'is butthe slave to memory, Of violent birth, and poor validity, Which now, like fruit unripe, stick on the tree, But fall unshaken when they mellow be. What to ourselvesin passionwe propose,The passion ending doth the purpose lose.'
That is Hamlet's verbal account of it, when he undertakes to reduce his philosophy to rhyme, and gets the player to insert some sixteen of his lines quietly into the court performance: that is hisverbalaccount of it; buthisaction, too, speaks louder and more eloquently than his words.
The principle of identity and the true self is wanting in this so-calledself-ishness. For the true principle of self is the peace principle, the principle ofstatewithin and without.
'To thine own self be true, And it must follow asthe night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man'
That is the doctrine, the scientific doctrine. But it is not the passionate, but thoughtful Hamlet, shrinking from blood, with his resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast ofconscientiousthought; it is not the humane, conscience-fettered Hamlet, but the man who aspires to make his single humours the law of the universal world, in whom the poet will show now this want of state and sovereignty.
He steels himself against Cominius; he steels himself against Menenius. 'He sits in gold,' Cominius reports, 'his eye redas 'twould burn Rome'—a small flambeau the poet thinks for so large a city. 'He no more remembers his mother than an eight year old horse,' is the poor old Menenius querulous account of him, when with a cracked heart he returns and reports how the conditions of a man are altered in him: but while he is making that already-quoted report of this superhuman growth and assumption of a divine authority and honour in the Military Chieftain, the Poet is quietly starting a little piece of philosophical machinery that will shake out that imperial pageant, and show the slave that is hidden under it, for it is nomanat all, but, in very deed, a slave, as Hamlet calls it, 'passion's slave,' 'a pipe for fortune's fingerto sound what stop she please.' For thatstate,—that command—depends on that which 'changes,'— fortuities, impressions, nay, it has the principle of revolution within it. It is its nature to change. The single passion cannot engross the large, many-passioned, complex nature, so rich and various in motivity, so large and comprehensive in its surveys—the single passion seeks in vain to subdue it to its single end. That reigning passion must give way when it is spent, or sooner if its master come. You cannot make it look to-day as it looked yesterday; you cannot make it look when its rival affection enters as it looked when it reigned alone. An hour ago, the hue of resolution on its cheek glowed immortal red. It was strong enough to defy God and all his creatures; it would annul all worlds but that one which it was god of.
This is the speech of it on the lips of the actor who comes in to interpret to usthe thinker'sinaction, the thinker's irresolution, for 'it isconsciencethat makes cowards of us all.' Here is a man who is resolute enough.His willis not 'puzzled.'Histhoughts,hisscruples will not divide and destroy his purpose.Hereis THE UNITY which precedes ACTION. This man is going to be revenged for his father. 'What would you undertake to do?' 'To cut his throat i' the church.'
'To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil.Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit.Idaredamnation. To this point I standThat both the worldsIgive to negligence,Let come what comes,onlyI'll be revengedMost thoroughly formyfather.' [Only.]
That is your passionate speech, your speech of fire. That was what the principle of vindictiveness said when it wasyou, when it mastered you, and calleditselfby your name. Ay, it has many names, and many lips; but it is alwaysone. That was what it said an hour ago; and now it is shrunk away you know not where, you cannot rally it, and you are there confounded, self-abandoned, self-annulled, a forgery, belying the identity which your visible form—which yourhumanform, was made to promise,—a slave,—a pipe forfortune'sfinger. This is the kind of action which is criticised in the scientific drama, and 'rejected'; and the conclusion after these reviews and rejections, 'after every species of rejection,'—theaffirmationis, that there is but one principle that ishuman, and that is GOOD yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and whose is true to that is true, in the human form, to the self which was, and will be. He cannot then be false to his yesterday, or tomorrow; he cannot then be false to himself; he cannot then be false to any man; for that is the self that is one in us all—that is the self ofreasonand conscience, not passion.
But as for this affection that is tried here now, that the diagram of this scene exhibits so tangibly, 'as it were, to the eye,'—this poor and private passion, that sits here, with its imperial crown on its head, in the place of God, but lacking His 'mercy,'—this passion of the petty man, that has made itself so hugely visible with its monstrous outstretching, that lies stretched out and glittering on these hills, with its dragon coils unwound, with its deadly fangs—those little fangs, that crush our private hearts, and torture and rend our daily lives—exposed in this great solar microscope, striking thecommon-weal,—as for this petty, usurping passion, there is a spectacle approaching that will undo it.
Out of that great city there comes a little group of forms, which yesterday this hero 'could not stay to pick out of that pile which had offended him,' that was his word,—which yesterday he would have burnt in it without a scruple. Towards the great Volscian army that beleaguers Rome it comes—towards the pavilion where the Volscian captain sits in gold, with his wings outspread, it shapes its course. To other eyes, it is but a group of Roman ladies, two or three, clad in mourning, with their attendants, and a prattling child with them; but, with the first glance at it from afar, the great chieftain trembles, and begins to clasp his armour. He could think of them and doom them, in his over-mastering passion of revenge, with its heroic infinity of mastery triumphant in him,—he couldthinkof them and doom them; but the impressions ofthe sensesare more vivid, and the passions wait on them. As that group draws nearer, one sees, by the light of this Poet's painting, a fair young matron, with subdued mien and modest graces, and an elder one, leading a wilful boy, with a 'confirmed countenance,' pattering by her side; just such a group as one might see anywhere in the lordly streets of Palatinus,—much such a one as one might find anywhere under those thousand-doomed plebeian roofs.
But to this usurping 'private,' to this man of passion and affection, and not reason—this man of private and particular motives only, and blind partial aims, it is more potent than Rome and all her claims; it outweighs Rome and all her weal—'it is worth of senators and patricians a city full, of tribunes and plebeians a sea and land full'—it outweighs all the Volscians, and their trust in him.
His reasons of state begin to falter, and change their aspects, as that little party draws nearer; and he finds himself within its magnetic sphere.
For this is the pattern-man, for the man of mere impression and instinct. He is full of feeling within his sphere, though it is a sphere which does not embrace plebeians,—which crushes Volscians with clarions, and drums, and trumpets, and poets' voices to utter its exultations. Within that private sphere, his sensibilities are exquisite and poetic in their depth and delicacy. He is not wanting in the finer impulses, in the nobler affections of the particular and private nature. He is not a base, brutal man. Even in his martial conquests, he will not take 'leaden spoons.' His soul is with a divine ambition fired to haveall. It is instinct, but it is the instinct of the human; it is 'conservation withadvancement' that he is blindly pursuing, for this is a generous nature. He knows the heights that reason lends to instinct in the human kind, and the infinities that affection borrows from it.
And the Poet himself has large and gentle views of 'this particular,' scientific views of it, scientific recognitions of its laws, such as no philosophic school was ever before able to pronounce. Even here, on this sad and tragic ground of a subdued and debased common-weal, he will not cramp its utterance—he will give it leave to speak, in all its tenderness and beauty, in its own sweet native dialect, all its poetic wildness, its mad verities, its sober impossibilities, even at the moment in which he asks in statesmanship for the rational motive, undrenched in humours and affections—for the motive of the weal that is common, and not for the motive of that which is private and exclusive.
In vain the hero struggles with his yielding passion, and seeks to retain it. In vain he struggles with a sentiment which he himself describes as 'a gosling's instinct,' and seeks to subdue it. In vain he rallies his pride, and says, 'Let it bevirtuousto beobstinate'; and determines to stand 'as if a man were author of himself, and knew no other kin.' His mother kneels. It is but a frail, aged woman kneeling to the victorious chieftain of the Volscian hosts; but to him it is 'as ifOlympustoa mole-hillstooped in supplication.' His boy looks at him with an eye in which great Nature speaks, and says, 'Deny not'; he sees the tears in the dove's eyes of the beloved, he hears her dewy voice; we hear it, too, through the Poet's art, in the words she speaks; and he forgets his part. We reach the 'grub' once more. The dragon wings of armies melt from him. He is his young boy's father—he is his fair young wife's beloved.
'O a kiss, longasmy exile, sweetasmy revenge.'
There's no decision yet. The scales are even now. But there is another there, waiting to be saluted, and he himself is but a boy—his own mother's boy again, at her feet. It is she that schools and lessons him; it is she that conquers him. Itwas'her boy,' after all—it was her boy still, that was 'coming home.'
Well might Menenius say—
'This Volumniais worth of consuls, senators, patricians, A city full; of tribunessuch as you, A sea and land full.'
But let us take the philosophic report of this experiment as we find it; for on the carefullest study, when once it is put in its connections, when once we 'have heard the argument,' we shall not find anything in it to spare. But we must not forget that this is still 'the election,' the ignorant election of the common-weal which is under criticism, and though this election has been revoked in the play already, and this is a banished man we are trying here, there was a play in progress when this play was played, in which that revocation was yet to come off; and this Poet was anxious that the subject should be considered first from the most comprehensive grounds, so thatthe principle of 'the election' need never again be called in question, so that the revolution should end in the state, and not in the principle of revolution.
'My wife comes foremost; then the honoured mouldWherein this trunk was framed, and in her handThe grand-child to her blood. But, out,affection!All bond and privilege of nature, break!Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.—What is that curtsey worth? or those doves' eyes,Which canmake gods forsworn?
['He speaks of the people as if he were a god to punish, and not a man of infirmity.']
'I melt,and am notOf STRONGER EARTH than others.—My mother bows;As if Olympus to a molehill shouldIn supplication nod: and my young boyHath an aspect of intercession, whichGreat Nature cries, 'Deny not!'—Let the VolscesPlough Rome, and harrow Italy; I'll neverBe such a GOSLING to obey INSTINCT; but stand,As if a MAN were author of himself,And knew no other kin.These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.
Vir.The sorrow that delivers us thus changed,Makes you think so.
[The objects are altered, not the eyes. We are changed. But it is with sorrow. She bids him note that alteration, and puts upon it the blame of his loss of love. But that is just the kind of battery he is not provided for. His resolution wavers. That unrelenting warrior, that fierce revengeful man is gone already, and forgot to leave his part—the words he was to speak are wanting.]
Cor. Like a dull actor now,I have forgot my part,and I am out,Even to a full disgrace. Best of my flesh,Forgive my tyranny; but do not say,For that, Forgive our Romans.—O, a kissLong as my exile, sweet as my revenge!Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kissI carried from thee, dear; and my true lipHath virgin'd it e'er since.—You gods! I prate,And themost noble mother of the worldLeave unsaluted: Sink, my knee, t'the earth; [Kneels.]Ofthe deep dutymoreimpressionshowThan that of common sons.
Vol. O, stand up bless'd! Whilst, with no softer cushion than the flint, I kneel before thee; and unproperlyShow duty, as mistaken—
[Note it—'as mistaken,' for this is the kind of learning described elsewhere, which differs from received opinions, and must, therefore, pray in aid of similes.]
—and improperlyShow DUTY, as mistaken all the whileBetween the child and parent.
[And the prostrate form of that which should command, is represented in the kneeling mother. The Poet himself points us to this hieroglyphic. It is the common-weal that kneels in her person, and the rebel interprets for us. It is the violated law that stoops for pardon.]
Cor. What is this? Your knees to me? toyour corrected son?Thenlet the pebbles on the hungry beach Fillip the stars;thenlet themutinouswinds Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun;Murdering impossibility, to make What cannot be, slight work.
Vol. Thouart my warrior; I holp to frame thee.
[But it is not of the little Marcius only, the hero—the Roman hero in germ—that she speaks—there is more than her Roman parthere, when she adds—]
Vol. This is a poor epitome of yours,Whichby the interpretationoffull timeMay show,like all, yourself.
[And hear now what benediction the true hero can dare to utter, what prayer the true hero can dare to pray, through this faltering, fluctuating, martial hero's lips, when, 'that whatsoever god who led him' is failing him, and the flaws of impulse are swaying him to and fro, and darkening him for ever.]
Cor.'The god of soldiersWith the consent ofSUPREME JOVE,'—[the Capitolian, thegod of state]—'informThy thoughtswith NOBLENESS;'—[inform thy thoughts.]'that thou may'st proveThe shameunvulnerable, and stick i'the warsLike a great sea-mark,standing every flaw,And saving those that eye thee.'
[Butthishero's conclusion for himself, and his impulsive nature is—]
'Not of a woman's tenderness to be,Requires nor child, nor woman's face to see.I have sat too long.'
But the mother will not let him go, and her stormy eloquence completes the conquest which that dumb rhetoric had before well nigh achieved.
Yes, Menenius was right in his induction. His abstraction and brief summing up of 'this Volumnia' and her history, is the true one. She is very potent in the business of the state, whether you take her in her first literal acceptation, as the representative mother, or whether you take her in that symbolical and allusive comprehension, to which the emphasis on the name is not unfrequently made to point, as 'the nurse and mother of all humanities,' the instructor of the state, the former of its nobility, whoin-forms their thoughts with nobleness, such nobleness, and such notions of it as they have, and who fits them for the place they are to occupy in the body of the common-weal.
Menenius has not exaggerated in his exposition the relative importance ofthisfigure among those which the dumb-show of this play exhibits. Among the 'transient hieroglyphics' which the diseased common-weal produces on the scientific stage, when the question of its CURE is the question of the Play—in that great crowd of forms, in that moving, portentous, stormy pageant of senators, and consuls, and tribunes, and plebeians, whose great acts fill the scene—there are none more significant than these two, whom we saw at first 'seated on two low stools, sewing'; these two of the wife and mother—the commanding mother, and the 'gracious silence.'
'This Volumnia'—yes, let her school him, for it is from her school that he has come: let her conquer him, for she is the conserver of this harm. It is she who makes of it a tradition. To its utmost bound of consequences, she is the mother of it, and accountable to God and man for its growth and continuance. Consuls, and senators, and patricians, and tribunes, such as we have, are powerless without her, are powerless against her. The state begins with her; but, instead of it, she has bred and nursed the destroyer of the state. Let her conquer him, though her life-blood must flow for it now. This play is the Cure of the Common-weal, the convulsed and dying Common-weal; and whether the assault be from within or without, this woman must undo her work. The tribunes have sent for her now: she must go forth without shrinking, and slay her son. She was the true mother; she trained him for the common-weal, she would have made a patrician of him, but that craved a noble cunning; she was not instructed in it; she must pay the penalty of her ignorance—the penalty of her traditions—and slay him now. There is no help for it, for she has made with her traditions a thing that no common-weal can bear.
Woe for this Volumnia! Woe for the common-weal whose chiefs she has reared, whose great men and 'GOOD CITIZENS' she has made! Woe for her! Woe for thecommon-weal, forherboy approaches! The land is groaning and shaken; the faces of men gather blackness; the clashing of arms is heard in the streets, blood is flowing, the towns are blazing. Great Rome will soon be sacked with Romans, for her boy is coming home; the child of her instinct, the son of her ignorance, the son of her RELIGION, iscoming home.
'O mother, mother!What hast thou done?….O my mother, mother! O,You have wona happy victory to Rome,—But for your son—'
Alas for him, and his gentle blood, and noble breeding, and his patrician greatness! Woe for the unlearned mother's son, who has made him great with such a training, that Rome's weal and his, Rome's greatness and his, must needs contend together—that 'Rome's happy victory' must needs be the blaze that shall darken him for ever!
Yet he storms again, with something like his old patrician fierceness; and yet not that, the tone is altered; he is humbler and tamer than he was, and he says himself, 'It is the first time that ever I have learned to scold'; but he is stung, even to boasting of his old heroic deeds, when Aufidius taunts him with his un-martial, un-divineinfirmity, and brings home to him in very words, at last, the Poet's suppressed verdict, the Poet's deferred sentence, GUILTY!—of what? He is but A BOY, his nurse's boy, and he undertookthe state! He is but A SLAVE, and he was caught climbing to the imperial chair, and putting on the purple. He is but 'adogto the commonalty,' and he was sitting in the place of God.
Aufidius owns, indeed, to his own susceptibility to these particular and private affections. When Coriolanus turns to him after that appeal from Volumnia has had its effect, and asks:—
'Now, good Aufidius,Wereyou in my stead, say, wouldyouhave heardA motherless, or grantedless, Aufidius?'
He answers, guardedly, 'I was movedwithal.' But the philosopher has his word there, too, as well as the Poet, slipped in under the Poet's, covertly, 'I wasmovedwith-all.' [It is the Play of the Common-weal.] And what should the single private man, the man of exclusive affections and changeful humours, do with the weal of the whole? In his noblest conditions, what business has he in the state? and who shall vote to give him the out-stretched wings and claws of Volscian armies, that he may say of Rome,all's mine, and give it to his wife or mother? Who shall follow inhistrain, to plough Rome and harrow Italy, who lays himself and all his forces at his mother's feet, and turns back at her word?
Aufidius. You lords and HEADS of the STATE, perfidiouslyHas he betrayedyour business, and given upFor certain drops of salt,your cityRome—I say,your city—tohis wife and mother:Breaking his oath and resolution likeA twist of rotten silk; never admittingCounsel of the war, butat his nurse's tearsHe whined and roar'd away your victory,That pages blushed at him, and men of heartLooked wondering at each other.
[There is a look which has come down to us. That isElizabethan. That is the suppressed Elizabethan.]
Cor. Hear'st thou,Mars?
Auf. Name notthe godthouBoyof tears.
Cor.Ha!
Auf. No MORE. [You are no more.]
Cor. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heartToo great for what contains it.Boy? O Slave!…. Boy? Falsehound!
[These are the names that are flying about here, now that the martial chiefs are criticising each other: it is no matter which side they go.]
'Boy? O slave!… Boy? False hound! ['He is a very dog to the commonalty.']Alone I did it. BOY?
But it is Volumnia herself who searches to the quick the principle of this boyish sovereignty, in her satire on the undivine passion she wishes to unseat. It is thus that she upbraids the hero with his un_manly_, ungracious, ignoble purpose:—
'Speak to me, son.
Thou hast affected the fine strains of HONOUR,To imitate the graces of the gods;To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,And yet to charge thy sulphur with a boltThat should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?Think'st thou it honourable for a NOBLE MANStill to remember wrongs?
For that is the height of the scientific affirmation also; the other was, in scientific language, its 'anticipation.' He wants nothing of a god but an eternity, and a heaven to throne in (slight deficiences in a god already). 'Yes, mercy, if you paint him truly.' 'I paint him in character.'
NOBILITY, HONOUR, MANLINESS, HEROISM, GOOD CITIZENSHIP, FREEDOM, DIVINITY, PATRIOTISM. We are getting a number of definitions here, vague popular terms, scientifically fixed, scientifically cleared, destined to waver, and be confused and mixed with other and fatally different things in the popular apprehension no more—when once this science is unfolded for that whole people for whom it was delivered—no more for ever.
There is no open dramatic embodiment in this play of the true ideal nobility, and manliness, and honour, and divinity. This is the false affirmation which is put upon the stage here, to be tried, and examined, and rejected. For it is to this Poet's purpose to show—and very much to his purpose to show, sometimes—what is not the true affirmation. His method is critical, but his rejection contains the true definition. The whole play is contrived to shape it here; all hands combine to frame it. Volscians and Romans conspire to pronounce it; the world is against this 'one man' and his part-liness, though he be indeed 'every man.' He himself has been compelled to pronounce it; for the speaker for the whole is the speaker in each of us, and pronounces his sentences on ourselves with our own lips. 'Being gentle wounded craves a noble cunning,' is the word of the noble, who comes back with a Volscian army to exhibit upon the stage this grand hieroglyphic, this grand dramatic negative of that nobility.
But it is from the lips of the mother, brought into this deadly antagonism with the manliness she has trained, compelled now to echo that popular rejection, that the Poet can venture to speak out, at last, from the depths of his true heroism. It is this Volumnia who strikes now to the heart of the play with her satire on this affectation of the graces of the gods,—this assumption of nobility, and manliness, and the fine strains ofhonour,—in one who is led only by the blind demon gods, 'that keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,'—in one who is bounded and shut in after all to the range of his own poor petty private passions, shut up to a poverty of soul which forbids those assumptions, limited to a nature in which thosestrictlyhuman terms can be only affectations, one who concentrates all his gloriousspecialhuman gifts on the pursuit of ends for which the lower natures are also furnished. Honour, forsooth! the fine strains of honour, and the graces of the gods. Look at that Volscian army there.
'To tear with thunderthe wide cheeks o' the air,And yetto charge thy sulphur with a boltThat should but rive an oak.Why dost not speak?'
He can not. There is no speech for that. It does not bearreview.
'Why dost not speak?Think'st thou it honourable for a noble manStillto remember wrongs?'
'Let it bevirtuousto beobstinate,' let there be no better principle of that identity which we insist on in men, that firmness which we call manliness, and the cherishedwrongis honour.
It is but an interrogative point, but the height of our affirmation is taken with it. It is a figure of speech andintensifiesthe affirmative with its irony.
'This a consul? No.'
'No more, but e'en a woman, and COMMANDEDBy suchpoorpassion as the maid that milks,And does the meanest chares.' [QUEEN.]
'Give me thatmanthat is notpassion's slave.
Since my dear soulwas mistress of her choice,And could of men distinguish her election,She hath seal'd thee for herself:forthou hast beenAs one, in sufferingall, thatsuffersnothing.
But the man who rates so highly 'this single mould of Marcius,' and the wounded name of it, that he willforgeanother for it 'i' the fire of burning Rome,' who will hurt the world to ease the rankling of his single wrong, who will plough Rome and harrow Italy to cool the fever of his thirst for vengeance; this is not the man, this is not the hero, this is not THE GOD, that the scientific review accepts. Whoso has put him in the chair of state on earth, or in heaven, must 'revoke that ignorant election.' Whatever our 'perfect example in civil life' may be, and we are, perhaps, not likely to get it openly in the form of an historic 'composition' on this author's stage, whatever name and shape it may take when it comes, this evidently is not it. This Caius Marcius is dismissed for the present from this Poet's boards. This curule chair that stands here empty yet, for aught that we can see, and this crown of 'olives of endless age,' is not for him.
'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?Against him first.
'We proceed first by negatives, and conclude after everyspecies of rejection.'
On the surface of this play, lies everywhere the question of the Common-Weal, in its relation to the good that is private and particular, scientifically reviewed, as a question in proportion,—as the question of the whole against the part,—of the greater against the less,—nay, as the question of that which is against that which is not. For it is a treatment which throws in passing, the shadow of the old metaphysical suspicion and scepticism on that chaotic unaxiomatical condition of things which the scientific eye discovers here, for the new philosophy with all its new comprehension of the actual, with all its new convergency on practice, is careful to inform us that it observes, notwithstanding the old distinction between 'being and becoming.' This is an IDEAL philosophy also, though the notions of nature are more respected in it, than the spontaneous unconsidered notions of men.
It is the largeness of the objective whole, the historic whole and the faculty in man of comprehending it, and the sense of relation and obligation to it, as the highest historic law,—theformal, theessential lawofkindin him, it is the breadth of reason, it is the circumference of conscience, it is thegrandeurof duty which this author arrays here scientifically against that oblivion and ignoring of thewhole, that forgetfulness of the world, and the universal tie which the ignorance of the unaided sense and the narrowness of passion and private affection create, whether in the one, or the few, or the many. It is the Weal of the whole against the will of the part, no matter where the limit of that partiality, or 'partliness,' as the 'poorcitizen' calls it, is fixed whether it be the selfishness of the single self, or whether the household tie enlarges its range, whether it be the partiality of class or faction, or the partiality of kindred or race, or the partiality of geographic limits, the question of the play, the question of the whole, of the worthier whole, is still pursued with scientific exaction. It is the conflict with axioms which is represented here, and not with wordy axioms only, not with abstractions good for the human mind only, in its abstract self-sustained speculations, but with historical axioms, axioms which the universal nature knows, laws which have had the consent of things since this nature began, laws which passed long ago the universal commons.
It is the false unscientific state which is at war, not with abstract speculation merely, but with the nature of things and the received logic of the universe, which this man of a practical science wishes to call attention to. It is the crowning and enthroning of that which is private and particular, it is the anointing of passion and instinct, it is the arming of the absolute—the demon—will; it is the putting into the hands of the ignorant part the sceptre of the whole, which strikes the scientific Reviewer as the thing to be noted here. And by way of proceeding by negatives first, he undertakes to convey to others the impression which this state of things makes upon his own mind, as pointedly as may be, consistently with those general intentions which determine his proceedings and the conditions which limit them, and he is by no means timid in availing himself of the capabilities of his story to that end. The true spectacle of the play,—the principal hieroglyphic of it,—the one in which this hieroglyphic criticism approaches the metaphysical intention most nearly, is one that requires interpretation. It does not report itself to the eye at once. The showman stops to tell us before he produces it, that itisa symbol,—that this is one of the places where he 'prays in aid of similes,'—that this is a specimen of what he calls elsewhere 'allusive' writing. The true spectacle of the play,—the grand hieroglyphic of it,—is that view of the city, and the woman in the foreground kneelingfor it, 'to herson, hercorrectedson,' begging for pardon of her corrected rebel—hanging for life on the chance of his changeful moods and passions. It isRomethat lies stretched out there upon her hills, in all her visible greatness and claims to reverence; it is Rome with her Capitolian crown, forth from which the Roman matron steps, and with no softer cushion than the flint, in the dust at the rebel's feet, kneels 'to show'—as she tells us—to show as clearly as the conditions of the exhibition allow it to be exhibited, DUTY as mistaken,—'asmistaken,'—all the whilebetweenthe childandparent.
It is Jupiter that stoops; it is Olympus doing obeisance to the mole-hill; it is the divineness of the universal law—theformallaw in man—that is prostrate and suppliant in her person; and the Poet exhausts even his own powers of expression, and grows inarticulate at last, in seeking to convey his sense of this ineffable, impossible, historical pretension. It is as 'if Olympus to a mole-hill shouldin supplication nod; it is as ifthe pebbleson the hungry beach shouldfillip the stars; as ifthe mutinous windsshould strike the proud cedars against the fiery sun,murdering impossibility, to make whatcan not be, slight work,'—what can notbe.
That was the spectacle of the play, and that was the world's spectacle when the play was written. Nay, worse; a thousandfold more wild and pitiful, and confounding to the intellect, and revolting to its sensibilities, was the spectacle that the State offered then to the philosophic eye. The Poet has all understated his great case. He has taken the pattern-man in the private affections, the noble man of mere instinct and passion, and puthimin the chair of state;—the man whom nature herself had chosen and anointed, and crowned with kingly graces.
'As waves before a vessel under sailSo men obeyed him, and fell below his stern,'
'If he would but incline to the people, there never was aworthier man.'
Not to the natural private affections and instincts, touched with the nobility of human sense,—not to the loyalty of the husband,—not to the filial reverence and duty of the son, true to that private and personal relationship at least; not to the gentleness of the patrician, true to that private patricianship also, must England owe herweal—such weal as she could beg and wheedle from her lord and ruler then. Not from the conquering hero with his fresh oakleaf on his brow, and the command of the god who led him in his speech and action,—and not from his lineal successor merely, must England beg her welfare then. It was not the venerable mother, or the gentle wife, with her dove's eyes able to make gods of earth forsworn, who could say then, 'The laws of England are at my commandment.'
Crimes that the historic pen can only point to,—not record,—low, illiterate, brutish stupidities, mad-cap folly, and wanton extravagancies and caprices, in their ideal impersonations—thesewere the gods that England, in the majesty of her State, in the sovereignty of her chartered weal, must abase herself to then. To the vices of tyranny, to low companions and their companions, andtheirkindred, the State must cringe and kneel then. Tothese,—men who meddled with affairs of State,—who took, even at such a time, the State to betheirbusiness,—must address themselves; for these were the councils in which England's peace and war were settled then, and the Tribune could enter them only in disguise. Hisvetocould not get spoken outright, it could only be pronounced in under-tones and circumlocutions. Not with noble, eloquent, human appeals, could the soul of power be reached and conquered then—the soul of him 'within whose eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,' the man of the thirty legions, to whom thisargumentmust be dedicated. 'Ducking observances,' basest flatteries, sycophancies past the power of man to utter, personal humiliations, and prostrations that seemed to teach 'the mind a most inherent baseness,'thesewere the weapons,—the required weapons of the statesman's warfare then. From these 'dogs of the commonalty' men who were indeed 'noble,' whose 'fame' did indeed 'fold in the orb o' the world,' must take then, as a purchase or a gift, deliverance from physical restraint, and life itself. These were the days whenEngland'svictories were 'blubbered and whined away,' in such a sort, that 'pages blushed at it, and men of heart looked wondering at each other.'
And, when science began first to turn her eye on history, and propose to herself the relief of the human estate, as her end, and the scientific arts as her means, this was the spectacle she found herself expected to endure; this was the state of things she found herself called upon to sanction and conserve. She could not immediately reform it—she must produce first her doctrine of 'trueforms,' her scientific definitions and precepts based on them, and her doctrine of constructions. She could not openly condemn it; but she could criticise and reject it by means of that method which is 'sometimes necessary in the sciences,' and to which 'those who would let in new light upon the human mind must have recourse.' She could seize the grand hieroglyphic of the heroic past, and make it 'point with its finger' that which was unspeakable,—her scorn of it. She could borrow the freedom of the old Roman lips, to repronounce, in her own new dialect,—not their anticipation of hervetoonly, but her eternal affirmation,—the word of her consulship, the rule of her nobility,—the nobility of being,—being in the human,—the nobility of manliness,—the divinity of State, thetruedoctrine of it;—and, to speaktruly, 'Antiquitas seculi, juventus mundi.'
'I do not like the fashion of your garments. You will say theyarePersianattire; but let them be changed.'—The King to Tom o' Bedlam.
'Would you proceed especially againstCaius Marcius?Against himfirst.'
It is the cure of the Common-weal which this author has undertaken, for he found himself pre-elected to the care of the people and to the world's tribuneship. But he handles his subject in the natural, historical order, in the chronological order,—and not here only, but in that play of which this is a part,—of which this is the play within the Play,—in that grand, historical proceeding on the world's theatre, which it was given to the author of this play to institute.
He begins with the physical wants of men. The hunger, and cold, and weariness, and all the physical suffering and destitution of that human condition which is the condition of the many, has arrested his human eye, with its dumb, patient eloquence, and it isthatwhich makes the starting point of his revolution. He translates its mute language, he anticipates its word. He is setting in movement operations that are intended to make 'coals cheap'; he proposes to have corn at his own price. He has so much confidence in what his tongue can do in the way of flattery, that he expects to come back beloved of all the trades in Rome. He will 'cog their hearts from them,' and get electedconsulyet, with all their voices.
'Scribbling seems to be the sign of a disordered age,' says the philosopher, who finds so much occasion for the use of that art about these days. 'It seems as if it were the season for vain things when the hurtful oppress us; in a time when doing ill is common, to do nothing but what signifies nothing is a kind of commendation. 'Tis my comfort that I shall be one of the last that are called in question; and, whilst the greater offenders are calling to account, I shall have leisure to amend; for it would be unreasonable to punishthe less troublesome, whilst we are infested withthe greater. As the physician said to one who presented him his finger to dress, and who, he perceived, had an ulcer in his lungs, "Friend," said he, "it is not now time to concern yourself about your fingers-ends". Andyet—[and yet]—I saw, some years ago, a person whose name and memory I have in very great esteem, in the very height of our great disorders, when there was neither law nor justice put in execution,nor magistratethat performedhis office—no more than there is now—publish, I know not what pitifulreformations, aboutclothes, cookery, and law chicanery. These are amusements wherewith to feed a people that are ill-used,to show that they are not totally forgotten.'
That is the account of it. That is the history of this innovation, beginning with books, proposing pitiful reformations in clothes, and cookery, and law chicanery. That would serve to show an ill-used people that there was some care for them stirring, some tribuneship at work already. 'What I say of physic generally, may serve AS AN EXAMPLE OF ALL OTHER SCIENCES,' saysthis samescribbler, under his scribbling cognomen. 'We certainlyintendto comprehend themall,' says the graver authority, 'such as Ethics, Politics, and Logic.'
That is, where we are exactly in this so entertaining performance, which was also designed for the benefit of an ill-used people; for this candidate for the chief magistracy is theAedilealso, and while he stands for his place these spectacles will continue.
It is that physical suffering of 'the poor citizens' that he begins with here. It is the question of the price of corn with which he opens his argument. The dumb and patient people are on his stage already; dumb and patient no longer, but clamoring against the surfeiting and wild wanton waste of the few; clamoring for their share in God's common gifts to men, and refusing to take any longer the portion which a diseased state puts down for them. But he tells us from the outset, thatthisclaim will be prosecuted in such a manner as to 'throw forth greater themes for insurrection's arguing.'
Though all the wretched poor were clothed and fed with imperial treasure, with imperial luxury and splendour—though all the arts which are based on the knowledge of physical causes should be put in requisition to relieve their need—though the scientific discoveries and inventions which are pouring in upon human life from that field of scientific inquiry which our men of science have already cultivated their golden harvests, should reach at last poor Tom himself—though that scientific movement now in progress should proceed till it has reached the humblest of our human kin, and surrounded him with all the goods of the private and particular nature, with the sensuous luxuries and artistic elegancies and refinements of the lordliest home—that good which is the distinctive human good, that good which is the constitutional humanend, that good, that formal and essential good, which it is the end of this philosophy to bring to man, would not necessarily be realised.
Forthat, and nothing short of that, the 'advancement' of the species to that which it is blindly reaching for, painfully groping for—its form in nature, its ideal perfection—the advancement of it to something more noble than the nobility of a nobler kind of vermin—a state which involves another kind of individual growth and greatness, one which involves a different, a distinctively 'human principle' and tie of congregation, is that which makes the ultimate intention of this philosophy.
The organization of that large, complex, difficult form in nature, in which the many are united in 'the greater congregation'; that more extensive whole, of which the units are each, not simple forms, but the complicated, most highly complex, and not yet subdued complexity, which the individual form of man in itself constitutes; this so difficult result of nature's combinations and her laws of combination, labouring, struggling towards its consummation, but disordered, threatened, convulsed, asking aid ofart, is the subject; the cure of it, the cure and healthful regimen of it, the problem.
And it is a born doctor who has taken it in hand this time; one of your natural geniuses, with an inward vocation for the art ofhealing, instructed of nature beforehand in that mystery and profession, and appointed of her to that ministry. Wherever you find him, under whatever disguise, you will find that his mind is running on the structure ofbodies, the means of their conservation and growth, and the remedies for their disorders, and decays, and antagonisms, without and within. He has a most extraordinary and incurable natural bent and determination towards medicine and cures in general; he is always inquiring into the anatomy of things and the qualities of drugs, analysing them and mixing them, finding the art of their compounds, and modifying them to suit his purposes, or inventing new ones; for, like Aristotle, to whom he refers for a precedent, he wishes 'to have a hand in everything.'
But he is not a quack. He has no respect for the old authoritative prescriptions, if they fail in practice, whether they come in Galen's name, or another's; but he is just as severe upon 'the empiricutics,' on the other hand, and he objects to 'a horse-drench' for the human constitution in the greater congregation, as much as he does in that distinctively complex delicate structure which the single individual human frame in itself constitutes.
Menenius [speaking of the letter which Volumnia has told him of, and putting in a word on this Doctor's behalf, for it is not very much to the purpose on his own] says, 'It gives me an estate ofseven years'health,during which time I will make a lip at the physician.' A lip—a lip—and 'what a deal of scorn looks beautiful on it,' when once you get to see it. But this is the play of 'conservation with advancement.' It is the cure and preservation of the common-weal, to which all lines are tending, to which all points and parentheses are pointing; and thus he continues: 'Themost sovereign prescriptioninGalenis but empiricutic, and tothispreservative of no better report than a horse-drench.' So we shall find, when we come to try it—thispreservative,—this conservation.
This Doctor has a great opinion of nature. He thinks that 'the physician must rely on her powers for his cures in the last resort, and be able to make prescriptions ofthem, instead of making them out of his own pre-conceits, if he would not have of his cure aconceitalso.' His opinion is, that 'nature is made better by no mean, but she herself hath made that mean;'—
'So o'er that artWhich you say adds to nature, is an artThat nature makes……This is an artWhich doesmend nature,changeit rather: butThe art itselfis nature.'
That is the Poet's view, but the Philosopher is of the same opinion. 'Man whileoperatingcan onlyapply or withdrawnatural bodies, nature internallyperformsthe rest.' Those who becomepracticallyversed in nature are the mechanic, the mathematician, the alchemist, andthe magician, butall, as matters now stand with faint efforts and meagre success.'… 'The syllogism forcesassentand notthings.'
'The subtlety of nature is far beyond that of sense or of the understanding.The syllogism consists of propositions, these of words, words are the signs of notions, notions represent things. If our notions are fantastical, the whole structure falls to the ground; but they are for the most part improperly abstracted and deduced fromthings.'
There is the whole of it; there it is in a nut-shell. As we are very apt to find it in this method of delivery by aphorisms; there is the shell of it at least. And considering 'the torture and press of the method,' and the instruments of torture then in use for correcting the press, on these precise questions, there is as much of the kernel, perhaps, as could reasonably be looked for, in those particular aphorisms; and 'aphorisms representing aknowledge broken, doinvitemen to inquire further;' sothiswriter of them tells us.
With all his reliance on nature then, and with all his scorn of the impracticable and arrogant conceits of learning as he finds it, and of the quackeries that are practised in its name, this is no empiric. He will not approach that large, complex, elaborate combination of nature, that laboured fruit of time,—her most subtle and efficacious agent, so prolific in results that amaze and confound our art, —he will not approach this great structure with all its unperceived interior adaptations,—with so much of nature's own work in it, —hehas too much respect for her own 'cunning hand,' to approach it without learning,—to undertake its cure with blind ignorant experiments. He will not go to work in the dark on this structure, with drug or surgery. This is going to be a scientific cure. 'Before we proceed any further,hear me speak.' He will inquire beforehand the nature of this particular structure that he proposes to meddle with, and get its normal state defined at the outset. But that will take him into the question of structures in general, as they appear in nature, and the intention of nature in them. He will have a comparative anatomy to help him. This analysis will not stop with the social unit, he will analyze him. It will not stop with him. It will comprehend the principles of all combinations. He will not stop in his analysis ofthiscomplexity till he comes to that which precedes all combination, and survives it—the original simplicity of nature. He will come to this cure armed with the universal 'simples;' he will have all the original powers of nature, 'which are not many,' in his hands, to begin with; and he will have more than that. He will have the doctrine of their combinations, not in man only, butin all the kinds;—those despised kinds, that claim such close relationship— such wondrous relationship with man; and he will not go to the primitive instinctive nature only for his knowledge on this point. He will inquire of art,—the empiric art,—and rude accident, what latent efficacies they have detected in her, what churlish secrets of hers they have wrung from her. You will find the gardener's and the farmer's reports, and not the physician's and the surgeon's only, inserted in his books of policy and ethics. The 'nettles' theory of the rights of private life, and his policy of foreign relationships, appears to this learned politician to strengthen his case a little, and the pertinacious refusal of the 'old crab trees' to lend their organizations, such as they are, to the fructification of a bud of nobler kind, is quoted with respect as a decision of nature in another court, on this same question, which is one of the questions here. For the principle of conservation as well as the other principles of the human conduct, appears to this philosopher to require a larger treatment than our men of learning have given it hitherto.
And this is the man of science who takes so much pains to acknowledge his preference for 'goodcompositions'—who thinks so much of good _natural _compositions and their virtues, who is always expressing or betraying his respect for the happy combinations, the sound results, the luxuriant and beautiful varieties with which nature herself illustrates the secret of her fertility, and publishes her own great volume of examples in the Arts.
First it is the knowledge of the simple forms into which all the variety of nature is convertible, the definitions which account for all—that which is always the same in all the difference, that which is always permanent in all the change; first it is the doctrine of 'those simple original forms, or differences of things, which like the alphabet are not many,the degrees and co-ordinationswhereof make all this variety,' and then it is the doctrine oftheir combinations,—the combinations which nature has herself accomplished, those which the arts have accomplished, and those which are possible, which havenotbeen accomplished,—those which the universal nature working in the human, working in each, from the platform of the human, from that height in her ascending scale of species, dictates now, demands,—divinely orders,—divinely instructs us in.
This, and nothing short of this,—this so radical knowledge, reaching from the summit of the human complexity, to the primaeval depths of nature,—to the simplicity of the nature that is one in all,—to the indissoluble laws of being,—the laws of being in the species,—the law with which the specific law is convertible,—the law which cannot be broken in the species, which involves loss of species,—loss of being in the species,—this so large and rich and various knowledge, comprehending all the varieties of nature in its fields, putting all nature under contribution for its results, this—this is the knowledge with which the man of science approaches now, this grand particular.
The reader who begins to examine for himself, for the first time, in the original books of it, this great system of the Modern Science, impressed with the received notions in regard to its scope and intentions, will be, perhaps, not a little surprised and puzzled, to find that the thing which is, of all others, most strenuously insisted on by this author, in his own person, next to the worthlessness of the conceits which have no correspondence with things, is the fact that the knowledge of the physical causes is altogether inadequate to that relief of the condition of man, which he finds to be the immediate end of science; and that it is a system of metaphysics, a new metaphysics, which he is everywhere propounding to that end,—openly, and with all the latent force of his new rhetoric.
It is 'metaphysical aid' that he offers us; it is magic, but, 'magic lawful as eating'; it is a priestly aid that he offers us, the aid of one who has penetrated to the inner sanctuary of the law,—the priest of nature, newly instructed in her mind and will, who comes forth from his long communing with her, with her own 'great seal' in his hands—with the rod of her enchantments, that old magicians desired to pluck from her, and did not—with the gift of the new and nobler miracles of science as the witness of his anointing—with the reading of 'God's book of power'—with the alphabet of its mystery, as the proof of his ordaining—with the key of it, hid from the foundation of the world until now.
The first difference between this metaphysics, and all the metaphysics that ever went before it or came after it, is, that it is practical. It carries in its hand, gathered into the simplicity of the causes that are not many, the secret of all motivity, the secret of all practice. It tells you so; over and over again, in so many words, it dares to tell you so. It opens that closed palm a little, and shows you what is there; it bids you look on while it stirs those lines but a little, and new ages have begun.
It is a practical metaphysics, and the first word of its speech is to forbid abstractions—your abstractions. It sets out from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal'; but from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal in nature.' It sets out from that which is fixed; but it is from the fixed and constant causes: 'forms' not 'ideas.' The simplicity which it seeks is the simplicity into which the historical phenomena are resolvable; the terms which it seeks are the terms which do not come within the range of the unscientific experience; they are the unknown terms of the unlearned; they are the causes 'which, like the alphabet, are not many'; they are the terms which the understanding knows, which the reason grasps, and comprehends in its unity; but they are the convertible terms of all the multiplicity and variety of the senses, they are the convertible terms—thepracticallyconvertible terms of the known—practically —that is the difference.
In that pyramid of knowledges which the science of things constitutes; in that converging ascent to the original simplicity and identity of nature, beginning at that broad science which makes its base—the science of Natural History—beginning with the basis of the historical complexity and difference; in that pyramid of science, that new and solid pyramid, which the Inductive science—which the inquiry into causes that are operant in nature builds, this author will not stop, either on that broad field of the universal history of nature, which is the base of it, or on that first stage of the ascent which the platform of 'the physical causes' makes. The causes which lie next to our experience—the causes, which are variable and many, do not satisfy him. He gains that platform, and looks about him. He finds that even a diligent inquiry and observationtherewould result in many new inventions beneficial to men; but the knowledge of these causes 'takes men in narrow and restrained paths'; he wants for the founding of his rule of art the cause which, under all conditions, secures the result, which gives the widest possible command of means. He refuses to accept of the physical causes as the bourne of his philosophy, in theory or practice. He looks with a great human scorn on all the possible arts and solutions which lie onthatplatform, when the proposal is to stop his philosophy of speculation and practicethere. It is not for the scientific arts, which that field of observation yields, that he begs leave to revive andre-integratethe misapplied and abused name ofnatural magic, which, in the true sense, is but natural wisdom, or 'PRUDENCE.'
He can hardly stop to indicate the results which the culture of that fielddoesyield for the relief of the human estate. His eye is uplifted to that new platform of a solid metaphysics, an historical metaphysics, which the inductive method builds. His eye is intent always on that higher stage of knowledge where that which is common to the sciences is found. He takes the other in passing only. Beginning with the basis of a new observation and history of nature, he will found a new metaphysics—anobjectivemetaphysics—the metaphysics of induction. His logic is but a preparation forthat. He is going to collect, by his inductive method, from all nature, from all species, the principles that are inall things; and he is going to build, on the basis of thoseinductedprinciples,—on the sure basis of that which is constant, and eternal, and universal in nature, the sure foundations of his universal practice; for, like common logic, the inductive method comprehends 'all.' That same simplicity, which the abstract speculations of men aspire to, and create,itaspires to andattains, by the rough roads, by the laboured stages of observation and experiment.
He is, indeed, compelled to involve his phraseology here in a most studious haze of scholasticism. Perspicuity is by no means the quality of style most in request, when we come to these higher stages of sciences. Impenetrable mists, clouds, and darkness, impenetrable to any but the eye that seeks also the whole, involve the heaven-piercing peak of this new height of learning, this new summit of a scientific divinity, frowning off—warding off, as with the sword of the cherubim, the unbidden invaders of this new Olympus, where sit the gods, restored again,—the simple powers of nature, recovered from the Greek abstractions,—not 'the idols'—not the impersonated abstractions, the false images of the mind of man—not the logical forms of those spontaneous abstractions, emptied of their poetic content—but the strong gods that make our history, that compose our epics, that conspire for our tragedies, whether we own them and build altars to them or not. This is that summit of theprima philosophiawhere the axioms that command all are found—where the observations that are common to the sciences, and the precepts that are based on these, grow. This is that height where thesamefootsteps of nature, treading in different substances or matters, lost in the difference below, are all cleared and identified. This is the height of the forms of the understanding, of the unity of the reason; not as it is in man only, but as it is in all matters or substances.
He does not care to tell us,—hecould notwell tell us, inpopularlanguage, what the true name of that height of learning is: he could not well name without circumlocution, that height which a scientific abstraction makes,—an abstraction that attains simplicity without destroying the concrete reality, an abstraction that attains as its result only a higher history,—a new and more intelligible reading of it,—a solution of it—that which is fixed and constant and accounts for it,—an abstraction whose apex of unity is the highest, the universal history, that which accounts for all,—the equivalent,—the scientific equivalent of it.
But whatever it be, it is something that is going to take the place of the unscientific abstractions, both in theory and practice; it is something that is going to supplant ultimately the vain indolent speculation, the inert because unscientific speculation, that seeks to bind the human life in the misery of an enforced and sanctioned ignorance, sealing up with its dogmas to an eternal collision with the universal laws of God and nature,—laws that no dogma or conceit can alter,—all the unreckoned generations of the life of man. Whatever it be, it is going to strike with its primeval rock, through all the air palace of the vain conceits of men;—it is going straight up, through that old conglomeration of dogmas, that the ages of the human ignorance have built and left to us. The unity to which all things in nature, inspired with her universal instinct tend,—the unity of which the mind and heart of man in its sympathy with the universal whole is but an expression, that unity of its own which the mind is always seeking to impart to the diversities which the unreconciled experience offers it, which it must have in its objective reality, which it will make for itself if it cannot find it, which itdoesmake in ignorant ages, by falling back upon its own form and ignoring the historic reality,—which it builds up without any solid objective basis, by ignoring the nature of things, or founds on one-sided partial views of their nature, that unity is going to have its place in the new learning also—but it is going to be henceforth the unity of knowledge—not of dogmas, not of belief merely, for knowledge, and not belief merely,—knowledge, and not opinion, ispower.
That man is not the only creature in nature, was the discovery of this philosophy. The founders of it observed that there were a number of species, which appeared to be maintaining a certain sort of existence of their own, without being dependent for it on the movements within the human brain. To abate the arrogance of the species,—to show the absurdity and ignorance of the attempt to constitute the universe beforehand within that little sphere, the human skull, ignoring the reports of the intelligencers from the universal whole, with which great nature has herself supplied us,—to correct the arrogance and specific bias of the human learning,—was the first attempt of the new logic. It is the house of the Universal Father that we dwell in, and it has 'many mansions,' and 'man is not the best lodged in it.' Noble, indeed, is his form in nature, inspired with the spirit of the universal whole, able in his littleness to comprehend and embrace the whole, made in the image of the universal Primal Cause, whose voice for us ishuman; but there are other dialects of the divine also,—there are nobler creatures lodged with us, placed above us; with larger gifts, with their ten talents ruling over our cities. There is no speech or language wheretheirvoice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth also, and their words unto the end of the world; and the poor beetle that we tread on, and the daisy and the lily in all its glory, and the sparrows that are going 'two for a farthing,' come in for their place also in this philosophy—the philosophy of science—the philosophy of the kinds, the philosophy of the nature that is one in them,—the metaphysics of history.
'Although there exists nothing IN NATURE except individual bodies, exhibiting distinct individualeffects, according to individualLAWS, yet in each branch of LEARNING that very LAW,—its investigation, discovery and development—are the foundationboth of theory and practice; this law, therefore, and itsparallelin eachscience, is what we understand by the term, FORM.'
That is a sentence to crack the heads of the old abstractionists. Before that can be read, the new logic will have to be put in requisition; the idols of the tribe will have to be dismissed first. The inveterate and 'pernicious habit of abstraction,'—that so pernicious habit of the men of learning must be overawed first.
'There exists nothing in nature exceptindividualbodies, exhibiting distinctindividualeffects, according toindividual laws.' The concrete is very carefully guarded there against that 'pernicious habit'; it is saved at the expense of the human species, at the expense of its arrogance. Nobody need undertake to abstractthoselaws, whatever they may be, for this master has turned his key on them. They are in their proper place; they are in the things themselves, and cannot be taken out of them. The utmost that you can do is to attain to a scientific knowledge of them, one that exactly corresponds with them. Thatcorrespondenceis the point in the new metaphysics, and in the new logic;—thatwas what was wanting in the old. 'The investigation, discovery, and development of this law, inevery branch of learning, are the foundation both of theory and practice. This law, therefore, and itsparallelin each science, is whatweunderstand by the term FORM.' The distinction is very carefully made between the 'cause in nature,' and that whichcorrespondsto it, in the human mind, theparallelto it in the sciences; for the notions of men and the notions of nature are extremely apt to differ when the mind is left to form its notions without any scientific rule or instrument; and these ill-made abstractions, which do not correspond with the cause in nature, are of no efficacy in the arts, for nature takes no notice of them whatever.
There is one term in use here which represents at the same time the cause in nature, and that which corresponds to it in the mind of man—the parallel to it in the sciences. When theseexactly correspond, one term suffices. The term 'FORM' is preferred for that purpose in this school. The term which was applied to the abstractions of the old philosophy, with a little modification, is made to signalise the difference between the old and the new. The 'IDEAS' of the old philosophy, the hasty abstractions of it, are 'the idols' of the new—the false deceiving images—which must be destroyed ere that which is fixed and constantin naturecan establish its own parallels in our learning. 'Too untimely a departure, and too remote a recess from particulars,' is the cause briefly assigned in this criticism for this want of correspondence hitherto. 'But it is manifest that Plato, in his opinion ofideas, as one that had a wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the true object of knowledge, but lost the real fruit of that opinion by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and notconfinedanddeterminedby matter.' 'Lost the fruit of that opinion'—this is the author who talks so 'pressly.' Two thousand years of human history are summed up in that so brief chronicle. Two thousand years of barren science, of wordy speculation, of vain theory; two thousand years of blind, empirical,unsuccessfulgroping in all the fields of human practice. 'And so,' he continues, concluding that summary criticism with a little further development of the subject, 'andso, turninghis opinionupon theology, wherewith all his natural philosophy is infected.' Natural philosophy infected with 'opinion,'—no matter whose opinion it is, or under what name it comes to us, whatever else it is good for, is not good for practice. And this is the philosophy which includes both theory and practice. 'That which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'
But that which distinguishes this from all others is, that it is the philosophy of 'HOPE'; and that is the name for it in both its fields, in speculationandpractice. The black intolerable wall, which those who stopped us on the lower platform of this pyramid of true knowledge brought us up with so soon—that blank wall with which the inquiry for the physical causes in nature limits and insults our speculation—has no place here, no place at all on this higher ground of science, which the knowledge of true forms creates—this true ground ofthe understanding, the understanding of nature, and the universal reason of things. 'He who is acquainted with forms, comprehends the unity of nature in substances apparently most distinct from each other.' Neither is that base and sordid limit, with which the philosophy of physical causes shuts in the scientific arts and their power for human relief, found here. For this is theprima philosophia, where the universal axioms, the axioms that command all, are found: and the precepts of the universal practice are formed on them. 'Even the philosopher himself—openly speaking from this summit—will venture to intimate briefly to men of understanding' the comprehension of its base, and the field of practice which it commands. 'Is not the ground,' he inquires, modestly, 'is not the ground which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish andpreservethem is to reduce themad principia, a rule inreligionandnature, as well as in civil administration?' There is the 'administrative reform' that will not need reforming, that waits for the science offormsand constructions. But he proceeds: 'Was not thePersianmagic' [and that is the term which he proposes to restore for 'the part operative' of this knowledge of forms], 'was not the Persian magic areductionor correspondence ofthe principlesandarchitectureofnatureto therulesandpolicyofgovernments?' There is no harm, of course, in that timid inquiry; but the student of theZenda-vestawill be able to get, perhaps, some intimation of the designs that are lurking here, and will understand the revived and reintegrated sense with which the termmagicis employed to indicate the part operative of this new ground ofscience. 'Neither are these only similitudes,' he adds, after extending these significant inquiries into other departments of practice, and demonstrating that this is the universality from which all other professions are nourished: 'Neither are these onlysimilitudes, as men of narrow observation may conceive them to be, butthe samefootsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters.'
'It must, however, be observed, that this method of operating' [which considers nature as SIMPLE, though in a concrete body] ['I the first of any, by myuniversal being.'Michael de Montaigne.] 'sets out from what is constant, eternal, and universalin nature; and opens suchbroadpaths to humanpower, as the thought of man can in the present state of things scarcely comprehend or figure to itself,'