The Ethics of the Dust Part 20

DORA. That is very kindly said for us. Some people would not allow so much as that girls had any minds to know.

L. They will at least admit that you have minds to change, Dora.

MARY. You might have left us the last speech, without a retouch.

But we'll put our little minds, such as they are, in the best trim we can, for to-morrow.

LECTURE 10.

THE CRYSTAL REST

Evening. The fireside. L's arm-chair in the comfortablest corner.

L. (perceiving various arrangements being made of footstool, cushion, screen, and the like.) Yes, yes, it's all very fine! and I am to sit here to be asked questions till supper-time, am I?

DORA. I don't think you can have any supper to-night:--we've got so much to ask.

LILY. Oh, Miss Dora! We can fetch it him here, you know, so nicely!

L. Yes, Lily, that will be pleasant, with compet.i.tive examination going on over one's plate: the compet.i.tion being among the examiners. Really, now that I know what teasing things girls are, I don't so much wonder that people used to put up patiently with the dragons who took THEM for supper. But I can't help myself, I suppose;--no thanks to St. George. Ask away, children, and I'll answer as civilly as may be.

DORA. We don't so much care about being answered civilly, as about not being asked things back again.

L. "Ayez seulement la patience que je le parle." There shall be no requitals.

DORA. Well, then, first of all--What shall we ask first, Mary?

MARY. It does not matter. I think all the questions come into one, at last, nearly.

DORA. You know, you always talk as if the crystals were alive; and we never understand how much you are in play, and how much in earnest. That's the first thing.

L. Neither do I understand, myself, my dear, how much I am in earnest. The stones puzzle me as much as I puzzle you. They look as if they were alive, and make me speak as if they were; and I do not in the least know how much truth there is in the appearance.

I'm not to ask things back again to-night, but all questions of this sort lead necessarily to the one main question, which we asked, before, in vain, "What is it to be alive?"

DORA. Yes; but we want to come back to that: for we've been reading scientific books about the "conservation of forces," and it seems all so grand, and wonderful; and the experiments are so pretty; and I suppose it must be all right: but then the books never speak as if there were any such thing as "life."

L. They mostly omit that part of the subject, certainly, Dora; but they are beautifully right as far as they go; and life is not a convenient element to deal with. They seem to have been getting some of it into and out of bottles, in their "ozone" and "antizone" lately; but they still know little of it: and, certainly, I know less.

DORA. You promised not to be provoking, to-night.

L. Wait a minute. Though, quite truly, I know less of the secrets of life than the philosophers do; I yet know one corner of ground on which we artists can, stand, literally as "Life Guards" at bay, as steadily as the Guards at Inkermann; however hard the philosophers push. And you may stand with us, if once you learn to draw nicely.

DORA. I'm sure we are all trying! but tell us where we may stand.

L. You may always stand by Form, against Force. To a painter, the essential character of anything is the form of it, and the philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell you, for instance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorific energy (or whatever else they like to call it), in a tea-kettle as in a Gier-eagle. Very good; that is so; and it is very interesting. It requires just as much heat as will boil the kettle, to take the Gier-eagle up to his nest; and as much more to bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. But we painters, acknowledging the equality and similarity of the kettle and the bird in all scientific respects, attach, for our part, our princ.i.p.al interest to the difference in their forms. For us the primarily cognizable facts, in the two things, are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak, the one a lid on its back, the other a pair of wings,--not to speak of the distinction also of volition which the philosophers may properly call merely a form or mode of force,--but then, to an artist, the form or mode, is the gist of the business. The kettle chooses to sit still on the hob, the eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of the choice, not the equal degree of temperature in the fulfillment of it, which appears to us the more interesting circ.u.mstance--though the other is very interesting too. Exceedingly so! Don't laugh children, the philosophers have been doing quite splendid work lately, in their own way especially, the transformation of force into light is a great piece of systematized discovery and this notion about the sun being supplied with his flame by ceaseless meteoric hail is grand, and looks very likely to be true. Of course, it is only the old gunlock,--flint and steel,--on a large scale but the order and majesty of it are sublime. Still, we sculptors and painters care little about it. "It is very fine," we say, "and very useful, this knocking the light out of the sun, or into it, by an eternal cataract of planets. But you may hail away, so, forever, and you will not knock out what we can. Here is a bit of silver, not the size of half-a-crown, on which, with a single hammer stroke, one of us, two thousand and odd years ago, hit out the head of the Apollo of Clazomenas. It is merely a matter of form; but if any of you philosophers, with your whole planetary system to hammer with, can hit out such another bit of silver as this,--we will take off our hats to you. For the present, we keep them on."

MARY. Yes, I understand; and that is nice; but I don't think we shall any of us like having only form to depend upon.

L. It was not neglected in the making of Eve, my dear.

MARY. It does not seem to separate us from the dust of the ground.

It is that breathing of the life which we want to understand.

L. So you should: but hold fast to the form, and defend that first, as distinguished from the mere transition of forces.

Discern the molding hand of the potter commanding the clay, from his merely beating foot, as it turns the wheel. If you can find incense, in the vase, afterwards,--well: but it is curious how far mere form will carry you ahead of the philosophers. For instance, with regard to the most interesting of all their modes of force-- light;--they never consider how far the existence of it depends on the putting of certain vitreous and nervous substances into the formal arrangement which we call an eye. The German philosophers began the attack, long ago, on the other side, by telling us, there was no such thing--as light at all, unless we chose to see it: now, German and English, both, have reversed their engines, and insist that light would be exactly the same light that it is, though n.o.body could ever see it. The fact being that the force must be there, and the eyes there; and "light" means the effect of the one on the other;--and perhaps, also--(Plato saw farther into that mystery than any one has since, that I know of),--on something a little way within the eyes; but we may stand quite safe, close behind the retina, and defy the philosophers.

SIBYL. But I don't care so much about defying the philosophers, if only one could get a clear idea of life, or soul, for one's self.

L. Well, Sibyl, you used to know more about it, in that cave of yours, than any of us. I was just going to ask you about inspiration, and the golden bough, and the like; only I remembered I was not to ask anything. But, will not you, at least, tell us whether the ideas of Life, as the power of putting things together, or "making" them; and of Death, as the power of pushing things separate, or "unmaking" them, may not be very simply held in balance against each other?

SIBYL. No, I am not in my cave to-night; and cannot tell you anything.

L. I think they may. Modern Philosophy is a great separator; it is little more than the expansion of Moliere's great sentence, "Il s'ensuit de la, que tout ce qu'ily a de beau est dans les dictionnaires; il n'y a que les mots qui sont transposes." But when you used to be in your cave, Sibyl, and to be inspired, there was (and there remains still in some small measure), beyond the merely formative and sustaining power, another, which we painters call "pa.s.sion"--I don't know what the philosophers call it; we know it makes people red, or white; and therefore it must be something, itself; and perhaps it is the most truly "poetic" or "making" force of all, creating a world of its own out of a glance, or a sigh: and the want of pa.s.sion is perhaps the truest death, or "unmaking" of everything;--even of stones. By the way, you were all reading about that ascent of the Aiguille Verte, the other day?

SIBYL. Because you had told us it was so difficult, you thought it could not be ascended.

L Yes, I believed the Aiguille Verte would have held its own. But do you recollect what one of the climbers exclaimed, when he first felt sure of reaching the summit.

SIBYL. Yes, it was, "Oh, Aiguille Verte, vous etes morte, vous etes morte!"

L. That was true instinct. Real philosophic joy. Now, can you at all fancy the difference between that feeling of triumph in a mountain's death; and the exultation of your beloved poet, in its life--

"Quantus Athos, aut quantus Eryx, aut ipse coruscis Quum fremit ilicibus quantus, gaudetque nivali Vertice, se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras."

DORA. You must translate for us mere housekeepers, please-- whatever the carekeepers may know about it.

MAY. I'll try then to?

L. No Dryden is a far way worse than nothing, and n.o.body will "do"

You can't translate it. But this is all you need know, that the lines are full of a pa.s.sionate sense of the Apennines' fatherhood, or protecting power over Italy; and of sympathy with, their joy in their snowy strength in heaven, and with the same joy, shuddering through all the leaves of their forests.

MARY. Yes, that is a difference indeed, but then, you know, one can't help feeling that it is fanciful. It is very delightful to imagine the mountains to be alive; but then,--are they alive?

L. It seems to me, on the whole, Mary, that the feelings of the purest and most mightily pa.s.sioned human souls are likely to be the truest. Not, indeed, if they do not desire to know the truth, or blind themselves to it that they may please themselves with pa.s.sion; for then they are no longer pure: but if, continually seeking and accepting the truth as far as it is discernible, they trust their Maker for the integrity of the instincts. He has gifted them with, and rest in the sense of a higher truth which they cannot demonstrate, I think they will be most in the right, so.

DORA and JESSIE (clapping their hands). Then we really may believe that the mountains are living?

L. You may at least earnestly believe that the presence of the spirit which culminates in your own life, shows itself in dawning, wherever the dust of the earth begins to a.s.sume any orderly and lovely state. You will find it impossible to separate this idea of gradated manifestation from that of the vital power. Things are not either wholly alive, or wholly dead. They are less or more alive. Take the nearest, most easily examined instance--the life of a flower. Notice what a different degree and kind of life there is in the calyx and the corolla. The calyx is nothing but the swaddling clothes of the flower; the child-blossom is bound up in it, hand and foot; guarded in it, restrained by it, till the time of birth. The sh.e.l.l is hardly more subordinate to the germ in the egg, than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last; but it never lives as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its task is fulfilled, as in the poppy; or wither gradually, as in the b.u.t.tercup; or persist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose; or harmonize itself so as to share in the aspect of the real flower, as in the lily; but it never shares in the corolla's bright pa.s.sion of life. And the gradations which thus exist between the different members of organic creatures, exist no less between the different ranges of organism. We know no higher or more energetic life than our own; but there seems to me this great good in the idea of gradation of life--it admits the idea of a life above us, in other creatures, as much n.o.bler than ours, as ours is n.o.bler than that of the dust.

MARY. I am glad you have said that; for I know Violet and Lucilla and May want to ask you something; indeed, we all do; only you frightened Violet so about the anthill, that she can't say a word; and May is afraid of your teasing her, too: but I know they are wondering why you are always telling them about heathen G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, as if you half believed in them; and you represent them as good; and then we see there is really a kind of truth in the stories about them; and we are all puzzled: and, in this, we cannot even make our difficulty quite clear to ourselves;--it would be such a long confused question, if we could ask you all we should like to know.

L. Nor is it any wonder, Mary; for this is indeed the longest, and the most wildly confused question that reason can deal with; but I will try to give you, quickly, a few clear ideas about the heathen G.o.ds, which you may follow out afterwards, as your knowledge increases.

Every heathen conception of deity in which you are likely to be interested, has three distinct characters:--