Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 329, March, 1843
Nor marvel, then, that men who have passed the fiery ordeal, whose power has been tried and not found wanting, whose nights of probation, difficulty, and despair are past, and with whom it is now noon, should come forth, with deportment modest and subdued, exempt from the insolent assumption of vulgar minds, and their yet more vulgar hostilities and friendships: that such men as Campbell and Rogers, and a thousand others in every department of life and letters, should partake of that quietude of manner, that modesty of deportment, that compassion for the unfortunate of their class, that unselfish admiration for men who, successful, have deserved success, that abomination of cliques, coteries, and conversazionés, and all the littleness of inferior fry: that such men should have parasites, and followers, and hangers-on; or that, since men like themselves are few and far between, they should live for and with such men alone.
But thou, O Vanity! thou curse, thou shame, thou sin, with what tides of pseudo talent hast thou not filled this ambitious town? Ass, dolt, miscalculator, quack, pretender, how many hast thou befooled, thou father of multifarious fools? Serpent, tempter, evil one, how many hast thou seduced from the plough tail, the carpenter's bench, the schoolmaster's desk, the rural scene, to plunge them into misery and contempt in this, the abiding-place of their betters, thou unhanged cheat? Hence the querulous piping against the world and the times, and the neglect of genius, and appeals to posterity, and damnation of managers, publishers, and the public; hence cliques, and claqueurs, and coteries, and the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of letters; hence bickerings, quarellings, backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity of contempt; hence the impossibility of literary union, and the absolute necessity imposed upon the great names of our time of shunning, like a pestilence, the hordes of vanity-struck individuals who would tear the coats off their backs in desperate adherence to the skirts. Thou, too, O Vanity! art responsible for greater evils:—Time misspent, industry misdirected, labour unrequited, because uselessly or imprudently applied: poverty and isolation, families left unprovided for, pensions, solicitations, patrons, meannesses, subscriptions!
True talent, on the contrary, in London, meets its reward, if it lives to be rewarded; but it has, of its own right, no social pre-eminence, nor is it set above or below any of the other aristocracies, in what we may take the liberty of calling its private life. In this, as in all other our aristocracies, men are regarded not as of their set, but as of themselves: they are individually admired, not worshipped as a congregation: their social influence is not aggregated, though their public influence may be. When a man, of whatever class, leaves his closet, he is expected to meet society upon equal terms: the scholar, the man of rank, the politician, the millionaire, must merge in the gentleman: if he chooses to individualize his aristocracy in his own person, he must do so at home, for it will not be understood or submitted to any where else.
The rewards of intellectual labour applied to purposes of remote, or not immediately appreciable usefulness, as in social literature, and the loftier branches of the fine arts, are, with us, so few, as hardly to be worth mentioning, and pity 'tis that it should be so. The law, the church, the army, and the faculty of physic, have not only their fair and legitimate remuneration for independent labour, but they have their several prizes, to which all who excel, may confidently look forward when the time of weariness and exhaustion shall come; when the pressure of years shall slacken exertion, and diminished vigour crave some haven of repose, or, at the least, some mitigated toil, with greater security of income: some place of honour with repose—the ambition of declining years. The influence of the great prize of the law, the church, and other professions in this country, has often been insisted upon with great reason: it has been said, and truly said, that not only do these prizes reward merit already passed through its probationary stages, but serve as inducements to all who are pursuing the same career. It is not so much the example of the prize-holder, as the prize, that stimulates men onward and upward: without the hope of reaching one of those comfortable stations, hope would be extinguished, talent lie fallow, energy be limited to the mere attainment of subsistence; great things would not be done, or attempted, and we would behold only a dreary level of indiscriminate mediocrity. If this be true of professions, in which, after a season of severe study, a term of probation, the knowledge acquired in early life sustains the professor, with added experience of every day, throughout the rest of his career, with how much more force will it apply to professions or pursuits, in which the mind is perpetually on the rack to produce novelties, and in which it is considered derogatory to a man to reproduce his own ideas, copy his own pictures, or multiply, after the same model, a variety of characters and figures!
A few years of hard reading, constant attention in the chambers of the conveyancer, the equity craftsman, the pleader, and a few years more of that disinterested observance of the practice of the courts, which is liberally afforded to every young barrister, and indeed which many enjoy throughout life, and he is competent, with moderate talent, to protect the interests of his client, and with moderate mental labour to make a respectable figure in his profession. In like manner, four or five years sedulous attendance on lectures, dissections, and practice of the hospitals, enables your physician to see how little remedial power exists in his boasted art; knowing this, he feels pulses, and orders a recognized routine of draughts and pills with the formality which makes the great secret of his profession. When the patient dies, nature, of course, bears the blame; and when nature, happily uninterfered with, recovers his patient, the doctor stands on tiptoe. Henceforward his success is determined by other than medical sciences: a pillbox and pair, a good house in some recognized locality, Sunday dinners, a bit of a book, grand power of head-shaking, shoulder-shrugging, bamboozling weak-minded men and women, and, if possible, a religious connexion.
For the clergyman, it is only necessary that he should be orthodox, humble, and pious; that he should on no occasion, right or wrong, set himself in opposition to his ecclesiastical superiors; that he should preach unpretending sermons; that he should never make jokes, nor understand the jokes of another: this is all that he wants to get on respectably. If he is ambitious, and wishes one of the great prizes, he must have been a free-thinking reviewer, have written pamphlets, or made a fuss about the Greek particle, or, what will avail him more than all, have been tutor to a minister of state.
Thus you perceive, for men whose education is intellectual, but whose practice is more or less mechanical, you have many great, intermediate, and little prizes in the lottery of life; but where, on the contrary, are the prizes for the historian, transmitting to posterity the events, and men, and times long since past; where the prize of the analyst of mind, of the dramatic, the epic, or the lyric poet, the essayist, and all whose works are likely to become the classics of future times; where the prize of the public journalist, who points the direction of public opinion, and, himself without place, station, or even name, teaches Governments their duty, and prevents Ministers of State becoming, by hardihood or ignorance, intolerable evils; where the prize of the great artist, who has not employed himself making faces for hire, but who has worked in loneliness and isolation, living, like Barry, upon raw apples and cold water, that he might bequeath to his country some memorial worthy the age in which he lived, and the art for which he lived? For these men, and such as these, are no prizes in the lottery of life; a grateful country sets apart for them no places where they can retire in the full enjoyment of their fame; condemned to labour for their bread, not in a dull mechanical routine of professional, official, or business-like duties, but in the most severe, most wearing of all labour, the labour of the brain, they end where they begun. With struggling they begin life, with struggling they make their way in life, with struggling they end life; poverty drives away friends, and reputation multiplies enemies. The man whose thoughts will become the thoughts of our children, whose minds will be reflected in the mirror of his mind, who will store in their memories his household words, and carry his lessons in their hearts, dies not unwillingly, for he has nothing in life to look forward to; closes with indifference his eyes on a prospect where no gleam of hope sheds its sunlight on the broken spirit; he dies, is borne by a few humble friends to a lowly sepulchre, and the newspapers of some days after give us the following paragraph:—
"We regret to be obliged to state that Dr ——, or —— ——, Esq. (as the case may be) died, on Saturday last at his lodgings two pair back in Back Place, Pimlico, (or) at his cottage (a miserable cabin where he retired to die) at Kingston-upon-Thames. It is our melancholy duty to inform our readers that this highly gifted and amiable man, who for so many years delighted and improved the town, and who was a most strenuous supporter of the (Radical or Conservative) cause, (it is necessary to set forth this miserable statement to awaken the gratitude of faction towards the family of the dead,) has left a rising family totally unprovided for. We are satisfied that it is only necessary to allude to this distressing circumstance, in order to enlist the sympathies, &c. &c., (in short, to get up a subscription)."
We confess we are at a loss to understand why the above advertisement should be kept stereotyped, to be inserted with only the interpolation of name and date, when any man dies who has devoted himself to pursuits of a purely intellectual character. Nor are we unable to discover in the melancholy, and, as it would seem, unavoidable fates of such men, substantial grounds of that diversion of the aristocracy of talent to the pursuit of professional distinction, accompanied by profit, of which our literature, art, and science are now suffering, and will continue to suffer, the consequences.
In a highly artificial state of society, where a command, not merely of the essentials, but of some of the superfluities of life are requisite as passports to society, no man will willingly devote himself to pursuits which will render him an outlaw, and his family dependent on the tardy gratitude of an indifferent world. The stimulus of fame will be inadequate to maintain the energies even of great minds, in a contest of which the victories are wreaths of barren bays. Nor will any man willingly consume the morning of his days in amassing intellectual treasures for posterity, when his contemporaries behold him dimming with unavailing tears his twilight of existence, and dying with the worse than deadly pang, the consciousness that those who are nearest and dearest to his heart must eat the bread of charity. Nor is it quite clear to our apprehension, that the prevalent system of providing for merely intellectual men, by a State annuity or pension, is the best that can be devised: it is hard that the pensioned aristocracy of talent should be exposed to the taunt of receiving the means of their subsistence from this or that minister, upon suppositions of this or that ministerial assistance which, whether true or false, cannot fail to derogate from that independent dignity of mind which is never extinguished in the breast of the true aristocrat of talent, save by unavailing struggles, long-continued, with the unkindness of fortune.
We wish the aristocracy of power to think over this, and so very heartily bid them farewell.
THE LOST LAMB
BY DELTA
A shepherd laid upon his bed,
With many a sigh, his aching head,
For him—his favourite boy—on whom
Had fallen death, a sudden doom.
"But yesterday," with sobs he cried,
"Thou wert, with sweet looks, at my side,
Life's loveliest blossom, and to-day,
Woes me! thou liest a thing of clay!
It cannot be that thou art gone;
It cannot be, that now, alone,
A grey-hair'd man on earth am I,
Whilst thou within its bosom lie?
Methinks I see thee smiling there,
With beaming eyes, and sunny hair,
As thou were wont, when fondling me,
To clasp my neck from off my knee!
Was it thy voice? Again, oh speak,
My boy, or else my heart will break!"
Each adding to that father's woes,
A thousand bygone scenes arose;
At home—a field—each with its joy,
Each with its smile—and all his boy!
Now swell'd his proud rebellious breast,
With darkness and with doubt opprest;
Now sank despondent, while amain
Unnerving tears fell down like rain:
Air—air—he breathed, yet wanted breath—
It was not life—it was not death—
But the drear agony between,
Where all is heard, and felt, and seen—
The wheels of action set ajar;
The body with the soul at war.
'Twas vain, 'twas vain; he could not find
A haven for his shipwreck'd mind;
Sleep shunn'd his pillow. Forth he went—
The noon from midnight's azure tent
Shone down, and, with serenest light,
Flooded the windless plains of night;
The lake in its clear mirror show'd
Each little star that twinkling glow'd;
Aspens, that quiver with a breath,
Were stirless in that hush of death;
The birds were nestled in their bowers;
The dewdrops glitter'd on the flowers;
Almost it seem'd as pitying Heaven
A while its sinless calm had given
To lower regions, lest despair
Should make abode for ever there;
So tranquil—so serene—so bright—
Brooded o'er earth the wings of night.
O'ershadow'd by its ancient yew,
His sheep-cot met the shepherd's view;
And, placid, in that calm profound,
His silent flocks lay slumbering round:
With flowing mantle, by his side,
Sudden, a stranger he espied,
Bland was his visage, and his voice
Soften'd the heart, yet bade rejoice.—
"Why is thy mourning thus?" he said,
"Why thus doth sorrow bow thy head?
Why faltereth thus thy faith, that so
Abroad despairing thou dost go?
As if the God who gave thee breath,
Held not the keys of life and death!
When from the flocks that feed about,
A single lamb thou choosest out,
Is it not that which seemeth best
That thou dost take, yet leave the rest?
Yes! such thy wont; and, even so,
With his choice little ones below
Doth the Good Shepherd deal; he breaks
Their earthly bands, and homeward takes,
Early, ere sin hath render'd dim
The image of the seraphim!"
Heart-struck, the shepherd home return'd;
Again within his bosom burn'd
The light of faith; and, from that day,
He trode serene life's onward way.
COMTE
Cours de Philosophie Positive, par M. Auguste Comte.
It is pleasant to find in some extreme, uncompromising, eccentric work, written for the complete renovation of man, a new establishment of truth, little else, after all its tempest of thought has swept over the mind, than another confirmation of old, and long-settled, and temperate views. Our sober philosophy, like some familiar landscape seen after a thunder storm, comes out but the more distinct, the brighter, and the more tranquil, for the bursting cloud and the windy tumult that had passed over its surface. Some such experience have we just had. Our Conservative principles, our calm and patient manner of viewing things, have rarely received a stronger corroboration than from the perusal or the extraordinary work of M. Comte—a work written, assuredly, for no such comfortable purpose, but for the express object (so far as we can at present state it to our readers) of re-organizing political society, by means of an intellectual reformation amongst political thinkers.
We would not be thought to throw an idle sneer at those generous hopes of the future destiny of society which have animated some of the noblest and most vigorous minds. It is no part of a Conservative philosophy to doubt on the broad question of the further and continuous improvement of mankind. Nor will the perusal of M. Comte's work induce, or permit, such a doubt. But while he leaves with his reader a strong impression of the unceasing development of social man, he leaves a still stronger impression of the futile or mischievous efforts of those—himself amongst the number—who are thrusting themselves forward as the peculiar and exclusive advocates of progress and improvement. He exhibits himself in the attitude of an innovator, as powerless in effect as he is daring to design; whilst, at the same time, he deals a crashing blow (as upon rival machinators) on that malignant party in European politics, whether it call itself liberal or of the movement, whose most distinct aim seems to be to unloose men from the bonds of civil government. We, too, believe in the silent, irresistible progress of human society, but we believe also that he is best working for posterity, as well as for the welfare of his contemporaries, who promotes order and tranquil effort in his own generation, by means of those elements of order which his own generation supplies.
That which distinguishes M. Comte's work from all other courses of philosophy, or treatises upon science, is the attempt to reduce to the scientific method of cogitation the affairs of human society—morality, politics; in short, all those general topics which occupy our solitary and perplexed meditation, or sustain the incessant strife of controversy. These are to constitute a new science, to be called Social Physics, or Sociology. To apply the Baconian, or, as it is here called, the positive method, to man in all phases of his existence—to introduce the same fixed, indissoluble, imperturbable order in our ideas of morals, politics, and history, that we attain to astronomy and mechanics, is the bold object of his labours. He does not here set forth a model of human society based on scientific conclusions; something of this kind is promised us in a future work; in the present undertaking he is especially anxious to compel us to think on all such topics in the scientific method, and in no other. For be it known, that science is not only weak in herself, and has been hitherto incompetent to the task of unravelling the complicate proceedings of humanity, but she has also a great rival in the form of theologic method, wherein the mind seeks a solution for its difficulties in a power above nature. The human being has contracted an inveterate habit of viewing itself as standing in a peculiar relation to a supreme Architect and Governor of the world—a habit which in many ways, direct and indirect, interferes, it seems, with the application of the positive method. This habit is to be corrected; such supreme Architect and Governor is to be dismissed from the imagination of men; science is to supply the sole mode of thought, and humanity to be its only object.
We have called M. Comte's an extraordinary book, and this is an epithet which our readers are already fully prepared to apply. But the book, in our judgment, is extraordinary in more senses than one. It is as remarkable for the great mental energy it displays, for its originality and occasional profundity of thought, as it is for the astounding conclusions to which it would conduct us, for its bold paradoxes, and for what we can designate no otherwise than its egregious errors. As a discipline of the mind, so far as a full appreciation is concerned of the scientific method, it cannot be read without signal advantage. The book is altogether an anomaly; exhibiting the strangest mixture that ever mortal work betrayed of manifold blunder and great intellectual power. The man thinks at times with the strength of a giant. Neither does he fail, as we have already gathered, in the rebellious and destructive propensities for which giants have been of old renowned. Fable tells us how they could have no gods to reign over them, and how they threatened to drive Jupiter himself from the skies. Our intellectual representative of the race nourishes designs of equal temerity. Like his earth-born predecessors, his rage, we may be sure, will be equally vain. No thunder will be heard, neither will the hills move to overwhelm him; but in due course of time he will lie down, and be covered up with his own earth, and the heavens will be as bright and stable as before, and still the abode of the same unassailable Power.
For the style of M. Comte's work, it is not commendable. The philosophical writers of his country are in general so distinguished for excellence in this particular, their exposition of thought is so remarkably felicitous, that a failure in a Frenchman in the mere art of writing, appears almost as great an anomaly as any of the others which characterize this production. During the earlier volumes, which are occupied with a review of the recognized branches of science, the vices of style are kept within bounds, but after he has entered on what is the great subject of all his lucubrations, his social physics, they grow distressingly conspicuous. The work extends to six volumes, some of them of unusually large capacity; and by the time we arrive at the last and the most bulky, the style, for its languor, its repetitions, its prolixity, has become intolerable.
Of a work of this description, distinguished by such bold features, remarkable for originality and subtlety, as well as for surprising hardihood and eccentricity of thought, and bearing on its surface a manner of exposition by no means attractive, we imagine that our readers will not be indisposed to receive some notice. Its errors—supposing we are capable of coping with them—are worthy of refutation. Moreover, as we have hinted, the impression it conveys is, in relation to politics, eminently Conservative; for, besides that he has exposed, with peculiar vigour, the utter inadequacy of the movement, or liberal party, to preside over the organization of society, there is nothing more calculated to render us content with an empirical condition of tolerable well-being, than the exhibition (and such, we think, is here presented to us) of a strong mind palpably at fault in its attempt to substitute, out of its own theory of man, a better foundation for the social structure than is afforded by the existing unphilosophical medley of human thought. Upon that portion of the Cours de Philosophie Positive which treats of the sciences usually so called, we do not intend to enter, nor do the general remarks we make apply to it. Our limited object is to place our reader at the point of view which M. Comte takes in his new science of Sociology; and to do this with any justice to him or to ourselves, in the space we can allot to the subject, will be a task of sufficient difficulty.
And first, as to the title of the work, Philosophie Positive, which has, perhaps, all this while been perplexing the reader. The reasons which induced M. Comte to adopt it, shall be given in his own words; they could not have been appreciated until some general notion had been given of the object he had in view.
"There is doubtless," he says, in his Avertissement, "a close resemblance between my Philosophie Positive, and what the English, especially since the days of Newton, understand by Natural Philosophy. But I would not adopt this last expression, any more than that of Philosophy of the Sciences, which would have perhaps been still more precise, because neither of these has yet been extended to all orders of phenomena, whilst Philosophie Positive, in which I comprehend the study of the social phenomena, as well as all others, designs a uniform manner of reasoning applicable to all subjects on which the human mind can be exerted. Besides which, the expression Natural Philosophy is employed in England to denote the aggregate of the several sciences of observation, considered even in their most minute details; whereas, by the title of Philosophie Positive, I intimate, with regard to the several positive sciences, a study of them only in their generalities, conceiving them as submitted to a uniform method, and forming the different parts of a general plan of research. The term which I have been led to construct is, therefore, at once more extended and more restricted than other denominations, which are so far similar that they have reference to the same fundamental class of ideas."
This very announcement of M. Comte's intention to comprehend in his course of natural philosophy the study of the several phenomena, compels us to enquire how far these are fit subjects for the strict application of the scientific method. We waive the metaphysical question of the free agency of man, and the theological question of the occasional interference of the Divine Power; and presuming these to be decided in a manner favourable to the project of our Sociologist, we still ask if it be possible to make of the affairs of society—legislation and politics, for instance—a department of science?
The mere multiplicity and complication of facts in this department of enquiry, have been generally regarded as rendering such an attempt hopeless. In any social problem of importance, we invariably feel that to embrace the whole of the circumstances, with all their results and dependencies, is really out of our power, and we are forced to content ourselves with a judgment formed on what appear to us the principal facts. Thus arise those limited truths, admitting of exceptions, of qualification, of partial application, on which we are fain to rely in the conduct of human affairs. In framing his measures, how often is the statesman, or the jurist, made aware of the utter impossibility of guarding them against every species of objection, or of so constructing them that they shall present an equal front on every side! How still more keenly is the speculative politician made to feel, when giving in his adherence to some great line of policy, that he cannot gather in under his conclusions all the political truths he is master of! He reluctantly resigns to his opponent the possession, or at least the usufruct, of a certain class of truths which he is obliged to postpone to others of more extensive or more urgent application.
But this multiplicity and complication of facts may merely render the task of the Sociologist extremely difficult, not impossible; and the half truths, and the perplexity of thought above alluded to, may only prove that his scientific task has not yet been accomplished. Nothing is here presented in the nature of the subject to exclude the strict application of the method. There is, however, one essential, distinctive attribute of human society which constitutes a difference in the nature of the subject, so as to render impossible the same scientific survey and appreciation of the social phenomena of the world that we may expect to obtain of the physical. This is the gradual and incessant developement which humanity has displayed, and is still displaying. Who can tell us that that experience on which a fixed and positive theory of social man is to be formed, is all before us? From age to age that experience is enlarging.
In all recognized branches of science nature remains the same, and continually repeats herself; she admits of no novelty; and what appears new to us, from our late discovery of it, is as old as the most palpable sequence of facts that, generation after generation, catches the eye of childhood. The new discovery may disturb our theories, it disturbs not the condition of things. All is still the same as it ever was. What we possessed of real knowledge is real knowledge still. We sit down before a maze of things bewildering enough; but the vast mechanism, notwithstanding all its labyrinthian movements, is constant to itself, and presents always the same problem to the observer. But in this department of humanity, in this sphere of social existence, the case is otherwise. The human being, with hand, with intellect, is incessantly at work—has a progressive movement—grows from age to age. He discovers, he invents, he speculates; his own inventions react upon the inventor; his own thoughts, creeds, speculations, become agents in the scene. Here new facts are actually from time to time starting into existence; new elements are introduced into society, which science could not have foreseen; for if they could have been foreseen, they would already have been there. A new creed, even a new machine, may confound the wisest of speculations. Man is, in relation to the science that would survey society, a creator. In short, that stability in the order of events, that invariable recurrence of the same linked series, on which science depends for its very existence, here, in some measure, fails us. In such degree, therefore, as humanity can be described as progressive, or developing itself, in such degree is it an untractable subject for the scientific method. We have but one world, but one humanity before us, but one specimen of this self developing creature, and that perhaps but half grown, but half developed. How can we know whereabouts we are in our course, and what is coming next? We want the history of some extinguished world in which a humanity has run its full career; we need to extend our observation to other planets peopled with similar but variously developed inhabitants, in order scientifically to understand such a race as ours.