The Intellectual Life Part 15

I promised not to return there before my hands were white. Of course I shall never enter the house again."

Here we have an instance of a man of science who has temporarily disqualified himself for polite society by an experiment in the pursuit of knowledge. What do you think of the vulgarity of Madame Beauregard?

To me it appears the perfect type of that preoccupation about appearances which blinds the genteel vulgar to the true n.o.bility of life. Were not Ampere's stained hands n.o.bler than many white ones? It is not necessary for every intellectual worker to blacken his fingers with chemicals, but a kind of rust very frequently comes over him which ought to be as readily forgiven, yet rarely is forgiven. "In his relations with the world," writes the biographer of Ampere, "the authority of superiority disappeared. To this the course of years brought no alternative. Ampere become celebrated, laden with honorable distinctions, the great Ampere! outside the speculations of the intellect, was hesitating and timid again, disquieted and troubled, and more disposed to accord his confidence to others than to himself."

Intellectual pursuits did not qualify Ampere, they do not qualify any one, for success in fashionable society. To succeed in the world you ought to be _of_ the world, so as to share the things which interest it without too wide a deviation from the prevalent current of your thoughts. Its pa.s.sing interests, its temporary customs, its transient phases of sentiment and opinion, ought to be for the moment your own interests, your own feelings and opinions. A mind absorbed as Ampere's was in the contemplation and elucidation of the unchangeable laws of nature, is too much fixed upon the permanent to adapt itself naturally to these ever-varying estimates. He did not easily speak the world's lighter language, he could not move with its mobility. Such men forget even what they eat and what they put on; Ampere's young wife was in constant anxiety, whilst the pair were separated by the severity of their fate, as to the sufficiency of his diet and the decency of his appearance. One day she writes to him to mind not to go out in his shabby old coat, and in the same letter she entreats him to purchase a bottle of wine, so that when he took no milk or broth he would find it, and when it was all drunk she tells him to buy another bottle.

Afterwards she asks him whether he makes a good fire, and if he has any chairs in his room. In another letter she inquires if his bed is comfortable, and in another she tells him to mind about his acids, for he has burnt holes in his blue stockings. Again, she begs him to try to have a pa.s.sably decent appearance, because that will give pleasure to his poor wife. He answers, to tranquillize her, that he does not burn his things now, and that he makes chemical experiments only in his old breeches with his gray coat and his waistcoat of greenish velvet. But one day he is forced to confess that she must send him new trousers if he is to appear before MM. Delambre and Villars. He "does not know what to do," his best breeches still smell of turpentine, and, having wished to put on trousers to go to the Society of Emulation, he saw the hole which Barrat fancied he had mended become bigger than ever, so that it showed the piece of different cloth which he had sown under it. He adds that his wife will be afraid that he will spoil his "_beau pantalon_,"

but he promises to send it back to her as clean as when he received it.

How different is all this from that watchful care about externals which marks the man of fashion! Ampere was quite a young man then, still almost a bridegroom, yet he is already so absorbed in the intellectual life as to forget appearances utterly, except when Julie, with feminine watchfulness, writes to recall them to his mind. I am not defending or advocating this carelessness. It is better to be neat and tidy than to go in holes and patches; but I desire to insist upon the radical difference between the fashionable spirit and the intellectual spirit.

And this difference, which shows itself in these external things, is not less evident in the clothing or preparation of the mind. Ampere's intellect, great and n.o.ble as it was, could scarcely be considered more suitable for _le grand monde_ than the breeches that smelt of turpentine, or the trousers made ragged by aquafortis.

A splendid contrast, as to tailoring, was our own dear Oliver Goldsmith, who displayed himself in those wonderful velvet coats and satin small-clothes from Mr. Filby's, which are more famous than the finest garments ever worn by prince or peer. Who does not remember that bloom-colored coat which the ablest painters have studiously immortalized, made by John Filby, at the Harrow, in Water Lane (best advertised of tailors!), and that charming blue velvet suit, which Mr.

Filby was never paid for? Surely a poet so splendid was fit for the career of fashion! No, Oliver Goldsmith's velvet and lace were the expression of a deep and painful sense of personal unfitness. They were the fine frame which is intended to pa.s.s off an awkward and imperfect picture. There was a quieter dignity in Johnson's threadbare sleeves.

Johnson, the most influential though not the most elegant intellect of his time, is grander in his neglect of fashion than Goldsmith in his ruinous subservience. And if it were permitted to me to speak of two or three great geniuses who adorn the age in which we ourselves are living, I might add that they seem to follow the example of the author of "Ra.s.selas" rather than that of Mr. Filby's ill.u.s.trious customer. They remind me of a good old squire who, from a fine sentiment of duty, permitted the village artist to do his worst upon him, and incurred thereby this withering observation from his metropolitan tailor: "You are _covered_, sir, but you are _not_ dressed!"

LETTER IV.

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN FASHIONABLE SOCIETY.

Test of professions--Mobility of fashionable taste--Practical service of an external deference to culture--Incompatibility between fashionable and intellectual lives--What each has to offer.

Your polite, almost diplomatic answer to my letter about fashionable society may be not unfairly concentrated into some such paragraph as the following:--

"What grounds have I for concluding that the professed tastes and opinions of Society are in any degree insincere? May not society be quite sincere in the preferences which it professes, and are not the preferences themselves almost always creditable to the good taste and really advanced culture of the Society which I suspect of a certain degree of affectation?"

This is the sense of your letter, and in reply to it I give you a simple but sure test. Is the professed opinion carried out in practice, when there are fair opportunities for practice?

Let us go so far as to examine a particular instance. Your friends profess to appreciate cla.s.sical literature. Do they read it? Or, on the other hand, do they confine themselves to believing that it is a good thing for other people to read it?

When I was a schoolboy, people told me that the cla.s.sical authors of antiquity were eminently useful, and indeed absolutely necessary to the culture of the human mind, but I perceived that they did not read them.

So I have heard many people express great respect for art and science, only they did not go so far as to master any department of art or science.

If you will apply this test to the professions of what is especially called fashionable society it is probable that you will arrive at the conclusions of the minority, which I have endeavored to express. You will find that the fashionable world remains very contentedly outside the true working intellectual life, and does not really share either its labors or its aspirations.

Another kind of evidence, which tells in the same direction, is the mobility of fashionable taste. At one time some studies are fashionable, at another time these are neglected and others have taken their place.

You will not find this fickleness in the true intellectual world, which steadily pursues all its various studies, and keeps them well abreast, century after century.

If I insist upon this distinction with reference to you, do not accuse me of hostility even to fashion itself. Fashion is one of the great Divine inst.i.tutions of human society, and the best philosophy rebels against none of the authorities that be, but studies and endeavors to explain them. The external deference which Society yields to culture is practically of great service, although (I repeat the epithet) it is _external_. The sort of good effect is in the intellectual sphere what the good effect of a general religious profession is in the moral sphere. All fashionable society goes to church. Fashionable religion differs from the religion of Peter and Paul as fashionable science differs from that of Humboldt and Arago, yet, notwithstanding this difference, the profession of religion is useful to Society as some restraint, at least during one day out of seven, upon its inveterate tendency to live exclusively for its amus.e.m.e.nt. And if any soul happens to come into existence in the fashionable world which has the genuine religious nature, that nature has a chance of developing itself, and of finding ready to hand certain customs which are favorable to its well-being. So it is, though in quite a different direction, with the esteem which Society professes for intellectual pursuits. It is an esteem in great part merely nominal, as fashionable Christianity is nominal, and still it helps and favors the early development of the genuine faculty where it exists. It is certainly a great help to us that fashionable society, which has such a tremendous, such an almost irresistible power for good or evil, does not openly discourage our pursuits, but on the contrary regards them with great external deference and respect. The recognition which Society has given to artists has been wanting in frankness and in prompt.i.tude, though even in this case much may be said to excuse a sort of hesitation rather than refusal which was attributable to the strangeness and novelty of the artistic caste in England; but Society has far more than a generation professed a respect for literature and erudition which has helped those two branches of culture more effectually than great subsidies of money. The exact truth seems to be that Society is sincere in approving our devotion to these pursuits, but is not yet sufficiently interested in them to appreciate them otherwise than from the outside, just as a father and mother applaud their boys for reading Thucydides, yet do not read him themselves, either in the original or in a translation.

All that I care to insist upon is that there is a degree of incompatibility between the fashionable and the intellectual lives which makes it necessary, at a certain time, to choose one or the other as our own. There is no hostility, there need not be any uncharitable feeling on one side or the other, but there must be a resolute choice between the two. If you decide for the intellectual life, you will incur a definite loss to set against your gain. Your existence may have calmer and profounder satisfactions, but it will be less amusing, and even in an appreciable degree less _human_; less in harmony, I mean, with the common instincts and feelings of humanity. For the fashionable world, although decorated by habits of expense, has enjoyment for its object, and arrives at enjoyment by those methods which the experience of generations has proved to be most efficacious. Variety of amus.e.m.e.nt, frequent change of scenery and society, healthy exercise, pleasant occupation of the mind without fatigue--these things do indeed make existence agreeable to human nature, and the science of living agreeably is better understood in the fashionable society of England than by laborious students and _savans_. The life led by that society is the true heaven of the natural man, who likes to have frequent feasts and a hearty appet.i.te, who enjoys the varying spectacle of wealth, and splendor, and pleasure, who loves to watch, from the Olympus of his personal ease, the curious results of labor in which he takes no part, the interesting ingenuity of the toiling world below. In exchange for these varied pleasures of the spectator the intellectual life can offer you but one satisfaction, for all its promises are reducible simply to this, that you shall come at last, after infinite labor, into contact with some great _reality_--that you shall know, and do, in such sort that you will feel yourself on firm ground and be recognized--probably not much applauded, but yet recognized--as a fellow-laborer by other knowers and doers. Before you come to this, most of your present accomplishments will be abandoned by yourself as unsatisfactory and insufficient, but one or two of them will be turned to better account, and will give you after many years a tranquil self-respect, and, what is still rarer and better, a very deep and earnest reverence for the greatness which is above you. Severed from the vanities of the Illusory, you will live with the realities of knowledge, as one who has quitted the painted scenery of the theatre to listen by the eternal ocean or gaze at the granite hills.

LETTER V.

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO KEPT ENTIRELY OUT OF COMPANY.

That Society which is frivolous in the ma.s.s contains individuals who are not frivolous--A piece of the author's early experience--Those who keep out of Society miss opportunities--People talk about what they have in common--That we ought to be tolerant of dulness--The loss to Society if superior men all held aloof--Utility of the gifted in general society--They ought not to submit to expulsion.

I willingly concede all that you say against fashionable society as a whole. It is, as you say, frivolous, bent on amus.e.m.e.nt, incapable of attention sufficiently prolonged to grasp any serious subject, and liable both to confusion and inaccuracy in the ideas which it hastily forms or easily receives. You do right, a.s.suredly, not to let it waste your most valuable hours, but I believe also that you do wrong in keeping out of it altogether.

The society which seems so frivolous in ma.s.ses contains individual members who, if you knew them better, would be able and willing to render you the most efficient intellectual help, and you miss this help by restricting yourself exclusively to books. Nothing can replace the conversation of living men and women; not even the richest literature can replace it.

Many years ago I was thrown by accident amongst a certain society of Englishmen who, when they were all together, never talked about anything worth talking about. Their general conversations were absolutely empty and null, and I concluded, as young men so easily conclude, that those twenty or thirty gentlemen had not half a dozen ideas amongst them. A little reflection might have reminded me that my own talk was no better than theirs, and consequently that there might be others in the company who also knew more and thought more than they expressed. I found out, by accident, after awhile, that some of these men had more than common culture in various directions; one or two had travelled far, and brought home the results of much observation; one or two had read largely, and with profit; more than one had studied a science; five or six had seen a great deal of the world. It was a youthful mistake to conclude that, because their general conversation was very dull, the men were dull individually. The general conversations of English society _are_ dull; it is a national characteristic. But the men themselves are individually often very well informed, and quite capable of imparting their information to a single interested listener. The art is to be that listener. Englishmen have the greatest dread of producing themselves in the semi-publicity of a general conversation, because they fear that their special topics may not be cared for by some of the persons present; but if you can get one of them into a quiet corner by himself, and humor his shyness with sufficient delicacy and tact, he will disburden his mind at last, and experience a relief in so doing.

By keeping out of society altogether you miss these precious opportunities. The wise course is to mix as much with the world as may be possible without withdrawing too much time from your serious studies, but not to expect anything valuable from the general talk, which is nothing but a neutral medium in which intelligences float and move as yachts do in sea-water, and for which they ought not to be held individually responsible. The talk of Society answers its purpose if it simply permits many different people to come together without clashing, and the purpose of its conventions is the avoidance of collision. In England the small talk is heavy, like water; in France it is light as air; in both countries it is a medium and no more.

Society talks, by preference, about amus.e.m.e.nts; it does so because when people meet for recreation they wish to relieve their minds from serious cares, and also for the practical reason that Society must talk about what its members have in common, and their amus.e.m.e.nts are more in common than their work. As M. Thiers recommended the republican form of government in France on the ground that it was the form which divided his countrymen least, so a polite and highly civilized society chooses for the subject of general conversation the topic which is least likely to separate the different people who are present. It almost always happens that the best topic having this recommendation is some species of amus.e.m.e.nt; since amus.e.m.e.nts are easily learnt outside the business of life, and we are all initiated into them in youth.

For these reasons I think that we ought to be extremely tolerant of the dulness or frivolity which may seem to prevail in any numerous company, and not to conclude too hastily that the members of it are in any degree more dull or frivolous than ourselves. It is unfortunate, certainly, that the art of general conversation is not so successfully cultivated as it might be, and there are reasons for believing that our posterity will surpa.s.s us in this respect, because as culture increases the spirit of toleration increases with it, so that the great questions of politics and religion, in which all are interested, may be discussed more safely than they could be at the present day, by persons of different ways of thinking. But even the sort of general conversation we have now, poor as it may seem, still sufficiently serves as a medium for human intercourse, and permits us to meet on a common ground where we may select at leisure the agreeable or instructive friends that our higher intellect needs, and without whom the intellectual life is one of the ghastliest of solitudes.

And now permit me to add a few observations on another aspect of this subject, which is not without its importance.

Let us suppose that every one of rather more than ordinary capacity and culture were to act as you yourself are acting, and withdraw entirely from general society. Let us leave out of consideration for the present the loss to their private culture which would be the consequence of missing every opportunity for forming new intellectual friendships. Let us consider, this time, what would be the consequence to Society itself.

If all the cultivated men were withdrawn from it, the general tone of Society would inevitably descend much lower even than it is at present; it would sink so low that the whole national intellect would undergo a sure and inevitable deterioration. It is plainly the duty of men situated as you are, who have been endowed by nature with superior faculties, and who have enlarged them by the acquisition of knowledge, to preserve Society by their presence from an evil so surely prolific of bad consequences. If Society is less narrow, and selfish, and intolerant, and apathetic than it used to be, it is because they who are the salt of the earth have not disdained to mix with its grosser and earthier elements. All the improvement in public sentiment, and the advancement in general knowledge which have marked the course of recent generations, are to be attributed to the wholesome influence of men who could think and feel, and who steadily exercised, often quite obscurely, yet not the less usefully in their time and place, the subtle but powerful attraction of the greater mind over the less. Instead of complaining that people are ignorant and frivolous, we ought to go amongst them and lead them to the higher life. "I know not how it is,"

said one in a dull circle to a more gifted friend who entered it occasionally, "when we are left to ourselves we are all lamentably stupid, but whenever you are kind enough to come amongst us we all talk very much better, and of things that are well worth talking about." The gifted man is always welcome, if only he will stoop to conquer, and forget himself to give light and heat to others. The low Philistinism of many a provincial town is due mainly to the shy reserve of the one or two superior men who fancy that they cannot amalgamate with the common intellect of the place.

Not only would I advocate a little patient condescension, but even something of the st.u.r.dier temper which will not be driven out. Are the Philistines to have all the talk to themselves forever; are they to rehea.r.s.e their stupid old plat.i.tudes without the least fear of contradiction? How long, O Lord? how long? Let us resolve that even in general society they shall not eternally have things their own way.

Somebody ought to have the courage to enlighten them even at their own tables, and in the protecting presence of their admiring wives and daughters.

LETTER VI.

TO A FRIEND WHO KINDLY WARNED THE AUTHOR OF THE BAD EFFECTS OF SOLITUDE.

_Vae solis_--Society and solitude alike necessary--The use of each--In solitude we know ourselves--Montaigne as a book-buyer--Compensations of solitude--Description of one who loved and sought it--How men are driven into solitude--Cultivated people in the provinces--Use of solitude as a protection for rare and delicate natures--Sh.e.l.ley's dislike to general society--Wordsworth and Turner--Sir Isaac Newton's repugnance to society--Auguste Comte--His systematic isolation and unshakable firmness of purpose--Milton and Bunyan--The solitude which is really injurious--Painters and authors--An ideal division of life.

You cry to me _Vae solis!_ and the cry seems not the less loud and stirring that it comes in the folds of a letter. Just at first it quite startled and alarmed me, and made me strangely dissatisfied with my life and work; but farther reflection has been gradually reconciling me ever since, and now I feel cheerful again, and in a humor to answer you.

_Woe unto him that is alone!_ This has been often said, but the studious recluse may answer, _Woe unto him that is never alone and cannot bear to be alone!_

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest. I thank heaven for a thousand pleasant and profitable conversations with acquaintances and friends; I thank heaven also, and not less gratefully, for thousands of sweet hours that have pa.s.sed in solitary thought or labor, under the silent stars.

Society is necessary to give us our share and place in the collective life of humanity, but solitude is necessary to the maintenance of the individual life. Society is to the individual what travel and commerce are to a nation; whilst solitude represents the home life of the nation, during which it develops its especial originality and genius.

The life of the perfect hermit, and that of those persons who feel themselves nothing individually, and have no existence but what they receive from others, are alike imperfect lives. The perfect life is like that of a ship of war which has its own place in the fleet and can share in its strength and discipline, but can also go forth alone in the solitude of the infinite sea. We ought to belong to Society, to have our place in it, and yet to be capable of a complete individual existence outside of it.

Which of the two is the grander, the ship in the disciplined fleet, arranged in order of battle, or the ship alone in the tempest, a thousand miles from land? The truest grandeur of the ship is neither in one nor the other, but in the capacity for both. What would that captain merit who either had not seamanship enough to work under the eye of the admiral, or else had not sufficient knowledge of navigation to be trusted out of the range of signals?

I value society for the abundance of ideas that it brings before us, like carriages in a frequented street; but I value solitude for sincerity and peace, and for the better understanding of the thoughts that are truly ours. Only in solitude do we learn our inmost nature and its needs. He who has lived for some great s.p.a.ce of existence apart from the tumult of the world, has discovered the vanity of the things for which he has no natural apt.i.tude or gift--their _relative_ vanity, I mean, their uselessness to himself, personally; and at the same time he has learned what is truly precious and good for him. Surely this is knowledge of inestimable value to a man: surely it is a great thing for any one in the bewildering confusion of distracting toils and pleasures to have found out the labor that he is most fit for and the pleasures that satisfy him best. Society so encourages us in affectations that it scarcely leaves us a chance of knowing our own minds; but in solitude this knowledge comes of itself, and delivers us from innumerable vanities.

Montaigne tells us that at one time he bought books from ostentation, but that afterwards he bought only such books as he wanted for his private reading. In the first of these conditions of mind we may observe the influence of society; in the second the effect of solitude. The man of the world does not consult his own intellectual needs, but considers the eyes of his visitors; the solitary student takes his literature as a lonely traveller takes food when he is hungry, without reference to the ordered courses of public hospitality.

It is a traditional habit of mankind to see only the disadvantages of solitude, without considering its compensations; but there are great compensations, some of the greatest being negative. The lonely man is lord of his own hours and of his own purse; his days are long and unbroken, he escapes from every form of ostentation, and may live quite simply and sincerely in great calm breadths of leisure. I knew one who pa.s.sed his summers in the heart of a vast forest, in a common thatched cottage with furniture of common deal, and for this retreat he quitted very gladly a rich fine house in the city. He wore nothing but old clothes, read only a few old books, without the least regard to the opinions of the learned, and did not take in a newspaper. On the wall of his habitation he inscribed with a piece of charcoal a quotation from De Senancour to this effect: "In the world a man lives in his own age; in solitude, in all the ages." I observed in him the effects of a lonely life, and he greatly aided my observations by frankly communicating his experiences. That solitude had become inexpressibly dear to him, but he admitted one evil consequence of it, which was an increasing unfitness for ordinary society, though he cherished a few tried friendships, and was grateful to those who loved him and could enter into his humor. He had acquired a horror of towns and crowds, not from nervousness, but because he felt imprisoned and impeded in his thinking, which needed the depths of the forest, the venerable trees, the communication with primaeval nature, from which he drew a mysterious yet necessary nourishment for the peculiar activity of his mind. I found that his case answered very exactly to the sentence he quoted from De Senancour; he lived less in his own age than others do, but he had a fine compensation in a strangely vivid understanding of other ages. Like De Senancour, he had a strong sense of the transitoriness of what is transitory, and a pa.s.sionate preference for all that the human mind conceives to be relatively or absolutely permanent. This trait was very observable in his talk about the peoples of antiquity, and in the delight he took in dwelling rather upon everything which they had in common with ourselves than on those differences which are more obvious to the modern spirit.

His temper was grave and earnest, but unfailingly cheerful, and entirely free from any tendency to bitterness. The habits of his life would have been most unfavorable to the development of a man of business, of a statesman, of a leader in practical enterprise, but they were certainly not unfavorable to the growth of a tranquil and comprehensive intellect, capable of "just judgment and high-hearted patriotism." He had not the spirit of the newspapers, he did not live intensely in the present, but he had the spirit which has animated great poets, and saints, and sages, and far-seeing teachers of humanity. Not in vain had he lived alone with Nature, not in vain had he watched in solemn twilights and witnessed many a dawn. There is, there _is_ a strength that comes to us in solitude from that shadowy, awful Presence that frivolous crowds repel!

Solitude may be and is sometimes deliberately accepted or chosen, but far more frequently men are driven into it by Nature and by Fate. They go into solitude to escape the sense of isolation which is always most intolerable when there are many voices round us in loud dissonance with our sincerest thought. It is a great error to encourage in young people the love of n.o.ble culture in the hope that it may lead them more into what is called good society. High culture always isolates, always drives men out of their cla.s.s and makes it more difficult for them to share naturally and easily the common cla.s.s-life around them. They seek the few companions who can understand them, and when these are not to be had within any traversable distance, they sit and work alone. Very possibly too, in some instances, a superior culture may compel the possessor of it to hold opinions too far in advance of the opinions prevalent around him to be patiently listened to or tolerated, and then he must either disguise them, which is always highly distasteful to a man of honor, or else submit to be treated as an enemy to human welfare.

Cultivated people who live in London (their true home) need never condemn themselves to solitude from this cause, but in the provinces there are many places where it is not easy for them to live sociably without a degree of reserve that is more wearisome than solitude itself.

And however much pains you take to keep your culture well in the background, it always makes you rather an object of suspicion to people who have no culture. They perceive that you are reserved, they know that very much of what pa.s.ses in your mind is a mystery to them, and this feeling makes them uneasy in your presence, even afraid of you, and not indisposed to find a compensation for this uncomfortable feeling in sarcasms behind your back. Unless you are gifted with a truly extraordinary power of conciliating goodwill, you are not likely to get on happily, for long together, with people who feel themselves your inferiors. The very utmost skill and caution will hardly avail to hide all your modes of thought. Something of your higher philosophy will escape in an unguarded moment, and give offence because it will seem foolish or incomprehensible to your audience. There is no safety for you but in a timely withdrawal, either to a society that is prepared to understand you, or else to a solitude where your intellectual superiorities will neither be a cause of irritation to others nor of vexation to yourself.