My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 10

In this state of mind, of which one especially finds a proof in his earlier poems, the philosophy of Locke, which is that professed at Cambridge, and which he had already skimmed, as it were, together with other philosophical systems, became his study. It only added an enormous weight in the way of contradictions to the already heavy weight of doubt.

Could it be otherwise? Does not Locke teach that all ideas being the creation of the senses, the notion of G.o.d, unless aided by tradition, has no other basis but our senses and the sight of the external world?

If this be not the doctrine professed by Locke, it is the reading which a logical mind may give to it.

He believes in G.o.d; yet the notion of G.o.d, as it appears from his philosophical teaching, is not that which is taught by Christian doctrine. According to him, G.o.d is not even proclaimed to be the Creator of the Universe. But even were He proclaimed such, what would be the result of this philosophical condescension, unless it be that G.o.d is distinct from the world? Would G.o.d possess then all those attributes which reason, independently of all philosophy, points to in the Divinity? Would power, goodness, infinite perfection be G.o.d's? Certainly not: as we are unable to know Him except through a world of imperfections, where good and evil, order and confusion, are mixed together, and not by the conception of the infinite, which alone can give us a true and perfect idea of G.o.d, it follows that G.o.d would be much superior to the world, but would not be absolute perfection.

After this depreciation of the Omnipotent, what says this philosophy of our soul? It does away altogether with one of the essential proofs of its spiritual nature, and thereby compromises the soul itself, declaring as it does, that "it is not unlikely that matter is capable of thought."

But then of what necessity would the soul be, if the body can think? How hope for immortality, if that which thinks is subject to dissolution and to death?

As for our liberty, it would be annihilated as a consequence of such doctrines; for it is not supposed to derive its essence from the interior activity of the soul, but would seem to be limited to our power of moving. Yet we are hourly experiencing what our weakness is in comparison with the power of the laws of nature, which rule us in every sense and way. In making, therefore, all things derivable from sensations, Locke fell from one error into another, and nearly arrived at that point when duty and all principles of justice and morality might be altogether denied. Being himself, however, both good, honest, liberal, and Christian-minded, he could only save himself from the social wreck to which he exposed others, by stopping on the brink of the abyss which he had himself created, and by becoming in practice inconsistent with his speculative notions. His successors, such as Condillac and Cabanis, fell by following his system and by carrying it too far.

A doctrine which denies the right of discovering, or of explaining the religious truths which are the grounds of all moral teaching, and which allows tradition the privilege only of bestowing faith; a system of metaphysics, which can not avoid the dangers in which morality must perish, owing to its contradictions and its inconsistencies, must be perilous for all but those happily const.i.tuted minds for whom simple faith and submission are a part of their essence, who believe on hearsay and seek not to understand, but merely glance at the surface of the difficult and venturesome questions which are discussed before them, either because they feel their weakness, or because the light of revelation shines upon them so strongly as to make that of reason pale.

For more logical minds, however, for such who are inquisitive, whose reason is both anxious and exacting, who want to understand before they believe, for whom the ties which linked them to tradition have been loosened, owing to their having reflected on a number of contradictions (the least of which, in the case of Lord Byron, was decidedly not that of seeing such a philosophy professed and adopted in a clerical university); for minds like these such doctrines must necessarily lead to atheism. Though Lord Byron's mind was one of these, he escaped the fearful results by a still greater effort of his reason, which made him reject the precepts of the sensualists, and comprehend their inconsistencies.

His protest against the doctrines of the sensualists is entered in his memorandum, where, after naming all the authors of the philosophical systems which he had read, and, coming to the head of that school, he exclaims from the bottom of his heart:

"Hobbes! I detest him!"

And notwithstanding the respect with which the good and great Locke must individually have inspired him, he evidently must have repudiated his precepts, inasmuch as they were not strong enough to uproot from his mind the religious truths which reason proclaims, nor prevent either his coming out of his philosophical struggle a firm believer in all the dogmas which are imperiously upheld to the human reason, or his proclaiming his belief in one G.o.d and Creator, in our free will, and in the immortality of the soul.

This glorious and n.o.ble victory of his mind and true religious tendencies at that time, is evinced in his "Prayer to Nature," written when he had not yet reached his eighteenth year. In this beautiful prayer, which his so-called orthodox friends succeeded in having cut out of the volume containing his earliest poems, we find both great power of contemplation and humility and confidence in prayer--a soul too near the Creator to doubt of His Omnipotence, but also too far from Him for his faith and confidence in the divine mercy not to be mixed up with a little fear; in fact, all the essential elements of a n.o.ble prayer which is not orthodox. Though written on the threshold of life, he might, with few modifications, have signed it on the eve of his death; when, still young, fate had spared him nothing, from the sweetest to the bitterest feelings, from every deserved pleasure to every undeserved pain.

THE PRAYER OF NATURE.

Father of Light! great G.o.d of Heaven!

Hear'st thou the accents of despair?

Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven?

Can vice atone for crimes by prayer?

Father of Light, on thee I call!

Thou seest my soul is dark within; Thou who canst mark the sparrow's fall, Avert from me the death of sin.

No shrine I seek, to sects unknown; Oh, point to me the path of truth!

Thy dread omnipotence I own; Spare, yet amend, the faults of youth.

Let bigots rear a gloomy fane, Let superst.i.tion hail the pile, Let priests, to spread their sable reign, With tales of mystic rites beguile.

Shall man confine his Maker's sway To Gothic domes of mouldering stone?

Thy temple is the face of day; Earth, ocean, heaven, thy boundless throne.

Shall man condemn his race to h.e.l.l, Unless they bend in pompous form?

Tell us that all, for one who fell, Must perish in the mingling storm?

Shall each pretend to reach the skies, Yet doom his brother to expire, Whose soul a different hope supplies, Or doctrines less severe inspire?

Shall these, by creeds they can't expound, Prepare a fancied bliss or woe?

Shall reptiles, grovelling on the ground, Their great Creator's purpose know?

Shall those who live for self alone, Whose years float on in daily crime-- Shall they by faith for guilt atone, And live beyond the bounds of Time?

Father! no prophet's laws I seek,-- _Thy_ laws in Nature's works appear;-- I own myself corrupt and weak, Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear!

Thou, who canst guide the wandering star Through trackless realms of aether's s.p.a.ce; Who calm'st the elemental war, Whose hand from pole to pole I trace:

Thou, who in wisdom placed me here, Who, when thou wilt, canst take me hence, Ah! while I tread this earthly sphere, Extend to me thy wide defence.

To Thee, my G.o.d, to thee I call!

Whatever weal or woe betide, By thy command I rise or fall, In thy protection I confide.

If, when this dust to dust's restored, My soul shall float on airy wing, How shall thy glorious name adored Inspire her feeble voice to sing!

But, if this fleeting spirit share With clay the grave's eternal bed, While life yet throbs I raise my prayer, Though doom'd no more to quit the dead.

To Thee I breathe my humble strain, Grateful for all thy mercies past, And hope, my G.o.d, to thee again This erring life may fly at last.

_December 29, 1806._ [First published, 1830.]

As much may be said of another poem which he likewise wrote in his youth; when, very dangerously ill, and believing his last end to be near, he turned all his thoughts to the other world, and conceived the touching poem which ended in the lines:--

"Forget this world, my restless sprite; Turn, turn thy thoughts to Heaven; There must thou soon direct thy flight If errors are forgiven."

But if Lord Byron did not adopt Locke's philosophy he at least paid the greatest tribute of regard to his goodness by following ever more closely his best precept, which is to the effect that to love truth for the sake of truth is an essential part of human perfection in this world, and the fertile soil on which is sown the seed of every virtue.

While his mind thus wavered between a thousand contradictory opinions, and, finding part of the truth only in every philosophical system which he examined, but not the whole truth--which was what his soul thirsted for; calling himself at times skeptic, because he hesitated in adhering to one school, in consequence of the numerous errors and inconsistencies common to all (the great school which has, to the honor of France, harmonized them all, was not yet open); but not losing sight of the great eternal truths of which he felt inwardly the proofs, he made the acquaintance of a young man who had just completed his university education with great success. This young man, who exercised a great influence over all his fellow-students, owing to his superior intellect, influenced Byron in a similar manner. Bold, logical, inflexible, he was not swayed by the dangers which the sensualistic teaching presented to all logical minds; dangers which had frightened the chief of that school himself, and who, in wishing to oppose them, had not been able to do so except by contradictions. This young man, by a n.o.ble inconsistency, drew back in presence of the moral conclusions of that metaphysical doctrine, but not without culling from the master's thoughts conclusions, such that they leave all that is spiritual and immortal without defense, together with all the legitimate inferences to be derived from the principles he taught, however impious or absurd.

Among the Germans he had likewise met with several bold doctrines; but, merely to speak here of the conclusions to which the school he belonged necessarily brought him, he arrived at those conclusions by a series of deductions from the study of those great questions, which experience always ends by referring either to reason or to revelation. Compelled by the tenets of that school, to solve all these problems by means of the sensations only, he was naturally led to the conclusion that no such thing existed as the spirituality of the soul, and hence, that it had neither the gift of immortality nor that of liberty, nor any principles of morality. Finally, obliged to seek in tradition the conviction that a G.o.d existed, and that He can only be perceived through a maze of imperfections, and not as reason conceives Him clearly and simply with all His necessary attributes of perfection, he was even led to the necessity of losing sight of a Creator altogether.

The fatal precipice, which this young student himself avoided by the practical conclusions by which he abided, Byron likewise escaped both by his conclusions and his theoretical notions. He even hated the name of atheist to that degree, that at Harrow he wished to fight his companion Lord Althorpe, because he had written the word atheist under Byron's name. This is so true that Sir Robert Dallas, of whose judgment no interpretation can ever be given without making allowances for the intolerant spirit and the exaggeration required by his notions of orthodoxy and by his party prejudices, after regretting that Lord Byron should not have had a shield during his minority to protect him against his comrades, "proud, free-thinking, and acute sophists," as he calls them, adds that, if surprise must be expressed, it is not that Byron should have erred, but that he should have pierced the clouds which surrounded him, and have dispersed them by the sole rays of his genius.

So many struggles, however, so many contradictions, so many strains upon the mind, while leaving his heart untouched, could not but multiply the doubts which he conceived, and more or less modify his mind, and even give to it a tinge of skepticism.

When he left England for the first time, his mind was in this transitory, suffering state. The various countries which he visited, the various creeds with which he became acquainted the intolerance of the one, the laxity in others in direct opposition to their superst.i.tious and irrational practices; the truly touching piety which he found in the Greek monasteries (at Zytza and at Athens), in the midst of which and in the silence of whose cloisters, he loved to share the peace and even the austerities of a monkish life; his transition from the Western countries, where reason is placed above imagination, to the East, where the opposite is aimed at--all contributed to prevent what was vacillating in his mind from becoming settled. Meanwhile endless disappointments, bitter sorrows, and broken illusions contributed their share to the pain which his mind experienced at every stage of its philosophical inquiry, and contributed to give him, in the loneliness of his life, a tinge of misanthropy opposed to his natural character, which suggested the rather philosophical and generous than prudent conception of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," where he depicts his hero as intellectually imbued with philosophical doctrines which lead practical minds to skepticism and materialism! These doctrines resulted in causing "Childe Harold" to lose that traditional faith which gives peace to the soul by insuring conviction to the mind. The poet shows the impossibility of withdrawing himself from their disastrous results when arrived at the age when pa.s.sions a.s.sert their rule, and when in a certain social position, they must be carried into practice. Nature not having gifted him with a sufficiently generous heart to check the disease of his mind, Childe Harold, _disgusted with the sins of his youth_, no longer seeks the road to virtue, but begins to experience with Solomon the vanity of human things, becomes a prey to satiety, ennui, and to insensibility to both physical and moral worth.

Byron, who made the intellectual education of his day responsible for Childe Harold's faults, had conceived this character in his earliest days at Harrow. It was in any case, he said, a characteristic of the youth of those days, although idealized and drawn from his own imagination. His enemies and his rivals have endeavored to prove that he wished to describe in this poem the state of his own mind. They made capital out of a few historical and local circ.u.mstances, to give to their falsehood some appearance of truth. But only those who did not know him personally could be ignorant how improbable it was that any resemblance between the poet and his hero could be maintained.

Let us confine ourselves to the remark that Lord Byron, instead of personifying his hero, personifies no one but simply the poet. Let us add, besides, that in no case could Lord Byron be made responsible for the consequences of the doctrines of the materialists, as held by his hero. Not only because of his nature, which was totally opposed to them, but also and especially because of his tendencies, which were eminently and persistently those of a spiritualist, and which clung to him throughout his life even at the time when he was accused of skepticism.

This was at the time when he wrote the second canto of "Childe Harold."

Thoughts, little in unison with, if not entirely opposed to his intimate convictions, sprang from his sick heart to his head: his soul became dejected, and his copious tears so obscured his eyes as to veil from them for a time the existence of the Almighty, which he seemed to question; and he appeared to think that if the Cambridge philosophy was right in doubting the soul's spirituality, its immortality might be equally questioned. These doubts having been expressed in his own, and not in his hero's name, at the outset of the second canto of "Childe Harold," led to his being also accused of skepticism.

But if pain actually paralyzed for a time the elasticity of his mind, the latter very soon recovered its natural vigor and showed itself in all its glowing energy in the eighth and ninth stanzas, which are most delicate emanations from a beautiful soul. The first stanzas alone, however, continued to occupy the attention of some orthodox and over-scrupulous minds: poetry not necessarily being a mode of teaching philosophy. We must besides remark that the meaning of the lines is purely hypothetical. In _saying_ that the soul might _not be immortal_, is it not saying much the same as was said by Locke in the words _the soul is perhaps spiritual_? Is not that perishable which is capable of dissolution according to the laws of the world? Lord Byron, though a stanch spiritualist at heart, derived his doubts from other much less exalted authorities. Believing implicitly in the omnipotence of the Creator, could he not modestly fear that G.o.d, who had made his soul out of nothing, might cause it to return to nothing? Might he not imagine that the contrary belief was rather the result of our wishes, of our pride, and of the importance which we love to attach to ourselves? Can the conviction of the existence of immortality, unless founded upon revelation, be any thing else but a hope or a sentiment? Pantheists alone find immortality to be the fatal consequence of their presumptuous doctrine. But what an immortality! One to be laughed at, as a philosopher of our days so well expresses it.

Accused of skepticism, Byron replied by explaining the meaning of his lines in a note which, at the instance of Mr. Dallas, he also consented to suppress with his habitual good-nature, and in which he endeavored to show that the spirit which pervaded the whole of the poem was rather one of discouragement and despair, than raillery at religion, and that, after all, the effect of religion upon the world had been less to make men love their equals than to excite the various sects to a hatred against one another, and thus give rise to those fanatical wars which have caused so much bloodshed and injured so deeply the cause which they were intended to defend.

In reading this note again, one can with difficulty make out what Dallas's objections were, and why he tried so hard to have it suppressed; for it savors much more of a spirit of toleration and charity than of skepticism. Lord Byron nevertheless withdrew it.

But this was not enough to satisfy the British straight-lacedness. As the accusations against his skepticism were on the increase daily, Mr.

Gifford, for whose enlightened opinion Byron ever had great respect, advised him to be more prudent, whereupon Byron replied:--

"I will do as you advise in regard to religious matters. The best would perhaps be to avoid them altogether. Certainly the pa.s.sages already published are rather too rigorously interpreted. I am no bigot of incredulity, and I did not expect that I should be accused of denying the existence of G.o.d, because I had expressed some doubts as to the immortality of the soul.... After all, I believe my doubts to be but the effects of some mental illness."