personal will can evoke the experience it covets by its sheer force and +assurance. His bond with Mephistopheles is an expression of this +romantic faith. It is no bargain to buy pleasures on earth at the cost +of torments hereafter; for neither Goethe, nor Faust, nor Mephistopheles +believes that such pleasures are worth having, or such torments +possible. + +The first taste Faust gets of the world is in Auerbach’s cellar, and he +finds it at once unpalatable. His mature and disdainful mind cannot be +amused by the sodden merriment he sees there. He is without that +simplicity and heartiness which might find even drunken gaiety +attractive; to put up with such follies, one must know nothing, like +Brander, or everything, like Mephistopheles. Faust still feels the +“pathos of distance;” he is acutely conscious of something incomparably +noble just out of reach. In the witches’ kitchen, which he next visits, +pleasure is still more ugly and shallow; here the din is even more +nonsensical, and the fancy more obscene. Yet Faust comes forth with two +points gained in his romantic rehabilitation; he has taken the elixir of +youth and he has seen the image of Helen in a mirror. He is henceforth +in love with ideal beauty, and being young again, he is able to find +ideal beauty in the first woman he sees. + +The great episode of Gretchen follows; and when he leaves her (after the +duel with her brother) to view the wild revels of the Walpurgisnacht, +his youth for a moment catches the contagion of that orgy. His love of +ideal beauty, which remains unsatisfied, saves him, however, from any +lasting illusion. He sees a little red mouse running out of the mouth of +a nymph he is pursuing, and his momentary inclination turns to aversion. +When he goes back to Gretchen in her prison, it is too late for him to +do more than recognize the ruin he has brought about,--Gretchen +dishonoured, her mother poisoned, her brother killed, her child drowned +by her in a pond, and she herself about to be executed. Gretchen, who is +the only true Christian in this poem, refuses to be rescued, because she +wishes to offer her voluntary death in propitiation for her grave, +though almost involuntary, offences. + +This is the end of Faust’s career through the world of private +interests,--the little world,--and we may well ask what has been the +fruit of his experiments so far. What strength or experience has he +amassed for his further adventures? The answer is to be found in the +first scene of the second part, where Goethe reaches his highest potency +as a poet and as a philosopher. We are transported to a remote, +magnificent, virgin country. It is evening, and Faust is lying, weary +but restless, on a flowering hillside. Kindly spirits of nature are +hovering above his head. Ariel, their leader, bids them bring solace to +the troubled hero. It is enough he was unfortunate--they make no +question whether he was a saint or a sinner.[13] The spirits in chorus +then sing four lovely stanzas, one for each watch of the night. The +first invokes peace, forgetfulness, surrender to the healing influence +of sleep. Pity and remorse, they seem to say, in the words of Spinoza, +are evil and vain; failure is incidental; error is innocent. Nature has +no memory; forgive yourself, and you are forgiven. The song of the +second watch merges the unhappy soul again in the infinite incorruptible +substance of nature. The stars, great or little, twinkling or pure, fill +the sky with their ordered peace, and the sea with their trembling +reflection. In this universal circulation there is no private will, no +permanent division. In the next watch we find the plastic stress of +nature beginning to reassert itself; seeds swell, sap mounts up the +thawing branches, buds grow full; everything recovers a fresh +individuality and a tender, untried will. Finally, the song of the +fourth watch bids the flowers open their petals and Faust his eyes. +Forces renewed in repose should tempt a new career. Nature is open to +the brave, to the intelligent; all may be noble, who dare to be so.[14] + +Soothed by these ministrations, Faust awakes full of new strength and +ambition. He watches with rapture the sunlight touch the mountain-tops +and creep down gradually into the valleys. When it reaches him, he +turns to look directly at the sun; but he is dazzled. He seems to +remember the Earth-Spirit that had once allured and then rejected him. +We wish, he says, to kindle our torch of life, and we produce a +conflagration, a monstrous medley of joy and sorrow, love and hate. Let +us turn our backs upon the sun, upon infinite force and infinite +existence. Fitter for our eyes the waterfall over against it, the +torrent of human affairs, broken into a myriad rills. Upon the mists +that rise from it the sunlight paints a rainbow, always vanishing, but +always restored. This is the true image of rational human achievement. +We have our life in the iridescence of the world.[15] Or, as Shelley has +said it for us,-- + + _Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,_ + _Stains the white radiance of eternity,_ + _Until death tramples it to fragments._ + +This death, however, is itself unstable. The Lucretian Venus, by +reshaping our senses and instincts, builds that coloured dome once more. +The rainbow is renewed, as the mists rise again or the wind dies down, +and creation is glorious as on the first day. + +This is Goethe’s theory of rejuvenation and immortality. It is +thoroughly naturalistic. There is a life after death, but only for such +souls as have enough scope to identify themselves with those forms which +nature, in her uncertain oscillations, always tends to reproduce. A deep +mind has deep roots in nature,--it will bloom many times over. But what +a deep mind carries over into its next incarnation--perhaps in some +remote sphere--is not its conventional merits and demerits, its load of +remorse, or its sordid memories. These are washed away in its new +baptism. What remains is only what was deep in that deep mind, so deep +that new situations may again imply and admit it. + +When, after the scene with the Earth-Spirit, Faust thought of suicide, +he regarded it as a means to escape from oppressive conditions and to +begin a fresh life under conditions wholly different and unknown. It was +as if a man in middle life, disgusted with his profession, should +abandon it to take up another. Such a resolution is serious. It +expresses a great dissatisfaction with things as they stand, but it also +expresses a great hope. Death, for Faust, is an adventure, like any +other; and if, contrary to his presumption, this adventure should prove +the last, that, too, is a risk he is willing to run. Accordingly, as he +lifted the poison to his lips, he drank to the dawn, to a new springtime +of existence. It was by no means the saddest nor the weakest moment of +his life.[16] + +Although the sound of an Easter hymn checked him, bringing sentimental +memories of a religion in which he no longer believed, the +transformation scene he looked for was only postponed. There is not much +difference between dying as he had thought to die and living as he was +about to live. Venomous essences, artificially brewed, were hardly +necessary to bring him to a new life; the adventures he was entering +upon were suicidal enough, for he was to strive without hope of +attainment, and to proceed by passionate wilfulness or magic, without +accepting the discipline of art or reason. Now, at the close of the +first part, he has drained this poisoned life to the dregs, and the +fever into which he falls carries him of itself into a new existence. He +is not grown better or more reasonable; he is simply starting afresh, +like a new day or a new person. It contains, however, the fundamental +part of his character; his will remains wayward, but indomitable, and +his achievements remain fruitless. Only he will henceforth be romantic +on a broader stage, that of history and civilization; and his magic +will summon before him illusions somewhat more intellectual, +counterfeits of beauty and of power. His old loves have blown over, like +the storms of a bygone year; and with only a dreamlike memory of his +past errors, he goes forth to meet a new day. + + * * * * * + +Among the allurements which, in the old legend, prompted Faust to sell +his soul to the devil, one was the beauty of woman. The poor recluse, +grown gray among his parchments, had never noticed real women, or had +not found them beautiful. Pedantic child that he was, when he thought of +the beauty of woman, he thought only of Helen of Troy. And Helen, to the +Faust of the legend, was simply what Venus might be to Tannhäuser,--a +woman more ravishing than other ravishing women. She was the supreme +instance of a vulgar thing. The young Goethe, however, who was a poet +and a true German, and loved with his soul, was not attracted by this +ideal. He gave his Faust a tenderer love,--a love of the heart as well +as of the senses. Later, also, when Goethe took up the old legend again +in a more antiquarian spirit, and restored Helen to her place in it, he +transformed her from a symbol of feminine beauty alone into a symbol for +all beauty, and especially for the highest beauty, that of Hellas. The +second love of Faust is the passion for classicism. + +This passion in a romantic age is not so paradoxical as it may sound. +Winckelmann and the philologians were restoring something ancient. It +was the romantic passion for all experience--for the faded experience of +the ancients also--that made, for them, the poetry and the charm of +antiquity. How dignified everything was in those heroic days! How noble, +serene, and abstracted! How pure the blind eyes of statues, how chaste +the white folds of the marble drapery! Greece was a remote, fascinating +vision, the most romantic thing in the history of mankind. The sad, +delicious emotion one felt before a ruined temple was as sentimental as +anything one could feel before a ruined castle, but more elegant and +more choice. It was sentimentality in marble. The heroes of the _Iliad_ +were idealized in the same way as the savages of Rousseau were +idealized, or as the robbers of Schiller. + +The romantic classicism of the Napoleonic era lies between the polite +classicism of the French seventeenth century and the archaeological +classicism of our present Grecians. French classicism had been quite +indifferent to the picturesque aspects of ancient life; it could +tolerate on the stage an Achilles in a periwig and laces. What the +French tragedians had adopted from the ancients was something inward, a +standard of character and motive, or a criterion of taste. They studied +harmony and restraint, not because these had been Greek qualities, but +because they were qualities essentially reasonable and beautiful, +naturally belonging, even in modern times, to a cultivated society and a +cultivated poet. Again, the admiration for Greece which is common in our +time among people of judgement differs from that of Goethe and his age; +for if we admire the artistic expression of ancient life in poetry or +sculpture, we know that these manifestations were made possible by a +long political and moral discipline, and that, in spite of that +discipline, ancient art remained very mixed, and often grotesque and +impure. + +For Goethe, however, as for Byron, Greece was less a past civilization, +to be studied scientifically, than a living idea, a summons to new forms +of art and of sentiment. Goethe was never so romantic as when he was +classical. His distichs are like theatrical gestures; he feels the sweep +of his toga as he rounds them off. His Iphigenia is a sentimental +dream--_verflucht human_, as he himself came to feel; and his Helena is +an evocation of magic, magical not merely by accident and in the story, +but essentially so, in her ghostly semi-consciousness and glassy beauty. +The apparent incongruities of the scenes in which she appears, +surrounded by German knights in the court of a feudal castle, are not +real incongruities. For this Helen is not a thing of the past; she is +the present dream and affectation of things classical in a romantic +era. Faust and his vassals offer Helen the most chivalrous and +exaggerated homage; they introduce her, as a play queen, into their +society. Faust retires with her to Arcadia,--the land of intentional and +mid-summer idleness. Here a son, Euphorion, is born to them, a young +genius, classic in aspect, but wildly romantic and ungovernable in +temper. He scales the highest peaks, pursues by preference the nymphs +that flee from him, loves violence and unreason, and finally, thinking +to fly, falls headlong, like Icarus, and perishes. His last words call +his mother after him, and she follows, leaving her veil and mantle +behind, as Euphorion had left his lyre. On the mantle of Helen, which +swells into a cloud, Faust is borne back again to his native Germany; +its virtue, as he learns, is to lift him above all commonness. + +This long allegory is charming enough, as a series of pictures and +melodies, to leave the reader content not to interpret it; yet the +intention of the poet is clear, if we care to disentangle it. By going +down into the bowels of nature, where the earth goddesses dwell, who are +the first mothers of all life and of all civilizations alike, we may +gather intelligence to comprehend even the most alien existence. Greece, +after such a reversion to the elemental, will appear to us in her +unmatched simplicity and beauty. The vision will be granted us, although +the object we see belongs to a distant past; and if our enthusiasm, +like that of Faust, is passionate and indomitable, we may actually +persuade the Queen of the Dead to yield up Helen that we may wed her. +Our scholarship and philosophy, our faithful imitation of Greek art and +literature, may actually render the Greek scene familiar to us. Yet the +setting of this recovered genius will still be modern; it will become +half modern itself; we shall have to teach Helen to rhyme. The product +of this hybrid inspiration will be a romantic soul in the garb of +classicism, a lovely wild thing, fated to die young. When this +enthusiasm has dashed itself against the hard conditions of life, the +beauty of Greece, that was its mother, will also pale before our eyes. +We shall be, perforce, content to let it return to the realm of +irrevocable past things. Only its garment, the monuments of its art and +thought, will remain to raise us, if we have loved them, above all +vulgarity in taste and in moral allegiance. + +It is an evidence of Goethe’s great wisdom that he felt that romantic +classicism must be subordinated or abandoned; that Helen must evaporate, +while Faust returned to Germany and to the feeling that after all +Gretchen was his true love.[17] At the same time the issue of this +wonderful episode is a little disappointing. At the beginning, the +vision of Helen in a mirror had inspired Faust with renewed enthusiasm. +The sight of her again, in the magic play, had altogether enraptured +and overwhelmed him; and this inspiration had come just when, after the +death of Gretchen, he had resolved to pursue not all experience, as at +first, but rather the best, experience,[18]--a hint that the +transformations of Faust’s will were expected somehow to constitute a +real progress. There was, indeed, among mortals such an infinite need of +this incomparable and symbolic Helen, that it could move the very +guardians of the dead to mercy and to tears. When we remember all this, +we have some reason to expect that a great and permanent improvement in +the life and heart of our hero should follow on his obtaining so rare a +boon. But to live within Arcadia Helen was not needed; any Phyllis would +have served. + +Helen, to be sure, leaves some relics behind, by which we may understand +that the influence of Greek history, literature, and sculpture may still +avail to cultivate the mind and give it an air of distinction. Perhaps +in the commonwealth he is about to found, Faust would wish to establish +not only dykes and freedom, but also professorships of Greek and +archaeological museums. And the lyre of Euphorion, which is also left +us, may signify that poems like Byron’s _Isles of Greece_, Keats’s +_Grecian Urn, Die Götter Griechenlands_ of Schiller, and Goethe’s own +classical pieces will continue to enrich European literature. This is +something, but not enough to lift Faust’s immense enthusiasm for Helen +above a crass illusion. That dream of a perfect beauty to be achieved, +of a perfect life to be lived according to nature and reason, would have +ended in a little scholarship and a little pedantry. Faust would have +won Helen in order to hand her over to Wagner. + +Helen was queen of Sparta; and although of course the Doric Sparta of +Lycurgus was something much later, and had nothing to do with the Sparta +of Homer, yet taken symbolically it is the happiest accident that Helen, +the type of Greek perfection in beauty, should have been queen of +Sparta, the type of Greek perfection in discipline. A Faust that had +truly deserved and understood Helen would have built her an Hellenic +city; he would have become himself an _ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν_, a master of men, +one of those poets in things, those shapers of well-bred generations and +wise laws, of which Plato speaks, contrasting them with Homer and other +poets in words only. For the beauty of mind and body that fascinates the +romantic classicist, and which inspired the ancient poets themselves, +was not a product of idleness and sentimentality, nor of material and +forced activity; it was a product of orderly war, religion, gymnastics, +and deliberate self-government. + +The next turn in Faust’s fortunes actually finds him a trader, a +statesman, an empire-builder; and if such a rolling stone could gather +any moss, we should expect to see here, if anywhere, the fruits of that +“aesthetic education of mankind” which Helen represented. We should +expect Faust, who had lain in the lap of absolute beauty, to understand +its nature. We should expect him, in eager search after perfection, to +establish his state on the distinction between the better and the +worse,--a distinction never to be abolished or obscured for one who has +loved beauty. In other words, he might have established a moral society +founding it on great renunciations and on enlightened heroisms, so that +the highest beauty might really come down and dwell within that city. +But we find nothing of the sort. Faust founds his kingdom because he +must do something; and his only ideal of what he hopes to secure for his +subjects is that they shall always have something to do. Thus the will +to live, in Faust, is not in the least educated by his experience. It +changes its objects because it must; the passions of youth yield to +those of age; and among all the illusions of his life the most fatuous +is the illusion of progress. + +It is characteristic of the absolute romantic spirit that when it has +finished with something it must invent a new interest. It beats the bush +for fresh game; it is always on the verge of being utterly bored. So +now that Helen is flown, Mephistopheles must come to the rescue, like an +amiable nurse, and propose all sorts of pastimes. Frankfort, Leipzig, +Paris, Versailles, are described, with the entertainments that life +there might afford; but Faust, who was always _difficile_, has been +rendered more so by his recent splendid adventures. However, a new +impulse suddenly arises in his breast. From the mountain-top to which +Helen’s mantle has borne him, he can see the German Ocean, with its +tides daily covering great stretches of the flat shore, and rendering +them brackish and uninhabitable. It would be a fine thing to reclaim +those wastes, to plant there a prosperous population. After Greece, +Faust has a vision of Holland. + +This last ambition of Faust’s is as romantic as the others. He feels the +prompting towards political art, as he had felt the prompting towards +love or beauty.[19] The notion of transforming things by his will, of +leaving for ages his mark upon nature and upon human society, fascinates +him;[20] but this passion for activity and power, which some +simple-minded commentators dignify with the name of altruism and of +living for others, has no steady purpose or standard about it.[21] +Goethe is especially lavish in details to prove this point. Magic, the +exercise of an unteachable will, is still Faust’s instrument. +Mephistopheles, by various arts of illusion, secures the triumph of the +emperor in a desperate war which he is carrying on against a justifiable +insurrection. As a reward for the aid rendered, Faust receives the shore +marches in fief. The necessary dykes and canals are built by magic; the +spirits that Mephistopheles commands dig and build them with strange +incantations. The commerce that springs up is also illegitimate: piracy +is involved in it. + +Nor is this all. On some sand-dunes that diversified the original beach, +an old man and his wife, Philemon and Baucis, lived before the advent of +Faust and his improvements. On the hillock, besides their cottage, there +stood a small chapel, with a bell which disturbed Faust in his newly +built palace, partly by its importunate sound, partly by its Christian +suggestions, and partly by reminding him that he was not master of the +country altogether, and that something existed in it not the product of +his magical will. The old people would not sell out; and in a fit of +impatience Faust orders that they should be evicted by force, and +transferred to a better dwelling elsewhere. Mephistopheles and his +minions execute these orders somewhat roughly: the cottage and chapel +are set on fire, and Philemon and Baucis are consumed in the flames, or +buried in the ruins. + +Faust regrets this accident; but it is one of those inevitable +developments of action which a brave man must face, and forget as soon +as possible. He had regretted in the same way the unhappiness of +Gretchen, and, presumably, the death of Euphorion; but such is romantic +life. His will, though shaken, is not extinguished by such +misadventures. He would continue, if life could last, doing things that, +in some respect, he would be obliged to regret: but he would banish that +regret easily, in the pursuit of some new interest, and, on the whole, +he would not regret having been obliged to regret them. Otherwise, he +would not have shared the whole experience of mankind, but missed the +important experience of self-accusation and of self-recovery. + +It is impossible to suppose that the citizens he is establishing behind +leaky dykes, so that they may always have something to keep them busy, +would have given him unmixed satisfaction if he could really have +foreseen their career in its concrete details. Holland is an +interesting country, but hardly a spectacle which would long entrance an +idealist like Faust, so exacting that he has found the arts and sciences +wholly vain, domesticity impossible, and kitchens and beer-cellars +beneath consideration. The career of Faust himself had been far more +free and active than that of his industrious burghers could ever hope to +be. His interest in establishing them is a masterful, irresponsible +interest. It is one more arbitrary passion, one more selfish illusion. +As he had no conscience in his love, and sought and secured nobody’s +happiness, so he has no conscience in his ambition and in his political +architecture; but if only his will is done, he does not ask whether, +judged by its fruits, it will be worth doing. As his immense dejection +at the beginning, when he was a doctor in his laboratory, was not +founded on any real misfortune, but on restlessness and a vague infinite +ambition, so his ultimate satisfaction in his work is not founded on any +good done, but on a passionate wilfulness. He calls the thing he wants +for others good, because he now wants to bestow it on them, not because +they naturally want it for themselves. Incapable of sympathy, he has a +momentary pleasure in policy; and in the last and “highest” expression +of his will, in his statesmanship and supposed public spirit, he remains +romantic and, if need be, aggressive and criminal. + +Meantime, his end is approaching. The smoke from that poor little +conflagration turns into shadowy-shapes of want, guilt, care, and death, +which come and hover about him. Want is kept off by his wealth, and +guilt is transcended by his romantic courage. But care slips through the +keyhole, breathes upon him, and blinds him; while death, though he does +not see it, follows close upon his heels. Nevertheless, the old +man--Faust is in his hundredth year--is undaunted, and all his thoughts +are intent on the future, on the work to which he has set his hand. He +orders the digging to proceed on the canals he is building; but the +spirits that seem to obey him are getting out of hand, and dig his grave +instead. + +When he feels death upon him, Faust has one of his most splendid moments +of self-assertion. He has stormed through the world, he says, taking +with equal thanks the buffets and rewards of fortune;[22] and the last +word of wisdom he has learned is that no man deserves life or freedom +who does not daily win them anew. He will leave the dykes he has thrown +up against the sea to protect the nation he has established; a symbol +that their health and freedom must consist in perpetual striving against +an indomitable foe. The thought of many generations living in that +wholesome danger and labour fills him with satisfaction; he could almost +say to this moment, in which that prospect opens before his mind’s eye, +“Stay, thou art so fair.”[23] And with these words--a last challenge and +mock surrender to Mephistopheles--he sinks into the grave open at his +feet. + +Who has won the wager? Faust has almost, though not quite, pronounced +the words which were to give Mephistopheles the victory; but the sense +of them is new, and Mephistopheles has not succeeded in making Faust +surrender his will to will, his indefinite idealism. Since what +satisfies Faust is merely the consciousness that this will to will is to +be maintained, and that neither he, nor the colonists he has brought +into being, will ever lick the dust, and take comfort, without any +further aspiration, in the chance pleasures of the moment. Faust has +maintained his enthusiasm for a stormy, difficult, and endless life. He +has been true to his romantic philosophy. + +He is therefore saved, in the sense in which salvation is defined in the +_Prologue in Heaven_, and presently again in the song of the angels that +receive his soul when they say: “Whosoever is unflagging in his +striving for ever, him we can redeem.”[24] This salvation does not hang +on any improvement in Faust’s character,--he was sinful to the end, and +had been God’s unwitting servant from the very beginning,--nor does it +lie in any revolution in his fortunes, as if in heaven he were to be +differently employed than on earth. He is going to teach life to the +souls of young boys, who have died too soon to have had in their own +persons any experience of Rathskellers, Gretchens, Helens, and +Walpurgisnachts.[25] Teaching (though not exactly in these subjects) had +been Doctor Faustus’ original profession; and the weariness of it was +what had driven him to magic and almost to suicide, until he had escaped +into the great world of adventure outside. Certainly, with his new +pupils he will not be more content; his romantic restlessness will not +forsake him in heaven. Some fine day he will throw his celestial +school-books out of the window, and with his pupils after him, go forth +to taste life in some windier region of the clouds. + +No, Faust is not saved in the sense of being sanctified or brought to a +final, eternal state of bliss. The only improvement in his nature has +been that he has passed, at the beginning of the second part, from +private to public activities. If, at the end of this part, he expresses +a wish to abandon magic and to live like a man among men, in the bosom +of real nature, that wish remains merely Platonic.[26] It is a thought +that visited Goethe often during his long career, that it is the part of +wisdom to accept life under natural conditions rather than to pretend to +evoke the conditions of life out of the will to live. This thought, were +it held steadfastly, would constitute an advance from transcendentalism +to naturalism. But the spirit of nature is itself romantic. It lives +spontaneously, bravely, without premeditation, and for the sake of +living rather than of enjoying or attaining anything final. And under +natural conditions, the vicissitudes of an endless life would be many; +and there could be no question of an ultimate goal, nor even of an +endless progress in any particular direction. The veering of life is +part of its vitality,--it is essential to romantic irony and to romantic +pluck. + +The secret of what is serious in the moral of _Faust_ is to be looked +for in Spinoza,--the source of what is serious in the philosophy of +Goethe. Spinoza has an admirable doctrine, or rather insight, which he +calls seeing things under the form of eternity. This faculty is +fundamental in the human mind; ordinary perception and memory are cases +of it. Therefore, when we use it to deal with ultimate issues, we are +not alienated from experience, but, on the contrary, endowed with +experience and with its fruits. A thing is seen under the form of +eternity when all its parts or stages are conceived in their true +relations, and thereby conceived together. The complete biography of +Caesar is Caesar seen under the form of eternity. Now the complete +biography of Faust, Faust seen under the form of eternity, shows forth +his salvation. God and Faust himself, in his last moment of insight, see +that to have led such a life, in such a spirit, _was_ to be saved; it +was to be the sort of man a man should be. The blots on that life were +helpful and necessary blots; the passions of it were necessary and +creative passions. To have felt such perpetual dissatisfaction is truly +satisfactory; such desire for universal experience is the right +experience. You are saved in that you lived well; saved not after you +have stopped living well, but during the whole process. Your destiny has +been to be the servant of God. That God and your own conscience should +pronounce this sentence is your true salvation. Your worthiness is +thereby established under the form of eternity. + +The play, in its philosophic development, ends here; but Goethe added +several more details and scenes, with that abundance, that love, of +symbolic pictures and poetic epigrams which characterizes the whole +second part. As Faust expires, or rather before he does so, +Mephistopheles posts one of his little demons at each aperture of the +hero’s body, lest the soul should slip out without being caught. At the +same time a bevy of angels descends, scattering the red roses of love +and singing its praises. These roses, if they touch Mephistopheles and +his demons, turn to balls of fire; and although fire is their familiar +element, they are scorched and scared away. The angels are thus enabled +to catch the soul of Faust at their leisure, and bear it away +triumphantly. + +It goes without saying that this fight of little boys over a fluttering +butterfly cannot be what really determines the issue of the wager and +the salvation of Faust; but Goethe, in his conversations with Eckermann, +justifies this intervention of a sort of mechanical accident, by the +analogy of Christian doctrine. Grace is needed, besides virtue; and the +intercession of Gretchen and the Virgin Mary, like that of the Virgin +Mary, Lucia, and Beatrice, in Dante’s case, and the stratagem of the +balls of fire, all stand for this external condition of salvation. + +This intervention of grace is, at bottom, only a new symbol for the +essential justification, under the form of eternity, of what is +imperfect and insufficient in time. The chequered and wilful life of +Faust is not righteous in any of its parts; yet righteousness is +imputed to it as a whole; divine love accepts it as sufficient; +speculative reason declares that to be the best possible life which, to +humdrum understanding, seems a series of faults and of failures. If the +foretaste of his new Holland fills, from a distance, the dying Faust +with satisfaction, how much more must the wonderful career of Faust +himself deserve to be accepted and envied, and proclaimed to be its own +excuse for being! The faults of Faust in time are not counted against +him in eternity. His crimes and follies were blessings in disguise. Did +they not render his life interesting and fit to make a poem of? Was it +not by falling into them, and rising out of them, that Faust was Faust +at all? This insight is the higher reason, the divine love, supervening +to save him. What ought to be imperfect in time is, because of its +very imperfection there, perfect when viewed under the form of +eternity. To live, to live just as we do, that--if we could only realize +it--is the purpose and the crown of living. We must seek improvement; we +must be dissatisfied with ourselves; that is the appointed attitude, the +histrionic pose, that is to keep the ball rolling. But while we feel +this dissatisfaction we are perfectly satisfactory, and while we play +our game and constantly lose it, we are winning the game for God. + +Even this scene, however, did not satisfy the prolific fancy of the +poet, and he added a final one,--the apotheosis or _Himmelfahrt_ of +Faust. In the Campo Santo at Pisa Goethe had seen a fresco representing +various anchorites dwelling on the flanks of some sacred +mountain,--Sinai, Carmel, or Athos,--each in his little cave or +hermitage; and above them, in the large space of sky, flights of angels +were seen rising towards the Madonna. Through such a landscape the poet +now shows us the soul of Faust carried slowly upwards. + +This scene has been regarded as inspired by Catholic ideas, whereas the +_Prologue in Heaven_ was Biblical and Protestant; and Goethe himself +says that his “poetic intention” could best be rendered by images +borrowed from the tradition of the mediaeval church. But in truth there +is nothing Catholic about the scene, except the names or titles of the +personages. What they say is all sentimental landscape-painting or vague +mysticism, such as might go with any somewhat nebulous piety; and much +is actually borrowed from Swedenborg. What is Swedenborgian, +however,--such as the notion of heavenly instruction, passage from +sphere to sphere, and looking through other people’s eyes,--is in turn a +mere form of expression. The “poetic intention” of the author is, as we +have seen, altogether Spinozitic. Undoubtedly he conceives that the soul +of Faust is to pass, in another world, through some new series of +experiences. But that destiny is not his salvation; it is the +continuance of his trial. The famous chorus at the very end repeats, +with an interesting variation, the same contrast we have seen before +between the point of view of time and that of eternity. Everything +transitory, says the mystic chorus,[27] is only an image; here (that is, +under the form of eternity) the insufficient is turned into something +actual and complete; and what seemed in experience an endless pursuit +becomes to speculation a perfect fulfilment. The ideal of something +infinitely attractive and essentially inexhaustible--the eternal +feminine, as Goethe calls it--draws life on from stage to stage. + +Gretchen and Helen had been symbols of this ideal; Goethe’s green old +age had felt, to the very last, the charm of woman, the sweetness and +the sorrow of loving what he could not hope to possess, and what, in its +ideal perfection, necessarily eludes possession. He had reconciled +himself, not without tears, to this desire without hope, and, like +Piccarda in the _Paradiso_, he had blessed the hand that gave the +passion and denied the happiness.[28] Thus, in dreaming of one +satisfaction and renouncing it, he had found a satisfaction of another +kind. _Faust_ ends on the same philosophical level on which it +began,--the level of romanticism. The worth of life lies in pursuit, not +in attainment; therefore, everything is worth pursuing, and nothing +brings satisfaction--save this endless destiny itself. + +Such is the official moral of _Faust_, and what we may call its general +philosophy. But, as we saw just now, this moral is only an afterthought, +and is far from exhausting the philosophic ideas which the poem +contains. Here is a scheme for experience; but experience, in filling it +out, opens up many vistas; and some of these reveal deeper and higher +things than experience itself. The path of the pilgrim and the inns he +stops at are neither the whole landscape he sees as he travels, nor the +true shrine he is making for. And the incidental philosophy or +philosophies of Goethe’s _Faust_ are, to my mind, often better than its +ultimate philosophy. The first scene of the second part, for instance, +is better, poetically and philosophically, than the last. It shows a +deeper sense for the realities of nature and of the soul, and it is +more sincere. Goethe there is interpreting nature with Spinoza; he is +not dreaming with Swedenborg, nor talking equivocal paradoxes with +Hegel. + +In fact, the great merit of the romantic attitude in poetry, and of the +transcendental method in philosophy, is that they put us back at the +beginning of our experience. They disintegrate convention, which is +often cumbrous and confused, and restore us to ourselves, to immediate +perception and primordial will. That, as it would seem, is the true and +inevitable starting-point. Had we not been born, had we not peeped into +this world, each out of his personal eggshell, this world might indeed +have existed without us, as a thousand undiscoverable worlds may now +exist; but for us it would not have existed. This obvious truth would +not need to be insisted on but for two reasons: one that conventional +knowledge, such as our notions of science and morality afford, is often +top-heavy; asserts and imposes on us much more than our experience +warrants,--our experience, which is our only approach to reality. The +other reason is the reverse or counterpart of this; for conventional +knowledge often ignores and seems to suppress parts of experience no +less actual and important for us as those parts on which the +conventional knowledge itself is reared. The public world is too narrow +for the soul, as well as too mythical and fabulous. Hence the double +critical labour and reawakening which romantic reflection is good +for,--to cut off the dead branches and feed the starving shoots. This +philosophy, as Kant said, is a cathartic: it is purgative and +liberating; it is intended to make us start afresh and start right. + +It follows that one who has no sympathy with such a philosophy is a +comparatively conventional person. He has a second-hand mind. Faust has +a first-hand mind, a truly free, sincere, courageous soul. It follows +also, however, that one who has no philosophy but this has no wisdom; he +can say nothing that is worth carrying away; everything in him is +attitude and nothing is achievement. Faust, and especially +Mephistopheles, do have other philosophies on top of their +transcendentalism; for this is only a method, to be used in reaching +conclusions that shall be critically safeguarded and empirically +grounded. Such outlooks, such vistas into nature, are scattered +liberally through the pages of _Faust_. Words of wisdom diversify this +career of folly, as exquisite scenes fill this tortuous and overloaded +drama. The mind has become free and sincere, but it has remained +bewildered. + +The literary merits of Goethe’s _Faust_ correspond accurately with its +philosophical excellences. In the prologue in the theatre Goethe himself +has described them; much scenery, much wisdom, some folly, great wealth +of incident and characterization; and behind, the soul of a poet singing +with all sincerity and fervour the visions of his life. Here is +profundity, inwardness, honesty, waywardness; here are the most touching +accents of nature, and the most varied assortment of curious lore and +grotesque fancies. This work, says Goethe (in a quatrain intended as an +epilogue, but not ultimately inserted in the play),--this work is like +human life: it has a beginning, it has an end; but it has no totality, +it is not one whole.[29] How, indeed, should we draw the sum of an +infinite experience that is without conditions to determine it, and +without goals in which it terminates? Evidently all a poet of pure +experience can do is to represent some snatches of it, more or less +prolonged; and the more prolonged the experience represented is the more +it will be a collection of snatches, and the less the last part of it +will have to do with the beginning. Any character which we may attribute +to the whole of what we have surveyed would fail to dominate it, if that +whole had been larger, and if we had had memory or foresight enough to +include other parts of experience differing altogether in kind from the +episodes we happen to have lived through. To be miscellaneous, to be +indefinite, to be unfinished, is essential to the romantic life. May we +not say that it is essential to all life, in its immediacy; and that +only in reference to what is not life--to objects, ideals, and +unanimities that cannot be experienced but may only be conceived--can +life become rational and truly progressive? Herein we may see the +radical and inalienable excellence of romanticism; its sincerity, +freedom, richness, and infinity. Herein, too, we may see its +limitations, in that it cannot fix or trust any of its ideals, and +blindly believes the universe to be as wayward as itself, so that nature +and art are always slipping through its fingers. It is obstinately +empirical, and will never learn anything from experience. + + + * * * * * + +[1] Eckermann, Conversation of May 6, 1827: “Das ist zwar ein wirksamer, +manches erklärender, guter Gedanke, aber es ist keine Idee die dem +Ganzen ... zugrunde liege.” + +[2] _Faust_, Part it-i. Act v. 375-82: + + Ich bin nur durch die Welt gerannt; + Ein jed’ Gelüst ergriff ich bei den Haaren, + Was nicht genügte, liess ich fahren, + Was mir entwischte, liess ich ziehn. + Ich habe nur begehrt und nur vollbracht + Und abermals gewünscht und so mit Macht + Mein Leben durchgestürmt; erst gross und mächtig, + Nun aber geht es weise, geht bedächtig. + + +[3] _Faust_, Part i., _Studierzimmer_, i.: + + Welch Schauspiel! aber, ach! ein Schauspiel nur! + Wo fass’ ich dich, unendliche Natur? + Euch, Brüste, wo? + + +[4] _Faust_, Part i., _Studierzimmer_: + + Du, Geist der Erde, bist mir näher; + Schon fühl’ ich meine Kräfte höher, + Schon glüh’ ich wie von neuem Wein; + Ich fühle Mut, mich in die Welt zu wagen, + Der Erde Weh, der Erde Glück zu tragen,... + Mit Stürmen mich herumzuschlagen + Und in des Schiffbruchs Knirschen nicht zu zagen. + + +[5] _Faust, Prolog im Himmel_: + + Mit den Toten + Hab’ ich mich niemals gern befangen. + Am meisten lieb’ ich mir die vollen, frischen Wangen. + Für einen Leichnam bin ich nicht zu Haus; + Mir geht es, wie der Katze mit der Maus.... + Von Sonn’ und Welten weiss ich nichts zu sagen, + Ich sehe nur, wie sich die Menschen plagen. + + +[6] _Faust, Prolog im Himmel_: + + Staub soll er fressen, und mit Lust. + + +[7] Ibid.: + + Es irrt der Mensch, so lang’ er strebt. + Ein guter Mensch in seinem dunkeln Drange + Ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewusst. + + +[8] _Faust_, Part ii. Act v.: + + Ja! diesem Sinne bin ich ganz ergeben. + Das ist der Weisheit letzter Schluss: + Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben, + Der täglich sie erobern muss. + + + +[9] Ibid., Part i., _Prolog im Himmel_: + + Des Menschen Thätigkeit kann allzu leicht erschlaffen, + Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh; + Drum geb’ ich gem ihm den Gesellen zu, + Der reizt und wirkt und muss als Teufel schaffen. + + + +[10] Ibid.: + + Das Werdende, das ewig wirkt und lebt, + Umfass’ euch mit der Liebe holden Schranken, + Und was in schwankender Erscheinung schwebt, + Befestiget mit dauernden Gedanken! + + +[11] _Faust_, Part i., _Wald und Höhle_: + + Erhabner Geist, du gabst mir, gabst mir alles, + Warum ich bat. Du hast mir nicht umsonst + Dein Angesicht im Feuer zugewendet.... + O, dass dem Menschen nichts Vollkommnes wird, + Empfind’ ich nun. Du gabst zu dieser Wonne, + Die mich den Göttern nah und näher bringt, + Mir den Gefährten, &c. + +Also, ibid., _Trüber Tag_: Grosser herrlicher Geist, der du mir zu +erscheinen würdigtest, der du mein Herz kennest und meine Seele, warum +an den Schandgesellen mich Schmieden, der sich am Schaden weidet und am +Verderben sich letzt? + +[12] _Faust_, Part i., _Studierzimmer_, ii.: + + Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint! + Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht, + Ist wert, dass es zu Grunde geht;, + Drum besser wär’s, dass nichts entstünde.... + Ich bin ein Teil des Teils, der anfangs alles war, + Ein Teil der Finsternis, die sich das Licht gebar.... + Was sich dem Nichts entgegenstellt, + Das Etwas, diese plumpe Welt, + So viel als ich schon unternommen, + Ich wusste nicht ihr beizukommen.... + Wie viele hab’ ich schon begraben! + Und immer cirkuliert ein neues, frisches Blut. + So geht es fort, man möchte rasend werden! + + +[13] _Faust_, Part ii. Act i., _Anmutige Gegend_: + + Kleiner Elfen Geistergrösse + Eilet, we sie helfen kann; + Ob er heilig, ob er böse, + Jammert sie der Unglücksmann. + + +[14] _Faust_, Part ii. Act i., _Anmutige Gegend_: + + Alles kann der Edle leisten, + Der versteht und rasch ergreift. + +The whole scene will repay study. + +[15] _Faust_, Part ii. Act i., _Anmutige Gegend_: + + Des Lebens Fackel wollten wir entzünden, + Ein Feuermeer umschlingt uns, welch ein Feuer!... + So bleibe denn die Sonne mir im Rücken! + Der Wassersturz, das Felsenriff durchbrausend, + Ihn schau’ ich an mit wachsendem Entzücken.... + Allein wie herrlich, diesem Sturm erspriessend, + Wolbt sich des bunten Bogens Wechseldauer,... + Der spiegelt ab das menschliche Bestreben.... + Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben. + + +[16] _Faust_, Part i., _Studierzimmer_: + + Ins hohe Meer werd’ ich hinausgewiesen,... + Zu neuen Sphären reiner Thätigkeit.... + Hier ist es Zeit, durch Thaten zu beweisen, + Dass Manneswürde nicht der Götterhöhe weicht,... + Zu diesem Schritt sich heiter zu entschliessen + Und war’ es mit Gefahr, ins Nichts dahin zu fliessen. + + +[17] _Faust_, Part ii. Act iv., _Hochgebirg_: The first monologue. + + +[18] _Faust_, Part i, Act ii., _Anmutige Gegend_: + + Du, Erde,... regst und rührst ein kraftiges Beschliessen + Zum höchsten Dasein immerfort zu streben. + + +[19] _Faust_, Part ii. Act iv., _Hochgebirg_: + + Erstaunenswürdiges soll geraten, + Ich fühle Kraft zu kühnem Fleiss. + Herrschaft gewinn’ ich, Eigentum! + Die That ist alles, nichts der Ruhm. + Da wagt mein Geist, sich selbst zu überfliegen; + Hier möcht’ ich kämpfen, dies möcht’ ich besiegen. + + +[20] Ibid., Act v., _Grosser Vorhof des Palasts_: + + Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdetagen + Nicht in Aeonen untergehn. + + +[21] _Faust_, Part ii. Act iv., _Hochgebirg_: + + Wer befehlen soll + Muss im Befehlen Seligkeit empfinden. + Ihm ist die Brust von hohem Willen voll, + Doch was er will, es darf’s kein Mensch ergründen. + + +[22] _Faust_, Part ii. Act v., _Mitternacht_: + + Ich bin nur durch die Welt gerannt: + Ein jed’ Gelüst ergriff ich bei den Haaren, + Was nicht genügte, liess ich fahren, + Was mich entwischte, liess ich ziehn. + + +[23] _Faust_, Part ii. Act v., _Grosser Vorhof des Palasts_: + + Solch ein Gewimmel möcht ich sehn, + Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volke stehn. + Zum Augenblicke dürft’ ich sagen: + Verweile doch, du bist so schön! + + +[24] _Faust_, Part ii. Act v., _Himmel_: + + Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, + Den konnen wir erlösen. + + +[25] Ibid.: + + Wir wurden früh entfernt + Von Lebechören; + Doch dieser hat gelernt, + Er wird uns lehren. + + +[26] _Faust_, Part ii. Act v., _Mitternacht_: + + Noch hab’ ich mich ins Freie nicht gekämpft. + Könnt ich Magie von meinem Pfad entfernen, + Die Zaubersprüche ganz und gar verlernen, + Stünd’ ich, Natur, vor dir ein Mann allein. + Da wär’s der Mühe wert, ein Mensch zu sein. + + +[27] _Faust_, Part ii, Act v., _Himmel_: + + Alles Vergängliche + Ist nur ein Gleichnis; + Das Unzulängliche, + Hier wird’s Ereignis; + Das Unbeschreibliche, + Hier ist es gethan; + Das Ewig-Weibliche + Zieht uns hinan. + + +[28] Cf. _Trilogie der Leidenschaft_, 1823: + + Mich treibt umher ein unbezwinglich Sehnen; + Da bleibt kein Rat als grenzenlose Thränen.... + Und so das Herz erleichtert merkt behende + Dass es noch lebt und schlägt und möchte schlagen,... + Da fühlte sich--o, dass es ewig bliebe!-- + Das Doppelglück der Töne wie der Liebe. + + +[29] _Aus dem Nachlass, Abkündigung:_ + + Des Menschen Leben ist ein ähnliches Gedicht; + Es hat wohl einen Anfang, hat ein Ende, + Allein ein Ganzes ist es nicht. + + + + + +V + + +CONCLUSION + + +It may be possible, after studying these three philosophical poets, to +establish some comparison between them. By a comparison is not meant a +discussion as to which of our poets is the best. Each is the best in his +way, and none is the best in every way. To express a preference is not +so much a criticism as a personal confession. If it were a question of +the relative pleasure a man might get from each poet in turn, this +pleasure would differ according to the man’s temperament, his period of +life, the language he knew best, and the doctrine that was most familiar +to him. By a comparison is meant a review of the analysis we have +already made of the type of imagination and philosophy embodied in each +of the poets, to see what they have in common, how they differ, or what +order they will fall into from different points of view. Thus we have +just seen that Goethe, in his _Faust_, presents experience in its +immediacy, variety, and apparent groundlessness; and that he presents it +as an episode, before and after which other episodes, differing from it +more and more as you recede, may be conceived to come. There is no +possible totality in this, for there is no known ground. Turn to +Lucretius, and the difference is striking. Lucretius is the poet of +substance. The ground is what he sees everywhere; and by seeing the +ground, he sees also the possible products of it. Experience appears in +Lucretius, not as each man comes upon it in his own person, but as the +scientific observer views it from without. Experience for him is a +natural, inevitable, monotonous round of feelings, involved in the +operations of nature. The ground and the limits of experience have +become evident together. + +In Dante, on the other hand, we have a view of experience also in its +totality, also from above and, in a sense, from outside; but the +external point of reference is moral, not physical, and what interests +the poet is what experience is best, what processes lead to a supreme, +self-justifying, indestructible sort of existence. Goethe is the poet of +life; Lucretius the poet of nature; Dante the poet of salvation. Goethe +gives us what is most fundamental,--the turbid flux of sense, the cry of +the heart, the first tentative notions of art and science, which magic +or shrewdness might hit upon. Lucretius carries us one step farther. Our +wisdom ceases to be impressionistic and casual. It rests on +understanding of things, so that what happiness remains to us does not +deceive us, and we can possess it in dignity and peace. Knowledge of +what is possible is the beginning of happiness. Dante, however, carries +us much farther than that. He, too, has knowledge of what is possible +and impossible. He has collected the precepts of old philosophers and +saints, and the more recent examples patent in society around him, and +by their help has distinguished the ambitions that may be wisely +indulged in this life from those which it is madness to foster,--the +first being called virtue and piety and the second folly and sin. What +makes such knowledge precious is not only that it sketches in general +the scope and issue of life, but that it paints in the detail as +well,--the detail of what is possible no less than that (more familiar +to tragic poets) of what is impossible. + +Lucretius’ notion, for instance, of what is positively worth while or +attainable is very meagre: freedom from superstition, with so much +natural science as may secure that freedom, friendship, and a few cheap +and healthful animal pleasures. No love, no patriotism, no enterprise, +no religion. So, too, in what is forbidden us, Lucretius sees only +generalities,--the folly of passion, the blight of superstition. Dante, +on the contrary, sees the various pitfalls of life with intense +distinctness; and seeing them clearly, and how fatal each is, he sees +also why men fall into them, the dream that leads men astray, and the +sweetness of those goods that are impossible. Feeling, even in what we +must ultimately call evil, the soul of good that attracts us to it, he +feels, in good all its loveliness and variety. Where, except in Dante, +can we find so many stars that differ from other stars in glory; so +many delightful habitations for excellences; so many distinct beauties +of form, accent, thought, and intention; so many delicacies and +heroisms? Dante is the master of those who know by experience what is +worth knowing by experience; he is the master of _distinction_. + +Here, then, are our three poets and their messages: Goethe, with human +life in its immediacy, treated romantically; Lucretius, with a vision of +nature and of the limits of human life; Dante, with spiritual mastery of +that life, and a perfect knowledge of good and evil. + +You may stop at what stage you will, according to your sense of what is +real and important; for what one man calls higher another man calls +unreal; and what one man feels to be strength smells rank to another. In +the end, we should not be satisfied with any one of our poets if we had +to drop the other two. It is true that taken formally, and in respect to +their type of philosophy and imagination, Dante is on a higher plane +than Lucretius, and Lucretius on a higher plane than Goethe. But the +plane on which a poet dwells is not everything; much depends on what he +brings up with him to that level. Now there is a great deal, a very +great deal, in Goethe that Lucretius does not know of. Not knowing of +it, Lucretius cannot carry this fund of experience up to the +intellectual and naturalistic level; he cannot transmute this abundant +substance of Goethe’s by his higher insight and clearer faith; he has +not woven so much into his poem. So that while to see nature, as +Lucretius sees it, is a greater feat than merely to live hard in a +romantic fashion, and produces a purer and more exalted poem than +Goethe’s magical medley, yet this medley is full of images, passions, +memories, and introspective wisdom that Lucretius could not have dreamed +of. The intellect of Lucretius rises, but rises comparatively empty; his +vision sees things as a whole, and in their right places, but sees very +little of them; he is quite deaf to their intricacy, to their birdlike +multiform little souls. These Goethe knows admirably; with these he +makes a natural concert, all the more natural for being sometimes +discordant, sometimes overloaded and dull. It is necessary to revert +from Lucretius to Goethe to get at the volume of life. + +So, too, if we rise from Lucretius to Dante, there is much left behind +which we cannot afford to lose. Dante may seem at first sight to have a +view of nature not less complete and clear than that of Lucretius; a +view even more efficacious than materialism for fixing the limits of +human destiny and marking the path to happiness. But there is an +illusion here. Dante’s idea of nature is not genuine; it is not +sincerely put together out of reasoned observation. It is a view of +nature intercepted by myths and worked out by dialectic. Consequently, +he has no true idea either of the path to happiness or of its real +conditions. His notion of nature is an inverted image of the moral +world, cast like a gigantic shadow upon the sky. It is a mirage. + +Now, while to know evil, and especially good, in all their forms and +inward implications is a far greater thing than to know the natural +conditions of good and evil, or their real distribution in space and +time, yet the higher philosophy is not safe if the lower philosophy is +wanting or is false. Of course it is not safe practically; but it is not +safe even poetically. There is an attenuated texture and imagery in the +_Divine Comedy_. The voice that sings it, from beginning to end, is a +thin boy-treble, all wonder and naïveté. This art does not smack of +life, but of somnambulism. The reason is that the intellect has been +hypnotized by a legendary and verbal philosophy. It has been unmanned, +curiously enough, by an excess of humanism; by the fond delusion that +man and his moral nature are at the centre of the universe. Dante is +always thinking of the divine order of history and of the spheres; he +believes in controlling and chastening the individual soul; so that he +seems to be a cosmic poet, and to have escaped the anthropocentric +conceit of romanticism. But he has not escaped it. For, as we have seen, +this golden cage in which his soul sings is artificial; it is +constructed on purpose to satisfy and glorify human distinctions and +human preferences. The bird is not in his native wilds; man is not in +the bosom of nature. He is, in a moral sense, still at the centre of the +universe; his ideal is the cause of everything. He is the appointed lord +of the earth, the darling of heaven; and history is a brief and +prearranged drama, with Judea and Rome for its chief theatre. + +Some of these illusions are already abandoned; all are undermined. +Sometimes, in moments when we are unnerved and uninspired, we may +regret the ease with which Dante could reconcile himself to a world, so +imagined as to suit human fancy, and flatter human will. We may envy +Dante his ignorance of nature, which enabled him to suppose that he +dominated it, as an infinite and exuberant nature cannot be dominated +by any of its parts. In the end, however, knowledge is good for the +imagination. Dante himself thought so; and his work proved that he was +right, by infinitely excelling that of all ignorant contemporary poets. +The illusion of knowledge is better than ignorance for a poet; but the +reality of knowledge would be better than the illusion; it would +stretch the mind over a vaster and more stimulating scene; it would +concentrate the will upon a more attainable, distinct, and congenial +happiness. The growth of what is known increases the scope of what may +be imagined and hoped for. Throw open to the young poet the infinity of +nature; let him feel the precariousness of life, the variety of +purposes, civilizations, and religions even upon this little planet; +let him trace the triumphs and follies of art and philosophy, and their +perpetual resurrections--like that of the downcast Faust. If, under the +stimulus of such a scene, he does not some day compose a natural comedy +as much surpassing Dante’s divine comedy in sublimity and richness as +it will surpass it in truth, the fault will not lie with the subject, +which is inviting and magnificent, but with the halting genius that +cannot render that subject worthily. + +Undoubtedly, the universe so displayed would not be without its dark +shadows and its perpetual tragedies. That is in the nature of things. +Dante’s cosmos, for all its mythical idealism, was not so false as not +to have a hell in it. Those rolling spheres, with all their lights and +music, circled for ever about hell. Perhaps in the real life of nature +evil may not prove to be so central as that. It would seem to be rather +a sort of inevitable but incidental friction, capable of being +diminished indefinitely, as the world is better known and the will is +better educated. In Dante’s spheres there could be no discord whatever; +but at the core of them was eternal woe. In the star-dust of our physics +discords are everywhere, and harmony is only tentative and approximate, +as it is in the best earthly life; but at the core there is nothing +sinister, only freedom, innocence, inexhaustible possibilities of all +sorts of happiness. These possibilities may tempt future poets to +describe them; but meantime, if we wish to have a vision of nature not +fundamentally false, we must revert from Dante to Lucretius. + +Obviously, what would be desirable, what would constitute a truly +philosophical or comprehensive poet, would be the union of the insights +and gifts which our three poets have possessed. This union is not +impossible. The insights may be superposed one on the other. Experience +in all its extent, what Goethe represents, should be at the foundation. +But as the extent of experience is potentially infinite, as there are +all sorts of worlds possible and all sorts of senses and habits of +thought, the widest survey would still leave the poet, where Goethe +leaves us, with a sense of an infinity beyond. He would be at liberty to +summon from the limbo of potentiality any form that interested him; +poetry and art would recover their early freedom; there would be no +beauties forbidden and none prescribed. For it is a very liberating and +sublime thing to summon up, like Faust, the image of _all_ experience. +Unless that has been done, we leave the enemy in our rear; whatever +interpretations we offer for experience will become impertinent and +worthless if the experience we work upon is no longer at hand. Nor will +any construction, however broadly based, have an _absolute_ authority; +the indomitable freedom of life to be more, to be new, to be what it has +not entered into the heart of man as yet to conceive, must always remain +standing. With that freedom goes the modesty of reason, both in physics +and in morals, that can lay claim only to partial knowledge, and to the +ordering of a particular soul, or city, or civilization. + +Poetry and philosophy, however, are civilized arts; they are proper to +some particular genius, which has succeeded in flowering at a particular +time and place. A poet who merely swam out into the sea of sensibility, +and tried to picture all possible things, real or unreal, human or +inhuman, would bring materials only to the workshop of art; he would not +be an artist. To the genius of Goethe he must add that of Lucretius and +Dante. + +There are two directions in which it seems fitting that rational art +should proceed, on the basis which a limited experience can give it. Art +may come to buttress a particular form of life, or it may come to +express it. All that we call industry, science, business, morality, +buttresses our life; it informs us about our conditions and adjusts us +to them; it equips us for life; it lays out the ground for the game we +are to play. This preliminary labour, however, need not be servile. To +do it is also to exercise our faculties; and in that exercise our +faculties may grow free,--as the imagination of Lucretius, in tracing +the course of the atoms, dances and soars most congenially. One +extension of art, then, would be in the direction of doing artistically, +joyfully, sympathetically, whatever we have to do. Literature in +particular (which is involved in history, politics, science, affairs) +might be throughout a work of art. It would become so not by being +ornate, but by being appropriate; and the sense of a great precision and +justness would come over us as we read or wrote. It would delight us; it +would make us see how beautiful, how satisfying, is the art of being +observant, economical, and sincere. The philosophical or comprehensive +poet, like Homer, like Shakespeare, would be a poet of business. He +would have a taste for the world in which he lived, and a clean view of +it. + +There remains a second form of rational art, that of expressing the +ideal towards which we would move under these improved conditions. For +as we react we manifest an inward principle, expressed in that reaction. +We have a nature that selects its own direction, and the direction in +which practical arts shall transform the world. The outer life is for +the sake of the inner; discipline is for the sake of freedom, and +conquest for the sake of self-possession. This inner life is wonderfully +redundant; there is, namely, very much more in it than a consciousness +of those acts by which the body adjusts itself to its surroundings. _Am +farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben_; each sense has its arbitrary +quality, each language its arbitrary euphony and prosody; every game has +its creative laws, every soul its own tender reverberations and secret +dreams. Life has a margin of play which might grow broader, if the +sustaining nucleus were more firmly established in the world. To the art +of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well. To +play with nature and make it decorative, to play with the overtones of +life and make them delightful, is a sort of art. It is the ultimate, the +most artistic sort of art, but it will never be practised successfully +so long as the other sort of art is in a backward state; for if we do +not know our environment, we shall mistake our dreams for a part of it, +and so spoil our science by making it fantastic, and our dreams by +making them obligatory. The art and the religion of the past, as we see +conspicuously in Dante, have fallen into this error. To correct it would +be to establish a new religion and a new art, based on moral liberty and +on moral courage. + +Who shall be the poet of this double insight? He has never existed, but +he is needed nevertheless. It is time some genius should appear to +reconstitute the shattered picture of the world. He should live in the +continual presence of all experience, and respect it; he should at the +same time understand nature, the ground of that experience; and he +should also have a delicate sense for the ideal echoes of his own +passions, and for all the colours of his possible happiness. All that +can inspire a poet is contained in this task, and nothing less than this +task would exhaust a poet’s inspiration. We may hail this needed genius +from afar. Like the poets in Dante’s limbo, when Virgil returns among +them, we may salute him, saying: _Onorate l’altissimo poeta_. Honour the +most high poet, honour the highest possible poet. But this supreme poet +is in limbo still. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE PHILOSOPHICAL POETS *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following +the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use +of the Project Gutenberg trademark. 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