The Real Robert Burns Part 15

He understood the value of simplicity in life as well as in religion, and expressed it in admirable form.

'The Address to the Unco Guid' has a kindly philosophic sympathy running like a stream of light through it; the profound sympathy of the Master who searched for the one stray lamb, and who suggested that he who was without sin should cast the first stone. The last verse especially contains a sublime human philosophy, that if studied till understood, and then practised, would work a greatly needed change in the att.i.tude of the rest of humanity towards the so-called wayward. It is one of the strange anomalies of life that, generally, professing Christian women have in the past been the last to come with Christian sympathy of an affectionate, and sisterly, and respectful quality to take an erring sister in their arms to try to prove that she still possessed their esteem, and to rekindle faith in her heart.

His poem to Mrs Dunlop on 'New Year's Day, 1790;' 'A Man's a Man for a'

That;' 'A Winter Night;' 'Sketch in Verse;' and 'Verses written in Friar's Ca.r.s.e Hermitage,' all show him to have been a philosophic student of human nature.

A few quotations from letters to his friends will show his philosophical att.i.tude to general matters, as the quotations from his letters showed the clearness and trueness of his philosophy regarding religion, democracy, and brotherhood.

Burns saw man's duty to his fellows and to himself in this life.

In a letter to Robert Ainslie, Edinburgh, 1788, he wrote: 'I have no objection to prefer prodigality to avarice, in some few instances; but I appeal to your observation, if you have not met, and often met, with the same disingenuousness, the same hollow-hearted insincerity, and disintegrative depravity of principle, in the hackneyed victims of profusion, as in the unfeeling children of parsimony. I have every possible reverence for the much-talked-of world beyond the grave, and I wish that which piety believes, and virtue deserves, may be all matter of fact. But in all things belonging to, and terminating in, the present scene of existence, man has serious business on hand. Whether a man shall shake hands with welcome in the distinguished elevation of respect, or shrink from contempt in the abject corner of insignificance; whether he shall wanton under the tropic of plenty, or at least enjoy himself in the comfortable lat.i.tudes of easy convenience, or starve in the arctic circle of poverty; whether he shall rise in the manly consciousness of a self-approving mind, or sink beneath a galling load of regret and remorse--these are alternatives of the last moment.'

Since the time of Burns men and women, both in the churches and out of them, have learned to set more store on the importance of living truly on the earth, and have ceased to a large extent to think only of a life to come after death. Men and women are now trying in increasing numbers to make it more heavenly here.

Burns taught a sound philosophy of contentment as a basis for happiness.

He wrote to Mr Ainslie in 1789: 'You need not doubt that I find several very unpleasant and disagreeable circ.u.mstances in my business [that of a gauger], but I am tired with and disgusted at the language of complaint at the evils of life. Human existence in the most favourable situations does not abound with pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills; capricious, foolish man mistakes these inconveniences and ills, as if they were the peculiar property of his own particular situation; and hence that eternal fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily does ruin, many a fine fellow, as well as many a blockhead; and is almost without exception a constant source of disappointment and misery. So far from being dissatisfied with my present lot, I earnestly pray the Great Disposer of events that it may never be worse, and I think I can lay my hand on my heart and say "I shall be content."'

Good, sound philosophy of contentment! Not the contentment that does not try to improve life's conditions, but the wise contentment that recognises the best in present conditions, instead of foolishly resenting what it cannot change.

Burns taught the philosophy of good citizenship.

In 1789 he wrote to Mr Ainslie: 'If the relations we stand in to King, country, kindred, and friends be anything but the visionary fancies of dreaming metaphysicians; if religion, virtue, magnanimity, generosity, humanity, and justice be aught but empty sounds; then the man who may be said to live only for others, for the beloved, honourable female whose tender, faithful embrace endears life, and for the helpless little innocents who are to be the men and women, the worshippers of his G.o.d, the subjects of his King, and the support, nay the very vital existence, of his country in the ensuing age, is the type of truest manhood.'

This quotation from a letter written to a warm, personal friend from whom he was not seeking any favours gives an insight into a rational mind loyal to G.o.d, loyal to his king, loyal to his country, and lovingly loyal to his wife and family.

In a letter to the Right Rev. Dr Geddes, a Roman Catholic Bishop resident in Edinburgh, a very kind friend to Burns, he wrote, 1789: 'I am conscious that wherever I am, you do me the honour to interest yourself in my welfare. It gives me pleasure to inform you that I am here at last [at Ellisland], stationary in the serious business of life, and have now not only the retired leisure, but the hearty inclination to attend to those great and important questions: What I am? Where I am? For what I am destined? Thus with a rational aim and method in life, you may easily guess, my reverend and much honoured friend, that my characteristical trade is not forgotten; I am, if possible, more than ever an enthusiast to the Muses. I am determined to study Man and Nature, and in that view, incessantly to try if the ripening and corrections of years can enable me to produce something worth preserving.'

Bishop Gillis, a Roman Catholic Bishop who lived more than sixty years after the death of Burns, said, in reference to the letter from which this quotation was made: 'If any man, after perusing this letter, will still say that the mind of Burns was beyond the reach of religious influence, or, in other words, that he was a scoffer at revelation, that man need not be reasoned with, as his own mind must be hopelessly beyond the reach of argument.'

In a letter to his friend Cunningham he wrote, 1789: 'What strange beings we are! Since we have a portion of conscious existence equally capable of enjoying pleasure, happiness, and rapture, or of suffering pain, wretchedness, and misery, it is surely worthy of inquiry whether there be not such a thing as a science of life; whether method, economy, and fertility of expedients be not applicable to enjoyment, and whether there be not a want of dexterity in pleasure which renders our little scantling of happiness still less; and a profuseness and intoxication in bliss which leads to satiety, disgust, and self-abhorrence.

'There is not a doubt but that health, talents, character, decent competency, respectable friends, are real, substantial blessings; and yet do we not daily see those who enjoy many, or all, of these good things, and _notwithstanding_ contrive to be as unhappy as others to whose lot few of them have fallen? I believe one great source of this mistake or misconduct is owing to a certain stimulus, with us called ambition, which goads us up the hill of life--not as we ascend other eminences, for the laudable curiosity of viewing an extended landscape, but rather for the dishonest pride of looking down on others of our fellow-creatures, seemingly diminutive in other stations, &c.'

His philosophy clearly recognised the evils of unduly centring our minds and hearts on pleasure, and thus not only robbing ourselves of development, and humanity of the advantage of the many things we might do in our overtime devoted to pleasure, but destroying our interest in the things that were intended to give us happiness.

He also recognised fully the evils of selfish ambition which aims at attaining higher positions than others; which climbs, not to get into purer air to see more widely our true relationships to our fellow-men, but for the degrading satisfaction of being able to look down with a hardening pride that separates humanity into groups instead of uniting all men in brotherhood. A man whose heart and mind are engrossed by base material aims cannot grow truly, and he loses the advantages that should have come to him from the elements of blessing he possesses by misusing them for selfish ends.

In another letter he wrote: 'All my fears and cares are of this world; if there is another, an honest man has nothing to fear from it. I hate a man that wishes to be a Deist; but, I fear, every fair, unprejudiced inquirer must in some degree be a sceptic. It is not that there are any very staggering arguments against the immortality of man, but, like electricity, phlogiston, &c., the subject is so involved in darkness that we want data to go upon.'

His philosophy left him no fears for what comes after death. He had deep faith in the justice of G.o.d. 'I believe,' he said, 'that G.o.d perfectly understands the being He has made.' Believing this, and believing also that G.o.d is just, he feared not the future. Burns, as he said to Mrs Dunlop, was 'in his idle moments sometimes a little sceptical.' But they were only moments. He knew there were problems he could not solve, and so, as he wrote to Dr Candlish, 'he was glad to grasp revealed religion.' A thoughtful man requires more faith in revealed religion than a man who does not really think, but only thinks he is thinking, when other people's thoughts are running through his head. Burns needed strong faith, and he had it even about religious matters he could not explain. 'The necessities of my own heart,' as he wrote to Mrs Dunlop, 'gave the lie to my cold philosophisings.' His 'Ode to Mrs Dunlop on New Year's Day, 1790,' said:

The voice of Nature loudly cries, And many a message from the skies, That something in us never dies.

He accepted by faith the 'messages from the skies,' and in his soul harmonised the messages with the 'Voice of Nature,' even though his philosophic mind searched for proof of problems he could not solve.

In a letter to Peter Hill, 1790, he wrote: 'Mankind are by nature benevolent creatures, except in a few scoundrelly instances. I do not think that avarice for the good things we chance to have is born with us; but we are placed here among so much nakedness and hunger and poverty and want, that we are under a d.a.m.ning necessity of studying selfishness in order that we may EXIST. Still there are in every age a few souls that all the wants and woes of life cannot debase into selfishness, or even give the necessary alloy of caution and prudence. If ever I am in danger of vanity, it is when I contemplate myself on this side of my disposition and character. G.o.d knows I am no saint; I have a whole host of follies and sins to answer for, but if I could (and I believe I do, as far as I can), I would 'wipe away all tears from all eyes.'

Burns was not self-righteous. He moralises in this quotation not as one of the 'unco guid,' but as a man on what he thought was one of life's most perplexing problems, poverty. He saw the problem more keenly than most men see it yet. It was not the poverty of Burns himself that, as Carlyle believed, made him write and work for freedom and justice for the labouring-cla.s.ses. It is quite true, however, that one of his reasons for pleading for democracy was the poverty among the peasantry of his time. He saw the injustice of conditions, and admitted in his poem to Davie, a brother poet, that

It's hardly in a body's power To keep at times from being sour, To see how things are shared.

Burns recommended the philosophy of right, not expediency in public as well as private matters.

He wrote a letter to Mrs Dunlop in 1790, in which he said: 'I believe, in my conscience, such ideas as, "my country; her independence; her honour; the ill.u.s.trious names that mark the history of my native land," &c.--I believe these, among your _men of the world_; men who, in fact, guide, for the most part, and govern our world, are looked on as so many modifications of wrong-headedness. They knew the use of bawling out such terms to rouse or lead the Rabble; but for their own private use, with almost all the _able statesmen_ that ever existed, or now exist, when they talk of right and wrong, they only mean proper and improper; and their measure of conduct is not what they ought, but _what they dare_. For the truth of this, I shall not ransack the history of nations, but appeal to one of the ablest judges of men, and himself one of the ablest men that ever lived--the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield. In fact a man that could thoroughly control his vices, whenever they interfered with his interest, and who could completely put on the appearance of every virtue as often as it suited his purposes, is, on the Stanhopian plan, _the perfect man_, a man to lead nations. But are great abilities, complete without a flaw, and polished without a blemish, the standard of human excellence? This is certainly not the staunch opinion of _men of the world_; but I call on honour, virtue, and worth to give the Stygian doctrine a loud negative!

However, this must be allowed, that, if you abstract from man the idea of an existence beyond the grave, then the true measure of human conduct is _proper and improper_; virtue and vice, as dispositions of the heart, are, in that case, of scarcely the same import and value to the world at large as harmony and discord in the modifications of sound; and a delicate sense of honour, like a nice ear for music, though it may sometimes give the possessor an ecstasy unknown to the coa.r.s.er organs of the herd, yet, considering the harsh gratings and inharmonic jars in this ill-tuned state of being, it is odds but the individual would be as happy, and certainly would be as much respected by the true judges of society, as it would then stand, without either a good ear or a good heart....

'Mackenzie has been called "the Addison of the Scots," and, in my opinion, Addison would not be hurt at the comparison. If he has not Addison's exquisite humour, he as certainly outdoes him in the tender and the pathetic. His _Man of Feeling_--but I am not counsel-learned in the laws of criticism--I estimate as the first performance of the kind I ever saw.

From what book, moral or even pious, will the susceptible young mind receive impressions more congenial to humanity and kindness, generosity and benevolence--in short, more of all that enn.o.bles the soul to herself, or endears her to others, than from the simple, affecting tale of poor Harley?

'Still, with all my admiration of Mackenzie's writings, I do not know if they are the fittest reading for a young man who is about to set out, as the phrase is, to make his way into life. Do you not think, Madam, that among the few favoured of heaven in the structure of their minds (for such there certainly are) there may be a purity, a tenderness, a dignity, and elegance of soul, which are of no use, nay, in some degree absolutely disqualifying, for the truly important business of making a man's way into life?'

Burns understood the underlying philosophy of sensitiveness.

In a letter to Miss Craik, 1790, he wrote: 'There is not among the martyrologies ever penned so rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets.

In the comparative view of wretches, the criterion is not what they are doomed to suffer, but how they are formed to bear. Take a being of our kind, give him a stronger imagination and a more delicate sensibility, which between them will ever engender a more ungovernable set of pa.s.sions than are the usual lot of man; implant in him an irresistible impulse to some idle vagary, such as arranging wild flowers in fantastical nosegays, tracing the gra.s.shopper to his haunt by his chirping song, watching the frisks of the little minnows in the sunny pool, or hunting after the intrigues of wanton b.u.t.terflies--in short, send him adrift after some pursuit which shall eternally mislead him from the paths of lucre, and yet curse him with a keener relish than any man living for the pleasures that lucre can purchase; lastly, fill up the measure of his woes by bestowing on him a spurning sense of his own dignity, and you have created a wight nearly as miserable as a poet. To you, Madam, I need not recount the fairy pleasures the Muse bestows to counterbalance this catalogue of evils.

Bewitching poesy is like bewitching woman: she has in all ages been accused of misleading mankind from the counsels of wisdom and the paths of prudence, involving them in difficulties, baiting them with poverty, branding them with infamy, and plunging them in the whirling vortex of ruin; yet, where is the man but must own that all our happiness on earth is not worth the name--that even the holy hermit's solitary prospect of paradisaical bliss is but the glitter of a northern sun rising over a frozen region, compared with the many pleasures, the nameless raptures that we owe to the lovely Queen of the heart of Man!'

He based the last two lines in his 'Poem on Sensibility' on this philosophy:

Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure, Thrill the deepest notes of woe.

His 'Parting Song to Clarinda' reveals in the four lines, said by Sir Walter Scott 'to contain the essence of a thousand love-tales,' how deepest love may bring darkest sorrow:

Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met--or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

In a letter to Crawford Tait, Esq., Edinburgh, 1790, requesting a sympathetic interest on behalf of a young man from Ayrshire, he says: 'I shall give you my friend's character in two words: as to his head, he has talents enough, and more than enough, for common life; as to his heart, when Nature had kneaded the kindly clay that composes it, she said, "I can no more."

'You, my good Sir, were born under kinder stars; but your fraternal sympathy, I well know, can enter into the feelings of the young man who goes into life with the laudable ambition to _do_ something, and to _be_ something among his fellow-creatures; but whom the consciousness of friendless obscurity presses to the earth, and wounds to the soul!

'Even the fairest of his virtues are against him. That independent spirit, and that ingenuous modesty--qualities inseparable from a n.o.ble mind--are, with the million, circ.u.mstances not a little disqualifying. What pleasure is in the power of the fortunate and the happy, by their notice and patronage, to brighten the countenance and glad the heart of such depressed youth! I am not so angry with mankind for their deaf economy of the purse--the goods of this world cannot be divided without being lessened--but why be a n.i.g.g.ard of that which bestows bliss on a fellow-creature, yet takes nothing from our own means of enjoyment? We wrap ourselves up in the cloak of our better-fortune and turn away our eyes, lest the wants and woes of our brother-mortals should disturb the selfish apathy of our souls.'

Burns was a deep character student, and he was able to adjust the balance fairly when weighing the characteristics that count for success in public life, in business, and in private life. He always recommended honesty, and always admired that independent spirit and that ingenuous modesty inseparable from a n.o.ble mind. Much as he admired them, however, he clearly understood that these admirable qualities might prevent the perfect development of a soul if they made a man morbidly sensitive, or interfered in any way with his faith in himself.

Speaking of 'independence and sensibility,' the same qualities he discussed in the letter quoted (to Mr Crawford Tait), he says in a letter to Peter Hill, Edinburgh, 1791, addressing poverty: 'By thee the man of sentiment, whose heart flows with independence, and melts with sensibility, inly pines under the neglect or writhes in bitterness of soul under the contumely of arrogant, unfeeling wealth.'

Burns taught the just philosophy of grat.i.tude to G.o.d.

In a letter to Dr Moore, of London, he wrote, 1791: 'Whatsoever is not detrimental to society, and is of positive enjoyment, is of G.o.d, the Giver of all good things, and ought to be received and enjoyed by His creatures with thankful delight.'

We cannot yet estimate the philosophic vision of Burns. It will grow clearer as century follows century. Carlyle said of him: 'We see that in this man was the gentleness, the trembling pity of a woman, with the deep earnestness, the force, and pa.s.sionate ardour of a hero. Tears lie in him, and a consuming fire, as lightning lurks in the drop of the summer clouds.'

So much for his heart; what says Carlyle about his mind?

'Burns never studied philosophy.... Nevertheless, sufficient indication, if no proof sufficient, remains for us in his works; we discern the brawny movements of a gigantic though untutored strength; and can understand how, in conversation, his quick, sure insight into men and things may, as aught else about him, have amazed the best thinkers of his time and country.

'But, unless we mistake, the intellectual gift of Burns is fine as well as strong. The more delicate relations of things could not well have escaped his eye, for they were intimately present to his heart. The logic of the senate and the forum is indispensable, but not all-sufficient; nay, perhaps the highest truth is that which will most certainly elude it, for this logic works by words, and "the highest," it has been said, "cannot be expressed in words." We are not without tokens of an openness for this higher truth also, a keen though uncultivated sense for it having existed in Burns. Mr Stewart, it will be remembered, wondered that Burns had formed some distinct conception of the doctrine of a.s.sociation. We rather think that far subtler things than the doctrine of a.s.sociation had from of old been familiar to him.'