A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 10

92.

All my own experience of life teaches me the _contempt_ of cunning, not the _fear_. The phrase "profound cunning" has always seemed to me a contradiction in terms. I never knew a cunning mind which was not either shallow, or on some point diseased. People dissemble sometimes who yet hate dissembling, but a "cunning mind" emphatically delights in its own cunning, and is the ready prey of cunning. That "pleasure in deceiving and aptness to be deceived" usually go together, was one of the wise sayings of the wisest of men.

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93.

It was a saying of Paracelsus, that "Those who would understand the course of the heavens above must first of all recognise the heaven in man:" meaning, I suppose, that all pursuit of knowledge which is not accompanied by praise of G.o.d and love of our fellow-creatures must turn to bitterness, emptiness, foolishness. We must imagine him to have come to this conclusion only late in life.

Browning, in that wonderful poem of Paracelsus,-a poem in which there is such a profound far-seeing philosophy, set forth with such a luxuriance of ill.u.s.tration and imagery, and such a wealth of glorious eloquence, that I know nothing to be compared with it since Goethe and Wordsworth,-represents his aspiring philosopher as at first impelled solely by the appet.i.te to _know_. He asks nothing of men, he despises them; but he will serve them, raise them, after a sort of G.o.d-like fashion, independent of their sympathy, scorning their applause, using them like instruments, cheating them like children,-all for their good; but it will not do. In Aprile, "who would love infinitely, and be beloved," is figured the type of the poet-nature, desiring only beauty, resolving all into beauty; while in Paracelsus we have the type of the reflecting, the inquiring mind desiring only knowledge, resolving all into knowledge, asking nothing more to crown his being. And both find out their mistake; both come to feel that love without knowledge is blind and weak, and knowledge without love barren and vain.

"I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE, Excluding love as thou refused'st knowledge; Still thou hast beauty and I power. We wake!

Are we not halves of one dissever'd world, Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part?-Never!

Till thou, the lover, know, and I, the knower, Love-until both are saved!"

After all, perhaps, only the same old world-renowned myth in another form-the marriage of Cupid and Psyche; Love and Intelligence long parted, long suffering, again embracing, and lighted on by Beauty to an immortal union. But to return to our poet. Aprile, exhausted by his own aimless, dazzling visions, expires on the bosom of him who knows; and Paracelsus, who began with a selfsufficing scorn of his kind, dies a baffled and degraded man in the arms of him who loves;-yet wiser in his fall than through his aspirations, he dies trusting in the progress of humanity so long as humanity is content to be _human_; to _love_ as well as to _know_;-to fear, to hope, to worship, as well as to aspire.

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94.

Lord Bacon says: "I like a plantation (in the sense of colony) in a _pure_ soil; that is, where people are not displanted to the end to plant in others: for else it is rather an extirpation than a plantation." (Bacon, who wrote this, counselled to James I. the plantation of Ulster exactly on the principle he has here deprecated.)

He adds, "It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the sc.u.m of people, and wicked condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant"

(_i. e._ colonise). And it is only now that our politicians are beginning to discover and act upon this great moral truth and obvious fitness of things!-like Bacon, adopting practically, and from mere motives of expediency, a principle they would theoretically abjure!

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95.

Because in real life we cannot, or do not, reconcile the high theory with the low practice, we use our wit to render the theory ridiculous, and our reason to reconcile us to the practice. We ought to do just the reverse.

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Many would say, if they spoke the truth, that it had cost them a life-long effort to unlearn what they had been taught.

For as the eye becomes blinded by fashion to positive deformity, so through social conventionalism the conscience becomes blinded to positive immorality.

It is fatal in any mind to make the moral standard for men high and the moral standard for women low, or _vice versa_. This has appeared to me the very commonest of all mistakes in men and women who have lived much in the world, but _fatal_ nevertheless, and in three ways; first, as distorting the moral ideal, so far as it exists in the conscience; secondly, as perplexing the bounds, practically, of right and wrong; thirdly, as being at variance with the spirit and principles of Christianity. Admit these premises, and it follows inevitably that such a mistake is _fatal_ in the last degree, as disturbing the consistency and the elevation of the character, morally, practically, religiously.

Akin to this mistake, or identical with it, is the belief that there are essential masculine and feminine virtues and vices. It is not, in fact, the quality itself, but the modification of the quality, which is masculine or feminine: and on the manner or degree in which these are balanced and combined in the individual, depends the perfection of that individual character-its approximation to that of Christ. I firmly believe that as the influences of religion are extended, and as civilisation advances, those qualities which are now admired as essentially _feminine_ will be considered as essentially _human_, such as gentleness, purity, the more unselfish and spiritual sense of duty, and the dominance of the affections over the pa.s.sions. This is, perhaps, what Buffon, speaking as a naturalist, meant, when he said that with the progress of humanity, "_Les races se feminisent_;" at least I understand the phrase in this sense.

A man who requires from his own s.e.x manly direct truth, and laughs at the cowardly subterfuges and small arts of women as being _feminine_;-a woman who requires from her own s.e.x tenderness and purity, and thinks ruffianism and sensuality pardonable in a man as being _masculine_,-these have repudiated the Christian standard of morals which Christ, in his own person, bequeathed to us-that standard which we have accepted as Christians-theoretically at least-and which makes no distinction between "the highest, holiest manhood," and the highest, holiest womanhood.

I might ill.u.s.trate this position not only scripturally but philosophically, by quoting the axiom of the Greek philosopher Antisthenes, the disciple of Socrates,-"The virtue of the man and the woman is the same;" which shows a perception of the moral truth, a sort of antic.i.p.ation of the Christian doctrine, even in the pagan times. But I prefer an ill.u.s.tration which is at once practical and poetical, and plain to the most prejudiced among men or women.

Every reader of Wordsworth will recollect, if he does not know by heart, the poem ent.i.tled "The Happy Warrior." It has been quoted often as an epitome of every manly, soldierly, and elevated quality. I have heard it applied to the Duke of Wellington. Those who make the experiment of merely subst.i.tuting the word _woman_ for the word _warrior_, and changing the feminine for the masculine p.r.o.noun, will find that it reads equally well; that almost from beginning to end it is literally as applicable to the one s.e.x as to the other. As thus:-

CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WOMAN.

Who is the happy _woman_? Who is _she_ That every _woman_ born should wish to be?

It is the generous spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, had wrought Upon the plan that pleased _her_ childish thought; Whose high endeavours are an inward light, That make the path before _her_ always bright: Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn; Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, But makes _her_ moral being _her_ prime care; Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, And Fear, and Sorrow, miserable train!

Turns _that_ necessity to glorious gain; In face of these doth exercise a power Which is our human nature's highest dower: Controls them and subdues, trans.m.u.tes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives; By objects, which might force the soul to abate _Her_ feeling, rendered more compa.s.sionate; Is placable-because occasions rise So often that demand such sacrifice; More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure As tempted more; more able to endure, As more exposed to suffering and distress; Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.

'Tis _she_ whose law is reason; who depends Upon that law as on the best of friends; Whence in a state where men are tempted still To evil for a guard against worse ill, And what in quality or act is best, Doth seldom on a right foundation rest, _She_ fixes good on good alone, and owes To virtue every triumph that _she_ knows.

Who, if _she_ rise to station of command, Rises by open means; and there will stand On honourable terms, or else retire.

Who comprehends _her_ trust, and to the same Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim; And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state; Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall Like showers of manna, if they come at all: Whose powers shed round _her_ in the common strife Or mild concerns of ordinary life, A constant influence, a peculiar grace; But who, if _she_ be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issue, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a lover; and attired With sudden brightness, like to one inspired; And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what _she_ foresaw; Or if an unexpected call succeed, Come when it will, is equal to the need!

In all these fifty-six lines there is only one line which cannot be feminised in its significance,-that which I have filled up with asterisks, and which is totally at variance with our ideal of A HAPPY WOMAN. It is the line-

"And in himself possess his own desire."

No woman could exist happily or virtuously in such complete independence of all external affections as these words express. "Her desire is to her husband,"-this is the sort of subjection prophesied for the daughters of Eve. A woman doomed to exist without this earthly rest for her affections, does not "in herself possess her own desire;" she turns towards G.o.d; and if she does not make her life a life of worship, she makes it a life of charity, (which in itself is worship,) or she dies a spiritual and a moral death. Is it much better with the man who concentrates his aspirations in himself? I should think not.

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Swift, as a man and a writer, is one of those who had least sympathy with women; and I have sometimes thought that the exaggeration, even to morbidity, of the coa.r.s.e and the cruel in his character, arose from this want of sympathy; but his strong sense showed him the one great moral truth as regards the two s.e.xes, and gave him the courage to avow it.

He says, "I am ignorant of any one quality that is amiable in a woman which is not equally so in a man. I do not except even modesty and gentleness of nature; nor do I know one vice or folly which is not equally detestable in both." Then, remarking that cowardice is an _infirmity_ generally allowed to women, he wonders that they should fancy it becoming or graceful, or think it worth improving by affectation, particularly as it is generally allied to cruelty.

Here is a pa.s.sage from one of Humboldt's letters, which I have seen quoted with sympathy and admiration, as applied to the manly character only:-

"Masculine independence of mind I hold to be in reality the first requisite for the formation of a character of real manly worth. The man who suffers himself to be deceived and carried away by his own weakness, may be a very amiable person in other respects, but cannot be called a good man; such beings should not find favour in the eyes of a woman, for a truly beautiful and purely feminine nature should be attracted only by what is highest and n.o.blest in the character of man."

Now we will take this bit of moral philosophy, and, without the slightest alteration of the context, apply it to the female character.

"Feminine independence of mind I hold to be in reality the first requisite for the formation of a character of real feminine worth. The woman who allows herself to be deceived and carried away by her own weakness may be a very amiable person in other respects, but cannot be called a good woman; such beings should not find favour in the eyes of a man, for the truly beautiful and purely manly nature should be attracted only by what is highest and n.o.blest in the character of woman."

After reading the above extracts, does it not seem clear, that by the exclusive or emphatic use of certain phrases and epithets, as more applicable to one s.e.x than to the other, we have introduced a most un-christian confusion into the conscience, and have prejudiced it early against the acceptance of the larger truth?

It might seem, that where we reject the distinction between masculine and feminine virtues, one and the same type of perfection should suffice for the two s.e.xes; yet it is clear that the moment we come to consider the personality, the same type will not suffice: and it is worth consideration that when we place before us the highest type of manhood, as exemplified in Christ, we do not imagine him as the father, but as the son; and if we think of the most perfect type of womanhood, we never can exclude the mother.