The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 52

Let no one say that this reformer is one of those who expose our miserable condition, without offering to improve it; or that he is one of those who take away our gold and jewels with their tests, and leave us no equivalent. This is no destroyer. He will help us to save all that we have. He is guarding us from the error of those who would let it alone till the ma.s.ses have taken the work in hand for themselves, without science. '_That_ is the way to lay all flat.'

He is not one of those, 'who to _make clean, efface_, and who cure diseases by death.' To found so great a thing as the state anew; to dissolve that so old and solid structure, and undertake to recompose it as a whole on the spot, is a piece of work which this chemist, after a survey of his apparatus, declines to take in; though he fairly admits, that if the question were of 'a new world,' and not 'a world already formed to certain customs,' science might have, perhaps, some important suggestions to make as to the original structure. And yet for all that, it is a scientific practice that is propounded here. It is a scientific innovation and renovation, that is propounded; the greatest that was ever propounded,--total, absolute, but not sudden.

It is a remedy for the world as it is, that this reformer is propounding.

New constructions according to true definitions, scientific inst.i.tutions,--inst.i.tutions of culture and regimen and cure, based on the recognition of the actual human const.i.tution and laws,--based on an observation as diligent and subtle, and precepts as severe as those which we apply to the culture of any other form in nature,--that is the proposition. 'It were a strange _speech_ which, spoken or spoken oft, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is by nature subject.' 'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' This plan of culture and cure involves not the knowledge of that nature which is in all men only, but a science, enriched with most careful collections of all the specific varieties of that nature. The fullest natural history of those forces that are operant in the hourly life of man, the most profound and subtle observation of the facts of this history, the most thoroughly scientific collection of them, make the beginning of this enterprise. The propounder of this cure will have to begin with the secret disposition of every man laid open, and the possibilities of human character exhausted, by means of a dissection of the entire form of that human nature, which every man carries with him, and a solar-microscopic exhibition of the several dispositions and tempers of men, in grand ideal portraits, conspicuous instances of them, where the particular disposition and temper is 'predominant,' as in the characterisation of Hamlet, where it takes all the persons of the drama to exhibit characteristics which are more or less developed in all men. Those natural peculiarities of disposition that work so incessantly and potently in this human business, those 'points of nature,' those predetermining forces of the human life, must come under observation here, and the whole nature of the pa.s.sions also, and a science of 'the will,' very different from that philosophy of it which our metaphysicians have entertained us with so long. He will have all the light of science, all the power of the new method brought to bear on this study. And he will have a similar collection, not less scientific, of the history of the human fortunes and their necessary effects on character; for these are the points that we must deal with 'by way of application, and to these all our labour is limited and tied; for we cannot fit a garment except we take a measure of the form we would fit it to.' Nothing short of this can serve as the basis of a scientific system of human education.

But this is not all. It is the human n.o.bility and greatness that is the end, and that 'craves,' as the n.o.ble who is found wanting in it tells us, 'a n.o.ble cunning.' It is no single instrumentality that makes the apparatus of this culture and cure. Skilful combinations of appliances based on the history of those forces which _are_ within our power, which 'we _can_ deal with by way of alteration,' forces 'from which the _mind suffereth_,' which have operation on it, so potent that 'they can almost change the stamp of nature,'--that they can make indeed, 'another nature,'--these are the engines,--this is the machinery which the scientific state will employ for its ends. These are the engines, this is the machinery that is going to take the place of that apparatus which the state, as it is, finds such need of. This is the machinery to 'prevent the fiend,' which the scientific statesman is propounding.

'I would we were all of ONE MIND, and one mind _good_' says our Poet.

'O _there_ were desolation of gallowses and gaolers. I speak against my present profit,' [he adds,--he was speaking not as a judge or a lawyer, but as a _gaoler_,] 'I speak against my present profit, but my wish hath a _preferment_ in it.'

(A _preferment_?)--That is the solution propounded by science, of the problem that is pressing on us, and urging on us with such violent appeals, its solution. 'I would we were all of one _mind_, and one mind _good_. My wish hath a _preferment_ in it.'

'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' 'It were a strange speech which, spoken, or spoken oft, should cure a man of _a vice_ to which he is _by nature subject_,'--_subject_--by _nature_.--That is the _Philosopher_. 'What _he cannot help in his nature_ you account _a vice_ in him,' says the poor citizen, putting in a word on the _Poet's_ behalf for Coriola.n.u.s whose education, whatever Volumnia may think about it, was not scientific, or calculated to reduce that 'partliness,' that disorganizing social principle, whose subsequent demonstrations gave her so much offence. Not admonition, not preaching and scolding, and not books only, but inst.i.tutions, laws, customs, habit, education in its more limited sense, 'a.s.sociation, emulation, praise, blame,' all the agencies 'from which the mind suffereth,'-- which have power to change it, in skilfully compounded recipes and regimen scientifically adapted to cases, and not prescribed only, but enforced,--_these_ make the state machinery--these are the engines that are going to 'prevent the fiend,' and educate the 'one mind,'-- _the one mind good_, which is the sovereign of the common-WEAL,--'my wish hath a preferment in it,'--the one only man who will make when he is crowned, not Rome, but _room_ enough for us all,--who will make when he is crowned such desolation of gallowses and gaolers. These are the remedies for the diseases of the state, when the scientific pract.i.tioner is called in at last, and permitted to undertake his cure. But he will not wait for that. He will not wait to be asked. He has no delicacy about pushing himself forward in this business. The concentration of genius and science on it, henceforth,--the _gradual_ adaptation of all these grand remedial agencies to this common end,-- this end which all truly enlightened minds will conspire for,--find to be _their own_,--this is the plan;--this is the sober day-dream of the Elizabethan Reformer; this is the plot of the Elizabethan Revolutionist. This is the radicalism that he is setting on foot.

This is the cure of the state which he is undertaking.

We want to command effects, and the way to do that is to find causes; and we must find them according to the new method, and not by reasoning it thus and thus, for the result is just the same, this philosopher observes, as if we had not reasoned it thus and thus, but some other way. That is the difficulty with that method, which is in use here at present, which this philosopher calls 'common logic.' Life goes on, life as it is and was, in the face of our reasonings; but it goes on in the dark; the phenomena are on the surface in the form of EFFECTS, and all our weal and woe is in them; but the CAUSES are beneath unexplored. They are able to give us certain impressions of their _natures_; they strike us, and blast us, it may be, by way of teaching us _something_ of their powers; but _we do not know them_; they are within our own souls and lives, and we do not _know_ them; not because they lie without the range of a scientific enquiry, but _because_ we will not apply to them _the scientific method_; because the old method of 'preconception' here is still considered the true one.

The plan of this great scientific enterprise was one which embraced, from the first, the whole body of the common-weal. It concerned itself immediately and directly with all the parts and members of the social state, from the king on his throne to the beggar in his straw. Its aim was to disclose ultimately, and educate in every member of society that entire and n.o.ble form of human nature which 'each man carries with him,' and whereby the individual man is naturally and const.i.tutionally a member of the common-weal. Its proposition was to develop ultimately and educate--successfully educate--in each integer of the state, the integral principle--the principle whereby in man the true conservation and integrity of the part--the virtue, and felicity, and perfection, of the part, tend to the weal of the whole--tend to perfect and advance the whole.

'To thine own self be true, And it doth follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any MAN.'

'Know thy-SELF. Know thy-self.'

This enterprise was not the product of a single individual mind, and it is important that this fact should be fully and unmistakeably enunciated here; because the ill.u.s.trious statesman, and man of letters, who a.s.sumed, in his own name and person, that part of it which could then be openly exhibited, the one on whom the great task of perfecting and openly propounding the new method of learning was devolved, is the one whose relation to this enterprise has been princ.i.p.ally insisted on in this volume.

The history of this great philanthropic a.s.sociation--an a.s.sociation of genius, a combination of chief minds, from which the leadership and direction of the modern ages proceeds, the history of this '_society_,' as it was called, when the term was still fresh in that special application; at least, when it was not yet qualified by its application to those very different kinds of voluntary individual combinations--'bodies of neighbourhood' within the larger whole, to which that movement has given rise; the history of _this_ society,--this first 'Shake-spear Society'--much as it is to our purpose, and much as it is to the particular purpose of this volume, can only be incidentally treated here. But as this work was originally prepared for publication in the HISTORICAL KEY to the Elizabethan Tradition which formed the FIRST BOOK of it, it was the part of that great Political and Military Chief, and not less ill.u.s.trious Man of Letters, who was recognised, in his own time, as the beginner of this movement and the founder of English philosophy, which was chiefly developed.

And it is the history of that 'great unknown'--that great Elizabethan unknown, for whose designs there was needed then a veil of a closer texture--of a more cunning pattern than any which the exigencies of modern authorship tend to fabricate, which must make the key to this tradition;--it is the history of that great unknown, whose incognito was a closed vizor,--that it was death to open,--a vizor that _did_ open once, and--the sequel is in our history, and will leave 'a brand'

upon the page which that age makes in it,--'the age that _did_ it, and _suffered_ it, _to the end of the world_.' So says _the Poet_ of that age, ('Age, thou are shamed.' 'And peep about to find ourselves _dishonourable graves_'). It is the history of the Tacitus who could not wait for a better Caesar. It is the history of the man who was sent to the block, _they_ tell us, who are able to give us those little secret historic motives that do not get woven always into the larger story; it is the history of the man who (if his family understood it) was sent to the block for the repet.i.tion, in his own name, of the words--the very words which he had written with his 'goose-pen,' as he calls it, years before--which he had written under cover of the 'spear' that was 'shaken' in sport, or that shook with fear,--under cover of 'the well turned and true filled lines in each of which he seems to _shake a lance as brandished_ in the eyes of _Ignorance_,' without suspicion--without challenge, from the crowned Ignorance, or the Monster that crowned it. It is the history of this unknown, obscure, unhonoured Father of the Modern Age that _unlocks_ this tradition.

It is the secret friend and 'brother' of the author of the Novum Organum, whose history unlocks this tradition. And when shall the friendship of such 'a twain' gladden our earth again, and build its 'eternal summer' in our common things? When shall a 'marriage of true minds' so even be celebrated on the lips and in the lives of men again? It is the friend and literary partner of our great recognised philosopher--his partner in his 'private and retired arts,' and in his cultivation of 'the princ.i.p.al and supreme sciences,' in whose history the key to this locked up learning is hidden.

It was an enterprise which originated in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in that little company of wits, and poets, and philosophers, which was the first-fruit of the new development of the national genius, that followed the revival of the learning of antiquity in this island--the fruit which that old stock began manifestly to bud and blossom with, about the beginning of the latter half of that Queen's reign. For it was the old northern genius, under the influence, not of the revival of the learning of antiquity only, but of that acc.u.mulated influence which its previous revival on the Continent brought with it here; under the influence, too, of that insular nurture, which began so soon to colour and insulate English history;--'Britain is a world by itself,' says Prince Cloten, 'and we will nothing pay,' etc.--it was the old northern genius nurtured in the cradle of that 'bravery' which had written its page of fire in the Roman Caesar's story--which had arrested the old cla.s.sic historian's pen, and fired it with a poet's prophecy, and taught _him_ too how to p.r.o.nounce from the old _British_ hero's lip the burning speech of _English_ freedom;--it was that which began to show itself here, then, in that new tongue, which we call the '_Elizabethan_.' It was that which could not fit its words to its mouth as it had a mind to do under those conditions, and was glad to know that 'the audience was deferred.' That was the thing which found itself so much embarra.s.sed by the presence of 'a man of prodigious fortune at the table,' who had leave 'to change its arguments with a magisterial authority.' It was that which was expected to produce its speech to 'serve as the base matter to illuminate'--not the _Caesar_--but the Tudor--the Tudor and the Stuart: the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts. 'AGE, _thou_ art shamed.' It was the true indigenous product of the English nationality under that great stimulus, which made that age; and the practical determination of the English mind, and the spirit of the ancient English liberties, the recognition of the common dignity of that form of human nature which each man carries entire with him--the sentiment of a common human family and brotherhood, which this race had brought with it from the forests of the North, and which it had conserved through ages of oppression, went at once into the new speculation, and determined its practical bent, and shaped this enterprise.

It was an enterprise which included in its plan of operations an immediate influence upon the popular mind--the most direct, immediate, and radically reforming influences which could be brought to bear, under those conditions, upon the habits and sentiments of the ignorant, custom-bound ma.s.ses of men;--those ma.s.ses which are, in all their ignorance and unfitness for rule, as the philosopher of this age perceived, 'that greater part which carries it'--those wretched statesmen, under whose rule we are all groaning. 'Questions about clothes, and cookery, and law chicanery,' are the questions with which the new movement begins to attract attention--a universally favourable attention--towards its beneficent purposes, and to that new command of 'effects' which arms them. But this is only 'to show an abused people that they are not wholly forgotten.' To improve the external condition of men, to 'accommodate' man to those exterior natural forces, of which he had been, till then, the 'slave,'--to minister to the need and add to the comforts of the king in his palace, and 'Tom' in his hovel,--this was the first scientific move. This was a movement which required no concealment. Its far-reaching consequences, its elevating power on the ma.s.ses, its educational power, its revolutionary power, did not lie within the range of any observation which the impersonated state was able to bring to bear at that time upon the New Organum and its reaches.

But this was not the only scientifically educational agency which this great Educational a.s.sociation was able to include, even then, in its scheme for the culture and instruction of the ma.s.ses--for the culture and instruction of that common social unit, which makes the ma.s.ses and determines political predominance. Quite the most powerful instrumentality which it is possible to conceive of, for purposes of direct effect in the way of intellectual and moral stimulus, in that stage of a popular development, was then already in process of preparation here; the 'plant' of a wondrous and inestimable machinery of popular influence stood offering itself, at that very moment, to the politicians with whom this movement originated, urging itself on their notice, begging to be purchased, soliciting their monopoly, proposing itself to their designs.

A medium of direct communication between the philosophic mind, in its more chosen and n.o.blest field of research, and the minds of those to whom the conventional signs of learning are not yet intelligible,--one in which the language of action and dumb show was, by the condition of the representation, predominant,--that language which is, as this philosophy observed, so much more powerful in its impression than words,--not on brutes only, but on those 'whose eyes are more learned than their ears,'--a medium of communication which was one tissue of that 'mute' language, whereby the direction, 'how to _sustain_ a tyranny _newly usurped_,' was conveyed once, stood prepared to their hands, waiting the dictation of the message of these new Chiefs and Teachers, who had taken their cue from Machiavel in exhibiting the arts of government, and who thought it well enough that the people _should_ know how to _preserve_ tyrannies _newly usurped_.

Those 'amus.e.m.e.nts,' with which governments that are founded and sustained, 'by cutting off and _keeping low_ the grandees and n.o.bility' of a nation, naturally seek to propitiate and divert the popular mind,--those amus.e.m.e.nts which the peoples who sustain tyrannies are apt to be fond of--'he loves no plays as _thou_ dost, _Antony_,'--that 'pulpit,' from which the orator of Caesar stole and swayed the hearts of the people with his sugared words; and his dumb show of the stabs in Caesar's mantle became, in the hands of these new conspirators, an engine which those old experimenters lacked,--an engine which the lean and wrinkled Ca.s.sius, with his much reading and 'observation strange' and dangerous, looking through of the thoughts of men; and the grave, high-toned Brutus, with his logic and his stilted oratory, could not, on second thoughts, afford to lack. It was this which supplied the means of that 'volubility of application'

which those 'Sir Oracles,' those 'grave sirs of note,' 'in observing their well-graced forms of speech,' it is intimated, 'might easily want.'

By means of that 'first use of the parable,' whereby (while for the present we drop 'the argument') it serves to ill.u.s.trate, and bring first under the notice of the senses, the abstruser truths of a new learning,--truths which are as yet too far out of the road of common opinion to be conveyed in other forms,--these amus.e.m.e.nts became, in the hands of the new Teachers and Wise Men, with whom the Wisdom of the Moderns had its beginning, the means of an insidious, but most 'grave and exceedingly useful,' popular instruction.

But the immediate influence on the common mind was not the influence to which this a.s.sociation trusted for the fulfilment of its great plan of social renovation and advancement. That so aspiring _social_ position, and that not less commanding position in the world of letters, built up with so much labour, with such persistent purpose, with a pertinacity which accepted of no defeat,--built up _expressly_ to this end,--that position from which a new method of learning could be openly propounded, in the face of the schools, in the face of the Universities, in the face and eyes of all the Doctors of Learning then, was, in itself, no unimportant part of the machinery which this political a.s.sociation was compelled to include in the plot of its far-reaching enterprise.

That trumpet-call which rang through Europe, which summoned the scholasticism and genius of the modern ages, from the endless battles of the human dogmas and conceits, into the field of true knowledge,--that summons which recalled, and disciplined, and gave the word of command to the genius of the modern ages, that was already tumultuously rushing thither,--that call which was _able_ to command the modern learning, and impose on it, for immediate use, the New Machine of Learning,--that Machine which, even in its employment in the humblest departments of observation, has already formed, ere we know it, the new mind, which has disciplined and trained the modern intelligence, and created insidiously new habits of judgment and _belief_,--created, too, a new stock of truths, which are accepted as a part of the world's creed, and from which the whole must needs be evolved in time,--this, in itself, was no small step towards securing the great ends of this enterprise. It was a step which we are hardly in a position, as yet, to estimate. We cannot see what it was till the n.o.bler applications of this Method begin to be made. It has cost us something while we have waited for these. The letter to Sir Henry Savile, on 'the Helps to the Intellectual Powers,' which is referred to with so much more iteration and emphasis than anything which the surface of the letter exhibits would seem to bear, in its brief hints, points also this way, though the effect of mental exercises, by means of other instrumentalities, on the habits of a larger cla.s.s, is also comprehended in it. But the formation of new intellectual habits in men liberally educated, appeared to promise, ultimately, those larger fruits in the advancement and culture of learning which, in 'the hour-gla.s.s' of that first movement, could be, as yet, only prophecy and antic.i.p.ation. The perfection of the Human Science, then first propounded, the filling up of 'the Antic.i.p.ations' of Learning, which the Philosophy of _Science_ also included in its system,--not rash and premature, however, and not claiming _the place_ of _knowledge_, but kept apart in a place by themselves,--put down as antic.i.p.ations, _not interpretations_,--the filling up of this outline was what was expected as the ultimate result of this proceeding, in the department of speculative philosophy.

But in that great practical enterprise of a social and political renovation--that enterprise of 'constructions' according to true definitions, which this science fastens its eye on, and never ceases to contemplate--it was not the immediate effect on the popular mind, neither was it the gradual effect on the speculative habits of men of learning and men of intelligence in general, that was chiefly relied on. It was the secret tradition, the living tradition of that intention; it was the tradition whereby that a.s.sociation undertook to continue itself across whatever gulfs and chasms in social history 'the fortunes of our state' might make. It was that _second_ use of the fable, which is 'to wrap up and conceal'; it was that 'enigmatic'

method, which reserves the secrets of learning for those 'who by the aid of an instructor, or by their own research, are able to pierce the veil,' which was relied on for this result. It was the _power_ of that tradition, its generative power, its power to reproduce 'in a better hour' the mind and will of that 'company'--it was its power to develop and frame that _ident.i.ty_ which was the secret of this a.s.sociation, and its new principle of UNION--that ident.i.ty of the 'one mind, and one mind good,' which is the human principle of union--that ident.i.ty which made a common name, a common personality, for those who worked together for that end, and whose WILL in it was '_one_.' A name, a personality, a philosophic unity, in whose great radiance we have basked so long--a name, a personality whose secret lies heavy on all our learning--whose secret of power, whose secret of inclusiveness and inexhaustible wealth of knowledge, has paralysed all our criticism, 'made marble'--as Milton himself confesses--'made marble with _too much conceiving_.' 'Write me a prologue, and let the prologue _seem_ to say [in dumb action], we will do no harm with our swords.' 'They all flourish their swords.' 'There is but _one mind_ in all these men, and that is bent against Caesar'--Julius Caesar.

'Even so the race Of SHAKE-SPEAR's mind and _manners brightly shines_, In his _well turned_ and _true filed_--lines; In each of which he seems to SHAKE a LANCE, As _brandished_ at the eyes of--Ignorance,'

[We will do _no harm_, with our--WORDS [it _seems_ to say.]--_Prologue_.]

It was the power of the Elizabethan Art of Tradition that was relied on here, that 'living Art'; it was its power to reproduce this Inst.i.tution, through whatever fatal eventualities the movement which these men were seeking then to antic.i.p.ate, and organize, and control, might involve; and though the Parent Union _should be_ overborne in those disastrous, not unforeseen, results--overborne and forgotten--and though other means employed for securing that end should fail.

It is to that posthumous effect that all the hope points here. It is the _Leonatus Posthumus_ who must fulfil this oracle.

'Now with the drops of this most balmy time My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes; Since, spite of him, I'LL live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes; And _thou_ in this shall find thy monument, When _tyrants' crests and tombs of bra.s.s_ are spent.'

'Not marble, nor the gilded monuments [_Elizabethan_ AGE.]

Of _Princes_ shall outlive this _power_-ful rhyme.'

[This is our unconscious Poet, who does not know that his poems are worth printing, or that they are going to get printed--who does not know or care whether they are or not.]

'But you shall shine more bright in these contents, Than unswept stone besmear'd with s.l.u.ttish time.

When wasteful war _shall statues_ overturn [iconoclasm], And _broils_ [civil war] root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn The _living record_ of _your memory_.'

[What is it, then, that this prophet is relying on? Is it a ma.n.u.script? Is it the recent invention of goose-quills which he is celebrating here with so much lyrical pomp, in so many, many lyrics?

Here, for instance:--]

'His _beauty_ shall in _these black lines_ be seen, And _they_ shall live, and he in them still green.'

And here--

'O where, alack!

Shall _time's best jewel_ from _time's chest_ lie hid?

Or what _strong hand_ can hold his swift foot back?

Or _who_ his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O none, unless _this_ miracle [this _miracle_] have might, that in _black ink_--'

Is this printer's ink? Or is it the ink of the prompter's book? or the fading ink of those loose papers, so soon to be 'yellowed with age,'

scattered about no one knew where, that some busy-body, who had nothing else to do, might perhaps take it into his head to save?

'_O none_, unless this miracle'--THIS MIRACLE, the rejoicing scholar and man of letters, who was not for an age, but for all time, cries--defying tyranny, laughing at princes' edicts, reaching into his own great a.s.sured futurity across the gulfs of civil war, planting his feet upon that sure ground, and singing songs of triumph over the spent tombs of bra.s.s and tyrants' crests; like that orator who was to make an oration _in public_, and found himself a little straitened in _time_ to fit his words to his mouth _as he had a mind to do_, when _Eros_, one of his _slaves_, brought him word that the audience was deferred till the next day; at which he was so _ravished with joy_, that he _enfranchised him_. '_This miracle_.' He knows what miracles are, for he has told us; but none other knew _what_ miracle this was that he is celebrating here with all this wealth of symphonies.

'O _none_, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink _my_ love may still _shine bright_.'

['My love,'--wait till you know what it is, and do not think to know with the first or second reading of poems, that are on the surface of them scholastic, academic, mystical, obtrusively enigmatical. Perhaps, after all, it is _that_ Eros who was _enfranchised_, emanc.i.p.ated.]

'But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that _fair_ thou _owest_ [thou _owes_!], Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in _eternal lines_ to time thou growest.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So _long_ lives _this_, and this _gives life_ to--thee!

But here is our prophecy, which we have undertaken to read with the aid of this collation:--

'When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry; Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn The _living_ record of your memory.

'Gainst death, _and_ all _oblivious enmity_, _Shall_ YOU _pace forth_. _Your_ praise shall still find room, Even _in the eyes_ [collateral sounds] _of all posterity_, That wear this world out to the ending doom.