GJoniell ilmnersitu Hibtrarg Jltljaca, 5foai $nrk WORDSWORTH COLLECTION MADE BY CYNTHIA MORGAN ST.JOHN ITHACA. N. Y. f * / \ ' / l I i ► fTHE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. ) /THE Intellectual Life. BY PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON, AUTHOR OF UA PAINTER’S CAMP,” 6i THOUGHTS ABOUT ART,” “ THE UNKNOWN RIVER,” ETC. WITH SI portrait of ILronartia ia Tinct, ETCHED BY LEOPOLD FLAMENG. “ Pro qua incurrisse non piget labores, dolores, exilium; quia labo- rando profui, exulando didici. Quia inveni in brevi labore diuturnam requiem, in levi dolore immensum gaudium, in angusto exilio patriam amplissimam.” — Giordano Bruno. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. lS73-♦ / 1 : ' ! 0 h vi ' i ; \> i H u M -f. TO EUGENIE H. We have shared together many hours of study, and you have been willing, at the cost of much patient labour, to cheer the difficult paths of intellectual toil by the unfailing sweetness of your beloved companion- ship. It seems to me that all those things which we have learned together are doubly my own; whilst those other studies which I have pursued in solitude have never yielded me more than a maimed and imperfect satisfaction. The dream of my life would be to asso- ciate you with all I do if that were possible; but since the ideal can never be wholly realized, let me at least rejoice that we have been so little separated, and that the subtle influence of your finer taste and more delicate perception is ever, like some penetrating perfume, in the whole atmosphere around me.I* PREFACE. I propose, in the following pages, to consider the possibilities of a satisfactory intellectual life under various conditions of ordinary human existence. It will form a part of my plan to take into account favour- able and unfavourable influences of many kinds; and my chief purpose, so far as any effect upon others may be hoped for, will be to guard some who may read the book alike against the loss of time caused by unnecessary discouragement, and the waste of effort which is the consequence of misdirected energies. I have adopted the form of letters addressed to persons of very different position in order that every reader may have a chance of finding what concerns him. The letters, it is unnecessary to observe, are in one sense as fictitious as those we find in novels, for they have never been sent to anybody by the post, yet the persons to whom they are addressed are not imaginary. I made it a rule, from the beginning, toPREFA CE. • * 0 rui think of a real person when writing, from an appre- hension that by dwelling in a world too exclusively ideal I might lose sight of many impediments which beset all actual lives, even the most exceptional and fortunate. The essence of the book may be expressed in a few sentences, the rest being little more than evidence or illustration. First, it appears that all who are born with considerable intellectual faculties are urged towards the intellectual life by irresistible instincts, as water-fowl are urged to an aquatic life; but the lower animals have this advantage over man, that as their purposes are simpler, so they attain them more completely than he does. The life of a wild duck is in perfect accordance with its instincts, but the life of an intel- lectual man is never on all points perfectly in accord- ance with his instincts. Many of the best intellectual lives known to us have been hampered by vexatious impediments of the most various and complicated kinds; and when we come to have accurate and intimate knowledge of the lives led by our intel- lectual contemporaries, we are always quite sure to find that each of them has some great thwarting difficulty to contend against. Nor is it too much to say that if a man were so placed and endowed in every way that all his work should be made as easy as the ignorant imagine it to be, that man would find in that very facility itself a condition most unfavourable to hisPREFA CE. IX intellectual growth. So that, however circumstances may help us or hinder us, the intellectual life is always $ a contest or a discipline, and the art or skill of living intellectually does not so much consist in surrounding ourselves with what is reputed to be advantageous as in compelling every circumstance and condition of our lives to yield us some tribute of intellectual benefit and force. The needs of the intellect are as various as intellects themselves are various; and if a man has got high mental culture during his passage through life it is of little consequence where he acquired it, or how. The school of the intellectual man is the place where he happens to be, and nis teachers are the people, books, animals, plants, stones, and earth round about him. The feeling almost always predominant in the minds of intellectual men as they grow older, is not so much one of regret that their opportunities were not more abundant, as of regret that they so often missed opportunities which they might have turned to better account. I have written for all classes, in the conviction that the intellectual life is really within the reach of every- one who earnestly desires it. The highest culture can never be within the reach of those who cannot give the years of labour which it costs; and if we cultivate ourselves to shine in the eyes of others, to become famous in literature or science, then of course we must give many more hours of labour than can be sparedX PREFA CE. from a life of practical industry. But I am fully convinced of this, convinced by the observation of living instances in all classes, that any man or woman of large natural capacity may reach the tone of thinking which may justly be called intellectual, even though that thinking may not be expressed in the most perfect language. The essence of intellectual living does not reside in extent of science or in perfection of expression, but in a constant preference for higher thoughts oT'er lower thoughts, and this preference may be the habit of a mind which has not any very considerable amount of information.. This may be very easily demonstrated by a reference to men who lived intellectually in ages when science had scarcely begun to exist, and when there was but little literature that could be of use as an aid to culture. The hum- blest subscriber to a mechanics’ institute has easier access .to sound learning than had either Solomon or Aristotle, yet both Solomon and Aristotle lived the intellectual life. Whoever reads English is richer in the aids to culture than Plato was, yet Plato thought intellectually. It is not erudition that makes the intel- lectual man, but a sort of virtue which delights in vigorous and beautiful thinking, just as moral virtue delights in vigorous and beautiful conduct. Intellectual living is not so much an accomplishment as a state or condition of the. mind in which it seeks earnestly for the highest and purest truth. It is the continualPREFACE. xi exercise of a firmly noble choice between the larger truth and the lesser, between that which is perfectly just and that which falls a little short of justice. The ideal life would be to choose thus firmly and deli- cately always, yet if we often blunder and fail for want of perfect wisdom and clear light, have we not the inward assurance that our aspiration has not been all in vain, that it has brought us a little nearer to the Supreme Intellect whose effulgence draws us whilst it dazzles ? Here is the true secret of that fascination which belongs to intellectual pursuits, that they reveal to us a little more, and yet a little more, of the eternal order of the Universe, establishing us so firmly in what is known, that we acquire an unshakable con- fidence in the laws whicn govern what is rot. and never can be, known.CONTENTS PART I. THE PHYSICAL BASIS. I .UTTER PAG* I. TO A YOUNG MAN OF LETTERS WHO WORKED EXCESSIVELY............................. I II. TO THE SAME............................... 5 III. TO A STUDENT IN UNCERTAIN HEALTH .... IO IV. TO A MUSCULAR CHRISTIAN...................22 V. TO A STUDENT WHO NEGLECTED BODILY EXERCISE. 26 VI. TO AN AUTHOR IN MORTAL DISEASE............31 VII. TO A YOUNG MAN OF BRILLIANT ABILITY, WHO HAD JUST TAKEN HIS DEGREE...............34 PART II. THE MORAL BASIS. L TO A MORALIST WHO HAD SAID THAT THERE WAS A WANT OF MORAL FIBRE IN THE INTELLECTUAL, ESPECIALLY IN POETS AND ARTISTS...............43 II. TO AN UNDISCIPLINED WRITER................53XIV CONTENTS. LETTER PAGE III. TO A FRIEND WHO SUGGESTED THE SPECULATION “ WHICH OF THE MORAL VIRTUES WAS MOST ESSENTIAL TO THE INTELI ECTUAL LIFE ”... 02 IV. TO A MORALIST WHO SAID THAT INTELLECTUAL CULTURE WAS NOT CONDUCIVE TO SEXUAL MORALITY..........................68 PART III. OF ED UCA TION. I. TO A FRIEND WHO RECOMMENDED THE AUTHOR TO LEARN THIS THING AND THAT..............73 II. TO A FRIEND WHO STUDIED MANY THINGS ... 78 III. TO THE SAME.............................86 IV. TO A STUDENT OF LITERATURE..............95 V. TO A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN WHO REGRETTED THAT HIS SON HAD THE TENDENCIES OF A DI LETT ANT...............................99 VI. TO THE PRINCIPAL OF A FRENCH COLLEGE . . . IOI VII. TO THE SAME...........................I06 VIII. TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES . . . . Ill IX. TO THE SAME............................115 X. TO A STUDENT WHO LAMENTED HIS DEFECTIVE MEMORY .................................. 125 XI. TO A MASTER OF ARTS WHO SAID THAT A CERTAIN 1 DISTINGUISHED PAINTER WAS HALF-EDUCATED . 129 PART IV. THE POWER OF TIME. 1. TO A MAN OF LEISURE WHO COMPLAINED OF WANT OF TIME...................................154CONTENTS. xv LETTER II. TO A YOUNG MAN OF GREAT TALENT AND ENERGY WHO HAD MAGNIFICENT PLANS FOR THE FUTURE .............................. III. TO A MAN OF BUSINESS WHO DESIRED TO MAKE HIMSELF BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH LITERA- TURE, BUT WHOSE TIME FOR READING WAS LIMITED.............................. IV. TO A STUDENT WHO FELT HURRIED AND DRIVEN . V. TO A FRIEND WHO, THOUGH HE HAD NO PRO- FESSION, COULD NOT FIND TIME FOR HIS VARIOUS INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS............... PART V. THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. I. TO A VERY RICH STUDENT.................. II. TO A GENIUS CARELESS IN MONEY MATTERS . . . III. TO A STUDENT IN GREAT POVERTY.......... PART VI. CUSTOM AND TRADITION. I. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO HAD FIRMLY RE- SOLVED NEVER TO WEAR ANYTHING BUT A GREY COAT ........................... II. TO A CONSERVATIVE WHO HAD ACCUSED THE AUTHOR OF A WANT OF RESPECT FOR TRADITION III. TO A LADY WHO LAMENTED THAT HER SON HAD INTELLECTUAL DOUBTS CONCERNING THE PAGE 142 154 160 I64 l68 175 IS? 193 200 DOGMAS OF THE CHURCH 208CONTENTS. LETTER PAGE IV. TO THE SON OF THE LADY TO WHOM THE PRE- CEDING LETTER WAS ADDRESSED......................213 V. TO A FRIEND WHO SEEMED TO TAKE CREDIT TO HIMSELF, INTELLECTUALLY, FROM THE NATURE OF HIS RELIGIOUS BELIEF..................219 VI. TO A ROMAN CATHOLIC FRIEND WHO ACCUSED THE INTELLECTUAL CLASS OF A WANT OF REVERENCE FOR AUTHORITY...................................22* PART VII. WOMEN AND MARK I AGE. I. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF INTELLECTUAL TASTES, WHO, WITHOUT HAVING AS YET ANY PAR- TICULAR LADY IN VIEW, HAD EXPRESSED, IN A GENERAL WAY, HIS DETERMINATION TO GET MARRIED....................................226 II. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.................................231 III. TO THE SAME..................................237 IV. TO THE SAME..................................243 V. TO THE SAME...................................249 VI. TO A SOLITARY STUDENT.........................257 VII. TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE WHO FOUND IT DIFFICULT TO ASSOCIATE WITH PERSONS OF HER OWN SEX...............................260 VIII. TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE....................264 IX. TO A YOUNG MAN OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, WELL EDUCATED, WHO COMPLAINED THAT IT WAS DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO LIVE AGREEABLY WITH HIS MOTHER, A PERSON OF SOMEWHAT AUTHO- RITATIVE DISPOSITION, BUT UNEDUCATED . . 267CONTENTS. xvu PART VIII. ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. LETTER PAGE I. TO A YOUNG ENGLISH NOBLEMAN.................273 II. TO AN ENGLISH DEMOCRAT......................287 PART IX. SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. I. TO A LADY WHO DOUBTED THE REALITY OF IN- TELLECTUAL FRIENDSHIPS..................300 II. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN FASHIONABLE SOCIETY..................304 III. TO THE SAME...........................30S IV. TO THE SAME...........................314 V. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO KEPT ENTIRELY OUT OF COMPANY.......................319 VI. TO A FRIEND WHO KINDLY WARNED TH-E AUTHOR OF THE BAD EFFECTS OF SOLITUDE......324 PART X. INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. I. TO A YOUNG AUTHOR WHILST HE WAS WRITING HIS FIRST BOOK............. ..............334 II. TO A STUDENT IN THE FIRST ARDOUR OF INTEL- LECTUAL AMBITION..........................240 bxviii CONTENTS. LETTER PAGE III. TO AN INTELLECTUAL MAN WHO DESIRED AN OUT- LET FOR HIS ENERGIES....................348 IV. TO THE FRIEND OF A MAN OF HIGH CULTURE WHO PRODUCED NOTHING .... 356 V. TO A STUDENT WHO FELT HURRIED AND DRIVEN . 360 VI. TO AN ARDENT FRIEND WHO TOOK NO REST . . 364 VII. TO THE SAME................................369 VIII. TO A FRIEND (HIGHLY CULTIVATED) WHO CON- GRATULATED HIMSELF ON HAVING ENTIRELY ABANDONED THE HABIT OF READING NEWS- PAPERS .........................372 IX. TO AN AUTHOR WHO APPRECIATED CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE............................381 X. TO AN AUTHOR WHO KEPT VERY IRREGULAR HOURS 386 PART XI. TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. I. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF ABILITY AND CULTURE WHO HAD NOT DECIDED ABOUT HIS PROFESSION . 395 (I. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO HAD LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES, BUT NO PROFESSION .... 405 III. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO WISHED TO DEVOTE HIMSELF TO LITERATURE AS A PROFESSION . . 409 (V. TO AN ENERGETIC AND SUCCESSFUL COTTON MANU- FACTURER .............................416 V. TO A YOUNG ETONIAN WHO THOUGHT OF BE- COMING A COTTON-SPINNER 424CONTENTS. xix PART XII. SURROUNDINGS. LETTER PAGE I. TO A FRIEND WHO OFTEN CHANGED HIS PLACE OF RESIDENCE .... 430 II. TO A FRIEND WHO MAINTAINED THAT SURROUND- INGS WERE A MATTER OF INDIFFERENCE TO A THOROUGHLY OCCUPIED MIND...............438 III. TO AN ARTIST WHO WAS FITTING UP A MAGNIFICENT NEW STUDIO..............................443ATHE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. THE PHYSICAL BASIS. LETTER I. TO A YOUNG MAN OF LETTERS WHO WORKED EXCESSIVELY. Mental labour believed to be innocuous to healthy persons—Diffi- culty of testing this—Case of the poet Wordsworth—Case of an eminent living author—Case of a literary clergyman—Case of an energetic tradesman—Instances of two Londoners who wrote professionally— Scott’s paralysis—Byron’s death—All intellectual labour proceeds on a physical basis. So little is really known about the action of the nervous system, that to go into the subject from the physiological point of view would be to undertake a most difficult investigation, entirely beyond the compe- tence of an unscientific person like your present corre- spondent. You will, therefore, permit me, in reference to this, to leave you to the teaching of the most advanced B PART 1 LETTER I. The newoui system.2 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER I. Operation of disease. Effect of brainwork. Vordsiuorth physiologists of the time; but I may be able to offer a few practical suggestions, based on the experience of intellectual workers, which may be of use to a man whose career is likely to be one of severe and almost uninterrupted intellectual labour. A paper was read several years ago before the members of a society in London, in which the author maintained that mental labour was never injurious to a perfectly healthy human organization, and that the numerous cases of break-down, which are commonly attributed to ex- cessive brain-work, are due, in reality, to the previous operation of disease. This is one of those assertions which cannot be answered in a sentence. Concentrated within the briefest expression it comes to this, that mental labour cannot produce disease, but may aggravate the consequences of disease which already exists. The difficulty of testing this is obvious; for so long as health remains quite perfect, it remains perfect, of course, whether the brain is used or not; and when failure of health becomes manifest, it is not always easy to decide in what degree mental labour may have been the cause of it. Again, the accuracy of so general a statement cannot be proved by any number of instances in its favour, since it is universally admitted that brain-work is not the only cause of disease, and no one affirms that it is more than one amongst many causes which may impede the bodily functions. When the poet Wordsworth was engaged in composing the “AVhite Doe of Rylstone,” he received a wound in his foot, and he observed that the continuation of his literary labour increased the irritation of the wound ; whereas by suspending his work he could diminish it,THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 3 and absolute mental rest produced a perfect cure. In connection with this incident he remarked that poetic excitement, accompanied by protracted labour in com- position, always brought on more or less of bodily derangement. He preserved himself from permanently injurious consequences by his excellent habits of life. A very eminent living author, whose name I do not feel at liberty to mention, is always prostrated by severe illness at the conclusion of each of his works ; another is unwell every Sunday, because he does not write on that day, and the recoil after the mental stretch of the week is too much for him. In the case of Wordsworth, the physical constitution is believed to have been sound. His health at seventy-two was excellent; the two other instances are more doubtful in this respect, yet both these writers enjoy very fair health, after the pressure of brain-work has been removed for any considerable time. A clergyman of robust organization, who does a good deal of literary work at intervals, told me that, whenever he had attempted to make it regular, the consequence had always been dis- tressing nervous sensations, from which at other times he was perfectly free. A tradesman, whose business affords an excellent outlet for energetic bodily activity, told me that having attempted, in addition to his ordinary work, to acquire a foreign language which seemed likely to be useful to him, he had been obliged to abandon it on account of alarming cerebral symptoms. This man has immense vigour and energy, but the digestive func- tions, in this instance, are sluggish. However, when he abandoned study, the cerebral inconveniences disap- peared, and have never returned since. Two Londoners who followed literature as a profession, B 3 PART I. LETTER I. Poetic excitement. Two living authors. A clergy+ man. A trades■ man.4 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER I. Two Londoners. Sir lVcilter Scott. Byron. So 7i they. and who both worked to excess, had cerebral attacks of a still more decided kind. One of them, after his re- covery, resolved to regulate his work in future, so that it might never pass the limits of moderation. He is now living, and in possession of a remarkably clear and richly furnished intellect. The other, who returned to his old habits, died in two years from softening of the brain. I am not aware that in these cases there was any other disease than that produced by an immoderate use of the mental powers. The health of Sir Walter Scott—we have this on his own testimony—was uncommonly robust, and there is every reason to believe that his paralysis was brought on by the excessive labour which resulted from his pecu- niary embarrassments, and that without such excessive mental labour and anxiety he would have preserved his health much longer. The death of Byron was due, no doubt, quite as much to habits of dissipation as to poetical excitement; still it is probable that he would have borne either of these evil influences if it had not been accompanied by the other; and that to a man whose way of life was so exhausting as Byron’s was, the addition of constant poetical excitement, and hard work in production, may be said without exaggeration to have killed him. We know that Scott, with all his facility, had a dread of that kind of excitement, and withdrew from the poetical arena to avoid it. We know, too, that the brain of Southey proved ultimately unable to endure the burden of the tasks he laid upon it. \ Difficult as it may be in some instances to ascertain quite accurately whether an overworked man had per- fectly sound bodily health to oegm with, obvious as it may be that in many breakdowns the final failure hasTHE PHYSICAL BASIS. 5 been accelerated by diseases independent of mental work, the facts remain, that the excessive exercise of the mental powers is injurious to bodily health, and that all intellectual labour proceeds upon a physical basis. No man can safely forget this, and act as if he were a pure spirit, superior to physical considerations. Let me then, in other letters on this subject, direct your attention to the close connection which exists between intellectual production and the state of the body and the brain ; not with the authority of a physician, but with the sympathy of a fellow-labourer, who has learned something from his own experience, and still more from the more varied experience of his friends. LETTER II. TO A YOUNG MAN OF LETTERS WHO WORKED EXCESSIVELY. Mental labour rarely compatible with the best physical conditions— Wordsworth’s manner of composition—Mr. W. F. A. Delane— George Sand working under pressure—Sir Walter Scott’s field- sports—Physical exercise the best tranquillizer of the nervous system—Eugene Sue—Shelley’s love of boating—Nervousness the affliction of brain-workers—Nature’s kindly warning—Work- ing by spurts—Beckford—Byron—Indolence of men of genius fortunate—Distressing nature of cerebral fatigue. It is possible that many of the worst results of intel- lectual labour may be nothing more than indirect results. We may suffer, not from the work itself, but from seden- tary confinement, from want of exercise, from insufficient variety and amusement. Mental labour is seldom compatible with the best physical conditions; it is so sometimes, however, or PART i LETTER * I. LETTER II. hidirect results.6 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER II. /Wr. Delane. //ealth in stock. George Sand. may be made so by an effort of will and resolution. Wordsworth composed his poetry in the open air, as he walked, and so preserved himself from the evil of close confinement to the desk. Mr. W. F. A. Delane, who did so much for the organization of the Times newspaper when it was under his management, began by doing law reports for that paper, in London and on circuit. His appearance of rude health surprised other members of his profession, but he accounted for it by the care he took to compensate for the bad air and sedentary labour in the courts of law by travelling between the assize towns on horseback, and also by a more than commonly temperate way of life, since he carefully avoided the bar dinners, eating and drinking for health alone. It is pos- sible to endure the most unhealthy labour when there are frequent intervals of invigorating exercise, accom- panied by habits of strict sobriety. The plan, so com- monly resorted to, of trying to get health in stock for the rest of the year by a fortnight’s hurried travelling in the autumn, is not so good as Mr. Delane’s way of getting the week’s supply of health during the course of the week itself. It happened once that George Sand was hurried by the proprietor of a newspaper who wanted one of her novels as a feuilleton.She has always been a careful and delibe- rate worker, very anxious to give all necessary labour in preparation, and, like all such conscientious labourers she can scarcely endure to be pushed. However, on this occasion she worked overtime, as they say in Lancashire, and to enable herself to bear the extra pressure she did part of the work at night in order to keep several hours of daylight clear for her walks in the country, where she I lived. Many writers, in the same situation, would haveTHE PHYSICAL BASIS. 7 temporarily abandoned exercise, but George Sand clung to it all the more at a time when it was especially neces- sary that she should be well. In the same way Sir Walter Scott counterbalanced the effects of sedentary occupation by his hearty enjoyment of field-sports. It has been supposed that his outdoor exercise, which to weaker persons appears excessive, may have helped to bring on the stroke of paralysis which finally disabled him; but the fact is, that when the stroke arrived Sir Walter had altered his habits of life in obedience to what he believed to be his duty, and had abandoned, or nearly so, the active amusements of his happier years. I believe rather that whilst he took so much exercise his robust constitu- tion not only enabled him to endure it without injury, but required it to keep the nervous system healthy, in spite of his hard work in literary composition. Physical exercise, when the constitution is strong enough to endure it, is by far the best tranquillizer of the nervous system which has yet been discovered, and Sir Walter’s life at Abbots- ford was, in this respect at least, grounded on the true philosophy of conduct. The French romancer, Eugbne Sue, wrote till ten o’clock every morning, and passed the rest of the day, when at his country-house, either in horse-exercise, or field-sports, or gardening, for all of which he had a liking which amounted to passion. Shelley’s delight was boating, which at once exercised his muscles and relieved his mind from the weariness of incessant invention or speculation. It will generally be found, that whenever a man of much intellectual distinction has maintained his powers in full activity, it has been by avoiding the bad effects of an entirely sedentary life. I well believe that a person naturally robust, with a clear and powerful brain, could bear twelve or fourteen PART i. LETTER II. Scott's field sports. Eugene Sue Shelley's love of boating8 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER II. Privation of exercise. Nervous- ness. Intense efforts. Indolence a remedy. hours’ work every day for years together so far as the work itself is concerned, if only so large an expenditure of time left a sufficient margin for amusement, and exer- cise, and sleep. But the privation of exercise, by weak- ening the digestive and assimilative powers, reduces the flow of healthy and rich blood to the brain—the brain requires an enormous quantity of blood, especially when the cerebral matter is rapidly destroyed by intellectual labour—and usually brings on nervousness, the peculiar affliction of the over-driven mental labourer. This ner- vousness is Nature’s kindly warning, preserving us, if we attend to it in time, from much more serious conse- quences. The best preventive of it, and often the only cure, is plenty of moderate exercise. The customs of the upper classes in England happily provide this in the best shape, that of amusement enjoyed in society, but our middle classes in large towns do not get nearly enough of it, and the most studious are always strongly tempted to neglect it altogether. Men of great imaginative power are commonly addicted to a habit which is peculiarly dangerous. They work as race-horses work, with the utmost intensity of effort during short spaces of time, taxing all their powers whilst the brilliant effort lasts. When Beckford wrote the wonderful tale “ Vathek” in his twentieth year, he did it at a single sitting, which lasted for three days and two nights, and it cost him a serious illness. Several of the best poems by Byron were written, if not quite with equal rapidity, still on the same principle of composition at white heat. In cases of this kind, Nature provides her own remedy in the indolence of the imaginative temperament, which leaves large spaces of time for the action of the recuperative processes. The same law governs the physical energies ofTHE PHYSICAL BASIS. 9 the carnivora, which maintain, or recover, their capacity for extraordinary effort by intervals of absolute repose. In its long spaces of mental rest the imaginative tem- perament recruits itself by amusement, which in England usually includes physical exercise of some kind. This fortunate indolence of men of genius would in most instances ensure their safety if they were not impelled by necessity to labour beyond the suggestions of inclination. The exhausted brain never of itself seeks the additional exhaustion of hard work. You know very well when you are tired, and at such times the natural man in you asks plainly enough for rest and recreation. The art is so to arrange our lives that the natural man may sometimes have his way, and forget, if only for a time, the labours which lead to weariness—not to that pleasant weariness of the body which promises soundest sleep, but the distressing fatigue of the exhausted spirit which is tortured by the importunity of ideas which it is unable to express, and apprehensions that it cannot dismiss, which fights through the sleepless night the phantoms of unconquerable horror. Note.—The bad effect of literary composition on the physical state which was observed by Wordsworth in his own case was also noticed by Shelley during the composition of the “ Cenci,” which, he said, had been a fine antidote to nervous medicines, and kept, he believed, the pain in his side “as sticks do a fire.” These influences are best observed in people whose health is delicate. Although Joubert, for example, had an extremely clear intellect, he could scarcely write at all on account of the physical consequences. I have come to the conclusion that literary work simply as a strong stimulant. In moderate quantities it is not only innocent, but decidedly beneficial; in excess it acts like poison on the nervous system. What constitutes excess every man has to find out by his own experience. A page was excess to Joubert, a chapter was moderation to Alexandre Dumas. PART I. LETTER I. Commands of necessity Brain- weariness Joubert. Excess.IO THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER III. K int. HIS good health. LETTER III. TO A STUDENT IN UNCERTAIN HEALTH. Habits of Kant, the philosopher—Objection to an over-minute regu- larity of habit—Value of independence of character—Case of an English author—Case of an English resident in Paris—Scott an abundant eater and drinker—Goethe also—An eminent French publisher—Turgot—Importance of good cookery—Wine drink- ing— Ale — The aid of stimulants treacherous — The various effects of tobacco—Tea and coffee—Case of an English clergy- man—Balzac—The Arabian custom of coffee-drinking—Wisdom of occasiorally using stimulants. Immanuej, Kant, who was a master in the art of taking care of himself, had by practice acquired a dexterous mode of folding himself up in the bed-clothes, by passing them over and under his shoulders, so that, when the operation was complete, he was shut up like the silkworm in his cocoon. “ When I am thus snugly folded up in my bed,” he would say to his friends,I say to myself, can any mar. be in better health than I am ? ” There is nothing in the lives of philosophers more satisfactory than this little passage. If Kant had said to himself, “ Can arybody be wiser, more learned, more justly deserving of immortal fame than I am ? ” we should have felt, that however agreeable this opinion might have been to the philosopher who held it, his private satisfaction stood in need of confirmation from without; and even if he had really been all this, we might have reflected that wisdom and learning still leave their possessor exposed to the acutest kinds of suffering. But when a philosopher rolls himself up at nigh*:, and congratulates himself on the possession of perfect fiealth, we only think what a happyTHE PHYSICAL BASIS. ii man he was to possess that first of blessings, and what a sensible man to know the value of it! And Kant had a deeper happiness in this reflection than any which could spring from the mere consciousness of possessing one of the unearned gifts of nature. The excellence of his health was due in part to a sufficiently good constitution, but it was due also to his own extreme carefulness about his habits. By an unceasing observation of his own bodily life, as far as possible removed from the anxiety of hypo- chondriacs, he managed to keep the physical machine in such regular order, that for more than thirty years he always rose precisely at the same minute. If his object had been health for health’s sake, the result would still have been well worth any sacrifices of momentary incli- nation that it cost him; but Kant had a higher purpose. He well knew that the regularity of the intellectual life depended entirely on the regularity of the bodily func- tions, and, unlike the foolish men alluded to by Goethe who pass the day in complaining of headache, and the night in drinking the wine that produces it, Kant not only knew that regular health was necessary to his work as a philosopher, but did everything in his power to preserve it. Few intellectual labourers have in this respect given evidence of such persistent strength of will. In his manner of living he did not consult custom, but the needs of his individual nature. It is not always easy for great brain-workers to follow with perfect fidelity the customs of the people about them. These usages have been gradually formed by the majority to suit the needs of the majority; but there are cases where a close adherence to them would be a serious hindrance to the highest and best activity. A good example PART i. LETTER III. Kant's care fid habits. Regularity in mind and body. C us tom. #12 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER III. Beer. B 7 eakfast. Kan Vs one meal. The night's rest. of this is Kant’s intense antipathy to beer. It did not suit him, and he was right in his non-conformity to German usage on this point, but he was mistaken in believing beer to be universally injurious. There is a very general belief in England that what is called a good breakfast is the foundation of the labour of the day. Kant’s breakfast, which he took at five in the morning at all the seasons of the year, consisted of a cup of tea and a pipe of tobacco. On this he worked eight hours, either in lecturing or writing—a long stretch of uninter- rupted labour. He dined at one, and this was his only meal, for he had no supper. The single repast was a deviation from ordinary usage, but Kant found that it suited him, probably because he read in the evening from six till a quarter to ten, and a second meal might have interfered with this by diminishing his power of attention. There exists a strong medical objection to this habit of taking only one meal in twenty-four hours, which indeed is almost unknown in England, though not extremely rare on the Continent. I know an old gentleman who for forty years has lived as Kant did, and enjoys excellent health and uncommon mental clearness. A detail which illustrates Kant’s attention to whatever could affect his physical life, is his rule to withdraw his mind from everything requiring effort fifteen minutes before he went to bed. His theory, which is fully con- firmed by the experience of others, was, that there was a risk of missing sleep if the brain was not tranquillized before bed-time. He knew that the intellectual life of the day depended on the night’s rest, and he took this precaution to secure it. The regularity of his daily walk, taken during the afternoon in all weathers, and the strictTHE PHYSICAL BASIS. 13 limitation of the hours of rest, also helped the soundness of his sleep. He would not walk out in company, for the whimsical reason that if he opened his mouth a colder air would reach his lungs than that which passed through the nos- trils ; and he would not eat alone, but always had guests to dinner. There are good physiological reasons in favour of pleasant society at table, and, besides these, there are good intellectual reasons also. By attention to these rules of his, Kant managed to keep both body and mind in a working order, more unin- terrupted than is usual with men who go through much intellectual labour. The solitary objection to his system is the excessive regularity of habit to which it bound him by chains of his own forging. He found a quiet happiness in this regularity; indeed, happiness is said to be more commonly found in habit than in anything else, so deeply does it satisfy a great permanent instinct of our nature. But a minute regularity of habit is objectionable, because it can only be practicable at home, and is compatible only with an existence of the most absolute tranquillity. Kant did not travel, and never could have travelled. He was a bachelor, and could not have ceased to be a bachelor, without a disturbance that would have been intolerable to him. He enjoyed the full benefits of his system without experiencing its disadvantages, but any considerable change of situation would have made the disadvantages apparent. Few lives can be so minutely regulated without risk of future inconvenience. Kant’s example is a good one so far as this, that it proved a sort of independence of character which would be valuable to every student. All who need to keep their minds in the best possible condition ought to have reso- part 1. LETTER III. Society at table. Regularity of habit. May be tot minute. /14 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER III. Custom not always to be obeyed. Two instances. lution enough to regulate their living in a manner which experience, in their case, proves to be most favourable. Whatever may be the authority of custom, a wise man makes himself independent of usages which are impedi- ments to his best activity. I know an author who was always unwell about eleven o’clock in the morning—so unwell that he could do nothing but lament his miser- able fate. Knowing by experience the powerful effect of regimen, I inquired whether he enjoyed his breakfast. “ No, he did not.” “ Then why did he attempt to eat any breakfast?” It turned out that this foolish man swallowed every morning two cups of bad coffee and a quantity of greasy food, from a patriotic deference to the customs of his country. He was persuaded to abandon this unsuitable habit and to eat nothing till half- past ten, when his adviser prescribed a well-cooked little dejeimer d la fourchette, accompanied by half a bottle of sound Bordeaux. The effect was magical. My friend felt light and cheerful before dejeuner, and worked quite happily and well, whilst after dejeimer he felt like a horse that has eaten his corn. Nor was the good effect a transitory one ; the bad symptoms never returned, and he still adheres to his new arrangement. This little reform made a wretched existence happy, and has had for its result an increase in production with a diminution of fatigue. The explanation is that the stomach did not ask for the early breakfast, and had a hard fight to overcome it, after which came exhaustion and a distaste both for food and work. There are cases where an opposite rule is the right one. An Englishman living in Paris found the French dj'euner unsuitable for him, and discovered that he worked best on a substantial English breakfast, with strong tea, at I eight in the morning, after which he went on working allTHE PHYSICAL BASIS. 15 day without any further nourishment till dinner at six in the evening. A friend of Sir Walter Scott’s, who had stayed with him at Abbotsford, told me that Sir Walter ate and drank like everybody else as to times and seasons, but much more abundantly than people of less vigorous organization. Goethe used to work till eleven without taking anything, then he drank a cup of chocolate and worked till one. “ At two he dined. This meal was the important meal of the day. His appetite was immense. Even on the days when he complained of not being hungry he ate much more than most men. Puddings, sweets, and cakes were always welcome. He sat a long while over his wine. He was fond of wine, and drank daily his two or three bottles.” An eminent French publisher, one of the most clear-headed and hard-working men of his generation, never touched food or drink till six in the evening, when he ate an excellent dinner with his guests. He found this system favourable to his work, but a man of less robust constitution would have felt exhausted in the course of the day. Turgot could not work well till after he had dined copiously, but many men cannot think after a substantial meal ; and here, in spite of the example set by Scott and Goethe, let me observe that nothing interferes so much with brainwork as over-eating. The intellectual workman requires nourishment of the best possible quality, but the quantity ought always to be well within the capacity of his digestive powers. The truth appears to be, that whilst the intellectual life makes very large demands upon nutrition—for cerebral activity cannot go forward without constant supplies of force, which must come ultimately from what we have eaten—this kind of life, being seden- tary, is unfavourable to the work of digestion. Brain- part 1. LETTER III. Scott as an eater. Goethe at table. A French publisher T urgot. Over-eatingi6 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER III. Quality of food. Importance of cookery. Wines. workers cannot eat like sportsmen and farmers without losing many hours in torpor, and yet they need nutrition as much as if they led active lives. The only way out of this difficulty is to take care that the food is good enough for a moderate quantity of it to maintain the physical and mental powers. The importance of scientific cookery can hardly be exaggerated. Intellectual labour is, in its origin, as dependent upon the art of cookery as the dis- semination of its results is dependent upon paper-making and printing. This is one of those matters which people cannot be brought to consider seriously; but cookery in its perfection—the great science of preparing food in the way best suited to our use—is really the most important of all sciences, and the mother of the arts. The wonderful theory that the most ignorant cookery is the most favourable to health is only fit for the dark ages. It is grossly and stupidly untrue. A scientific cook will keep you in regular health, when an ignorant one will offer you the daily alternative of starving or indigestion. The great question of drinks is scarcely less important. Sound natural wines, not strengthened by any addition of alcohol, are known to supply both stimulus and nourish- ment to the brain. Goethe’s practice was not irrational, though he drank fifty thousand bottles in his lifetime. Still it is not necessary to imitate him to this extent. The wine-drinking populations have keener and livelier wits than those who use other beverages. It is proved by long experience that the pure juice of the grape sustains the force and activity of the brain. The poets who from age to age have sung the praise of wine were not wholly either deceivers or deceived. In the lands of the vine, where the plant is looked upon as a nursing-mother, men do not injure their health by drinking; but in the colderTHE PHYSICAL BASIS. 17 North, where the grape can never ripen, the deaths from in- temperance are frequent. Bread and wine are almost pure gifts of nature, though both are prepared by man after the old traditional ways. These are not poisons, but gin and absinthe are poisons, madness poured out from a bottle ! Kant and Goethe loved the pure Rhine wine, and their brains were clear and vigorous to the utmost span of life. It was not wine that ruined Burns and Byron, or Baudelaire, or Alfred de Musset. Notwithstanding Kant’s horror of beer, that honest northern drink deserves our friendly recognition. It has quite a peculiar effect upon the nervous system, giving a rest and calm which no other drink can procure for it so safely. It is said that beer drinkers are slow, and a little stupid; that they have an ox-like placidity not quite favourable to any brilliant intellectual display. But there are times when this placidity is what the labouring brain most needs. After the agitations of too active thinking there is safety in a tankard of ale. The wine drinkers are agile, but they are excitable; the beer drinkers are heavy, but in their heaviness there is peace. In that clear golden drink which England has brewed for more than a thousand Octobers, and will brew for a thousand more, we may find perhaps some explana- tion of that absence of irritability which is the safe- guard of the national character, which makes it faithful in its affections, easy to govern, not easy to excite to violence. If I have spoken favourably of beer and wine as having certain intellectual uses, please remember that I recom- mend only the habitual use of them, not mad rites of Bacchus, and even the habitual use only just so far as it : may suit the individual constitution. The liberal regimen c PART I. LETTER III. Effect cf wine. Beer and ale. Needs 0/ tJu individual.is THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER III. Men unable to use pure wine. Stimulants I'obte to deceive. Effects of tobacco. of Scott and Goethe would not answer in every case, and there are organizations, often very robust, in which intoxi- cating drinks of all kinds, even in the most moderate quantity, impede the brain’s action instead of aiding it. Two of the most able men I have ever known could not drink pure wine of any kind because it sent the blood to the head, with consequent cerebral oppression. And whilst on this subject I ought to observe, that the aid which these stimulants afford, even when the body grate- fully accepts them, is often treacherous from its very ac- ceptability. Men who are over-driven—and the number of such men is unhappily very great in these days—say that without stimulants they could not get through their labour; but the stimulants often delude us as to the limits of our natural powers and encourage us to attempt too much. The help thev give us is not altogether illusory ; under certain limitations it is real, but many have gone farther than the reality of the assistance warranted. The ally brings to us an increase of forces, but he comes with appearances of power surpassing the reality, and we undertake tasks beyond our strength. In drinking, as in eating, the best rule for the intellectual is moderation in quantity with good quality, a sound wine, and not enough of it to foster self-delusion. The use of tobacco has so much extended itself in the present generation that we are all obliged to make* a decision for ourselves on the ancient controversy between its friends and enemies. We cannot form a reasonable opinion about tobacco without bearing in mind that it produces, according to circumstances, one of two entirely distinct and even opposite classes of effects. In certain states of the body it acts as-a stimu- lant, in other states as a narcotic. People who have aTHE PHYSICAL BASIS. 19 dislike to smoking affirm that it stupifies; but this asser- tion, at least so far as the temporary consequences are concerned, is not supported by experience. Most of the really brilliant conversations that I have listened to have been accompanied by clouds of tobacco-smoke ; and a great deal of the best literary composition that is pro- duced by contemporary authors is wrought by men who are actually smoking whilst they work. My own expe- rience is that very moderate smoking acts as a pleasant stimulus upon the brain, whilst it produces a temporary lassitude of the muscular system, not perceptible in times of rest, but an appreciable hindrance in times of muscular exertion. It is better therefore for men who feel these effects from tobacco to avoid it when they are in exercise, and to use it only when the body rests and the mind labours. Pray remember, however, that this is the experience of an exceedingly moderate smoker, who has not yet got himself into the general condition of body which is brought on by a larger indulgence in tobacco. On the other hand, it is evident that men engaged in physical labour find a muscular stimulus in occasional smoking, and not a temporary lassitude. It is probable that the effect varies with individual cases, and is never precisely what our own experience would lead us to imagine. For excessive smokers, it appears to be little more than the tranquillizing of a sort of uneasiness, the continual satisfaction of a continual craving. I have never been able to ascertain that moderate smoking diminished intellectual force; but I have observed in excessive smokers a decided weakening of the will, and a preference for talking about work to the effort of actual labour. The opinions of medical men on this subject are so much at variance that their science only adds to PART I. LETTER III. Effects of tobacco. Excessive smoking. Medical opinions. C 220 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER *11. r Tea: drinking. A clerical tea-dri?iker. Coffee in France, a?id in A rabia. our uncertainty. One doctor tells me that the most moderate smoking is unquestionably injurious, whilst others affirm that it is innocent. Speaking simply from self-observation, I find that in my own case tea and coffee are far more perilous than tobacco. Almost all English people are habitual tea-drinkers, and as the tea they drink is very strong, they may be said to use it in excess. The unpleasant symptoms which tea- poisoning produces in a patient not inured by habit, disappear in the seasoned tea-drinker, leaving only a certain exhilaration, which appears to be perfectly in- nocuous. If tea is a safe stimulant, it is certainly an agreeable one, and there seems to be no valid reason why brain-workers should refuse themselves that solace. I knew a worthy clergyman many years ago who from the most conscientious motives denied himself ale and wine, but found a fountain of consolation in the tea-pot. His usual allowance was sixteen cups, all of heroic strength, and the effect upon his brain seems to have been alto- gether favourable, for his sermons were both long and eloquent, and to this day he is preaching still, without any diminution of his powers. French people find in coffee the most efficacious remedy for the temporary torpor of the mind which results from the processes of digestion. Balzac drank great quantities of coffee whilst he wrote; and this, it is believed, brought on the terrible nervous disease that accelerated his end. The best proof that tea and coffee are favourable to intellectual expression is that all nations use one or the other as aids to conversation. In Mr. Palgrave’s Travels in Arabia there is never any talk without the inevitable coffee, that fragant Arabian berry prepared with such delicate cunning that it yields the perfect aroma.THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 21 The wisdom of occasionally using these various stimu- lants for intellectual purposes is proved by a single con- sideration. Each of us has a little cleverness and a great deal of sluggish stupidity. There are certain occasions when we absolutely need the little cleverness that we possess. The orator needs it when he speaks, the poet when he versifies, but neither cares how stupid he may become when the oration is delivered and the lyric set down on paper. The stimulant serves to bring out the talent when it is wanted, like the wind in the pipes of an organ. “What will it matter if I am even a little duller afterwards ? ” says the genius; “ I can afford to be dull when I have done.” But the truth still remains that there are stimulants and stimulants. Not the nectar of the gods themselves were worth the dash of a wave upon the beach, and the pure cool air of the morning. Note.—What is said in the above letter about the employment of stimulants is intended to apply only to cases in which there is no organic disease. The harm which diseased persons do to themselves by conforming to customs which are innocent for others is as lament- able as it is easily avoidable. Two bottles of any natural wine grown above the latitude of Lyons are a permissible daily allowance to a man whose organs are all sound ; but the doctors in the wine districts unanimously forbid pure wine when there is a chronic inflammatory tendency. In these cases even the most honest Bordeaux ought to be diluted with twice its volume of water. There are many chronic diseases which tobacco irritates and accelerates. Both wine and to- bacco are injurious to weak eyes. PART I. LETTER III. Practical service of stimulants. Diseased persons.22 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER IV. Two little brothers. LETTER IV. TO A MUSCULAR CHRISTIAN. Muscular and intellectual tendencies in two boys—Difficulty of find- ing time to satisfy botfly—Plato on the influences of music and gymnastics—Somnolence and digestion—Neglect of literature— Natural restlessness of the active temperament—Case of a Gari- baldian officer—Difficulty of taking a sufficent interest in exercise —A boar hunt. I know two little boys, sons of a near neighbour, who have from childhood exhibited opposite tendencies. One of them is incessantly active, always out of doors in any weather, busy about horses, and farming, and game, heedless of his books, and studying only under positive compulsion. The other sits at home with his lessons or a story-book, and only goes out because he is incited by the fraternal example. The two lads represent two dis- tinct varieties of human life, the active and the intel- lectual. The elder is happiest during physical exertion ; the younger is happiest when his brain is fully occupied. Left entirely to themselves, without the equalizing influ- ence of the outside world and the ways of living which general custom has established, they would lead the most opposite lives. The elder would inevitably become a farmer, that he might live in the country and take exercise all day long, or else he would seek adventure in wild travel, or in romantic warfare; but the younger would very quickly be taken possession of by some engrossing intel- lectual pursuit, and lead the life of a sedentary student. The problem which these two young lives have before them is the reconciliation of their tendencies. Since they come- of cultivated parents, the intellectual lad has the betterTHE PHYSICAL . 23 chance of following his own bent. Both will have to take their University degrees, and the younger has the advantage there. Still there are powerful influences in favour of the elder. His activity will be encouraged by the admiration of his companions, and by the example of the country gentlemen who are his neighbours. He can ride, and row, and swim; he is beginning to shoot; at twenty he will be a sportsman. When once he has taken his degree, I wonder what will be the advances in his intellectual culture. Fraternal and social influences will preserve the younger from absolute physical inaction; but there are not any influences powerful enough to keep the elder safe from intellectual rust. If you, who are a distinguished sportsman and athlete, would kindly inform us with perfect frankness of the line which your studies have followed since you quitted Eton, we should be the wiser for your experience. Have gymnastic exercises hardened you, as Plato said they did, w'hen pursued excessively ? and do you need the musical studies which he both valued and dreaded as the most powerful of softening influences? If you have energy enough to lead both lives, pray how do you find the time ? As to Plato’s musical influence, you invite it, and yet you treacherously elude its power. After being out all day. in thfe pursuit of sylvan pleasures (if shooting on treeless wastes can be called a sylvan pleasure), you come home at nightfall ravenous. Then you do ample justice to your dinner, and having satisfied your dc , you go into the drawing-room, and ask your wife to play and sing to you. If Plato could witness that pretty scene, he would approve your obedience to his counsels. He would behold an athletic Englishman stretching his mighty hubs on a couch of soft repose, and letting his soul grow • part 1 LETTER IV. A sportsman and aiklete. In the eve 7 ling.24 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER IV. The &/>ortsi7iatt*s reading. The active life. tender as his ears drank ravishing harmonies. If, how- ever, the ancient sage, delighted with so sweet a picture of strength refined by song, were to dwell upon the sight as I have done, he would perceive too soon that, although your body was present indeed, your soul had become deaf in sleep’s oblivion. So it happens to you night after night, and the music reaches you no more than the songs of choristers reach the dead in the graves below. And the elevating influences of literature? You have books, of course, in abundance. There is a library, amongst other luxuries of your home. But the literature your intellect feeds upon is in the columns of the , your newspaper. Yet this neglect of the means of cul- ture is not due to any natural feebleness of the mind. Your brain, by its nature, is as vigorous as your vigorous body. It is sleep, and weariness, and the great neces- sary business of digestion, that drown your intellectual energies. The work of repairing so great a destruction of muscle is nature’s chief concern. Since you became the mighty hunter that you are, the wear and tear have been enormous, and the necessary rapidity of reconstruc- tion has absorbed your rich vitality. I will not question the wisdom of your choice, if there has been any deliberate choice, though perhaps the life of action that you lead may have grown rather out of circumstances determining habit than from any conscious resolution. Health is so much more necessary to hap- piness than culture, that few who could choose between them would sacrifice it for learning, unless they were impelled by irresistible instincts. And beyond the great delight of health and strength there is a restlessness in men born to be active which must have its outlet in activity. I knew a brave Italian who had followedTHE PHYSICAL BASIS. 25 Garibaldi in all his romantic enterprises who had suffered from privation and from wounds, who had not only faced death in the wildest adventures, but, what is even more terrible to the active temperament, had risked health from frequent exposure; and when I asked him whether t was affection to his famous chief, or faith in a political creed, or some more personal motive that had led him to this scorn of prudence, he answered that, after honest self-examination, he believed the most powerful motive to be the passion for an active life. The active tempera- ment likes physical action for its own sake, and not as a means of health. Activity renews itself and claims larger and larger satisfaction, till at last the habit of it absorbs the whole energy of the man. Although such a life as yours would be incompatible with the work I have to do, it would be an unmixed benefit to me to take a greater interest in exercise. If you could but communicate that interest, how willingly would I become your pupil! The fatal law of the studious temperament is, that in exercise itself it must find some intellectual charm, so that we quit our books in the library only to go and read the infinite book of nature. We cannot go out in the country without inces- santly thinking about either botany, or geology, or land- scape painting, and it is difficulty for us to find a refuge from the importunate habit of investigation. Sport is the only refuge, but the difficulty is to care about it suffi- ciently to avoid ennui.When you have not the natural instinct, how are you to supply its place by any make- believe excitement ? There is no position in the world more wearisome than that of a man inwardly indifferent to the amusement in which he is trying to take part. You can watch for game with an invincible patience, part 1. LETTER IV. A brave Italian. Need of action. Want cf interest in exercise. Sport.26 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER IV. IVait tugfor a wild boar. letter V. for you have the natural instinct, but after the first ten minutes on the skirts of the wood I lay my gun down and begin to botanize. Last week a friendly neighbour invited me to a boar-hunt. The boar was supposed to be in the middle of a great impenetrable plantation, and all I did during the whole morning was to sit in my saddle awaiting the exit of the beast, cantering from one point of the wood’s circumference to another, as the cry of the dogs guided me. Was it pleasure ? A true hunter would have found interest enough in expectation, but I felt like a man on a railway-platform who is waiting for a train that is late. LETTER V. TO A STUDENT WHO NEGLECTED BODILY EXERCISE. Difficulty of conciliating the animal and the intellectual lives—Bodily activity sometimes preserved by an effort of the will—Necessity of faith in exercise—Incompatibility between physical and intel- lectual living disappears in large spaces of time—Franklin’s theory about concentration in exercise—Time an essential factor— Health of a rural postman—Pedestrian habits of Wordsworth—• Pedestian and equestrian habits of Sir Walter Scott—Goethe’s wild delight in physical exercise—Alexander Humboldt com- bated early delicacy by exercise—Intellectual utilities of physical action. m “ We have done those things which we ought not to have done; we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us.” How applicable, my dear brother, are these words which the Church, in her wisdom, has seen to be adapted to all sinners—how applicable, I say, are they to students most especially! They have quite a personal applica-THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 27 bility to you and me. We have read all day long, and written till three o’clock in the morning; we have taken no exercise for weeks, and there is no health in us. The doctor scrutinizes our wearied eyes, and knows that our brains are weary. Little do we need his warnings, for does not Nature herself remind us of our disobedience, and tell us, in language not to be misinterpreted, to amend the error of our ways ? Our digestion is sluggish and imperfect; we are as nervous as delicate ladies, and there is no health in us. How easy it is to follow one of the two lives—the animal or the intellectual! how difficult to conciliate the two! In every one of us there exists an animal which might have been as vigorous as wolves and foxes, if it had been left to develop itself in freedom. But besides the animal, there existed also a mind, and the mental activity re- strained the bodily activity, till at last there is a serious danger of putting an end to it altogether. I know two men, about fifty-five years old both of them, and both of them admirably active. They tell me that their bodily activity has been preserved by an effort of the will; that if they had not resolutely kept up the habit of using legs and arms in daily work or amusement their limbs would have stiffened into uselessness, and their constitutions would have been unable to bear the call of any sudden emergency. One of them has four residences in different parts of the same county, and yet he will not keep a carriage, but is a pedestrian terrible to his friends; the other is at the head of a great business, and gives an example of physical activity to his work- people. Both have an absolute faith in habitual exercise; and both affirm that if the habit were once broken they could never afterwards resume it. part 1. LETTER V. The two lives. Bodily activity preserved*28 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER V. Faith in exercise. Conciliation ' between body a?id mind. Franklin s theory of exercise. Time is needed. We need this faith in exercise—this firm conviction of its necessity—the sort of conviction that makes a man go out in all weathers, and leave the most urgent intellectual labour for the mere discipline and hardening of the body. Few students possess this faith in its purity. It is hard to believe that we shall get any good from exercise pro- portionate to the sacrifice of time. The incompatibility between the physical and the intel- lectual lives is often very marked if you look at small spaces of time only; but if you consider broader spaces, such as a lifetime, then the incompatibility is not so marked, and gives place to a manifest conciliation. The brain is clearer in vigorous health than it can be in the gloom and misery of sickness; and although health may last for a while without renewal from exercise, so that if you are working under pressure for a month the time given to exercise is so much deducted from the result, it is not so for the life’s performance. Health sustained for many years is so useful to the realization of all con- siderable intellectual undertakings, that the sacrifice to the bodily well-being is the best of all possible investments. Franklin’s theory about concentrating his exercise for the economy of time was founded upon a mistake. Violent exertion for minutes is not equivalent to moderate exercise for hours. The desire to concentrate good of various kinds into the smallest possible space is one of the commonest of human wishes, but it is not encouraged by the broader economy of nature. In the exercise of the mind every teacher is well aware that time is an essential factor. It is necessary to live with a study for hundreds or thousands of hours before the mind can assimilate as much of the subject as it may need; and so it is necessary to live in exercise during a thousandTHE PHYSICAL 29 hpurs of every year to make sure of the physical benefits. Even the fresh air itself requires time to renovate our blood. The fresh air cannot be concentrated ; and to breathe the prodigious quantities of it which are needed for perfect energy, we must be out in it frequently and long. The inhabitants of great cities have recourse to gym- nastics as a substitute for the sports of the country. These exercises have one advantage—they can be directed scientifically so as to strengthen the limbs that need de- velopment ; but no city gymnasium can offer the in- vigorating breezes of the mountain. We require not only exercise but exposure—daily exposure to the health- giving inclemencies of the weather. The postman who brings my letters walks eight thousand miles a year, and enjoys the most perfect regularity of health. There are operatives in factories who go through quite as much bodily exertion, but they have not his fine condition. He is as merry as a lark, and announces himself every morning like a bearer of joyful tidings. What the post- man does from necessity an old gentleman did as regularly, though more moderately, for the preservation of his health and faculties. He went out every day; and as he never consulted the weather, so he never had to consult the physicians. Nothing in the habits of Wordsworth—that model of excellent habits—can be better as an example to men of letters than his love of pedestrian excursions. Wherever he happened to be, he explored the whole neighbour- hood on foot, looking into every nook and cranny of it; and not merely the immediate neighbourhood, but ex- tended tracts of country; and in this way he met with much of his best material. Scott was both a pedestrian and an equestrian traveller, having often, as he tells us, part 1. LETTER V. Fresh air. Gymnastics. Exposure. A postnian. JVorris- 'll'or tli s pedestrian habits. Scott3<> THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER V. Goethe s delight in exercise. Humboldt. Leonardo da Vinci. Intellectual uses of action. walked thirty miles or ridden a hundred in those rich and beautiful districts which afterwards proved to him such a mine of literary wealth. Goethe took a wild delight in all sorts of physical exercise—swimming in the Ilm by moonlight, skating with the merry little Weimar court on the Schwansee, riding about the country on horseback, and becoming at times quite outrageous in the rich exuberance of his energy. Alexander Humboldt was delicate in his youth, but the longing for great enter- prises made him dread the hindrances of physical insuffi- ciency, so he accustomed his body to exercise and fatigue, and prepared himself for those wonderful explorations which opened his great career. Here are intellectual lives which were forwarded in their special aims by habits of physical exercise; and, in an earlier age, have we not also the example of the greatest intellect of a great epoch, the astonishing Leonardo da Vinci, who took such a delight in horsemanship that although, as Vasari tells us, poverty visited him often, he never could sell his horses or dismiss his grooms ? The physical and intellectual lives are not' incom- patible. I may go farther, and affirm that the physical activity of men eminent in literature has added abund- ance to their material and energy to their style; that the activity of scientific men has led them to innumerable discoveries; and that even the more sensitive and con- templative study of the fine arts has been carried to a higher perfection by artists who painted action in which they had had their part, or natural beauty which they had travelled far to see. Even philosophy itself owes much to mere physical courage and endurance. How much that is noblest in ancient thinking may be due to the hardy health of Socrates !THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 3* LETTER VI. TO AN AUTHOR IN MORTAL DISEASE. Considering death as a certainty—The wisdom learned from suffering —Employment of happier intervals—The teaching of the diseased not to be rejected—Their double experience—Ignorance of Nature’s spoiled children—Benefit of disinterested thought—Reasons for pursuing intellectual labours to the last —Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. When Alexandre Bixio lay on his death-bed, his friend Labrousse visited him, and exclaimed on entering the room, “How well you are looking to-day!” To this, Bixio, who was clearly aware of his condition, answered in these words :—“ Voyons, mon pauvre Labrousse ; tu viens voir un homme qui n’a plus qu’un quart d’heure k vivre, et tu veux lui faire croire qu’il a bonne mine ; allons, une poignee de main, cela vaut mieux pour un homme que tous ces petits mensonges-lL” I will vex you with none of these well-meant but wearisome little falsehoods. We both of us know your state; we both know that your malady, though it may be alleviated, can never be cured ; and that the fatal termina- tion of it, though delayed by all the artifices of science, will certainly arrive at last. The cheerful courage which enables you to look this certainty in the face has also enabled you to extract from years of suffering that pro- foundest wisdom which (as one of the wisest of living Englishmen has told us) can be learned from suffering alone. The admirable elasticity of your intellectual and moral nature has enabled you, in the intervals of physical uneasiness or pain, to cast aside every morbid thought, to enter quite fully and heartily into the healthy life of others, and to enjoy the magnificent spectacle of the part i. LETTER V.I. Bixio on his death-bed. Wisdom lea7~ned from suffering.32 7HE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER VI. Effects of disease on a noble 7nind. Experience of the sick. universe with contented submission to its laws—those beneficent yet relentless laws which to you bring debility and death. You have continued to write notwidistanding the progress of your malady; and yet, since it has so pitilessly held you, there is no other change in the spirit of your compositions than the deepening of a graver beauty, the addition of a sweeter seriousness. Not one sentence that you have written betrays either the injustice of the invalid, or his irritability. Your mind is not clouded by any mist from the fever marshes, but its sympathies are far more active than they were. Your pain has taught you a tender pity for all the pain that is outside of you, and a patient gentleness which was wanting to your nature in its days of barbarian health. Surely it would be a lamentable error if mankind were to carry out the recommendation of certain ruthless philosophers, and reject the help and the teaching of the diseased. Without undervaluing the robust per- formance of healthy natures, and without encouraging literature that is morbid, that is fevered, impatient, and perverse, we may still prize the noble teaching which is the testament of sufferers to the world. The diseased have a peculiar and mysterious experience; they have known the sensations of health, and then, in addition to this knowledge, they have gained another knowledge which enables them to think more accurately even of health itself. A life without suffering would be like a picture without shade. The pets of Nature, who do not know what sufferering is, and cannot realize it, have always a certain rawness, like foolish landsmen Avho laugh at the terrors of the ocean, because they have neither experience enough to know what those terrors are, nor brains enough to imagine them.THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 33 You who are borne along, slowly but irresistibly, to that Niagara which plunges into the gulf of death,—you who, with perfect self-possession and heroic cheerfulness, are counting the last miles of the voyage,—find leisure to study and think as the boat glides onwards silently to the inevitable end. It is one of the happiest privileges of the high intellectual life that it can elevate us—at part I. LETTER VI. A privilege of the intellectual. least in the intervals of relief from complete prostra- tion or acute pain—to regions of disinterested thought, where all personal anxieties are forgotten. To feel that he is still able, even in days of physical weakness and decline, to add something to the world’s inheritance of knowledge, or to bequeath to it some new and noble thought in the pearl of complete expression, is a pro- found satisfaction to the active mind that is lodged in a perishing body. Many diseases fortunately permit this activity to the last; and I do not hesitate to affirm, that the work done in the time of physical decline has in not work in a few instances been the most perfect and the most per- decline manently valuable. It is not accurately true that the mind and the body invariably fail together. Physicians who know how prevalent chronic diseases are, and how many eminent men are physically inconvenienced by them, know also that minds of great spiritual energy possess the wonderful faculty of indefinitely improving themselves whilst the body steadily deteriorates. Nor is there any- thing irrational in this persistent improvement of the mind, even to the extremest limit of material decay; for ■ the mind of every intellectual human being is part and parcel of the great permanent mind of humanity; and even if its influence soon ceases to be traceable—if the spoken words are forgotten—if the written volume is not reprinted or even quoted, it has not worked in vain. The D34 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER VI. The nameless •workers. LETTER VII. intellectual light of Europe in this century is not only due to great luminaries whom everyone can name, but to millions of thoughtful persons, now utterly forgotten, who in their time loved the light, and guarded it, and increased it, and carried it into many lands, and be- queathed it as a sacred trust. He who labours only for his personal pleasure may well be discouraged by the shortness and uncertainty of life, and cease from his selfish toil on the first approaches of disease; but whoever has fully realized the grand continuity of intellectual tradition, and taken his own place in it between the future and the past, will work till he can work no more, and then gaze hopefully on the world’s great future, like Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire, when his blind eyes beheld the future of zoology. LETTER VII. TO A YOUNG MAN OF BRILLIANT ABILITY, WHO HAD JUST TAKEN HIS DEGREE. A domestic picture—Thoughts suggested by it—Importance of the senses in intellectual pursuits—Importance of hearing to Madame de Stael—Importance of seeing to Mr. Ruskin—Mr. Prescott, the historian—How blindness retarded his work—Value of all the five senses—Self-government indispensable to their perfection— Great value of longevity to the intellectual life. It is always a great pleasure to me to pass an evening at your father’sshouse ; but on the last occasion that pleasure was very much enhanced because you were once more with us. I watched your mother’s eyes as she sat in her place in the drawing-room. They followed you almost i without ceasing, and there was the sweetest, happiest I expression on her dear face, that betrayed her tenderTHE PHYSICAL BASIS. 35 maternal love for you and her legitimate maternal pride. Your father was equally happy in his own way; he was much more gay and talkative than I have seen him for two or three anxious years; he told amusing stories; he entered playfully into the jests of others; he had pleasant projects for the future, and spoke of them with facetious exaggeration. I sat quietly in my corner, slyly observing my old friends, and amusing myself by discovering (it did not need much perspicacity for that) the hidden sources of the happiness that was so clearly visible. They were gladdened by the first successes of your manhood ; by the evidence of your strength; by the realization of hopes long cherished. Watching this charming picture with a perfect sym- pathy, I began to have certain thoughts of my own which it is my present purpose to communicate to you without disguise. I thought, first, how agreeable it was to be the spectator of so pretty a picture; but then my eyes wan- dered to a painting that hung upon the walls, in which also there were a mother and her son, and this led me a long way. The painting was a hundred years old; but although the colours were not quite so fresh as when they left the palette of the artist, the beautiful youth who stood radiant like a young Apollo in the centre of the composition had not lost one of the great gifts with which his cunning human creator had endowed him. The fire of his eye had not been quenched by time; the bloom of his cheek still flushed with faint vermilion; his lip was full and imperious; his limbs athletic; his bear- ing haughty and dauntless. All life seemed spread before him like a beautiful rich estate of which every acre was his own. How easily will he conquer fame ! how easily kindle passion! Who shall withstand this pink and PART i. LETTER VII. A domestic scene. I A painting, D 2S6 PART I. LETTER VII. Subtile changes of time. Perfection of the se?ises THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. perfection of aristocracy—this ideal of the age of fine gentlemen, with all the gifts of nature helped by all the inventions of art? Then I thought farther: “That splendid young noble- man in the picture will look just as young as he does now when we shall be either superannuated or dead.” And I looked at you and your mother again and thought: “ It is just five minutes since I saw these two living beings, and in this little space of time they have both of them aged a little, though no human observer has enough delicacy of perception to detect so inappreciable an alteration.” I went gradually on and on into the future, trying to imagine the changes which would come over yourself more especially (for it was you who were the centre of my reverie), till at last I imagined pretty accurately what you might be at sixty; but there it became necessary to stop, because it was too difficult to conceive the processes of decay. % After this, one thought grew upon me and became dominant. I thought, at present he has all the senses in their perfection, and they serve him without a hitch. He is an intelligence served by organs, and the organs are all doing their duty as faithfully as a postman who brings letters. When the postman becomes too infirm to do his work he will retire on his little pension, and another will take his place and bring the letters just as regularly; but when the human organs become infirm they cannot be taken out and replaced by new ones, so that we must content ourselves, to the end, with their service, such as it may be. Then I reflected how useful the senses are to the high intellectual life, and how wise it is, even for intellectual purposes, to preserve them as long as possible in their perfection.THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 37 To be able to see and hear well—to feel healthy sensa- tions—even to taste and smell properly, are most important qualifications for the pursuit of literature, and art, and science. If you read attentively the work of any truly illustrious poet, you will find that the whole of the imagery which gives power and splendour to his verse is derived from nature through one or other of these ordinary chan- nels. Some philosophers have gone much farther than this, and have affirmed that the entire intellectual life is based ultimately upon remembered physical sensations; that we have no mental conception that is really indepen- dent of sensuous experience ; and that the most abstract thought is only removed from sensation by successive processes of substitution. I have not space to enter into so great and mysterious a subject as this ; but I desire to draw your attention to a truth very commonly overlooked by intellectual people, which is the enormous importance of the organs of sense in the highest intellectual pursuits. I will couple together two names which have owed their celebrity, one chiefly to the use of her ears, the other to the use of his eves. Madame de Stael obtained her literary material almost exclusively by means of con- versation. She directed, systematically, the talk of the learned and brilliant men amongst whom she lived to the subject which for the moment happened to occupy her thoughts. Her literary process (which is known to us in detail through the revelations of her friends) was pur- posely invented to catch everything that she heard, as a net catches fish in a river. First, she threw down on paper a very brief rough draft of the intended literary project. This she showed to few, but from it she made a second “ state ” (as an engraver would say), which she exhibited to some of her trusted friends, profiting by their hints PART i. LETTER VII. Intellectual utility of the senses. Hearing in the case of Madame de Stael. Her literary process.38 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER VII. How little she used her eyes. Ruskin* His use of sight. and suggestions. Her secretary copied the corrected manuscript, incorporating the new matter, on paper with a very broad margin for farther additions. During all the time that it took to carry her work through these successive states, that ingenious woman made the best possible use of her ears, which were her natural providers. She made everybody talk who was likely to be of any use to her, and then immediately added what she had caught on the wide margin reserved for that purpose. She used her eyes so little that she might almost as well have been blind. We have it on her own authority, that were it not out of respect to custom, she would not open her window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, whereas she would travel five hundred leagues to talk with a clever man whom she had never met. Now since Madame de Stael’s genius fed itself exclu- sively through the faculty of hearing, what an enormous difference it would have made to her if she had been deaf! It is probable that the whole of her literary reputation was dependent on the condition of her ears. Even a very moderate degree of deafness (just enough to make listening irksome) might have kept her in perpetual obscurity. The next instance I intend to give is that of a distin- guished contemporary, Mr. Ruskin. His peculiar posi- tion in literature is due to his being able to see as culti- vated artists see. Everything that is best and most original in his writings is invariably either an account of what he has seen in his own independent inimitable way, or else a criticism of the accurate or defective sight of others. His method of study, by drawing and taking written memoranda of what he has seen, is entirely dif- ferent from Madame de Stael’s method, but refers always,THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 39 as hers did, to the testimony of the predominant, sense. Everyone whose attention has been attracted to the subject is aware that, amongst people who are com- monly supposed to see equally well, and who are not suspected of any tendency to blindness, the degrees of perfection in this sense vary to infinity. Suppose that Mr. Ruskin (to our great misfortune) had been endowed with no better eyes than many persons who see fairly well in the ordinary sense, his enjoyment and use of sight would have been so much diminished that he wbuld have had little enthusiasm about seeing, and yet that kind of enthusiasm was quite essential to his work. The well-known instance of Mr. Prescott, the his- torian, is no doubt a striking proof what be accom- plished by a man of remarkable intellectual ability without the help of sight, or rather helped by the sight of others. We have also heard of a blind traveller, and even of a blind entomologist; but in all cases of this kind there are executive difficulties to be overcome, such that only the most resolute natures would ever dream of encountering them. When the materials for the “ Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella” arrived in Prescott’s house from Europe, his remaining eye had just suffered from over-exertion to such a degree that he could not use it again for years. “ I well remember,” he wrote in a letter to a friend, “ the blank despair which I felt when my literary treasures arrived, and I saw the mine of wealth lying around me which I was forbidden to explore.” And although, by a most tedious process, which would have worn out the patience of any other author, Mr. Prescott did at last arrive at the conclusion of his work, it cost him ten years of labour—probably thrice as much time as would PART i. LETTER VII. Prescott, the historia n.40 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER VII. Taste and smell. The five senses. Evils of excess. have been needed by an author of equal intellectual ability without any infirmity of sight. Although, of the five senses which God has given us, sight and hearing are the most necessary to the intel- lectual life, it may easily be demonstrated that the lower ones are not without their intellectual uses. Perfect literature and art can only be produced by men who are perfect in all their natural faculties. The great creative intellects have never been ascetics; they have been rightly and healthily sensitive to every kind of pleasure. The taste of fruits and wines, the perfume of flowers, are a part of the means by which the spirit of Nature influences our most secret thoughts, and conveys to us suggestions, or carries us into states of feeling which have an enormous effect upon our thinking, though the manner in which the effect is produced is one of the deepest mysteries of our mysterious being. When the Caliph Vathek added five wings to the palace of Al- koremmi, on the hill of Pied Horses, for the particular gratification of each of his five senses, he only did on a uselessly large scale what every properly-endowed human being does, when he can afford it, on a small one. You will not suspect me of preaching unlimited indul- gence. The very object of this letter is to recommend, for intellectual purposes, the careful preservation of the senses in the freshness of their perfection, and this is altogether incompatible with every species of excess. If you are to see clearly all your life, you must not sacrifice eyesight by overstraining it; and the same law of mode- ration is the condition of preserving every other faculty. I want you to know the exquisite taste of common dry bread; to enjoy the perfume of a larch wood at a dis-THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 41 tance; to feel delight when a sea-wave dashes over you. I want your eye to be so sensitive that it shall discern the faintest tones of a grey cloud, and yet so strong that it shall bear to gaze on a white one in the dazzling glory of sunshine. I would have your hearing sharp enough to detect the music of the spheres, if it were but audible, and yet your nervous system robust enough to endure the shock of the guns on an ironclad. To have and keep these powers we need a firmness of self-govern- ment that is rare. Young men are careless of longevity; but how precious are added years to the fulness of the intellectual life ! There are lives, such as that of Major Pendennis, which only diminish in value as they advance—when the man of fashion is no longer fashionable, and the sportsman can no loiiger stride over the ploughed fields. The old age of the Major Pendennises is assuredly not to be envied; but how rich is the age of the Humboldts! I compare the life of the intellectual to a long wedge of gold—the thin end of it begins at birth, and the depth and value of it go on indefinitely increasing till at last comes Death (a personage for whom Nathaniel Haw- thorne had a peculiar dislike, for his unmannerly habit of interruption), who stops the auriferous processes. Oh the mystery of the nameless ones who have died when the wedge was thin and looked so poor and light! Oh the happiness of the fortunate old men whose thoughts went deeper and deeper like a wall that runs out into the sea! Note.—One of the most painful cases of interruption caused by death is that of Cuvier. His paralysis came upon him whilst he was still in full activity, and death prevented him from arranging a great accumulation of scientific material. He said to M. Pasquier, “I had PART I. LETTER VII. Sensitiveness and strength, Value of longevity. Cuvier.42 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART I. LETTER VII. great things still to do; all was ready in my head. After thirty years of labour and research, there remained but to write, and now the hands fail, and carry with them the head.” But the most lamentable instances of this kind of interruption are, from the nature of things, unknown to us. Even the friends of the deceased cannot estimate the extent of the loss, for a man’s immediate neighbours are generally the very last persons to become aware of the nature of his powers or the value of his acquirements.PART II. THE MORAL BASIS. LETTER I. TO A MORALIST WHO HAD SAID THAT THERE WAS A WANT OF MORAL FIBRE IN THE INTELLECTUAL, ESPECIALLY IN POETS AND ARTISTS. The love of intellectual pleasure—The seeking for a stimulus—In- toxication of poetry and oratory—Other mental intoxications— The Bishop of Exeter on drudgery—The labour of composition in poetry—Wordsworth’s dread of it—Moore—His trouble with “ Lalla Rookh”—His painstaking in preparation—Necessity of patient industry in other arts—John Lewis, Meissonier, Mul- ready—Drudgery in struggling against technical difficulties— Water-colour painting, etching, oil-painting, fresco, line-engrav- ing—Labour undergone for mere discipline—Moral strength of students—Giordano Bruno. You told me the other day that you believed the induce- ment to what I called intellectual living to be merely the love of pleasure—pleasure of a higher kind, no doubt, than that which we derive from wine, yet fairly comparable to it. You went on to say that you could not, from the moral point of view, discern any appreciable difference between intoxicating oneself by means of literature or PART II. LETTER I The love of pleasure.44 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. I .UTTER I. Excitement of oratory. Mental stimulants. art and getting tipsy on port wine or brandy; that the reading of poetry, most especially, was clearly self-intoxi- cation—a service of Venus and Bacchus, in which the suggestions of artfully-ordered words were used as sub- stitutes for the harem and the wine-flask. Completing the expression of this idea, you said that the excitement produced by oratory was exactly of the same nature as the excitement produced by gin, so that Mr. Bright and M. Gambetta—nay, even a gentleman so respectable as the late Lord Derby—belonged strictly to the same pro- fession as the publicans, being dealers in stimulants, and no more. The habitual student was, in your view, nothing better than the helpless victim of unresisted appetite, to whom intellectual intoxication, having been at first a pleasure, had finally become a necessity. Yon added that any rational person who found himself sinking into such a deplorable condition as this, would have recourse to some severe discipline as a preservative—a discipline requiring close attention to common things, and rigo- rously excluding every variety of thought which could possibly be considered intellectual. It is strictly true that the three intellectual pursuits— literature, science, and the fine arts—are all of them strong stimulants, and that men are attracted to them by the stimulus they give. But these occupations are morally much nearer to the common level of other occu- pations than you suppose. There is no doubt a certain intoxication in poetry and painting; but I have seen a tradesman find a fully equivalent intoxication in an addition of figures showing a delightful balance at his banker’s. I have seen a young poet intoxicated with the love of poetry; but I have also seen a young mechanical genius on whom the sight of a locomotive acted exactlyTHE MORAL BASIS. 45 like a bottle of champagne. Everything that is capable of exciting or moving man, everything that fires him with enthusiasm, everything that sustains his energies above the dead level of merely animal existence, may be com- pared, and not very untruly, to the action of generous wine. The two most powerful mental stimulants—since they overcome even the fear of death—are unquestion- ably religion and patriotism: ardent states of feeling both of them when they are genuine; yet this ardour has a great utility. It enables men to bear much, to perform much which would be beyond their natural force if it were not sustained by powerful mental stimulants. And so it is in the intellectual life. It is because its labours are so severe that its pleasures are so glorious. The Creator of intellectual man set him the most arduous tasks—tasks that required the utmost possible patience, courage, self-discipline, and which at the same time were for the most part, from their very nature, likely to receive only the most meagre and precarious pecuniary reward. Therefore, in order that so poor and weak a creature might execute its gigantic works with the energy neces- sary to their permanence, the labour itself was made intensely attractive and interesting to the few who were fitted for it by their constitution. Since their courage could not be maintained by any of the common motives which carry men through ordinary drudgery—since neither wealth nor worldly position was in their prospects, the drudgery they had to go through was to be rewarded by the triumphs of scientific discovery, by the felicities of artistic expression. A divine drunkenness was given to them for their encouragement, surpassing the gift of the grape. But now that I have acknowledged, not ungratefully, PART II. LETTER I. The most powerful sti7iiulanti A rdu out tasks. 7 heir reuard.4o THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER L Drudgery. A rtists and authors. the necessity of that noble excitement which is the life of life, it is time for me to add that, in the daily labour of all intellectual workers, much has to be done which requires a robustness of the moral constitution beyond what you appear to be aware of. It is not long since the present Bishop of Exeter truly affirmed, in an address to a body of students, that if there were not weariness in work, that work was not so thorough-going as it ought to be. “Of all work,” the Bishop said, “that produces results, nine-tenths must be drudgery. There is no work, from the highest to the lowest, which can be done well by any man who is unwilling to make that sacrifice,. Part of the very nobility of the devotion of the true workman to his work consists in the fact that a man is not daunted by finding that drudgery must be done ; and no man can really succeed in any walk of life without a good deal of what in ordinary English is called pluck. That is the condition of all work whatever, and it is the condition of all success. And there is nothing which so truly repays itself as this very perseverance against weariness.” You understand, no doubt, that there is drudgery in the work of a lawyer or an accountant, but you imagine that there is no drudgery in that of an artist, or author, or man of science. In these cases you fancy that there is nothing but a pleasant intoxication, like the puffing of tobacco or the sipping of claret after dinner. The Bishop sees more accurately. He knows that “of all work that produces results nine-tenths must be drudgery.” He makes no exceptions in favour of the arts and sciences; if he had made any such exceptions, they would have proved the absence of culture in himself. Real work of all descriptions, even including the composition of poetryTHE MORAL BASIS. 47 (the most intoxicating of all human pursuits), contains drudgery in so large a proportion that considerable moral courage is necessary to carry it to a successful issue. Some of the most popular writers of verse have dreaded the labour of composition. Wordsworth shrank from it much more sensitively than he did from his prosaic labours as a distributor of stamps. He had that horreur de la plume which is a frequent malady amongst literary men. But we feel, in reading Wordsworth, that composition was a serious toil to him—the drudgery is often visible. Let me take, then, the case of a writer of verse distinguished especially for fluency and ease —the lightest, gayest, apparently most thoughtless of modern minstrels—the author of “ The Irish Melodies” and “ Lalla Rookh.” Moore said—I quote from memory, and may not give the precise words, but they were to this effect—that although the first shadowy imagining of a new poem was a delicious fool’s paradise, the labour of actual composition was something altogether different. He did not, I believe, exactly use the word “ drudgery,” but his expression implied that there was painful drudgery in the work. When he began to write “ Lalla Rookh ” the task was anything but easy to him. He said that he was at all times a far more slow and painstaking workman than would ever be guessed from the result.” For a long time after the conclusion of the agreement with Messrs. Longman, “ though generally at work with a view to this task, he made but very little real progress in it.” After many unsatisfactory attempts, finding that his subjects were so slow in kindling his own sympathies, he began to despair of their ever touching the hearts of others. “ Had this series of disheartening experiments been carried on much further, I must have thrown aside the work PART II. LETTER I. Poets. IVords- •worth. Moore, Lalla Rookh,48 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER I. Moores self-prepa- ration* Subjnission to discipline. Foreign artists. in despair.” He took the greatest pains in long and laboriously preparing himself by reading. “To form a storehouse, as it were, of illustrations purely Oriental, and so familiarize myself with its various treasures that, quick as Fancy required the aid of fact in her spiritings, the memory was ready to furnish materials for the spell- work ; such was, for a long while, the sole object of my studies.” After quoting some opinions favourable to the truth of his Oriental colouring, he says : “ Whatever of vanity there may be in citing such tributes, they show, at least, of what great value, even in poetry, is that prosaic quality, industry, since it was in a slow and laborious collection of small facts that the first founda- tions of this fanciful romance were laid.” Other fine arts make equally large claims upon the industry of their professors. We see the charming result, which looks as if it were nothing but pleasure—the mere sensuous gratification of an appetite for melody or colour ; but no one ever eminently succeeded in music or painting without patient submission to a discipline far from attrac- tive or entertaining. An idea was very prevalent amongst the upper classes in England, between twenty and thirty years ago, that art was not a serious pursuit, and that Frenchmen were too frivolous to apply themselves seri- ously to anything. When, however, the different schools of art in Europe came to be exhibited together, the truth began to dawn upon people’s minds that the French and Belgian schools of painting had a certain superiority over the rest—a superiority of quite a peculiar sort; and when the critics applied themselves to discover the hidden causes of this generally-perceived superiority, they found out that it was due in great measure to the patient drudgery submitted to by those foreign artists in theirTHE MORAL BASIS. 49 youth. English painters who have attained distinction have gone through a like drudgery, if not in the public atelier at least in secrecy and solitude. Mr. John Lewis, in reply to an application for a drawing to be reproduced by the autotype process, and published in the , said that his sketches and studies were all in colour, but if we liked to examine them we were welcome to select anything that might be successfully photographed. Not being in London at the time, I charged an experienced friend to go and see if there were anything that would answer our purpose. Soon afterwards he wrote : “ I have just been to see John Lewis, and have come away astounded.” He had seen the vast foundations of private industry on which the artist’s public work had been erected,—innumerable studies in colour, wrought with the most perfect care and finish, and all for self-education merely, not for any direct reward in fame. We have all admired the extraordinary power of representation in the little pictures of Meissonier; that power was acquired by painting studies life-size for self-instruction, and the artist has sustained his knowledge by persistence in that practice. Mulready, between the conception of a new picture and the execution of it, used to give himself a special training for the intended work by painting a study in colour of every separate thing that was to form part of the composition. It is useless to go on multiplying these examples, since all great artists, without exception, have been distinguished for their firm faith in steady well- directed labour. This faith was so strong in Reynolds that it limited his reasoning powers, and prevented him from assigning their due importance to the inborn natural gifts. Not only in their preparations for work, but even in E PART II. LETTER I. John Lewis. His private studies. Meissonier. Malready.5<> THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. rART II. LETTER I. Work of artists. r echnical troubles. In water colour. Ik etching. In fresco. the work itself, do artists undergo drudgery. It is the peculiarity of their work that, more than any other human work, it displays whatever there may be in it of pleasure and felicity, putting the drudgery as much out of sight as possible; but all who know the secrets of the studio are aware of the ceaseless struggles against technical difficulty which are the price of the charms that plea- santly deceive us. The amateur tries to paint in water- colour, and finds that the gradation of his sky will not come right; instead of being a sound gradation like that of the heavenly blue, it is all in spots and patches. Then he goes to some clever artist who seems to get the right thing with enviable ease. “ Is my paper good ? have my colours been properly ground ? ” The materials are sound enough, but the artist confesses one of the discouraging little secrets of his craft. “ The fact is#” he says, “ those spots that you complain of happen to all of us, and very troublesome they are, especially in dark tints ; the only way is to remove them as patiently as we can, and it sometimes takes several days. If one or two of them remain in spite of us, we turn them into birds.” In etching, the most famous practitioners get into messes with the treacherous chemistry of their acids, and need an invincible patience. Even Mery on was always very anxious when the time came for confiding .his work to what he called the traitresse liqueur; and whenever I give a commission to an etcher, I am always expecting some such despatch as the following : “ Plate utterly ruined in the biting. Very sorry. Will begin another immediately.” We know what a dreadful series of mishaps attended our fresco-painters at Westminster, and now even the promising water-glass process, in which Maclise trusted, shows the bloom of premature decayTHE MORAL BASIS. 51 The safest and best known of modern processes, simple oil-painting, has its own dangers also. The colours sink and alter; they lose their relative values; they lose their pearly purity, their glowing transparence—they turn to buff and black. The fine arts bristle all over with technical difficulties, and are, I will not say the best school of patience in the world, for many other pur- suits are also very good schools of patience; but I will say, without much fear of contradiction from anybody acquainted with the subject, that the fine arts offer drudgery enough, and disappointment enough, to be a training both in patience and in humility. In the labour of the line-engraver both these qualities are developed to the pitch of perfect heroism. He sits down to a great surface of steel or copper, and day by day, week after week, month after month, ploughs slowly his marvellous lines. Sometimes the picture before him is an agreeable companion; he is in sympathy with the painter; he enjoys every touch that he has to translate. But sometimes, on the contrary, he hates the picture, and engraves it as a professional duty. I happened to call upon a distinguished English engraver—a man of the greatest taste and knowledge, a refined and culti- vated critic—and I found him seated at work before a thing which had nothing to do with fine art—a medley of ugly portraits of temperance celebrities on a platform. “Ah!” he said to me sadly, “you see the dark side of our profession ; fancy sitting down to a desk all day long for two years together with that thing to occupy your thoughts !” How much moral fibre was needed to carry to a successful issue so repulsive a task as that! You may answer that a stone-breaker on the roadside sur- passes my line-engraver both in patience and in humility; PART 11. LETTER I. The fine arts a school of patience. Lvie- engravers. Dark side of their pro- fession. E 252 PART II. BETTER I. c ouso- lations. Work done foi discipline alone. THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. but whereas the sensitiveness of the stone-breaker has been deadened by his mode of life, the sensitiveness of the engraver has been continually fostered and increased. An ugly picture was torture to his cultivated eye, and he had to bear the torture all day long, like the pain of an irritating disease. Still even the line-engraver has secret sources of enter- tainment to relieve the mortal tedium of his task-work. The picture may be hideous, but the engraver has hidden consolations in the exercise of his wonderful art. He can at least entertain himself with feats of interpretative skill, with the gentle treacheries of improving here and there upon the hatefulness of the intolerable original. He may congratulate himself in the evening, that one more frightful hat or coat has been got rid of; that the tire- some task has been reduced by a space measurable in eighths of an inch. The heaviest work which shows progress is not without 07ie element of cheerfulness. There is a great deal of intellectual labour, undergone simply for discipline, which shows no present result that is appreciable, and which therefore requires, in addition to patience and humility, one of the noblest of the moral virtues, faith. Of all the toils in which men engage, none are nobler in their origin or their aim than those by which they endeavour to become more wise. Pray observe that whenever the desire for greater wisdom is earnest enough to sustain men in these high endeavours, there must be both humility and faith—the humility which acknow- ledges present insufficiency, the faith that relies upon the mysterious laws which govern our intellectual being. Be sure that there has been great moral strength in all who have come to intellectual greatness. During some brief moments of insight the mist has rolled away, andTHE MORAL BASIS. they have beheld, like a celestial city, the home of their highest aspirations; but the cloud has gathered round them again, and still in the gloom they have gone steadily forwards, stumbling often, yet maintaining their unconquerable resolution. It is to this sublime per- sistence of the intellectual in other ages that the world owes the treasures which they won; it is by a like persistence that we may hope to hand them down, augmented, to the future. Their intellectual purposes did not weaken their moral nature, but exercised and exalted it. All that was best and highest in the im- perfect moral nature of Giordano Bruno had its source in that noble passion for Philosophy, which made him declare that for her sake it was easv to endure labour and pain and exile, since he had found “ in brevi labore diuturnam requiem, in levi dolore immensum gaudium, in angusto exilio patriam amplissimam.” LETTER II. TO AN UNDISCIPLINED WRITER. Early indocility of great workers—External discipline only a sub- stitute for inward discipline—Necessity for inward discipline— Origin of the idea of discipline—Authors peculiarly liable to overlook its uses—Good examples—Sir Arthur Helps—Sainte- Beuve—The central authority in the mind—Locke’s opinion— Even the creative faculty may be commanded—Charles Baude- laire—Discipline in common trades and professions—Lawyers and surgeons—Haller—Mental refusals not to be altogether dis- regarded—The idea of discipline the moral basis of the intellec- tual life—Alexander Humboldt. 5 3 PART II. LETTER I. Persistence. Giordano Bruno. LETTER II. Sir Arthur Helps, in that wise book of his, “ Thoughts upon Government,” says that “much of the best and54 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER II. Indocility of clever boys. I School discipline a substitute for ijiward discipline. A greatest work in the world has been done by those who were anything but docile in their youth.” He believes that “this bold statement applies not only to the greatest men in Science, Literature, and.Art, but also to the greatest men in official life, in diplomacy, and in the general business of the world.” Many of us who were remarkable for our indocility in boyhood, and remarkable for nothing else, have found much consolation in this passage. It is most agreeable to be told, by a writer very eminent both for wisdom and for culture, that our untowardness was a hopeful sign. Another popular modern writer has also encou- raged us by giving a long list of dunces who have become illustrious. Yet, however flattering it may be to find ourselves in such excellent company, at least so far as the earlier half of life may be concerned, we cannot quite forget the very numerous instances of distinguished persons who began by submitting to the discipline of school and college, and gained honours and reputation there, before encountering the competition of the world. The external discipline applied by schoolmasters is a substitute for that inward discipline which we all so greatly need, and which is absolutely indispensable to culture. Whether a boy happens to be a dunce at school or a youth of brilliant promise, his future intellectual career will depend very much on his moral force. The distinguished men who derived so little benefit from early discipline have invariably subjected themselves to a discipline of another kind which prepared them for the labour of their manhood. It may be a pure assump- tion to say this, but the assumption is confirmed by every instance that is known to me. Many eminent men haveTHE MORAL BASIS. 55 undergone the discipline of business, many like l'ranklin have been self-disciplined, but I have never heard of a person who had risen to intellectual eminence without voluntary submission to an intellectual discipline of some kind. There are, no doubt, great pleasures attached to the intellectual life, and quite peculiar to it; but these plea- sures are the support of discipline and not its negation. They give us the cheerfulness necessary for our work, but they do not excuse us from the work. They are like the cup of coffee served to a soldier on duty, not like the opium which incapacitates for everything but dreaming. I have been led into these observations by a perusal of the new book which you sent me. It has many qualities which in a young writer are full of promise. It is earnest, and lively, and exuberant, but at the same time it is undisciplined. Now I believe it may be affirmed, that although there has been much literature in former ages which was both vigorous and undisciplined, still when an age presents, as ours does, living examples of perfect intellectual discipline, whoever falls below them in this respect con- tents himself with the very kind of inferiority which of all inferiorities is the easiest to avoid. You cannot, by an effort of the will, hope to rival the brilliance of a genius, but you may quite reasonably expect to obtain a's complete a control over your own faculties and your own work as any other highly-cultivated person. The origin of discipline is the desire to do not merely our best with the degree of power and knowledge which at the time we do actually happen to possess, but with that which we might possess if we submitted to the necessary training. The powers given to us by Nature PART II. LETTER II. Pleasure the support of discipline. Examples. Origin of discipline.56 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER II. Good work- manship in literature. Helps• Sainte- Beuve. are little more than a power to become, and this becom- ing is always conditional on some sort of exercise—what sort we have to discover for ourselves. No class of persons are so liable to overlook the uses of discipline as authors are. Anybody can write a book, though few can write that which deserves the name of literature. There are great technical differences between literature and book-making, but few can clearly explain these differences, or detect, in their own case, the absence of the necessary qualities. In painting, the most perfect finish is recognized at a glance, but the mind only can perceive it in the book. It was an odd notion of the authorities to exhibit literature in the international exhi- bitions ; but if they could have made people see the difference between sound and unsound workmanship in the literary craft, they would have rendered a great service to the higher intellectual discipline. Sir Arthur Helps might have served as an example to English writers, because he has certain qualities in which we are grievously deficient. He can say a thing in the words that are most fit and necessary, and then leave it. Sainte- Beuve would have been another admirable example of self-discipline, especially to Frenchmen, who would do well to imitate him in his horror of the apeu pres. He never began to write about anything until he had cleared the ground well before him. He never spoke about any character or doctrine that he had not bottomed (to use Locke’s word) as far as he was able. He had an ex- traordinary aptitude for collecting exactly the sort of material that he needed, for arranging and classifying material, for perceiving its mutual relations. Very few Frenchmen have had Sainte-Beuve’s intense repugnance to insufficiency of information and inaccuracy/ of lan-THE MORAL BASIS. 57 guage. Few indeed are the French journalists of whom it might be said, as it may be truly said of Sainte-Beuve, that he never wrote even an article for a newspaper without having subjected his mind to a special training for that particular article. The preparations for one of his Lundiswere the serious occupation of several laborious days; and before beginning the actual composition, his mind had been disciplined into a state of the most com- plete readiness, like the fingers of a musician who has been practising a piece before he executes it. The, object of intellectual discipline is the establish- ment of a strong central authority in the mind by which all its powers are regulated and directed as the military forces of a nation are directed by the strategist who ar- ranges the operations of a war. The presence of this strong central authority is made manifest in the unity and proportion of the results; when this authority is absent (it is frequently entirely absent from the minds of undisciplined persons, especially of the female sex), you have a chaos of complete confusion; when the authority without being absent is not strong enough to regulate the lively activity of the intellectual forces, you have too much energy in one direction, too little in another, a brigade where a regiment could have done the work, and light artillery where you want guns of the heaviest calibre. To establish this central authority it is only necessary, in any vigorous and sound mind, to exercise it. Without such a central power there is neither liberty of action nor security of possession. “ The mind,” says Locke, “should always be free and ready to turn itself to the variety of objects that occur, and allow them as much consideration as shall, for that time, be thought fit. To be engrossed so PART II. LETTER II. Prepara* tion the ce7itral authority. Its exercise,53 I THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER II. Locke. Creative faculty obe- die lit. Baudelaire, George Sand. by one subject as not to be prevailed on to leave it for another that we judge fitter for our contemplation, is to make it of no use to us. Did this state of mind always remain so, everyone would, without scruple, give it the name of perfect madness; and whilst it does last, at whatever intervals it returns, such a rotation of thoughts about the same object no more carries us forwards towards the attainment of knowledge, than getting upon a mill-horse whilst he jogs on his circular track, would carry a man on a journey.” Writers of imaginative literature have found in practice that even the creative faculty might be commanded. Charles Baudelaire, who had the poetical organization with all its worst inconveniences, said nevertheless that “ inspiration is decidedly the sister of daily labour. These two contraries do not exclude each other more than all the other contra'ries which constitute nature. Inspira- tion obeys like hunger, like digestion, like sleep. There is, no doubt, in the mind a sort of celestial mechanism, of which we need not be ashamed, but we ought to make the best use of it. If we will only live in a resolute con- templation of next day’s work, the daily labour will serve inspiration.” In cases where discipline is felt to be very difficult, it is generally at the same time felt to be very desirable. George Sand complains that although “ to overcome the indiscipline of her brain, she had imposed upon herself a regular way of living, and a daily labour, still twenty times out of thirty she catches herself reading or dreaming, or writing something entirely apart from the work in hand.” She adds that without this frequent in- tellectual flanerie, she would have acquired information which has been her perpetual but unrealized desire. It is the triumph of discipline to overcome both smallTHE MORAL BASIS. 59 trades and professions. Lawyers. Surgeons. and great repugnances. We bring ourselves, by its help, I part ii. to face petty details that are wearisome, and heavy tasks I n. that are almost appalling. Nothing shows the power of discipline more than the application of the mind in the | Discipline common trades and professions to subjects which have hardly any interest in themselves. Lawyers are especially admirable for this. They acquire the faculty of resolutely applying their minds to the driest documents, with tena- city enough to end in the perfect mastery of their con- tents ; a feat which is utterly beyond the capacity of any undisciplined intellect, however gifted by Nature. In the case of lawyers there are frequent intellectual re- pugnances to be overcome ; but surgeons and other men of science have to vanquish a class of repugnances even less within the power of the will—the instinctive phy- sical repugnances. These are often so strong as to seem apparently insurmountable, but they yield to perse- vering discipline. Although Haller surpassed his con- temporaries in anatomy, and published several important anatomical works, he was troubled at the outset with a horror of dissection beyond what is usual with the inex- perienced, and it was only by firm self-discipline that he became an anatomist at all. There is, however, one reserve to be made about dis- cipline, which is this : We ought not to disregard alto- gether the mind’s preferences and refusals, because in most cases they are the indication of our natural powers. They are not so always; many have felt attracted to pursuits for which they had no capacity (this happens continually in literature and the fine arts), whilst others have greatly distinguished themselves in careers which were not of their own choosing, and for which they felt no vocation in their youth. Still there exists a certain Haller. The wind's refusals6o THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER II. Opinion of society. Inward refusals. relation between preference and capacity, which rnay often safely be relied upon when there are not extrinsic circumstances to attract men or repel them. Discipline becomes an evil, and a very serious evil, causing immense losses of special talents to the community, when it over- rides the personal preferences entirely. We are less in danger of this evil, however, from the discipline which we impose upon ourselves than from that which is im- posed upon us by the opinion of the society in which we live. The intellectual life has this remarkable peculiarity as to discipline, that whilst very severe discipline is indis- pensable to it, that which it really needs is the obedience to an inward law, an obedience which is not only com- patible with revolt against other people’s notions of what the intellectual man ought to think and do, but which often directly leads to such revolt as its own inevitable result. In the attempt to subject ourselves to the inward law, we may encounter a class of mental refusals which indicate no congenital incapacity, but prove that the mind has been incapacitated by its acquired habits and its ordinary occupations. I think that it is particularly important to pay attention to this class of mental refusals, and to give them the fullest consideration. Suppose the case of a man who has a fine natural capacity for paint- ing, but whose time has been taken up by some profes- sion which has formed in him mental habits entirely different from the mental habits of an artist. The inborn capacity for art might whisper to this man, “What if you were to abandon your profession and turn painter ? ” But to this suggestion of the inborn capacity the acquired unfitness would, in a man of sense, most probably reply, “No; painting is an art bristling all over with the mostTHE MORAL BASIS. 61 alarming technical difficulties, which I am too lazy to overcome ; let younger men attack them if they like.” Here is a mental refusal of a kind which the severest self-disciplinarian ought to listen to. This is Nature’s way of keeping us to our specialities; she protects us by means of what superficial moralists condemn as one of the minor vices—the disinclination to trouble ourselves without necessity, when the work involves the acquisition of new habits. The moral basis of the intellectual life appears to be the idea of discipline; but the discipline is of a very peculiar kind, and varies with every individual. People • of original power have to discover the original discipline that they need. They pass their lives in thoughtfully altering this private rule of conduct as their needs alter, as the legislature of a progressive State makes unceasing alterations in its laws. When we look back upon the years that are gone, this is our bitterest regret, that whilst the precious time, the irrecoverable, was passing by so rapidly, we were intellectually too undisciplined to make the best personal use of all the opportunities that it brought. Those men may be truly esteemed happy and fortunate who can say to themselves in the evening of their days—“ I had so prepared myself for every succes- sive enterprise, that when the time came for it to be carried into execution my training ensured success.” I had thought of some examples, and there are several great men who have left us noble examples of self- discipline ; but, in the range and completeness of that discipline, in the foresight to discern what would be wanted, in the humility to perceive that it was wanting, in the resolution that it should not be wanting when the time came that such knowledge or faculty should be PART II. LETTER. XI. Variety of discipline. Prepara- tion.62 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER II. Humboldt. LETTER III. Disinter ested?iess% called for, one colossal figure so far excels all others that I cannot write down their names with that of Alexander Humboldt. The world sees the intellectual greatness of such a man, but does not see the sub- stantial moral basis on which the towering structure rose. When' I think of his noble dissatisfaction with what he knew; his ceaseless eagerness to know more, and know it better; of the rare combination of teach- ableness that despised no help (for he accepted without jealousy the aid of everybody who could assist him), with self-reliance that kept him always calm and observant in the midst of personal danger, I know not which is the more magnificent spectacle, the splendour of the intel- lectual light, or the beauty and solidity of the moral constitution that sustained it. LETTER III. TO A FRIEND WHO SUGGESTED THE SPECULATION “WHICH OF THE MORAL VIRTUES WAS MOST ESSENTIAL TO THE INTEL. LECTUAL LIFE.” The most essential virtue is disinterestedness—The other virtues possessed by the opponents of intellectual liberty—The Ultramon- tane party—Difficulty of thinking disinterestedly even about the affairs of another nation—English newspapers do not write dis- interestedly about foreign affairs—Difficulty of disinterestedness in recent history—Poets and their readers feel it—Fine subjects for poetry in recent events not yet available—Even history of past times rarely disinterested—Advantages of the study of the dead languages in this respect—Physicians do not trust their own judgment about their personal health—The virtue consists in endeavouring to be disinterested. I think there cannot be a doubt that the most essential virtue is disinterestedness. \THE MORAL BASIS. 63 Let me tell you, after this decided answer, -what are the considerations which have led me to it. I began by taking the other important virtues one by one—industry, perseverance, courage, discipline, humility, and the rest; and then asked myself whether any class of persons possessed and cultivated these virtues who were never- theless opposed to intellectual liberty. The answer came immediately, that there have in every age been men deservedly respected for these virtues who did all in their power to repress the free action of the intellect. What is called the Ultramontane party in the present day includes great numbers of talented adherents who are most industrious, most persevering, who willingly submit to the severest discipline—who are learned, self-denying, and humble enough to accept the most obscure and ill-requited duties. Some of these men possess nine-tenths of the qualifications that are neces- sary to the highest intellectual life—they have brilliant gifts of nature; they are well-educated; they take a delight in the exercise of noble faculties, and yet instead of employing their time and talents to help the intel- lectual advancement of mankind, they do all in their power to retard it. They have many most respectable virtues, but one is wanting. They have industry, per- severance, discipline, but they have not disinterested- ness. I do not mean disinterestedness in its ordinary sense as the absence of selfish care about money. The Church of Rome has thousands of devoted servants who are content to labour in her cause for stipends so miserable that it is clear they have no selfish aim; whilst they abandon all those possibilities of fortune which exist for every active and enterprising layman. But their PART 11. LETTER III. Virtties. The Ultra- montane s. One virtue wanting 164 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER III. The habit of advocacy. Partisans. thinking can never be disinterested so long as their ruling motive is devotion to the interests of their Church. Some of them are personally known to me, and we have discussed together many of the greatest questions which agitate the continental nations at the present time. They have plenty of intellectual acumen • but whenever the discussion touches, however remotely, the ecclesiastical interests that are dear to them, they cease to be observers— they become passionate advocates. It is this habit of advocacy which debars them from all elevated specula- tion about the future of the human race, and which so often induces them to take a side with incapable and retrograde governments, too willingly overlooking their deficiencies in the expectation of services to the cause. Their predecessors have impeded, as far as they were able, the early growth of science—not for intellectual reasons, but because they instinctively felt that there was something in the scientific spirit not favourable to those interests which they placed far above the knowledge of mere matter. I have selected the Ultramontane party in the Church of Rome as the most prominent example of a party eminent for many intellectual virtues, and yet opposed to the intellectual life from its own want of disinterested- ness. But the same defect exists, to some degree, in every partisan—exists in you and me so far as we are partisans. Let us suppose, for example, that we desired to find out the truth about a question much agitated in a neighbouring country at the present time—the question whether it would be better for that country to attempt the restoration of its ancient Monarchy or to try to consoli- date a Republican form of government. How difficult it is to think out such a problem disinterestedly, and yet howTHE MORAL BASIS. 65 LETTER III. Interested spectators. necessary to the justice of our conclusions that we should I part ii. think disinterestedly if we pretend to think at all! It is true that we have one circumstance in our favour—we are not French subjects, and this is much. Still we are not disinterested, since we know that the settlement of a great political problem such as this, even though on foreign soil, cannot fail to have a powerful influence on opinion in our own country, and consequently upon the institutions of our native land. We are spectators only, it is true; but we are far from being disinterested spectators. And if you desire to measure the exact degree to which we are interested in the result, you need only look at the newspapers. The English newspapers always treat French affairs from the standpoint of their own party. The Conservative journalist in England is [ Journalists% a Monarchist in France, and has no hopes for the Republic; the Liberal journalist in England believes that the French dynasties are used up, and sees no chance of tranquillity outside of republican institutions. In both cases there is an impediment to the intellectual appreciation of the problem. This difficulty is so strongly felt by those who write I , . | poems. and read the sort of literature which aspires to per- manence, and which, therefore, ought to have a sub- stantial intellectual basis, that either our distinguished poets choose their subjects in actions long past and half forgotten, or else, when tempted by present excite- ment, they produce work which is artistically far inferior to their best. Our own generation has witnessed three remarkable events which are poetical in the highest degree. The conquest of the Two Sicilies by Garibaldi is a most perfect subject for a heroic poem; the events which led to the execution of the Emperor Maximilian F66 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER III. Recent subjects for Poems. Historians. A rtists. Dead languages. and deprived his Empress of reason, would, in the hands of a great dramatist, afford the finest possible material for a tragedy; the invasion of France by the Germans, the overthrow of Napoleon III., the siege of Paris, are an epic ready to hand that only awaits its Homer; yet, with the exception of Victor Hugo, who is far gone in intellectual decadence, no great poet has sung of these things yet. The subjects are as good as can be, but too near. Neither poet nor reader is disinterested enough for the intellectual enjoyment of these subjects: the poet would not see his way clearly, the reader would not follow unreservedly. It may be added, however, in this connection, that even past history is hardly ever written disinterestedly. Historians write with one eye on the past and the other on the pre-occupations of the present. So far as they do this they fall short of the intellectual standard. An ideally perfect history would tell the pure truth, and all the truth, so far as it was ascertainable. Artists are seldom good critics of art, because their own practice biasses them, and they are not disinterested. The few artists who have written soundly about art have succeeded in the difficult task of detaching saying from doing; they have, in fact, become two distinct persons, each oblivious of the other. The strongest of all the reasons in favour of the study of the dead languages and the literatures preserved in them, has always appeared to me to consist in the more perfect disinterestedness with which we moderns can approach them. The men and events are separated from us by so wide an interval, not only of time and locality, but especially of modes of thought, that our passions are not often enlisted, and the intellect is sufficiently free.THE MORAL BASIS. 67 It may be noted that medical men, who are a scien- tific class, and therefore more than commonly aware of the great importance of disinterestedness in intellectual action, never trust their own judgment when they feel the approaches of disease. They know that it is difficult for a man, however learned in medicine, to arrive at accurate conclusions about the state of a human body that concerns him so nearly as his own, even although the person who suffers has the advantage of actually experiencing the morbid sensations. To all this you may answer that intellectual disin- terestedness seems more an accident of situation than a virtue. The virtue is not to have it, but to seek it in all earnestness; to be ready to accept the truth even when it is most unfavourable to ourselves. I can illus- trate my meaning by a reference to a matter of every- day experience. There are people who cannot bear to look into their own accounts from a dread that the clear revelation of figures may be less agreeable to them than the illusions which they cherish. There are others who possess a kind of virtue which enables them to see their own affairs as clearly as if they had no personal interest in them. The weakness of the first is one of the most fatal of intellectual weaknesses ; the mental independence of the second is one of the most desirable of intellectual qualities. The endeavour to attain it, or to strengthen it, is a great virtue, and of all the virtues the one most indispensable to the nobility of the intellectual life. Note.—The reader may feel some surprise that I have not mentioned honesty as an important intellectual virtue. Honesty is of great importance, no doubt, but it appears to be (as to practical effects) included in disinterestedness, and to be less comprehensively useful. There is no reason to suspect the honesty of many political PART II. LETTER III. Medical men. The virtue of tryuig to be dis- i?it crested. Honesty t <68 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER III. LETTER IV. The A uthor not polemical. and theological partisans, yet their honesty does not preserve them from the worst intellectual habits, such as the habit of “ begging the question/5 of misrepresenting the arguments on the opposite side, of shutting their eyes to every fact which is not perfectly agreeable to them. The truth is, that mere honesty, though a most respectable and necessary virtue, goes a very little way towards the forming of an effective intellectual character. It is valuable rather in the relations of the intellectual man to the outer world around him, and even here it is dangerous unless tempered by discretion. A perfect disinter- estedness would ensure the best effects of honesty, and yet avoid some serious evils, against which honesty is not, in itself, a safeguard. LETTER IV TO A MORALIST WHO SAID THAT INTELLECTUAL CULTURE WAS NOT CONDUCIVE TO SEXUAL MORALITY. That the Author does not write in the spirit of advocacy—Two different kinds of immorality—Byron and Shelley—A peculiar temptation for the intellectual—A distinguished foreign writer— Reaction to coarseness from over-refinement—Danger of intel- lectual excesses—Moral utility of culture—The most cultivated classes at the same time the most moral—That men of hmh o intellectual aims have an especially strong reason for morality— M. Taine’s opinion. A critic in one of the quarterlies once treated me as a feeble defender of my opinions, because I gave due com sideration to both sides of a question. He said that, like a wise commander, I capitulated beforehand in case my arguments did not come up for my relief; nay, more, that I gave up my arms in unconditional surrender. To this let me answer, that I have nothing to do with the polemical method, that I do not look upon an opponent as an enemy to be repelled, but as a torch-bearer to be welcomed for any light that he may bring; that ITHE MORAL BASIS. 69 defend nothing, but try to explore everything that lies near enough. You need not expect me, therefore, to defend very vigorously the morality of the intellectual life. An advocate could do it brilliantly; there are plenty of materials, but so clumsy an advocate as your present correspondent would damage the best of causes by un- seasonable indiscretions. So I begin by admitting that your accusations are most of them well founded. Many intellectual people have led immoral lives, others have led lives which, although in strict conformity to their own theories of morality, were in opposition to the morality of their country and their age. Byron is a good instance of the first, and Shelley of the second. Byron was really and knowingly immoral; Shelley, on the other hand, hated what he considered to be immorality, and lived a life as nearly as possible in accordance with the moral ideal in his own conscience; still he did not respect the moral rule of his country, but lived with Mary Godwin, whilst Harriet, his first wife, was still alive. There is a clear distinction between the two cases; yet both have the defect that the person takes in hand the regulation of his own morality, which it is hardly safe for anyone to do, considering the prodigious force of passion. I find even in the lives of intellectual people a peculiar temptation to immorality from which others are exempt. It is in their nature to feel an eager desire for intellectual companionship, and yet at the same time to exhaust very rapidly whatever is congenial to them in the intellect of their friends. They feel a strong intellectual attraction to persons of the opposite sex; and the idea of living with a person whose conversation is believed at the time to promise an increasing interest, is attractive in ways of PART 11. LETTER IV. Immorality of the intellectual. Byron. Shelley, A distinction. A peculiar temptation.7o THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER IV. A foreign writer. Danger of these changes. Reaction from over- refi7iement. which those who have no such wants can scarcely form a conception. A most distinguished foreign writer, of the female sex, has made a succession of domestic arrange- ments which, if generally imitated by others, would be subversive of any conceivable system of morality; and yet it is clear in this case that the temptation was chiefly, if not entirely, intellectual. The successive companions of this remarkable woman were all of them men of ex- ceptional intellectual power, and her motive for changing them was an unbridled intellectual curiosity. This is the sort of immorality to which cultivated people are most exposed. It is dangerous to the well- being of a community because it destroys the sense of security on which the idea of the family is founded. If we are to leave our wives when their conversation ceases to be interesting, the foundations of the home will be unsafe. If they are to abandon us when we are dull, to go away with some livelier and more talkative com- panion, can we ever hope to retain them permanently ? There is another danger which must be looked fairly in the face. When the lives of men are refined beyond the real needs of their organization, Nature is very apt to bring about the most extraordinary reactions. Thus the most exquisitely delicate artists in literature and painting have frequently had reactions of incredible coarseness. Within the Chateaubriand of Atala there existed an obscene Chateaubriand that would burst forth occasionally in talk that no biographer could repeat. I have heard the same thing of the sentimental Lamartine. We know that Turner, dreamer of enchanted landscapes, took the pleasures of a sailor on the spree. A friend said to me of one of the most exquisite living geniuses : “ You can have no conception of the coarseness of hisTHE MORAL BASH. 71 tastes; he associates with the very lowest women, and enjoys their rough brutality.” These cases only prove, what I have always willingly admitted, that the intellectual life is not free from certain dangers if we lead it too exclusively. Intellectual ex- cesses, by the excitement which they communicate to the whole system, have a direct tendency to drive men into other excesses, and a too great refinement in one direction may produce degrading reactions in another. Still the cultivation of the mind, reasonably pursued, is, on the whole, decidedly favourable to morality; and we may easily understand that it should be so, when we remember that people have recourse to sensual indul- gences simply from a desire for excitement, whilst intel- lectual pursuits supply excitement of a more innocent kind and in the utmost variety and abundance. If, instead of taking a few individual instances, you broadly observe whole classes, you will recognize the moral utility of culture. The most cultivated classes in our own country are also the most moral, and these classes have advanced in morality at the same time that they have advanced in culture. English gentlemen of the present day are superior to their forefathers whom Fielding described they are better educated, and they read more; they are at the same time both more sober and more chaste. I may add that intellectual men have peculiar and most powerful reasons for avoiding the excesses of im- morality, reasons which to anyone who has a noble am- bition are quite enough to encourage him in self-control. Those excesses are the gradual self-destruction of the intellectual forces, for they weaken the spring of the mind, not leaving it will enough to face the drudgery that is inevitable in every career. Even in cases where PART 11. LETTER IV. Excesses and reactions. Culture still favourable to morality• Engl is a gentlemen. Reasons /o* morality.72 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART II. LETTER IV. Importance of small advajitages. Self- government for ambition. ) Effects of immorality. they do not immediately lead to visible imbecility, they make the man less efficient and less capable than he might have been; and all experienced wrestlers with fate and fortune know well that success has often, at the critical time, depended upon some very trifling advantage which the slightest diminution of power would have lost to them. No one knows the full immensity of the difference between having power enough to make a little headway against obstacles, and just falling short of the power which is necessary at the time. In every great intellectual career there are situations like that of a steamer with a storm-wind directly against her and an iron-bound coast behind. If the engines are strong enough to gain an inch an hour she is safe, but if they lose there is no hope. Intellectual successes are so rewarding that they are worth any sacrifice of pleasure; the sense of defeat is so humiliating that fair Venus herself could not offer a consolation for it. An ambitious man will govern himself for the sake of his ambition, and withstand the seductions of the senses. Can he be ever strong enough, can his brain ever be lucid enough for the immensity of the task before him ? “ Le jeune homme,” says M. Taine, “ ignore qu’il n’y a pas de pire deperdition de forces, que de tels commerces abaissent le coeur, qu’apres dix ans dune vie pareille il aura perdu la moitie de sa volonte, que ses pensees auront un arriere-gout habituel d’amertume et de tris- tesse, que son ressort intdrieur sera amolli ou fausse. II s’excuse k ses propres yeux, en se disant qu’un homme doit tout toucher pour tout connaitre. De fait, il apprend la vie, mais bien souvent aussi il perd l’energie, la chaleur dame, la capacite d’agir, et a trente ans il n’est plus bon qu’k faire un employe, un dilettante, ou un rentier.”PART III. OF EDUCATION. LETTER I. TO A FRIEND WHO RECOMMENDED THE AUTHOR TO LEARN THIS THING AND THAT. Lesson learned from a cook—The ingredients of knowledge—Impor- tance of proportion in the ingredients—Case of an English author—Two landscape painters—The unity and charm of cha- racter often dependent upon the limitations of culture—The burden of knowledge may diminish the energy of action— Difficulty of suggesting a safe rule for the selection of our know- ledge—Men qualified for their work by ignorance as well as by knowledge—Men remarkable for the extent of their studies— Franz Woepke—Goethe—Flebrew proverb. I happened one day to converse with an excellent French cook about the delicate art which he professed, and he comprised the whole of it under two heads—the knowledge of the mutual influences of ingredients, and the judicious management of heat. It struck me that there existed a very close analogy between cookery and education; and, on following out the subject in my own way, I found that what he told me suggested several considerations of the very highest importance in the culture of the human intellect. PART III. LETTER I. Cookery and ediication.74 THE INTELLECTUAL LLFE. PART III. LETTER I. A Fre?tch dish. How it was spoiled. Mental chemistry. Amongst the dishes for which my friend had a de- served reputation was a certain gateau de foie which had a very exquisite flavour. The principal ingredient, not in quantity but in power, was the liver of a fowl; but there were several other ingredients also, and amongst these a leaf or two of parsley. He told me that the influence of the parsley was a good illustration of his theory about his art. If the parsley were omitted, the flavour he aimed at was not produced at all; but, on the other hand, if the quantity of parsley was in the least excessive, then the gateau instead of being a delicacy for gourmets became an uneatable mess. Perceiving that I was really interested in the subject, he kindly pro- mised a practical evidence of his doctrine, and the next day intentionally spoiled his dish by a trifling addition of parsley. He had not exaggerated the consequences; the delicate flavour entirely departed, and left a nauseous bitterness in its place, like the remembrance of an ill- spent youth. And so it is, I thought, with the different ingredients of knowledge which are so eagerly and indiscriminately recommended. We are told that we ought to learn this thing and that, as if every new ingredient did not affect the whole flavour of the mind. There is a sort of intellectual chemistry which is quite as marvellous as material chemistry, and a thousand times more diffi- cult to observe. One general truth may, however, be relied upon as surely and permanently our own. It is true that everything we learn affects the whole character of the mind. Consider how incalculably important becomes the question of proportion in our knowledge, and how that which we are is dependent as much upon our ignoranceOF EDUCA 7702V. 75 as our science. What we call ignorance is only a smaller proportion—what we call science only a larger. The larger quantity is recommended as an unquestionable good, but the goodness of it is entirely dependent on the mental product that we want. Aristocracies have always instinctively felt this, and have decided that a gentleman ought not to know too much of certain arts and sciences. The character which they had accepted as their ideal would have been destroyed by indis- criminate additions to those ingredients of which long experience had fixed the exact proportions. The same feeling is strong in the various professions : there is an apprehension that the disproportionate knowledge may destroy the professional nature. The less intelligent members of the profession will tell you that they dread an unprofessional use of time; but the more thoughtful are not so apprehensive about hours and days, they dread that sure transformation of the whole intellect which follows every increase of knowledge. I knew an English author who by great care and labour had succeeded in forming a style which har- monized quite perfectly with the character of his think- ing, and served as an unfailing means of communica- tion with his readers. Everyone recognized its simple ease and charm, and he might have gone on writing with that enviable facility had he not determined to study Locke’s philosophical compositions. Shortly afterwards my friend’s style suddenly lost its grace; he began to write with difficulty, and what he wrote was unpleasantly diffi- cult to read. Even the thinking was no longer his own thinking. Having been in too close communication with a writer who was not a literary artist, his own art had deteriorated in consequence. PART III. LETTER I. Proportion in knowledge. Professional feeling. Effect of reading..76 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER I. Two landscape pai?iters. Unproduc- tive characters. I could mention an English landscape painter who diminished the pictorial excellence of his works by taking too much interest in geology. His landscapes Decame geological illustrations, and no longer held together pictorially. Another landscape painter, who Degan by taking a healthy delight in the beauty of natural scenery, became morbidly religious after an ill- ness, and thenceforth passed by the loveliest European scenery as comparatively unworthy of his attention, to go and make ugly pictures of places that had sacred associations. For people who produce nothing these risks appear to be less serious; and yet there have been admirable cha- racters, not productive, whose admirableness might have been lessened by the addition of certain kinds of learn- ing. The last generation of the English country aristo- cracy was particularly rich in characters whose unity and charm was dependent upon the limitations of theii culture, and which would have been entirely altered, perhaps not for the better, by simply knowing a science or a literature that was closed to them. Abundant illustrations might be collected in evidence of the well-known truth that the burden of knowledge may diminish the energy of action ; but this is rather outside of what we are considering, which is the influence of knowledge upon the intellectual and not the active life. I regret very much not to be able to suggest anything like a safe rule for the selection of our knowledge. The most rational one which has been hit upon as yet appears to be a simple confidence in the feeling that we in- wardly want to know. If I feel the inward want for a certain kind of knowledge, it may perhaps be presumed that it would be good for me; but even this feeling isOF EDUCA \ 77 not perfectly reliable, since people are often curious about things that do not closely concern them, whilst they neglect what it is most important for them to ascertain. All that I venture to insist upon is, that we cannot learn any new thing without changing our whole intellectual composition as a chemical compound is changed by another ingredient; that the mere addition of knowledge may be good for us or bad for us; and that whether it will be good or bad is usually a more obscure problem than the enthusiasm of educators will allow. That de- pends entirely on the work we have to do. Men are qualified for their work by knowledge, but they are also negatively qualified for it by their ignorance. Nature herself appears to take care that the workman shall not know too much—she keeps him steadily to his task ; fixes him in one place mentally if not corporeally, and conquers his restlessness by fatigue. As we are bound to a little planet, and hindered by impassable gulfs of space from wandering in stars where we have no busi- ness, so we are kept by the force of circumstances to the limited studies that belong to us. If we have any kind of efficiency, very much of it is owing to our narrowness, which is favourable to a powerful individuality. Sometimes, it is true, we meet with instances of men remarkable for the extent of their studies. Franz Woepke, who died in 1864, was an extraordinary example of this kind. In the course of a short life he became, although unknown, a prodigy of various learning. His friend M. Taine says that he was erudite in many eruditions. His favourite pursuit was the history of mathematics, but as auxiliaries he had learned Arabic, and Persian, and Sanskrit. He was classically educated, he wrote and spoke the principal modem languages easily and PART III. LETTER I. Addition of knowledge may be gooai or bad. Nature keeps us to our tasks. Frans IVcepke.78 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER I. correctly;1 his printed works are in three languages. He had lived in several nations, and known their lead- ing men of science. And yet this astonishing list of acquirements may be reduced to' the exercise of two decided natural tastes. Franz Woepke had the gift of the linguist and an interest in mathematics, the first serving as auxiliary to the second. Goethe said that “a vast abundance of objects must lie before us ere we can think upon them.” Woepke felt the need of this abundance, but he did not go out of his way to find it. The objectionable seeking after know- ledge is the seeking after the knowledge which does not belong to us. In vain you urge me to go in quest of sciences for which I have no natural aptitude. Would you have me act like that foolish camel in the Hebrew proverb, which in going to seek horns lost his ears ? LETTER II. LETTER II. TO A FRIEND WHO STUDIED MANY THINGS. Difficulty of restriction. Men cannot restrict themselves in learning—Description of a Latin scholar of two generations since—What is attempted by a cultivated contemporary—Advantages of a more restricted field—Privilege of instant admission—Many pursuits cannot be kept up simulta- neously—The deterioration of knowledge through neglect—What it really is—The only available knowledge that which we habi- tually use—Difficulty in modern education—That it is inevitably a beginning of many things and no more—The simpler education of an ancient Greek—That of Alcibiades—How the Romans were situated as to this—The privilege of limited studies belongs to the earlier ages—They learned and we attempt to learn. It appears to be henceforth inevitable that men should be unable to restrict themselves to one or two pursuits, 1 According to M. Taine. I have elsewhere expressed a doubt about polyglots.OF ED UCA TION. 79 and you, who are in most respects a very perfect specimen of what the age naturally produces in the way of culture, have studied subjects so many and so various that a mere catalogue of them would astonish your grandfather if his shade could revisit his old home. And yet your grand- father was considered a very highly cultivated gentleman according to the ideas and requirements of his time. He was an elegant scholar, but in Latin chiefly, for he said that he never read Greek easily, and indeed he abandoned that language entirely on leaving the University. But his Latin, from daily use and practice (for he let no day slip by without reading some ancient author) and from the thoroughness and accuracy of his scholarship, was always as ready for service as the saddled steeds of Branksome. I think he got more culture, more of the best effects of good literature, out of that one language than some poly- glots get out of a dozen. He knew no modern tongue, he had not even the common pretension to read a little French, and in his day hardly anybody studied German. He had no scientific training of any kind except mathe- matics, in which I have heard him say that he had never been proficient. Of the fine arts his ignorance was com- plete, so complete that I doubt if he could have distin- guished Rigaud from Reynolds, and he had never played upon any musical instrument. The leisure which he enjoyed during a long and tranquil existence he gave entirely to Latin and English literature, but of the two he enjoyed Latin the more, not with the preference of a pedant, but because it carried him more completely out of the present, and gave him the refreshment of a more perfect change. He produced on all who knew him the impression of a cultivated gentleman, which he was. There is only an interval of one generation between part in LETTER II. A portraitSo THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER II. A equip- ments of a modern. you and that good Latinist, but how wide is the differ- ence in your intellectual regimen ! You have studied— well, here is a little list of what you have studied, and probably even this is not complete :— Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, mathematics, chemistry, mineralogy, geology, botany, the theory of music, the practice of music on two instruments, much theory about painting, the practice of painting in oil and water-colour, photography, etching on copper, &c. &c. &c. Subdivision of time. Advantages of . restriction. That is to say, six literatures (including English), six sciences (counting mineralogy and geology as one), and five branches or departments of the fine arts. Omitting English literature from our total, as that may be considered to come by nature to an Englishman, though any real proficiency in it costs the leisure of years, * we have here no less than sixteen different pursuits. If you like to merge the theory of music and painting in the practice of those arts, though as a branch of study the theory is really distinct, we have still fourteen pursuits, any one of which is enough to occupy the whole of one man’s time. If you gave some time daily to each of these pursuits, you could scarcely give more than half an hour, even supposing that you had no professional occupation, and that you had no favourite study, absorbing time to the detriment of the rest. Now your grandfather, though he would be considered quite an ignorant country gentleman in these days, had in reality certain intellectual advantages over his more accomplished descendant. In the first place, he entirely escaped the sense of pressure, the feeling of not having time enough to do what he wanted to do. He accumu- lated his learning as quietly as a stout lady accumulatesOF EDUCATION. 81 her fat, by the daily satisfaction of his appetite. And at the same time that he escaped the sense of pressure, he escaped also the miserable sense of imperfection. Of course he did not know Latin like an ancient Roman, but then he never met with any ancient Romans to humiliate him by too rapid and half-intelligible conversation. He met the best Latinists of his day ; and felt himself a master amongst masters. Every time he went into his study, to pass delightful hours with the noble authors that he loved, he knew that his admission into that august society would be immediate and complete. He had to wait in no antechamber of mere linguistic difficulty, but passed at once into the atmosphere of ancient thought, and breathed its delicate perfume. In this great privilege of instant admission the man of one study has always the advantage of men more variously cultivated. Their misfortune is to be perpetually waiting in antechambers, and losing time in them. Grammars and dictionaries are antechambers, bad drawing and bad colouring are ante- chambers, musical practice with imperfect intonation is an antechamber. And the worst is that even when a man, like yourself for instance, of very various culture, has at one time fairly penetrated beyond the antechamber, he is not sure of admittance a year hence, because in the meantime the door may have been closed against him. The rule of each separate hall or saloon of knowledge is that he alone is to be instantly admitted who calls there every day. The man of various pursuits does not, in any case, keep them up simultaneously; he is led by inclination or compelled by necessity to give predominance to one or another. If you have fifteen different pursuits, ten of them, at any given time, will be lying by neglected. G PART III. LETTER II. 1n s taut admission. Ante chambers. Difficulty of keeping up 7iiany pursuits82 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER II. Rust. Disorgani- zation. Effects of neglect. Available knowledge. The metaphor commonly used in reference to neglected pursuits is borrowed from the oxidation of metal; it is said that they become rusty. This metaphor is too mild to be exact. Rust on metal, even on polished steel, is easily guarded against by care, and a gun or a knife does not need to be constantly used to keep it from being pitted. The gunsmith and the cutler know how to keep these things, in great quantity, without using them at all. But no one can retain knowledge without using it. The metaphor fails still more seriously in perpetuating a false conception of the deterioration of knowledge through neglect. It is not simply a loss of polish which takes place, not a loss of mere surface-beauty, but absolute disorganization, like the disorganization of a carriage when the axle-tree is taken away. A rusty thing may still be used, but a disorganized thing cannot be used until the lost organ has been replaced. There is no equivalent, amongst ordinary material losses, to the intel- lectual loss that we incur by ceasing from a pursuit. But we may consider neglect as an enemy who carries away the girths from our saddles, the bits from our bridles, the oars from our boats, and one wheel from each of our carriages, leaving us indeed still nominally possessors of all these aids to locomotion, but practically in the same position as if we were entirely without them. And as an enemy counts upon the delays caused by these vexations to execute his designs whilst we are helpless, so whilst we are labouring to replace the lost parts of our know- ledge the occasion slips by when we most need it. The only knowledge which is available when it is wanted is that which we habitually use. Studies which from their nature cannot be commonly used are always retained with great difficulty. The study of anatomy is perhapsOF EDUCATION. 83 the best instance of this; every one who has attempted it knows with what difficulty it is kept by the memory. Anatomists say that it has to be learned and forgotten six times before it can be counted upon as a possession. This is because anatomy lies so much outside of what is needed for ordinary life that very few people are ever called upon to use it except during the hours when they are actually studying it. The few who need it every day remember it as easily as a man remembers the language of the country which he inhabits. The workmen in the establishment at Saint Aubin d’Ecroville, where Dr. Auzoux manufactures his wonderful anatomical models, are as familiar with anatomy as a painter is with the colours on his palette. The never forget it. Their knowledge is never made practically valueless by some yawning hiatus, causing temporary incompetence and delay. To have one favourite study and live in it with happy familiarity, and cultivate every portion of it diligently and lovingly, as a small yeoman proprietor cultivates his own land, this, as to study at least, is the most enviable intellectual life. But there is another side to the question which has to be considered. The first difficulty for us is in our education. Modern education is a beginning of many things, and it is little more than a beginning. “ My notion of educating my boy,” said a rich Englishman, “ is not to make him particularly clever at anything during his minority, but to make him overcome the rudimentary difficulties of many things, so that when he selects for himself his own line of culture in the future, it cannot be altogether strange to him, whatever line he may happen to select.” A modern father usually allows his son to learn many things from a feeling of timidity about making a choice, if only one thing PART III. LETTER II. A natoniy. Education a begi7ini7ig of many things.S4 PART III. LETTER II. Greek education. A Icibiades. Education c/A Icibiades• THE INTELLECTUAL LITE. had to be chosen. He might so easily make a wrong choice! When the inheritance of the human race was less rich, there was no embarrassment of that kind. Look at the education of an ancient Greek, at the education of one of the most celebrated Athenians, a man living in the most refined and intellectual society, himself mentally and bodily the perfect type of his splendid race, an eloquent and powerful speaker, a most capable commander both by sea and land—look at the education of the brilliant Alcibiades ! When Socrates gave the list of the things that Alcibiades had learned, Alcibiades could add to it no other even nominal accomplishment, and what a meagre, short catalogue it was ! “ But indeed I also pretty accu- rately know what thou hast learned ; thou wilt tell me if anything has escaped my notice. Thou hast learned then thy letters {ypd.fxp.aTa), to play on the cithara and to wrestle (TraXaun>), for thou hast not cared to learn to play upon the flute. This is all that thou hast learned, unless something has escaped me.” The which Alcibiades had learned with a master meant reading and writing, for he expressly says later on, that as for speaking Greek, kWpyi^eiv, he learned that of no other master than the people. An English education equivalent to that of Alcibiades would therefore consist of reading and writing, wrestling, and guitar-playing, the last accomplishment being limited to very simple music. Such an education was possible to an Athenian (though it is fair to add that Socrates does not seem to have thought much of it) because a man situated as Alcibiades was situated in the intellectual history of the world, had no past behind him which deserved his attention more than the present which surrounded him. Simply to speak Greek, eWrji'L was really then the most precious of all accomplishments,OF ED DC A TION. and the fact that Alcibiades came? by it easily does not lessen its value. Amongst a people like the Athenians, fond of intellectual talk, conversation was one of the best and readiest means of informing the mind, and certainly the very best means of developing it. It was not a slight advantage to speak the language of Socrates, and have him for a companion. The cleverest and most accomplished Romans were situated rather more like ourselves, or at least as we should be situated if we had not to learn Latin and Greek, and if there were no modern language worth studying except French. They went to Greece to perfect themselves in Greek, and improve their accent, just as our young gentlemen go to Paris or Touraine. Still, the burden of the past was comparatively light upon their shoulders. An Englishman who had attempted no more than they were bound to attempt might-be a scholar, but he would not be considered so. He might be a thorough scholar in French and English,—that is, he might possess the cream of two great literatures,—but he would be spoken of as a person of defective education. It is the fashion, for example, to speak of Sir Walter Scott as a half-educated man, because he did not know much Greek, yet Sir Walter had studied German with success, and with his habit of extensive reading, and his immense memory, certainly knew incomparably more about the generations which preceded him than Horace knew of those which preceded the Augustan era. The privilege of limiting their studies, from the begin- ning, to one or two branches of knowledge, belonged to earlier ages, and every successive accumulation of the world’s knowledge has gradually lessened it. Schoolboys in our time are expected to know more, or to have 35 PART III. LETTER II. Education• 0/ ancient Romans. The moderns. Limited studies a privilege of earlier age,$%86 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER II. attempted to learn more, than the most brilliant intel- lectual leaders of former times. What English parent, in easy circumstances, would be content that his son should have the education of Alcibiades, or an education accurately corresponding to that of Horace, or to that which sufficed for Shakespeare? Yet although the burdens laid upon the memory have been steadily augmented, its powers have not increased. Our brains are not better constituted than those of our forefathers, although where they learned one thing we attempt to learn six. They learned, and we attempt to learn. The only hope for us is to make a selection from the attempts of our too heavily burdened youth, and in those selected studies to emulate in after-life the thoroughness of our forefathers. LETTER III. * LETTER III. TO A FRIEND WHO STUDIED MANY THINGS. An idealized portrait—The scholars of the sixteenth century—Isolated students—French students of English when isolated from Eng- lishmen—How one of them read Tennyson—Importance of sounds—Illusions of scholarship—Difficulty of appreciating the sense—That Latin may still be made a spoken language—The early education of Montaigne—A contemporary instance—Dream of a Latin island — Rapid corruption of a language taught artificially. In your answer to my letter about the multiplicity ot modern studies you tell me that my portrait of your grandfather is considerably idealized, and that, notwith- standing all the respect which you owe to his memory, you have convincing proof in his manuscript annotationsOF EDUCATION. 87 to Latin authors that his scholarship cannot have been quite so thorough as I represented it. You convey, moreover, though with perfect modesty in form, the idea that you believe your own Latin superior to your grandfather’s, notwithstanding the far greater variety of your studies. Let me confess that I did somewhat idealize that description of your grandfather’s intellectual life. I described rather a life which might have been than a life which actually was. And even this “ might have been” is problematical. It maybe doubted whether any modern has ever really mastered Latin. The most that can be said is that a man situated like your grandfather, without a profession, without our present temptation to scatter effort in many pursuits, and who made Latin scholarship his unique intellectual purpose, would pro- bably go nearer to a satisfactory degree of attainment than we whose time and strength have been divided into so many fragments. But the picture of a perfect modern Latinist is purely ideal, and the prevalent notion of high attainment in a dead language is not fixed enough to be a standard, whilst if it were fixed it would certainly be a very low standard. The scholars of this century do not write Latin except as a mere exercise ; they do not write books in Latin, and they never speak it at all. They do not use the language actively ; they only read it, which is not really using it, but only seeing how other men have used it. There is the same difference between reading a language and writing or speaking it that there is between looking at pictures intelligently and painting them. The scholars of the sixteenth century spoke Latin habitually, and wrote it with ease and fluency. “ Nicholas Grouchy,” says Montaigne, “ who wrote a book de Comitiis Roma- nnrum; William Guerente, who has written a commentary PART III. LETTER III. An idealized portrait. Doubts. Habits of sc ho la rs. Scholars of the sixteenth, century.88 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER III. Their imperfect attainment. Isolated students. upon Aristotle; George Buchanan, that great Scotch poet; and Marc Anthony Muret, whom both France and Italy have acknowledged for the best orator of his time, my domestic tutors (at college), have all of them often told me that I had in my infancy that language so very fluent and ready that they were afraid to enter into discourse with me.” This passage is interesting for two reasons : it shows that the scholars of that age spoke Latin ; but it proves at the same time that they cannot have been really masters of the language, since they were “ afraid to enter into discourse ” with a clever child. Fancy an Englishman who professed to be a French scholar and yet “was afraid to enter into discourse” with a French boy, for fear he should speak too quickly ! The position of these scholars relatively to Latin was in fact too isolated for it to have been possible that they should reach the point of mastery. Suppose a society of Frenchmen, in some secluded little French village where no Englishman ever penetrates, and that these French- men learn English from dictionaries, and set themselves to speak English with each other, without anybody to teach them the colloquial language or its pronunciation, without ever once hearing the sound of it from English lips, what sort of English would they create amongst themselves ? This is a question that I happen to be able to answer very accurately, because I have known two Frenchmen who studied English literature just as the Frenchmen of the sixteenth century studied the literature of ancient Rome. One of them, especially, had attained what would certainly in the case of a dead language be considered a very high- degree of scholar- ship indeed. Most of our great authors were known to him, even down to the ciose critical comparison ofOF EDUCATION. 89 LETTER III. A French student of English literature. different readings. Aided by the most powerful memory | part hi. I ever knew, he had amassed such stores that the acqui- sitions, even of cultivated Englishmen, would in many cases have appeared inconsiderable beside them. But he could not write or speak English in a manner tolerable to an Englishman; and although he knew nearly all the words in the language, it was dictionary knowledge, and so different from an Englishman’s apprehension of the same words that it was only a sort of pseudo-English that he knew, and not our living tongue. His apprecia- tion of our authors, especially of our poets, differed so widely from English criticism and English feeling that it was evident he did not understand them as we under- stand them. Two things especially proved this: he frequently mistook declamatory versification of the most mediocre quality for poetry of an elevated order ; whilst, on the other hand, his ear failed to perceive the music of the musical poets, as Byron and Tennyson. How could he hear their music, he to whom our English sounds were all unknown ? Here, for example, is the way he read I How he read “ Claribel: ”— \ "ciaM” iC At ev ze bittle bommess Azvart ze zeeket Ion \ At none ze veeld be ommess Aboot ze most edston At meedneeg ze mon commess An lokez dovn alon Ere songg ze lintveet svelless Ze clirvoic-ed mavi dvelless Ze fledgling srost lispess Ze slombroos vav ootvelless Ze babblang ronnel creespess Ze ollov grot replee-ess Vere Claribel lovlee-ess.”90 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER III. Latin scholars. Ignorance of Latin sou? ids. Sound and se?ise. This, as nearly as I have been able to render it in English spelling, was the way in which a French gentle- man of really high culture was accustomed to read English poetry to himself. Is it surprising that he should have failed to appreciate the music of our musical verse ? He did not, however, seem to be aware that there existed any obstacle to the accuracy of his decisions, but gave his opinion with a good deal of authority, which might have surprised me had I not so frequently heard Latin scholars do exactly the same thing. My French friend read “ Claribel ” in a ridiculous manner; but English scholars all read Latin poetry in a manner not less ridiculous. You laugh to hear “Claribel” read with a foreign pronunciation, and you see at once the absurdity of affecting to judge of it as poetry before the reader has learned to pronounce the sounds ; but you do not laugh to hear Latin poetry read with a foreign pronunciation, and you do not perceive that we are all of us disqualified, by our profound ignorance of the pronunciation of the ancient Romans, for any competent criticism of their verse. In all poetry, in all oratory, in much of the best and most artistic prose-writing also, sound has a great influence upon sense : a great deal is conveyed by it, especially in the way of feeling. If we do not thoroughly know and practise the right pronunciation (and by the right pronunciation I mean that which the author himself thought in whilst he wrote), we miss those delicate tones and cadences which are in literature like the modulations of the voice in speech. Nor can we properly appreciate the artistic choice of beautiful names for persons and places unless we know the sounds of them quite accu- rately, and have already in our minds the associations belonging to the sounds. Names which are selectedOF EDUCA TION. 91 with the greatest care by our English poets, and which hold their place like jewels on the finely-wrought texture of the verse, lose all their value when they are read with a vicious foreign pronunciation. So it must be with Latin poetry when read by an Englishman, and it is pro- bable that we are really quite insensible to the delicate art of verbal selection as it was practised by the most consummate masters of antiquity. I know that scholars think that they hear the Roman music still; but this is one of the illusions of scholar- ship. In each country Latin scholars have adopted a conventional style of reading, and the sounds which are in conformity with that style seem to them to be musical, whilst other than the accepted sounds seem ridiculous, and grate harshly on the unaccustomed ear. The music which the Englishman hears, or imagines that he hears, in the language of ancient Rome, is certainly not the music which the Roman authors in- tended to note in words. It is as if my Frenchman, having read “ Claribel ” in his own way, had affirmed that he heard the music of the verse. If he heard music at all, it was not Tennyson’s. Permit me to add a few observations about sense. My French friend certainly understood English in a very remarkable manner for a student who had never visited our country; he knew the dictionary meaning of every word he encountered, and yet there ever remained between him and our English tongue a barrier or wall of separation, hard to define, but easy to perceive. In the true deep sense he never understood the language. He studied it, laid regular siege to it, mastered it to all ap- pearance, yet remained, to the end, outside of it. His observations, and especially his unfavourable criticisms, PART III. LETTER III. Choice of na?nes. Verbal selection. Illusions oj scholarship, A barrier.\ 92 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER III. Misappre- hensions. Latin might be a spoken language. proved this quite conclusively. Expressions often ap- peared to him faulty, in which no English reader would see anything to remark upon ; it may be added that (by way of compensation) he was unable to appreciate the oddity of those intentionally quaint turns of expression which are invented by the craft of humorists. It may even be doubted whether his English was of any ascer- • tamable use to him. He might probably have come as near to an understanding of our authors by the help of translations, and he could not converse in English, for the spoken language was entirely unintelligible to him. An acquisition of this kind seems scarcely an adequate reward for the labour that it costs. Com- pared with living Englishmen my French friend was nowhere, but if English had been a dead language, he would have been looked up to as a very eminent scholar, and would have occupied a professor’s chair in the university. A little more life might be given to the study of Latin by making it a spoken language. Boys might be taught to speak Latin in their schooldays with the modern Roman pronunciation, which, though probably a deviation from the ancient, is certainly nearer to it than our own. If colloquial Latin were made a subject of special research, it is likely that a sufficiently rich phrase-book might be constructed from the plays. If this plan were pursued throughout Europe (always adopting the Roman pronun- ciation) all educated men would possess a common tongue which might be enriched to suit modern requirements without any serious departure from classical construction. The want of such a system as this was painfully felt at the council of the Vatican, where the assembled prelates discovered that their Latin was of no practical use.OF EDUCATION. 93 although the Roman Catholic clergy employ Latin more habitually than any other body of men in the world. That a modern may be taught to think in Latin, is proved by the early education of Montaigne, and I may mention a much more recent instance. My brother-in- law told me that, in the spring of 1871, a friend of his had come to stay with him accompanied by his little son, a boy seven years old. This child spoke Latin with the utmost fluency, and he spoke nothing else. What I am going to suggest is a Utopian dream, but let us suppose that a hundred fathers could be found in Europe, all of this way of thinking, all resolved to submit to some inconvenience in order that their sons might speak Latin as a living language. A small island might be rented near the coast of Italy, and in that island Latin alone might be permitted. Just as the successive govern- ments of France maintain the establishments of Sevres and the Gobelins to keep the manufactures of porce- lain and tapestry up to a recognized high standard of excellence, so this Latin island might be maintained to give more vivacity to scholarship. If there were but one little corner of ground on the wide earth where pure Latin was constantly spoken, our knowledge of the classic writers would become far more sym- pathetically intimate. After living in the Latin island we should think in Latin as we read, and read without translating. But this is dreaming. It is too certain that on return- ing from the Latin island into the atmosphere of modern colleges an evil change would come over our young Latinists like that which came upon the young Montaigne when his father sent him to the college of Guienne, “at that time the best and most flourishing in France.” PART III. LETTER III. Montaigne A boy Latinist. Dream of a Latin island.94 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER III. Corruption Latin. False qua7itities. Montaigne tells us that, notwithstanding all his father’s precautions, the place “was a college still.” “ My Latin,” he adds, “ immediately grew ccn'rupt, and by dis- continuance I have since lost all viannei* of use of it.” If it were the custom to speak Latin, it would be the custom to speak it badly; and a master of the language would have to conform to the evil usages around him. Our present state of ignorance has the charm of being silent, except when old-fashioned gentlemen in the House of Commons quote poetry which they cannot pronounce to hearers who cannot understand it. Note.—An English orator quoted from Cicero the sentence “ Non intelligunt homines quam magnum vectigal sit parsimonia. ” He made the second vowel in vectigal short, and the House laughed at him ; he tried again and pronounced it with the long sound of the English z, on which the critical body he addressed was perfectly satisfied. But if a Roman had been present it is probable that, of the two, the short English i would have astonished his ears the less, for our short i does bear some resemblance to the southern i9 whereas our long i resembles no single letter in any alphabet of the Latin family of languages. We are scrupulously careful to avoid what we call false quantities, we are quite utterly and ignorantly unscrupulous about false sounds. One of the best instances is the well-known “ veni, vidi, vici/’ which we pronounce very much as if it had been written vinai} vaidai, vaisai, in Italian letters.OF EDUCATION. 95 LETTER IV. TO A STUDENT OF LITERATURE. Studies, whatever they maybe, always considered, by some, a waste of time—The classical languages—The higher mathematics— The accomplishments—Indir^t uses of different studies—In- fluence of music—Studies indirectly useful to authors—What induced Mr. Roscoe to write the lives of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Leo X. Whatever you study, some one will consider that par- ticular study a foolish waste of time. If you were to abandon successively every subject of intellectual labour which had, in its turn, been con- demned by some adviser as useless, the result would be simple intellectual nakedness. The classical languages, to begin with, have long been considered useless by the majority of practical people —and pray, what to shop- keepers, doctors, attorneys, artists, can be the use of the higher mathematics? And if these studies, which have been conventionally classed as serious studies, are considered unnecessary notwithstanding the tremendous authority of custom, how much the more are those studies exposed to a like contempt which belong to the category of accomplishments ! What is the use of draw- ing, for it ends in a worthless sketch ? Why should we study music when after wasting a thousand hours the amateur cannot satisfy the ear? A quoi bon modern languages when the accomplishment only enables us to call a waiter in French or German who is sure to answer us in English? And what, when it is not your trade, can be the good of dissecting animals or plants ? PART III. LETTER IV. Studies considered a waste U time. The classics, Mathe- matics. Drawing, M usic. Language, Science.96 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER IV. We 'workfor culture. History and la. ndscape painting. Botany. i Music. To all questionings of this kind there is but one reply. We work for culture. We work to enlarge the intel- ligence, and to make it a better and more effective instrument. This is our main purpose; but it may be added that even for our special labours it is always difficult to say beforehand exactly what will turn out in the end to be most useful. What, in appearance, can be more entirely outside the work of a landscape painter than the study of ancient history ? and yet I can show you how an interest in ancient history might indirectly be of great service to a landscape painter. It would make him profoundly feel the human associations of many localities which to an ignorant man would be devoid of interest or meaning; and this human interest in the scenes where great events have taken place, or which have been distinguished by the habitation of illustrious men in other ages, is in fact one of the great fundamental motives of landscape painting. It has been very much questioned, especially by foreign critics, whether the interest in botany which is taken by some of the more cultivated English landscape painters is not for them a false direction and wrong employment of the mind ; but a landscape painter may feel his interest in vegetation infinitely increased by the accurate knowledge of its laws, and such an increase of interest would make him work more zealously, and with less danger of weariness and ennui, besides being a very useful help to the memory in retaining the authentic vegetable forms. It may seem more difficult to show the possible utility of a study apparently so entirely outside of other studies as music is ; and yet music has an important influence on the whole of our emotional nature, and indirectly upon expression of all kinds. He who has once learned thsOF EDUCA TION. 97 self-control of the musician, the use of piano and , each in its right place, when to be lightly swift or majestically slow, and especially how to keep to the key once chosen till the right time has come for changing it; he who has once learned this knows the secret of the arts. No painter, writer, orator, who had the power and judgment of a thoroughly cultivated musician, could sin against the broad principles of taste. More than all other men have authors reason to appreciate the indirect utilities of knowledge that is apparently irrelevant. Who can tell what knowledge will be of most use to them ? Even the very greatest of authors are indebted to miscellaneous reading, often in several different languages, for the suggestion of their most original works, and for the light which has kindled many a shining thought of their own. And authors who seem to have less need than others of any outward help, poets whose compositions might appear to be chiefly inventive and emotional, novelists who are free from the restraints and the researches of the historian, work up what they know into what they write ; so that if you could remove every line which is based on studies out- side the strict limits of their art, you would blot out half their compositions. Take the antiquarian element out of Scott, and see how many of his works could never have been written. Remove from Goldsmith’s brain the recollection of his wayward studies and strange ex- periences, and you would remove the rich material of the “Traveller” and the Essays, and mutilate even the immortal “Vicar of Wakefield.” Without a classical education and foreign travel, Byron would not have composed “Childe Harold;” without the most catholic interest in the literature of all the ages, and of many PART III. LETTER IV. Music. Knowledge indirectly useful to authors. * Scott. Goldsmith. Byron. H98 THE INTELLECTLAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER IV. Morris. Roscoe. V Francis Holden. different peoples from the North Sea to the Mediter- ranean, our contemporary William Morris would never have conceived, and could not have executed, that strong work “ The Earthly Paradise.” It may not seem necessary to learn Italian, yet Mr. Roscoe’s cele- brity as an author was due in the first place to his private fondness for Italian literature. He did not learn Italian in order that he might write his biographies, but he wrote about Lorenzo and Leo because he had mastered Italian, and because the language led him to take an interest in the greatest house of Florence. The way in which authors are led by their favourite studies indirectly to the great performance of their lives has never been more clearly illustrated than in this instance. When William Roscoe wras a young man he had for his friend Francis Holden, nephew of Mr. Richard Holden, a schoolmaster in Liverpool. Francis Holden was a young man of uncommon culture, having at the same time really sound scholarship in several languages, and an ardent enthusiasm for literature. He urged Roscoe to study languages, and used especially, in their evening walks together, to repeat to him passages from the noblest poets of Italy. In this way Roscoe was led to attempt Italian, and, having once begun, went on till he had mastered it. “ It was in the course of these studies,” says his biographer, “ that he first formed the idea of writing the Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici.”OF E.DCCA TION. 99 LETTER V. TO A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN WHO REGRETTED THAT HIS SON HAD THE TENDENCIES OF A DII.ETTANT. Inaccuracy of the common distinction between amateur pursuits and more serious studies—All of us are amateurs in many things— Prince Albert—The Emperor Napoleon III.—Contrast between general and professional education—The price of high accom- plishment. I agree with you that amateurship, as generally prac- tised, may be a waste of time, but the common dis- tinction between amateur pursuits and serious studies is inconsistent. A painter whose art is imperfect and who does not work for money is called an amateur; a scholar who writes imperfect Latin, not for money, escapes the imputation of amateurship, and is called a learned man. Surely we have been blinded by custom in these things. Ideas of frivolity are attached to imperfect acquirement in certain directions, and ideas of gravity to equally imperfect acquirement in others. To write bad Latin poetry is not thought to be frivolous, but it is considered frivolous to compose imperfectly and unprofessionally in other fine arts. Yet are we not all of us amateurs in those pursuits which constituted our education—amateurs at the best, if we loved them, and even inferior to amateurs if we disliked them? We have not sounder knowledge or more perfect skill in the ancient languages than Prince Albert had in music. We know something of them, yet in comparison with perfect mastery such as that of a cultivated old Greek or Roman, our scholarship is at the PART III. LETTER V. A mateur- ship. Custom. All of us are amatezirs, H 2IOO THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER V. Napoleon III. Variety of modern education. Mastery. best on a level with the musical scholarship of a culti- vated amateur like the Prince Consort. If the essence of dilettantism is to be contented with imperfect attainment, I fear that all educated people must be considered dilettants. It is narrated of the Emperor Napoleon III. that in answer to some one who inquired of his Majesty whether the Prince Imperial was a musician, he replied that he discouraged dilettantism, and “ did not wish his son to be a Coburg.” But the Emperor himself was quite as much a dilettant as Prince Albert; though their dilet- tantism did not lie in the same directions. The Prince was an amateur musician and artist; the Emperor was an amateur historian, an amateur scholar, and antiquary. It may be added that Napoleon III. indulged in another and more dangerous kind of amateurship. He had a taste for amateur generalship, and the consequences of his indulgence of this taste are known to everyone. The variety of modern education encourages a scat- tered dilettantism. It is only in professional life that the energies of young men are powerfully concentrated. There is a steadying effect in thorough professional train- ing which school education does not supply. Our boys receive praise and prizes for doing many things most imperfectly, and it is not their fault if they remain ignorant of what perfection really is, and of the im- mensity of the labour which it costs. I think that you would do well, perhaps, without discouraging your son too much by chillingly accurate estimates of the value of what he has done, to make him on all proper occasions feel and see the difference between half-knowledge and thorough mastery. It would be a good thing for a youth to be made clearly aware how enormous a price ofOF EDUCA TION. IOI labour Nature has set upon high accomplishment in everything that is really worthy of his pursuit. It is this persuasion, which men usually arrive at only in their maturity, that operates as the most effectual tran- quillizer of frivolous activities. LETTER VI. TO THE PRINCIPAL OF A FRENCH COLLEGE. The Author’s dread of protection in intellectual pursuits—Example from the Fine Arts—Prize poems—Governmental encourage- ment of learning—The bad effects of it—Pet pursuits—Objec- tion to the interference of Ministers—A project for separate examinations. What I am going to say will seem very strange to you, and is not unlikely to arouse as much professional animosity as you are capable of feeling against an old friend. You who are a dignitary of the University, and have earned your various titles in a fair field, as a soldier wins his epaulettes before the enemy, are not the likeliest person to hear with patience the unauthorized theories of an innovator. Take them, then, as mere speculations, if you will—not altogether unworthy of consideration, for they are suggested by a sincere anxiety for the best interests of learning, and yet not very dangerous to vested interests of any kind, since they can have little influence on the practice or opinion of the world. I feel a great dread of what maybe called protection in intellectual pursuits. It seems to me that when the Government of a country applies an artificial stimulus PART III LETTER V, LETTER VI. I Protection in intellectual pursuits. r102 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER VI. Medals and money for artists. Govern- mental patro?iage. Prize poe77is. to certain branches of study for their encouragement, by the offer of rewards in honour or in money beyond the rewards inherent in the studies themselves, or coming naturally from their usefulness to mankind, there is a great danger that men may give a disproportionate atten- tion to those favoured branches of study. Let me take an example from the practice of the Fine Arts. A Govern- ment, by medals and crosses, or by money, can easily create and foster a school of painting which is entirely out of relation to the century in which it exists, and quite incapable of working harmoniously with the con- temporary national life. This has actually been done to a considerable extent in various countries, especially in France and in Bavaria. A sort of classicism which had scarcely any foundation in sincerity of feeling was kept up artificially by a system of encouragement which offered inducements outside the genuine ambition of an artist. The true enthusiasm which is the life of art impels the artist to express his own feeling for the delight of others. The offer of a medal or a pension induces him to make the sort of picture which is likely to satisfy the authorities. He first ascertains what is according to the rule, and then follows it as nearly as he is able. He works in a temper of simple conformity, remote indeed from the passionate enthusiasm of creation. It is so with prize poems. We all know the sort of poetry which is composed in order to gain prizes. The anxiety of the versifier is to be safe : he tries to compose what will escape censure; he dreads the originality that may give offence. But all powerful pictures and poems have been wrought in the energy of individual feeling, not in conformity to a pattern. Now, suppose that, instead of encouraging poetry orOF EDUCATION. 103 painting, a Government resolves to encourage learning. It will patronise certain pursuits to the neglect of others, or it will encourage certain pursuits more liberally than others. The subjects of such a Government will not follow learning exclusively for its delightfulness or its utility; another consideration will affect their choice. They will inquire which pursuits are rewarded by prizes in honour or money, and they will be strongly tempted to select them. Therefore, unless the Government has exercised extraordinary wisdom, men will learn what they do not really care for and may never practically want, merely in order to win some academical grade. So soon as this object has been attained, they will immediately abandon the studies by which they at- tained it. Can it be said that in these cases the purposes of the Government were fulfilled? Clearly not, if it desired to form a permanent taste for learning. But it may have done worse than fail in this merely negative way; it may have diverted its youth from pursuits to which Nature called them, and in which they might have effectually aided the advancement and the prosperity of the State. Let us suppose that a Government were to have a pet study, and offer great artificial inducements for success in it. Suppose that the pet study were entomo- logy. All the most promising youth of the country would spend ten years in emulating Messrs. Kirby and Spence, and take their degrees as entomological bachelors. But might it not easily happen that to a majority of the young gentlemen this pursuit would have acted positively as a hindrance by keeping them from other pursuits more likely to help them in their pro- PART III. LETTER VI. Academical grades. Possible bad effects. A pet studyTHE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. io* PART III. LETTER VI. A pet study. U>t :7>ersity degrees. fessions? It would not only cost a great deal of valuable time, it would absorb a quantity of youthful energy which the country can ill afford to lose. The Government would probably affirm that entomology, if not always practically useful in itself, was an invaluable intellectual training; but what if this training used up the early vigour which might be needed for other pur suits, and of which every human being has only a limited supply? We should be told, no doubt, tnat this power- ful encouragement was necessary to the advancement of science, and it is true that under such a system the rudiments of entomology would be more generally known. But the vulgarization of rudiments is not the advancement of knowledge. Entomology has gone quite as far in discovery, though pursued simply for its own sake, as it would have gone if it had been made neces- sary to a bachelor’s degree. You will ask whether I would go so far as to abolish degrees of all kinds. Certainly not; that is not my project. But I believe that no Government is com- petent to make a selection amongst intellectual pursuits and say, “This or that pursuit shall be encouraged by university degrees, whilst other pursuits of intellectual men shall have no encouragement whatever.” I may mention by name your present autocrat of Public In- struction, Jules Simon. He is a literary man of some eminence ; he has written several interesting books, and on the whole he is probably more competent to deal with these questions than many of his predecessors. But however capable a man may be, he is sure to be biassed by the feeling common to all intellectual men which attributes a peculiar importance to their own pursuits. I do not like to see any Minister, or anyOF EDUCA TION. Cabinet of Ministers, settling what all the young men of a country are to learn under penalty of exclusion from all the liberal professions. What I should think more reasonable would be some such arrangement as the following. There might be a board of thoroughly competent examiners for each branch of study separately, authorized to confer certi- ficates of competence. When a man believed himself to have mastered a branch of study, he would go and try to get a certificate for that. The various studies would then be followed according to the public sense of their importance, and would fall quite naturally into the rank which they ought to occupy at any given period of the national history. These separate examina- tions should be severe enough to ensure a serviceable degree of proficiency. Nobody should be allowed to teach anything who had not got a certificate for the particular thing he intended to profess. In the con- fusion of your present system, not only do you fail to ensure the thoroughness of pupils, but the teachers themselves are too frequently incompetent in some speciality which accidentally falls to their share. I think that a Greek master ought to be a complete Hellenist, but surely it is not necessary that he should be half a mathematician. To sum up. It seems to me that a Government has no business to favour some intellectual pursuits more than others, but that it ought to recognize competent attainment in every one of them by a sort of diploma or certificate, leaving the relative rank of different pur- suits to be settled by public opinion. And as to the educators themselves, I think that when a man has proved his competence in one thing, he ought to be *°5 PART III. LETTER VI. A proposal. Certificates of competence. Recognttion.io6 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER VI. allowed to teach that one thing in the University without being required to pass an examination in any other thing. LETTER VII. LETTER VII. TO THE PRINCIPAL OF A FRENCH COLLEGE. Loss of time to acquire an ancient language too imperfectly for it to be useful—Dr. Arnold—Mature life leaves little time for culture —Modern indifference to ancient thinking—Larger experience of the moderns—The moderns older than the ancients—The Author’s regret that Latin has ceased to be a living language— The shortest way to learn to read a language—The recent interest in modem languages—A French student of Hebrew. Abandon- 71107it of Greek. I was happy to learn your opinion of the reform so recently introduced by the Minister of Public Instruc- tion, and the more so that I was glad to find the views of so inexperienced a person as myself confirmed by your wider knowledge. You went even farther than M. Jules Simon, for you openly expressed a desire for the complete withdrawal of Greek from the ordinary school curriculum. Not that you undervalue Greek,— no one of your scholarship would be likely to under- value a great literature,—but you thought it a loss of time to acquire a language so imperfectly that the litera- ture still remained practically closed whilst thousands of valuable hours had been wasted on the details of grammar. The truth is, that although the principle of beginning many things in school education with the idea that the pupil will in maturer life pursue them to fuller accom- plishment may in some instances be justified by the prolonged studies of men who have a natural taste forOF EDUCATION. 107 erudition, it is idle to shut one’s eyes to the fact that most men have no inclination for school-work after they have left school, and if they had the inclination they have not the time. Our own Dr. Arnold, the model English schoolmaster, said, “ It is so hard to begin anythingcin after-life, and so comparatively easy to continue what has been begun, that I think we are bound to break ground, as it were, into several of the mines of knowledge with our pupils ; that the first difficulties may be overcome by them whilst there is yet a power from without to aid their own faltering resolution, and that so they may be enabled, if they will, to go on with the study hereafter.” The principle here expressed is no doubt one of the important principles of all early education, and yet I think that it cannot be safely followed without taking account of human nature, such as it is. Everything hangs on that little parenthesis “ if they will.” And if they will not, how then ? The time spent in breaking the ground has been wasted, except so far as the exer- cise of breaking the ground may have been useful in mental gymnastics. Mature life brings so many professional or social duties that it leaves scant time for culture; and those who care for culture most earnestly and sincerely, are the very persons who will economize time to the utmost. Now, to read a language that has been very imperfectly mastered is felt to be a bad economy of time. Suppose the case of a man occupied in business who has studied Greek rather assiduously in youth and yet not enough to read it with facility. Suppose that this man wants to get at the mind of Plato. He can read the original, but he reads it so slowly that it would cost him more hours than he can spare, and this is why he has recourse to a trans- PART III. LETTER VII. Beginnings. Duties of mature life. Aio8 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER VJI. Indifference to ancient thought. Opinion of a classical scholar. lation. In this case there is no indifference to Greek culture; on the contrary, the reader desires to assimilate what he can of it, but the very earnestness of his wish to have free access to ancient thought makes him prefer it in modern language. This is the most favourable instance that can be imagined, except, of course, those exceedingly rare cases where a man has leisure enough, and enthusiasm enough, to become a Hellenist. The great majority of our contemporaries do not care for ancient thought at all, it is so remote from them, it belongs to conditions of civilization so different from their own, it is encumbered with so many lengthy discussions of questions which have been settled by the subsequent experience of the world, that the modern mind prefers to occupy itself with its own anxieties and its own speculations. It is a great error to suppose that indifference to ancient think- ing is peculiar to the .spirit of Philistinism; for the most cultivated contemporary intellects seek light from each other rather than from the ancients. One of the most distinguished of modern thinkers, a scholar of the rarest classical attainments, said to me in reference to some scheme of mine for renewing my ^classical studies, that they would be of no more use to me than numismatics. It is this feeling, the feeling that Greek speculation is of less consequence to the modem world than German and French speculation, which causes so many of us, rightly or wrongly, to regard it as a palaeontological curiosity, interesting for those who are curious as to the past of the human mind, but not likely to be influential upon its future. This estimate of ancient thinking is not often expressed quite so openly as I have just expressed it, and yet it isOF EDUCATION. 109 very generally prevalent even amongst the most thoughtful people, especially if modern science has had any con- spicuous influence in the formation of their minds. The truth is, as Sydney Smith observed many years ago, that there is a confusion of language in the use of the word “ ancient.” We say “ the ancients,” as if they were older and more experienced men than we are, whereas the age and experience are entirely on our side. They were the clever children, “ and we only are the white-bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have treasured up, and are prepared to profit by, all the experience which human life can supply.” The sense of our larger experience, as it grows in us and becomes more distinctly conscious, produces a corresponding decline in our feelings of reverence for classic times. The past has bequeathed to us its results, and we have incorporated them into our own edifice, but we have used them rather as materials than as models. In your practical desire to retain in education only what is likely to be used, you are willing to preserve Latin. M. Jules Simon says that Latin ought to be studied only to be read. On this point permit me to offer an observation. The one thing I regret about Latin is that we have ceased to speak it. The natural method, and by far the most rapid and sure method of learning a language, is to begin by acquiring words in order to use them to ask for what we want;-after that we acquire other words for narration and the expression of our sentiments. By far the shortest way to learn to read a language is to begin by speaking it. The colloquial tongue is the basis of the literary tongue. This is so true that with all the pains and trouble you give to the Latin education of your pupils, you cannot teach them as much PART III. LETTER VIJ. Conufsion of words. The moderns older than the ancients* The study of Latin%no THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER VII. Latin. Modern languages. A Frenchman on German literature. Latin, for reading only, in the course of ten years, as a living foreigner will give them of his own language in ten months. I seriously believe that if your object is to make boys read Latin easily, you begin at the wrong end. It is deplorable that the learned should ever have allowed Latin to become a dead language, since in per- mitting this they have enormously increased the difficulty of acquiring it, even for the purposes of scholarship. No foreigner who knows the French people will disapprove of the novel desire to know the modern lan- guages, which has been one of the most unexpected con- sequences of the war. Their extreme ignorance of the literature of other nations has been the cause of enor- mous evils. Notwithstanding her central position, France has been a very isolated country intellectually, much more isolated than England, more isolated even than Transylvania, where foreign literatures are familiar to the cultivated classes. This isolation has produced very lamentable effects, not only on the national culture but most especially on the national character. No modern nation, however important, can safely remain in igno- rance of its contemporaries. The Frenchman was like a gentleman shut up within his own park-wall, having no in- tercourse with his neighbours, and reading nothing but the history of his own ancestors—for the Romans were your ancestors, intellectually. It is only by the study of living languages, and their continual use, that we can learn our true place in the world. A Frenchman was study- ing Hebrew; I ventured to suggest that German might possibly be more useful. To this he answered, that there was 110 literature in German. “ Vous avez vans avez Schiller, et vous avez Lessing, mais en dehors de ces trois nomsil n'ya rien.” This meant simply that myOF ED DC A iii student of Hebrew measured German literature by his own knowledge of it. Three names had reached him, only names, and only three of them. As to the men who were unknown to him, he had decided that they did not exist. Certainly, if there are many French- men in this condition, it is time that they learned a little German. PART III. LETTER VII. LETTER VIII. TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES. LETTER VIII. Standard of attainment in living languages higher than in ancient ones—Difficulty of maintaining high pretensions—Prevalent illu- sion about the facility of modern languages—Easy to speak them badly—Some propositions based upon experience—Expectations and disappointments. Had your main purpose in the education of yourself (I do not say self-education, for you wisely accept all help from others) been the attainment of classical scholarship, I might have observed that as the received standard in that kind of learning is not a very elevated one, you might reasonably hope to reach it with a certain calculable quantity of effort. The classical student has only to contend against other students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated himself. They have learned Latin and Greek from grammars and dictionaries as he is learning them, and the only natural advantages which any of his predecessors may have possessed are superiorities of memory which may be compensated by his greater perseverance, or superiorities of sympathy to which he may “ level up ” by that acquired and artificial interest which comes from pro- Classical students.112 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, PART III. LETTER VIII. Students of 7)iodern languages, Severe tests of their efficiency. Scitisfac- toriness of severe tests, tracted application. But the student of modern languages has to contend against advantages of situation, as the gardeners of an inhospitable climate contend against the natural sunshine of the south. How easy it is to have a fruitful date-tree in Arabia, how difficult in England! How easy for the Florentine to speak Italian, how difficult for us ! The modern linguist can never fence himself behind that stately unquestionableness which shields the classical scholar. His knowledge may at any time be put to the severest of all tests, to a test incom- parably more severe than the strictest university exami- nation. The first native that he meets is his examiner, the first foreign city is his Oxford. And this is probably one reason why accomplishment in modern languages has been rather a matter of utility than of dignity, for it is difficult to keep up great pretensions in the face of a multitude of critics. What would the most learned- looking gown avail, if a malicious foreigner were laugh- ing at us ? But there is a deep satisfaction in the severity of the test. An honest and courageous student likes to be clearly aware of the exact value of his acquisitions. He takes his French to Paris and has it tested there as we take our plate to the silversmith, and after that he knows, or may know, quite accurately what it is worth. He has not the dignity of scholarship, he is not held to be a learned man, but he has acquired something which may be of daily use to him in society, or in commerce, or in literature; and there are thousands of educated natives who can accurately estimate his attainment and help him to a higher perfection. All this is deeply satisfying to a lover of intellectual realities. The modem linguist is always on firm ground, and in broad daylight./ OF EDUCA'HON. 113 He may impede his own progress by the illusions of solitary self-conceit, but the atmosphere outside is not favourable to such illusions. It is well for him that the temptations to charlatanism are so few, that the risks of exposure are so frequent. Still there are illusions, and the commonest of them is that a modern language may be very easily mastered. There is a popular idea that French is easy, that Italian is easy, that German is more difficult, yet by no means insuperably difficult. It is believed that when an Englishman has spent all the best years of his youth in attempting to learn Latin and Greek, he may acquire one or two modern languages with little effort during a brief residence on the Continent. It is certainly true that we may learn any number of foreign languages so as to speak them badly, but it surely cannot be easy to speak them well. It may be inferred that this is not easy because the accomplishment is so rare. The in- ducements are common, the accomplishment is rare. Thousands of English people have very strong reasons for learning French, thousands of French people could improve their * position by learning English ; but rare indeed are the men and women who know both lan- guages thoroughly. The following propositions, based on much observa- tion of a kind wholly unprejudiced, and tested by a not inconsiderable experience, will be found, I believe, un- assailable. 1. Whenever a foreign language is perfectly acquired there are peculiar family conditions. The person has either married a person of the other nation, or is of mixed blood. 2. When a foreign language has been acquired (there are instances of this) in quite absolute perfection, there is almost part in. LETTER VIII. Illusions about facil ity. Five propositions about languages. I114 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER VIII. always some loss in the native tongue. Either the native tongue is not spoken correctly,or it is not spoken with perfect ease. 3. A man sometimes speaks two languages correctly, his father's and his mother's, or his own and his wife's, but never three. 4. Children can speak several languages exactly like natives, but in succession, never simultaneously. They forget the first in acquiring the second, and so on. 5. A language cannot be learned by an adult without five years' residence in the country where it is spoken, and without habits of close observation a residejice of twenty years is insufficient. This is not encouraging, but it is the truth. Happily, a knowledge which falls far short of mastery may be of much practical use in the common affairs of life, and may even afford some initiation into foreign litera- tures. I do not argue that because perfection is denied of us by the circumstances of our lives or the necessities of our organization we are therefore to abandon the study to every language but the mother tongue. It may be of use to us to know several languages imperfectly, if only we confess the hopelessness of absolute attainment. That which is truly, and deeply, and seriously an injury to our intellectual life, is the foolishness of the too common vanity which first deludes itself with childish expecta- tions, and then tortures itself with late regret for failure which might have been easilv foreseen. /OF ED UCA ”5 \ LETTER IX. TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES. Cases known to the Author—Opinion of an English linguist—Family conditions—An Englishman who lived forty years in France— Influence of children—An Italian in France—Displacement of one language by another—English lady married to a Frenchman —An Italian in Garibaldi’s army—Corruption of languages by the uneducated when they learn more than one—Neapolitan servant of an English gentleman—A Scotch servant-woman—The author’s eldest boy—Substitution of one language for another—In mature life we lose facility—The resisting power of adults—Seen in international marriages—Case of a retired English officer—Two Germans in France—Germans in London—The innocence of the ear—Imperfect attainment of little intellectual use—Too many languages attempted in education—Polyglot waiters—Indirect benefits. FART III LETTER IX. My five propositions about learning modern languages appear from your answer to have rather surprised you, and you ask for some instances in illustration. I am aware that my last letter was dogmatic, so let me begin by begging your pardon for its dogmatism. The present communication may steer clear of that rock of offence, for it shall confine itself to an account of cases that I have known. One of the most accomplished of English linguists re- marked to me that after much observation of the labours of others, and a fair estimate of his own, he had come to the rather discouraging conclusion that it was not possible to learn a foreign language. He did not take account of the one exceptional class of cases where the family conditions make the use of two languages habitual. The most favourable family conditions are not A dis- couraging com iusum.116 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER IX. An English resident in France. Children the best teachers. Natural groiuth of a language. in themselves sufficient to ensure the acquisition of a language, but wherever an instance of perfect acquisition is to be found, these family conditions are always found along with it. My friend W., an English artist living in Paris, speaks French with quite absolute accuracy as to grammar and choice of expression, and with accuracy of pronunciation so nearly absolute that the best French ears can detect nothing wrong but the pronunciation of the letter “r.” He has lived in France for the space of forty years, but it may be doubted whether in forty years he could have mastered the language as he has done if he had not married a native. French has been his home language for thirty years and more, and the perfect ease and naturalness of his diction are due to the powerful home influences, especially to the influence of children. A child is born that speaks the foreign tongue from the first inarticulate beginnings. It makes its own child- language, and the father as he hears it is born over again in the foreign land by tender paternal sympathy. Gradu- ally the sweet child-talk gives place to the perfect tongue, and the father follows it by insensible gradations, himself the most docile of pupils, led onward rather than instructed by the winning and playful little master, incomparably the best of masters. The process here is nature’s own inimitable process. Every new child that is born to a man so situated carries him through a repeti- tion of that marvellous course of teaching. The language grows in his brain from the first rudiments—the real natural rudiments, not the hard rudiments of the gram- marian—just as plants grow naturally from their seeds. It has not been built by human processes of piecing together, but has developed itself like a living creature. This way of learning a language possesses over the die-OF EDUCA TION. 117 tionary process exactly the kind of superiority which a living man, developed naturally from the foetus, possesses over the clastic anatomical man-model of the ingenious doctor Auzoux. The doctor’s models are remarkably perfect in construction, they have all the organs, but they have not life. When, however, this natural process of growth is allowed to go forward without watchful care, it is likely to displace the mother tongue. It is sometimes affirmed that the impressions of childhood are never effaced, that the mother tongue is never forgotten. It may be that it is never wholly forgotten, except in the case of young children, but it may become so imperfect as to be practically of little use. I knew an Italian who came to France as a young man and learned his profession there He was afterwards naturalized, married a French lady, had several children, pursued a very successful career in Paris, and became ultimately French Am- bassador at the court of Victor Emmanuel. His French was so perfect that it was quite impossible for anyone to detect the usual Italian accents. I used to count him as a remarkable and almost solitary instance of a man speaking two languages in their perfection, but I learned since then that his French had displaced his Italian, and so completely that he was quite unable to speak Italian correctly, and made use of French invariably when in Italy. The risk of this displacement is always greatest in cases where the native tongue is not kept up by means of literature. Byron and Shelley, or our con- temporary Charles Lever, would run little risk of losing English by continental residence, but people not accus- tomed to reading and writing often forget the mother tongue in a few years, even when the foreign one which PART III. LETTER IX. La7iguagt ii?tperfectly retained. Case of an Italian Loss of the mother tongue.ii8 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER IX. Case of an English lady settled in France. \ T L . J A Garibaldian sergeant. / has displaced it is still in a state of imperfection. Madame L. is an English lady who married a Frenchman : neither her husband nor her children speak English, and as her relatives live in one of our most distant colonies, she has been separated from them for many years. Isolated thus from English society, living in a part of France rarely visited by her countrymen, never reading English, and writing it little and at long intervals, she speaks it now with much difficulty and diffidence. Her French is not grammatical, though she has lived for many years with people who speak grammatically; but then her French is fluent and alive, truly her own living language now, whilst English is, if not wholly forgotten, dead almost as our Latin is dead. She and I always speak French together when we meet, because it is easier for her than English, and a more natural expression. I have known some other cases of displacement of the native tongue, and have lately had the opportunity of watching a case of such displacement during its progress. A sergeant in the Italian army deserted to join Garibaldi in the campaign of 1870. On the conclusion of peace it was impossible for him to return to Italy, so he settled in France and married there. I found some work for him, and for some months saw him frequently. Up to the date of his marriage he spoke no language but Italian, which he could read and write correctly, but after his marriage the process of displacement of the native tongue began immediately by the corruption of it. He did not keep his Italian safely by itself, putting the French in a place of its own as he gradually acquired it, but he mixed the two inextricably together. Imagine the case of a man who, having a bottle half full of wine, gets some beer given him and pours it immediately into theOF EDUCATION. H9 wine-bottle. The beer will never be pure beer, but it will effectually spoil the wine. This process is not so much one of displacement as of corruption. It takes place readily in uncultivated minds, with feeble separating powers. Another example of this was a Neapolitan servant of an English gentleman, who mixed his Italian twice, first with French and afterwards with English, pro- ducing a compound intelligible to nobody but himself, if indeed he himself understood it. At the time I knew him, the man had no means of communication with his species. When his master told him to do anything, he made a guess at what was likely to be for the moment his master’s most probable want, and sometimes hit the mark, but more generally missed it. The man’s name was Alberino, and I remember on one occasion profiting by a mistaken guess of his. After a visit to Alberino’s master, my servant brought forth a magnificent basket of trout, which surprised me, as nothing had been said about them. However, we ate them, and only dis- covered afterwards that the present was due to an illusion of Alberino’s. His master had never told him to give me the trout, but he had interpreted some other order in that sense. When you asked him for mustard, he would first touch the salt, and then the pepper, &c., looking at you inquiringly till you nodded assent. Any attempt at conversation with Alberino was sure to lead to a perfect comedy of misunderstandings. He never had the remotest idea of what his interlocutor was talking about; but he pretended to catch your meaning, and answered at haphazard. He had a habit of talking aloud to himself, “ but in a tongue no man could understand.” It is a law that cultivated people can keep languages PART III. LETTER IX. Corruption, of the native tongue. Case of a Neapolitan domestic.120 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER IX. Difficulty of keeping languages separated. Case of a Scotch serua?it. Substitu- tion. T he A uthors eldest son. apart, and in their purity, better than persons who have not habits of intellectual analysis. When I lived in Scotland three languages were spoken in my house all day long, and a housemaid came to us from the Low- lands who spoke nothing but Lowland Scotch. She used to ask what was the French for this thing or that, and then what was the Gaelic for it. Having been answered, she invariably asked the further question which of the three words, French, Gaelic, or English, the right word. She remained, to the last, entirely incapable of conceiving how all the three could be right. Had she learned another language, it must have been by substitution for her own. This is exactly the natural process which takes place in the brains of children who are transferred from one country to another. My eldest boy spoke English in childhood as well as any other English child of his age. He was taken to the south of France, and in three months he replaced his English with Provencal, which he learned from the servants about him. There were two ladies in the house who spoke English well, and did all in their power, in compliance with my urgent entreaties, to preserve the boy’s native language; but the substitution took place too rapidly, and was beyond control. He began by an unwillingness to use English words whenever he could use Provencal instead, and in a remarkably short time this unwillingness was succeeded by inability. The native language was as completely taken out of his brain as a violin is taken out of its case: nothing remained, nothing, not one word, not any echo of an accent. And as a violinist may put a new instrument into the case from which he has removed the old one, so the new language occupied the whole space which had been occupied by English. When I IOF EDUCA TION. 121 saw the child again, there was no means of communica- tion between us. After that, he was removed to the north of France, and the same process began again. As Provencal had pushed out English, so French began to push out Proven9al. The process w'as wonderfully rapid. The child heard people speak French, and he began to speak French like them without any formal teaching. He spoke the language as he breathed the air. In a few weeks he did not retain the least remnant of his Provencal; it was gone after his English into the limbo of the utterly forgotten. Novelists have occasionally made use of cases similar to this, but they speak of the forgotten language as being forgotten in the manner that Scott forgot the manuscript of “ Waverley,” which he found afterwards in the drawers of an old writing-desk when he was seeking for fishing- tackle. They assume (conveniently for the purposes of their art) that the first language we learn is never really lost, but may be as it were under certain circumstances mislaid, to be found again at some future period. Now, although something of this kind may be possible when the first language has been spoken in rather advanced boyhood, I am convinced that in childhood a consider- able number of languages might succeed each other without leaving any trace whatever. I might have re- marked that in addition to English, Provencal, and French, my boy had understood Gaelic in his infancy, at least to some extent, though he did not speak it. The languages in his case succeeded each other without any cost of effort, and without any appreciable effect on health. The pronunciation of each language was quite faultless so far as foreign accent went; the child had the defects PART III. LETTER IX. Recovery of language in novels. S iiccession of languages. !122 THE INTELLECTUAL LITE. PART III. LETTER IX. \ ~m—~~ Foreign residents in England. Children and adults. Interna- tional marriages. of children, but of children born in the different coun- tries where he lived. As we grow older this facility of acquisition gradually leaves us. M. Philarete Chasles says that it is quite im- possible for any adult to learn German: an adult may learn German as Dr. Arnold did for purposes of erudi- tion, for which it is enough to know a language as we know Latin, but this is not mastery. You have met with many foreign residents in England, who after stay- ing in the country for many years can barely make themselves intelligible, and must certainly be incapable of appreciating those beauties of our literature which are dependent upon arrangements of sound. The resisting power of the adult brain is quite as remarkable as the assimilating power of the immature brain. A child hears a sound, and repeats it with perfect accuracy; a man hears a sound, and by way of imitation utters some- thing altogether different, being nevertheless persuaded that it is at least a close and satisfactory approximation. Children imitate well, but adults badly, and the acquisi- tion of languages depends mainly on imitation. The resisting power of adults is often seen very remarkably in international marriages. In those classes of society where there is not much culture, or leisure or disposition for culture, the one will not learn the other’s language from opportunity or from affection, but only under abso- lute necessity. It seems as if two people living always together would gain each other’s languages as a matter of course, but the fact is that they do not. French people who marry foreigners do not usually acquire the foreign language if the pair remain in France; English people under similar conditions make the attempt more fre- quently, but they rest contented with imperfect attainment.OF EDUCA TION. 123 If the power of resistance is so great in people who being wedded together for life have peculiarly strong inducements for learning each other’s languages, it need surprise us little to find a like power of resistance in cases where motives of affection are altogether absent. Englishmen who go to France as adults, and settle there, frequently remain for many years in a state of half-know- ledge which, though it may carry them through the little difficulties of life at railway stations and restaurants, is for any intellectual purpose of no conceivable utility. I knew a retired English officer, a bachelor, who for many years had lived in Paris without any intention of returning to England. His French just barely carried him through the small transactions of his daily life, but was so limited and so incorrect that he could not maintain a conversa- tion. His vocabulary was very meagre; his genders were all wrong, and he did not know one single verb, literally not one. His pronunciation was so foreign as to be very nearly unintelligible, and he hesitated so much that it was painful to have to listen to him. I could mention a celebrated German, who has lived in or near Paris for the last twenty years, and who can neither speak nor write the language with any approach to accuracy. Another German, who settled in France as a master of languages, wrote French tolerably, but spoke it//^tolerably. There are Germans in London, who have lived there long enough to have families and make fortunes, yet who continue to repeat the ordinary German faults of pronunciation, the same faults which they committed years ago, when first they landed on our shores. The child hears and repeats the true sound, the adult misleads himself by the spelling. Seldom indeed can the adult recover the innocence of the ear. It is like PART III. LETTER IX. A n Englishman in Paris. Germans in France. Germans in London. The innocence of the ear.124 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER IX. Too many lan judges attempted. Polyglot waiters. the innocence of the eye, which has to be recovered before we can paint from nature, and which belongs only to infancy and to art. Let me observe, in conclusion, that although to know a foreign language perfectly is a most valuable aid to the intellectual life, I have never known an instance of very imperfect attainment which seemed to enrich the student intellectually. Until you can really feel the refinements of a language, your mental culture can get little help or furtherance from i£ of any kind, nothing but an inter- minable series of misunderstandings. I think that in the education of our boys too many languages are at- tempted, and that their minds would profit more by the perfect acquisition of a single language in addition to the native tongue. This, of course, is looking at the matter simply from the intellectual point of view. There may be practical reasons for knowing several languages imperfectly. It may be of use to many men in com- mercial situations to know a little of several languages, even a few words and phrases are valuable to a traveller, but all intellectual labour of the higher kind requires much more than that. It is of use to society that there should be polyglot waiters who can tell us when the train starts in four or five languages; but the poly- glot waiters themselves are not intellectually advanced by their accomplishment; for, after all, the facts of the railway time-table are always the same small facts, in however many languages they may be announced. True culture ought to strengthen the faculty of thinking, and to provide the material upon which that noble faculty may operate. An accomplishment which does neither of these two things for us is useless for our culture, though it may be of considerable practical convenience in the affairsOF EDUCATION. 125 of ordinary life. It is right to add, however, that there is sometimes an indirect intellectual benefit from such accom- plishments. To be able to order dinner in Spanish is not in itself an intellectual advantage ; but if the dinner, when you have eaten it, enables you to visit a cathedral whose architecture you are qualified to appreciate, there is a clear intellectual gain, though an indirect one. LETTER X. TO A STUDENT WHO LAMENTED HIS DEFECTIVE MEMORY. The author rather inclined to congratulation than to condolence —Value of a selecting memory—Studies of the young Goethe— His great faculty of assimilation—A good literary memory like a well-edited periodical—The selecting memory in art—Treacherous memories—Cures suggested for them—The mnemotechnic art contrary to the true discipline of the mind—Two instances—The memory safely aided only by right association. So far from writing, as you seem to expect me to do, a letter of condolence on the subject of what you are pleased to call your “ miserable memory,” I feel disposed rather to indite a letter of congratulation. It is possible that you may be blessed with a selecting memory, which is not only useful for what it retains but for what it rejects. In the immense mass of facts which come before you in literature and in life, it is well that you should suffer from as little bewilderment as possible. The nature of your memory saves you from this by unconsciously selecting what has interested you, and letting the rest go by. What interests you is what con- cerns you. In saying this I speak simply from the intellectual point of view, and suppose you to be an intellectual PART III. LETTER IX. Indirect benefits. LETTER X. That miserable memories may be selecting 7uemories.120 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER X. Studies of the young Goethe. Bad memories. man by the natural organization of your brain, to begin with. In saying that what interests you is what concerns you, I mean intellectually, not materially. It may con- cern you, in the pecuniary sense, to take an interest in the law; yet your mind, left to itself, would take little or no interest in law, but an absorbing interest in botany. The passionate studies of the young Goethe, in many different directions, always in obedience to the pre- dominant interests of the moment, are the best example of the way in which a great intellect, with remarkable powers of acquisition and liberty to grow in free luxuri- ance, sends its roots into various soils and draws from them the constituents of its sap. As a student of law, as a university student even, he was not of the type which parents and professors consider satisfactory. He neglected jurisprudence, he neglected even his college studies, but took an interest in so many other pursuits that his mind became rich indeed. Yet the wealth which his mind acquired seems to have been due to that liberty of ranging by which it was permitted to him to seek his own everywhere, according to the maxim of French law, chacun prend son bicn oil il le troave. Had he been a poor student, bound down to the exclusively legal studies, which did not greatly interest him, it is likely that no one would ever have suspected his im- mense faculty of assimilation. In this way men who are set by others to load their memories with what is not their proper intellectual food, never get the credit of having any memory at all, and end by themselves be- lieving that they have none. These bad memories are often the best, they are often the selecting memories. They seldom win distinction in examinations, but in literature and art. They are quite incomparably superiorOF EDUCA 127 to the miscellaneous memories that receive only as boxes and drawers receive what is put into them. A good literary or artistic memory is not like a post-office that takes in everything, but like a very well-edited periodical which prints nothing that does not harmonize with its intellectual life. A well-known author gave me this piece of advice : “ Take as many notes as you like, but when you write do not look at them—what you remem- ber is what you must write, and you ought to give things exactly the degree of relative importance that they have in your memory. If you forget much, it is well, it will only save beforehand the labour of erasure.” This advice would not be suitable to every author; an author who dealt much in minute facts ought to be allowed to refer to his memoranda; but from the artistic point of view in literature the advice was wise indeed. In painting, our preferences select whilst we are in the presence of nature, and our memory selects when we are away from nature. The most beautiful compositions are produced by the selecting office of the memory, which retains some features, and even greatly exaggerates them, whilst it diminishes others and often altogether omits them. An artist who blamed himself for these exaggerations and omissions would blame himself for being an artist. Let me add a protest against the common methods of curing what are called treacherous memories. They are generally founded upon the association of ideas, which is so far rational, but then the sort of association which they have recourse to is unnatural, and produces precisely the sort of disorder which would be produced in dress if a man were insane enough to tie, let us say, a frying-pan to one of his coat-tails and a child’s kite to the other. The true discipline of the mind is to be effected PART III. LETTER X. A good literary memory. Memory in painting. Cures for defective metnories.128 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER X. Objections to the mnemo- technic art. The ratio?ial art of viemory. only by associating those things together which have a real relation of some kind, and the profounder the rela- tion, the more it is based upon the natural constitution of things, and the less it concerns trifling external details, the better will be the order of the intellect. The mnerao- technic art wholly disregards this, and is therefore un- suited for intellectual persons, though it may be of some practical use in ordinary life. A little book on memory, of which many editions have been sold, suggests to men who forget their umbrellas that they ought always to associate the image of an umbrella with that of an open door, so that they could never leave any house without thinking of one. But would it not be preferable to lose two or three guineas annually rather than see a spectral umbrella in every doorway ? The same writer suggests an idea which appears even more objectionable. Be- cause we are apt to lose time, we ought, he says, to imagine a skeleton clock-face on the visage of every man we talk with; that is to say, we ought systematically to set about producing in our brains an absurd associa- tion of ideas, which is quite closely allied to one of the most common forms of insanity. It is better to forget umbrellas and lose hours than fill our minds with asso- ciations of a kind which every disciplined intellect does all it can to get rid of. The rational art of memory is that used in natural science. We remember anatomy and botany because, although the facts they teach are infinitely numerous, they are arranged according to the constructive order of nature. Unless there were a clear relation between the anatomy of one animal and that of others, the memory would refuse to burden itself with the details of their structure. So in the study of languages, we learn several languages by perceiving their trueOF ED UCATION. 129 structural relations, and remembering these. Associa- tion of this kind, and the maintenance of order in the mind, are the only arts of memory compatible with the right government of the intellect. Incongruous, and even superficial associations ought to be systematically discouraged, and we ought to value the negative or re- jecting power of the memory. The finest intellects are as remarkable for. the ease with which they resist and throw off what does not concern them as for the per- manence with which their own truths engrave themselves. They are like clear glass, which fluoric acid etches in- delibly, but which comes out of vitriol intact. LETTER XI. TO A MASTER OF ARTS WHO SAID THAT A CERTAIN DISTIN- GUISHED PAINTER WAS HALF-EDUCATED. Conventional idea about the completeness of education—The estimate of a schoolmaster—No one can be fully educated—Even Leonardo da Vinci fell short of the complete expression of his faculties—The word “education” used in two different senses— The acquisition of knowledge—Who are the learned ?—Quotation from Sydney Smith—What a “ half-educated ” painter had learned —What faculties he had developed. An intelligent lady was lamenting to me the other day that when she heard anything she did not quite agree with, it only set her thinking, and did not suggest any immediate reply. “ Three hours afterwards,” she added, “ I arrive at the answer which ought to have been given, but then it is exactly three hours too late.” Being afflicted with precisely the same pitiable in- firmity, I said nothing in reply to a statement you made K PART III. LETTER y. Reception and rejection. LETTER XI.130 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART III. LETTER XI. “Half- educated." Arbitrary ideas. School estimate THE POWER OF TIME. PART IV. LETTER I. LETTER I. TO A MAN OF LEISURE WHO COMPLAINED OF WANT OF TIME. Necessity for time-thrift in all cases—Serious men not much in danger from mere frivolity—Greater danger of losing time in our serious pursuits themselves—Time thrown away when we do not attain proficiency—Soundness of former scholarship a good example — Browning’s Grammarian — Knowledge an organic whole—Soundness the possession of essential parts—Necessity of fixed limits in our projects of study—Limitation of purpose in the fine arts—In languages—Instance of M. Louis Enault—In music—Time saved by following kindred pursuits—Order and proportion the true secrets of time-thrift—A waste of time to leave fortresses untaken in our rear. Time thrift. You complain of want of time—you, with your bound- less leisure ! It is true that the most absolute master of his own hours still needs thrift if he would turn them to account, and that too many never learn this thrift, whilst others learn it late. Will you permit me to offer briefly a few observations on time-thrift which have been suggested to me by my own experience and by the experience of in tellectual friends ?THE POWER OF TIME. *35 It may be accepted for certain, to begin with, that men who like yourself seriously care for culture, and make it, next to moral duty, the principal object of their lives, are but little exposed to waste time in downright frivolity of any kind. You may be perfectly idle at your own times, and perfectly frivolous even, whenever you have a mind to be frivolous, but then you will be clearly aware how the time is passing, and you will throw it away knowingly, as the most careful of money-economists will throw away a few sovereigns in a confessedly foolish amusement, merely for the relief of a break in the habit of his life. To a man of your tastes and temper there is no danger of wasting too much time so long as the waste is intentional; but you are exposed to time-losses of a much more insidious character. It is in our pursuits themselves that we throw away our most valuable time. Few intellectual men have the art of economizing the hours of study. The very necessity, which everyone acknowledges, of giving vast portions of life to attain proficiency in anything, makes us prodigal where we ought to be parsimonious, and careless where we have need of unceasing vigilance. The best time- savers are the love of soundness in all we learn or do, and a cheerful acceptance of inevitable limitations. There is a certain point of proficiency at which an ac- quisition begins to be of use, and unless we have the time and resolution necessary to reach that point, our labour is as completely thrown away as that of a mechanic who began to make an engine but never finished it. Each of us has acquisitions which remain permanently unavailable from their unsoundness, a language or two that we can neither speak nor write, a science of which the elements have not been mastered, an art which we PART IV. LETTER I. Waste in known frivolities not the most dangerous. Waste of time m 07ir serious work. T i7ne~ savers.THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 136 PART IV. LETTER I. Soundness. The old scholars. Browning*s Gra nrn<%m rian. cannot practise with satisfaction either to others or to ourselves. Now the time spent on these unsound ac- complishments has been in great measure wasted, not quite absolutely wasted, since the mere labour of trying to learn has been a discipline for the mind, but wasted so far as the accomplishments themselves are concerned. And even this mental discipline, on which so much stress is laid by those whose interest it is to encourage unsound accomplishment, might be obtained more perfectly if the subjects of study were less numerous and more thoroughly understood. Let us not therefore in the studies of our maturity repeat the error of our youth. Let us determine to have soundness, that is, accurately organized know- ledge in the studies we continue to pursue, and let us resign ourselves to the necessity for abandoning those pursuits in which soundness is not to be hoped for. The old-fashioned idea about scholarship in Latin and Greek, that it ought to be based upon thorough gramma- tical knowledge, is a good example, so far as it goes, of what soundness really is. That ideal of scholarship failed only because it fell short of soundness in other directions and was not conscious of its failure. But there existed, in the minds of the old scholars, a fine resolution to be accurate, and a determination to give however much labour might be necessary for the attainment of accuracy, in which there was much grandeur. Like Mr. Browning’s Grammarian, they said— “ Let me know all! Prate not of most or least Painful or easy / . and so at least they came to know the ancient tongues grammatically, which few of us do in these days. I should define each kind of knowledge as an organicTHE POWER OF TIME. 137 whole and soundness as the complete possession of all the essential parts. For example, soundness in violin- playing consists in being able to play the notes in all the positions, in tune, and with a pure intonation, whatever may be the degree of rapidity indicated by the musical composer. Soundness in painting consists in being able to lay a patch of colour having exactly the right shape and tint. Soundness in the use of language consists in being able to put the right word in the right place. In each of the sciences, there are certain elementary notions without which sound knowledge is not possible, but these elementary notions are more easily and rapidly acquired than the elaborate knowledge or confirmed skill necessary to the artist or the linguist. A man may be a sound botanist without knowing a very great number of plants, and the elements of sound botanical knowledge may be printed in a portable volume. And so it is with all the physical sciences; the elementary notions which are necessary to soundness of knowledge may be acquired rapidly and at any age. Hence it follows that all whose leisure for culture is limited, and who value soundness of knowledge, do wisely to pursue some branch of natural history rather than languages or the fine arts. It is well for everyone who desires to attain a perfect economy of time, to make a list of the different pursuits to which he has devoted himself, and to put a note opposite to each of them indicating the degree of its unsoundness with as little self-delusion as may be. After having done this, he may easily ascertain in how many of these pursuits a sufficient degree of soundness is attain- able for him, and when this has been decided he may at once effect a great saving by the total renunciation of the rest. With regard to those which remain, and which are PART IV LETTER I. Sound?iess in painting» In la7iguage. Soundness in science# Degrees of unsound- ness. /THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 1)8 PART IV. LETTER I. The fixing of limits. In art. In lang n ages. Louis final lit. to be carried farther, the next thing to be settled is the exact limit of their cultivation. Nothing is so favourable to sound culture as the definite fixing of limits. Suppose, for example, that the student said to himself “ I desire to know the flora of the valley I live in,” and then set to work systematically to make a herbarium illustrating that flora, it is probable that his labour would be more thorough, his temper more watchful and hopeful, than if he set himself to the boundless task of the illimitable flora of the world. Or in the pursuit of fine art, an amateur discouraged by the glaring unsoundness of the kind of art taught by ordinary drawing-masters, would find the basis of a more substantial superstructure on a narrower but firmer ground. Suppose that instead of the usual messes of bad colour and bad form, the student produced work having some definite and not unattainable purpose, would there not be, here also, an assured eco- nomy of time ? Accurate drawing is the basis of sound- ness in the fine arts, and an amateur, by perseverance, may reach accuracy in drawing; this, at least, has been proved by some examples—not by many, certainly, but by some. In languages we may have a limited purpose also. That charming and most intelligent traveller, Louis Enault, tells us that he regularly gave a week to the study of each new language that he needed, and found that week sufficient. The assertion is not so pre- sumptuous as it appears. For the practical necessities of travelling M. finault found that he required about four hundred words, and that, having a good memory, he was able to learn about seventy words a day. The secret of his success was the invaluable art of selection, and the strict limitation of effort in accordance with a precon- ceived design. A traveller not so well skilled in selectionTHE POWER OF . 139 might have learned a thousand words with less advantage to his travels, and a traveller less decided in purpose might have wasted several months on the frontier of every new country in hopeless efforts to master the intricacies of grammatical form. It is evident that in the strictest sense M. Enault’s knowledge of Norwegian cannot have been sound, since he did not master the grammar, but it was sound in its own strictly limited way, since he got possession of the four hundred words which were to serve him as current coin. On the same principle it is a good plan for students of Latin and Greek who have not time to reach true scholarship (half a lifetime is necessary for that), to propose to themselves simply the reading of the original authors with the help of a literal translation. In this way they may attain a closer ac- quaintance with ancient literature than would be possible by translation alone, whilst on the other hand their read- ing will be much more extensive on account of its greater rapidity. It is, for most of us, a waste of time to read Latin and Greek without a translation, on account of the comparative slowness of the process; but it is always an advantage to know what was really said in the original, and to test the exactness of the translator by continual reference to the ipsissima verba of the author. When the knowledge of the ancient language is not sufficient even for this, it may still be of use for occasional comparison, even though the passage has to be fought through a coups de dictionnaire. What most of us need in reference to the ancient languages is a frank resignation to a restric- tion of some kind. It is simply impossible for men occupied as most of us are in other pursuits to reach perfect scholarship in those languages, and if we reached it we should not have time to maintain it. PART IV. LETTER I. Reading Lati7i and Greek.140 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IV. LETTER I. *Modem languages. M usic. Choice of an instrument. In modern languages it is not so easy to fix limits satisfactorily. You may resolve to read French or German without either writing or speaking them, and that would be an effectual limit, certainly. But in practice it is found difficult to keep within that boundary if ever you travel or have intercourse with foreigners. And when once you begin to speak, it is so humiliating to speak badly, that a lover of soundness in accomplish- ment will never rest perfectly satisfied until he speaks like a cultivated native, which nobody ever did except under peculiar family conditions. In music the limits are found more easily. The amateur musician is frequently not inferior in feeling and taste to the more accomplished professional, and by selecting those compositions which require much feeling and taste for their interpretation, but not so much manual skill, he may reach a sufficient success. The art is to choose the very simplest music (provided of course that it is beautiful, which it frequently is), and to avoid all technical difficulties which are not really necessary to the expression of feeling. The amateur ought also to select the easiest instrument, an instrument in which the notes are made for him already, rather than one which compels him to fix the notes as he is playing. The violin tempts amateurs who have a deep feeling for music because it renders feeling as no other instrument can render it, but the difficulty of just intonation is almost insuperable unless the whole time is given to that one instrument. It is a fatal error to perform on several different instruments, and an amateur who has done so may find a desirable limitation in restricting himself to one. Much time is saved by following pursuits which helpTHE TO WEE OF TIME. each other. It is a great help to a landscape painter to know the botany of the country he works in, for botany gives the greatest possible distinctness to his memory of all kinds of vegetation. Therefore, if a landscape painter takes to the study of science at all, he would do well to study botany, which would be of use in his painting, rather than chemistry or mathematics, which would be entirely disconnected from it. The memory easily retains the studies which are auxiliary to the chief pursuit. Entomologists remember plants well, the reason being that they find insects in them, just as Leslie the painter had an excellent memory for houses where there were any good pictures to be found. The secret of order and proportion in our studies is the true secret of economy in time. To have one main pursuit and several auxiliaries, but none that are not auxiliary, is the true principle of arrangement. Many hard workers have followed pursuits as widely discon- nected as possible, but this was for the refreshment of absolute change, not for the economy of time. Lastly, it is a deplorable waste of time to leave fortresses untaken in our rear. Whatever has to be mastered ought to be mastered so thoroughly that we shall not have to come back to it when Ave ought to be carrying the war far into the enemy’s country. But to study on this sound principle, we require not to be hurried. And this is why, to a sincere student, all external pressure, whether of examiners, or poverty, or business engagements, which causes him to leave work behind him which was not done as it ought to have been done, is so grievously, so intolerably vexatious. 141 PART IV. LETTER I. Kindred pursuits. Order and proportion in studies. Fortresses un taken in the rear.142 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IV. LETTER II. LETTER II. TO A YOUNG MAN OF GREAT TALENT AND ENERGY WHO HAD MAGNIFICENT PLANS FOR THE FUTURE. Mistaken estimates about time and occasion—The Unknown Element —Procrastination often time’s best preserver—Napoleon’s advice to do nothing at all—Use of deliberation and of intervals of leisure—Artistic advantages of calculating time—Prevalent childishness about time—Illusions about reading—Bad economy of reading in languages we have not mastered—That we ought to be thrifty of time, but not avaricious—Time necessary in pro- duction—Men who work best under the sense of pressure— Rossini—That these cases prove nothing against time-thrift— The waste of time from miscalculation—People calculate accu- rately for short spaces, but do not calculate so well for long ones —Reason for this—Stupidity of the Philistines about wasted time—Topfferand Claude Tillier—Retrospective miscalculations, and the regrets that result from them. Quotation from Sir A. Helps* Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author ? On the same principle, people will give a higher price to a picture-dealer than they would have given to the painter himself. The picture that has been once bought has a recommendation, and the quoted passage is both recommended and isolated from the context. Trusting to this well-known principle, although I am aware that you have read everything that Sir Arthur Helps has published, I proceed to make the following quotation from one of his wisest books. “ Time and occasion are the two important circum- stances in human life, as regards which the most mistaken estimates are made. And the error is universal. It besets even the most studious and philosophic men.THE POWER OF TIME. 143 This may notably be seen in the present day, when many most distinguished men have laid down projects for literature and philosophy, to be accomplished by them in their own lifetime, which would require several men and many lifetimes to complete ; and, generally speaking, if any person, who has passed the meridian of life, looks back upon his career, he will probably own that his greatest errors have arisen from his not having made sufficient allowance for the length of time which his various schemes required for their fulfilment.” There are many traditional maxims about time which insist upon its brevity, upon the necessity of using it whilst it is there, upon the impossibility of recovering what is lost; but the practical effect of these maxims upon conduct can scarcely be said to answer to their undeni- able importance. The truth is, that although they tell us to economize our time, they cannot, in the nature of things, instruct us as to the methods by which it is to be economized. Human life is so extremely various and complicated, whilst it tends every day to still greater variety and complication, that all maxims of a general nature require a far higher degree of intelligence in their application to individual cases than it ever cost originally to invent them. Any person gifted with ordinary com- mon sense can perceive that life is short, that time flies, that we ought to make good use of the present; but it needs the union of much experience, with the most con- summate wisdom, to know exactly what ought to be done and what ought to be left undone—the latter being fre- quently by far the more important of the two. Amongst the favourable influences of my early life was the kindness of a venerable country gentleman, who had seen a great deal of the world and passed many years, PART IV, LETTER II. T raditionat maxims Difficulty ef applying general maxims.*44 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IV. LETTER II. Pitfalls, Mere luck. before he inherited his estates, in the practice of a laborious profession. I remember a theory of his, that experience was much less valuable than is generally supposed, be- cause, except in matters of simple routine, the problems that present themselves to us for solution are nearly always dangerous from the presence of some unknown element. The unknown element he regarded as a hidden pitfall, and he warned me that in my progress through life I might always expect to tumble into it. This saying of his has been so often confirmed since then, that I now count upon the pitfall quite as a matter of certainty. Very frequently I have escaped it, but more by good luck than good management. Sometimes I have tumbled into it, and when this misfortune occurred it has not unfrequently been in consequence of having acted upon the advice of some very knowing and experienced person indeed. We have all read, when we were boys, Captain Marryat’s “ Midshipman Easy.” There is a passage in that story which may serve as an illustration of what is constantly happening in actual life. The boats of the were ordered to board one of the enemy’s vessels ; young Easy was in command of one of these boats, and as they had to wait he began to fish. After they had received the order to advance, he delayed a little to catch his fish, and this delay not only saved him from being sunk by the enemy’s broadside, but enabled him to board the Frenchman. Here the pitfall was avoided by idling away a minute of time on an occasion when minutes were like hours ; yet it was mere luck, not wisdom, which led to the good result. There was a sad railway accident on one of the continental lines last autumn ; a notable per- sonage would have been in the train if he had arrived in time for it, but his miscalculation saved him. In mattersTHE POWER OF TIME. J45 where there is no risk of the loss of life, but only of the waste of a portion of it in unprofitable employment, it frequently happens that procrastination, which is reputed to be the thief of time, becomes its best preserver. Suppose that you undertake an enterprise, but defer the execution of it from day to day: it is quite possible that in the interval some fact may accidentally come to your knowledge which would cause a great modification of your plan, or even its complete abandonment. Every thinking person is well aware that the enormous loss of time caused by the friction of our legislative machinery has preserved the country from a great deal of crude and ill-digested legislation. Even Napoleon the Great, who had a rapidity of conception and of action so far surpassing that of other kings and commanders that it seems to us almost supernatural, said that when you did not quite know what ought to be done it was best to do nothing at all. One of the most distinguished of living painters said exactly the same thing with reference to the practice of his art, and added that very little time would be needed for the actual execution of a picture if only the artist knew beforehand how and where to lay the colour. It so often happens that mere activity is a waste of time, that people who have a morbid habit of being busy are often terrible time-wasters, whilst, on the con- trary, those who are judiciously deliberate, and allow themselves intervals of leisure, see the way before them in those intervals, and save time by the accuracy of their calculations. A largely intelligent thrift of time is necessary to all great works—and many works are very great indeed relatively to the energies of a single individual, which pass unperceived in the tumult of the world. The / L PART IV. LETTER II. Use of retarding friction. Napoleon /. \ Waste in mere activity. Time-thrift necessary in great uoj k*146 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. l’ART IV. LETTER II. Gothic 'x*chitecture. *ncongruous styles. Childish delusions. advantages of calculating time are artistic as well as economical. I tliink that, in this respect, magnificent as are the cathedrals which the Gothic builders have left us, they committed an artistic error in the very immensity of their plans. They do not appear to have reflected that from the continual changes of fashion in architecture, incongruous work would be sure to intrude itself before their gigantic projects could be realized by the genera- tions that were to succeed them. For a work of that kind to possess artistic unity, it ought to be completely realized within the space of forty years. How great is the charm of those perfect edifices which, like the Sainte Chapelle, are the realization of one sublime idea ! And those changes in national thought which have made the old cathedrals a jumble of incongruous styles, have their parallel in the life of every individual workman. We change from year to year, and any work which occupies us for very long will be wanting in unity of manner. Men are apt enough of themselves to fall into the most astonishing delusions about the opportunities which time affords, but they are even more deluded by the talk of the people about them. When children hear that a new carriage has been ordered of the builder, they expect to see it driven up to the door in a fortnight, with the paint quite dry on the panels. All people are children in this respect, except the workman, who knows the endless details of production ; and the workman himself, notwith- standing the lessons of experience, makes light of the future task. What gigantic plans we scheme, and how little we advance in the labour of a day ! Three pages of the book (to be half erased to-morrow), a bit of drapery in the picture that will probably have to be done over again, the imperceptible removal of an ounce of marble- THE POWER OF TIME. 147 dust from the statue that seems as if it never would be finished ; so much from dawn to twilight has been the accomplishment of the golden hours. If there is one lesson which experience teaches, surely it is this, to make plans that are strictly limited, and to arrange our work in a practicable way within the limits that we must accept. Others expect so much from us that it seems as if we had accomplished nothing. “ What ! have you done only that ? ” they say, or we know by their looks that they are thinking it. The most illusory of all the work that we propose to ourselves is reading. It seems so easy to read, that we intend, in the indefinite future, to master the vastest literatures. We cannot bring ourselves to admit that the library we have collected is in great part closed to us simply by want of time. A dear friend of mine, who was a solicitor with a large practice, indulged in wonderful illusions about reading, and collected several thousand volumes, all fine editions, but he died without having cut their leaves. I like the university habit of making read- ing a business, and estimating the mastery of a few authors as a just title to consideration for scholarship. I should like very well to be shut up in a garden for a whole summer with no literature but the “ Faery Queene,” and one year I very nearly realized that project, but publishers and the postman interfered with it. After all, this business of reading ought to be less illusory than most others, for printers divide books into pages, which they number, so that, with a moderate skill in arithmetic, one ought to be able to foresee the limits of his possi- bilities. There is another observation which may be suggested, and that is to take note of the time required for reading different languages. We read very slowly L 2 PART IV. LETTER II. Li7nited plans. Illusions about reading.I4S THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IV. LETTER II. Time lost in grammars a?id dictionaries. Thrift not avarice. ** Give it timeT when the language is imperfectly mastered, and we need the dictionary, whereas in the native tongue we see the whole page almost at a glance, as if it were a picture. People whose time for reading is limited ought not to waste it in grammars and dictionaries, but to confine themselves resolutely to a couple of languages, or three at the very utmost, notwithstanding the contempt of polyglots, who estimate your learning by the variety of your tongues. It is a fearful throwing away of time, from the literary point of view, to begin more languages than you can master or retain, and to be always puzzling your- self about irregular verbs. All plans for sparing time in intellectual matters ought, however, to proceed upon the principle of thrift, and not upon the principle of avarice. The object of the thrifty man in money matters is so to lay out his money as to get the best possible result from his ex- penditure; the object of the avaricious man is to spend no more money than he can help. An artist who taught me painting often repeated a piece of advice which is valuable in other things than art, and which I try to remember whenever patience fails. He used to say to me, 11 Give it time." The mere length of time that we bestow upon our work is in itself a most im- portant element of success, and if I object to the use of languages that we only half know, it is not because it takes us a long time to get through a chapter, but because we are compelled to think about syntax and conjugations which did not in the least occupy the mind of the author, when we ought rather to be thinking about those things which did occupy his mind, about the events which he narrated, or the characters that he imagined or described. There are, in truth, only two ways of impressing anythingTHE POWER OF TIME. H9 on the memory, either intensity or duration. If you saw a man struck down by an assassin, you would remember the occurrence all your life ; but to remember with equal vividness a picture of the assassination, you would pro- bably be obliged to spend a month or two in copying it. The subjects of our studies rarely produce an intensity of emotion sufficient to ensure perfect recollection with- out the expenditure of time. And when your object is not to learn, but to produce, it is well to bear in mind that everything requires a certain definite time-outlay, which cannot be reduced without an inevitable injury to quality. A most experienced artist, a man of the very rarest executive ability, wrote to me the other day about a set of designs I had suggested. “ If I could but get the TIME,”—the large capitals are his own,—“ for, some- how or other, let a design be never so studiously simple in the masses, it will fill itself as it goes on, like the weasel in the fable who got into the meal-tub ; and when the pleasure begins in attempting tone and mystery and intricacy, away go the hours at a gallopl' A well-known and very successful English dramatist wrote to me: “ When I am hurried, and have undertaken more work than I can execute in the time at my disposal, I am always perfectly paralysed.” There is another side to this subject which deserves attention. Some men work best under the sense of pressure. Simple compression evolves heat from iron, so that there is a flash of fire when a ball hits the side of an ironclad. The same law seems to hold good in the intellectual life of man, whenever he needs the stimulus of extraordinary excitement. Rossini positively advised a young composer never to write his overture until the evening before the first performance. ‘‘Nothing,” PART IV. LETTER II. hitensity and duration• Gallofiitig hours. The sense rj pressure. 1 Rossini.THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. IS° PART IV. LETTER II. R ossini. Time enough. he said, “ excites inspiration like necessity; the pre- sence of a copyist waiting for your work, and the view of a manager in despair tearing out his hair by hand- fuls. In Italy in my time all the managers were bald at thirty. I composed the overture to ‘ Othello ’ in a small room in the Barbaja Palace, where the baldest and most ferocious of managers had shut me up by force with nothing but a dish of maccaroni, and the threat that I should not leave the place alive until I had written the last note. I wrote the overture to the ‘ Gazza Ladra ’ on the day of the first performance, in the upper loft of the La Scala, where I had been confined by the manager, under the guard of four scene-shifters who had orders to throw my text out of the window bit by bit to copyists, who were waiting below to transcribe it. In default of music I was to be thrown out myself.” I have quoted the best instance known to me of this voluntary seeking after pressure, but striking as it is, even this instance does not weaken what I said before. For observe, that although Rossini deferred the composition of his overture till the evening before the first perform- ance, he knew very well that he could do it thoroughly in the time. He was like a clever schoolboy who knows that he can learn his lesson in the quarter of an hour before the class begins; or he was like an orator who knows that he can deliver a passage and compose at the same time the one which is to follow, so that he prefers to arrange his speech in the presence of his audience. Since Rossini always allowed himself all the time that was necessary for what he had to do, it is clear that he did not sin against the great time-necessity. The express which can travel from London to Edinburgh in a night may leave the English metropolis on Saturday eveningTHE POWER OF TIME. although it is due in Scotland on Sunday, and still act with the strictest consideration about time. The blame- able error lies in miscalculation, and not in rapidity of performance. Nothing wastes time like miscalculation. It negatives all results. It is the parent of incompleteness, the great author of the Unfinished and the Unserviceable. Almost every intellectual man has laid out great masses of time on five or six different branches of knowledge which are not of the least use to him, simply because he has not carried them far enough, and could not carry them far enough in the time he had to give. Yet this might have been ascertained at the beginning by the simplest arith- metical calculation. The experience of students in all departments of knowledge has quite definitely ascertained the amount of time that is necessary for success in them, and the successful student can at once inform the aspi- rant how far he is likely to travel along the road. What is the use, to anybody, of having just enough skill to feel vexed with himself that he has no more, and yet angry at other people for not admiring the little that he possesses ? I wish to direct your attention to a cause which more than any other produces disappointment in ordinary in- tellectual pursuits. It is this. People can often calculate with the utmost accuracy what they can accomplish in ten minutes or even in ten hours, and yet the very same persons will make the most absurd miscalculations about what they can accomplish in ten years. There is of course a reason for this : if there were not, so many sensible people would not suffer from the delusion. The reason is, that owing to the habits of human life there is a certain elasticity in large spaces of time that include 151 PART IV. LETTER II. IVaste of time by mis- calculation. Calculating for short and Ion* spat es.152 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IV. LETTER II. The elasticity of time% Value of idle hours. nights, and meal-times, and holidays. We fancy that we shall be able, by working harder than we have been accustomed to work, and by stealing hours from all the different kinds of rest and amusement, to accomplish far more in the ten years that are to come than we have ever actually accomplished in the same space. And to a certain extent this may be very true. No doubt a man whose mind has become seriously aware of the vast importance of economizing his time will economize it better than he did in the days before the new conviction came to him. No doubt, after skill in our work has been confirmed, we shall perform it with increased speed. But the elasticity of time is rather that of leather than that of india-rubber. There is certainly a degree of elasticity, but the degree is strictly limited. The true master of time-thrift would be no more liable to illusion about years than about hours, and would act as prudently when working for remote results as for near ones. Not that we ought to work as if we were always under severe pressure. Little books are occasionally published in which we are told that it is a sin to lose a minute. From the intellectual point of view this doctrine is simply stupid. What the Philistines call wasted time is often rich in the most varied experience to the intelligent^ If all that we have learned in idle moments could be suddenly expelled from our minds by some chemical process, it is probable that they would be worth very little afterwards. What, after such a process, would have remained to Shakespeare, Scott, Cervantes, Thackeray, Dickens, Hogarth, Goldsmith, Moliere? When these great students of human nature were learning most, the sort of people who write the foolish little books just alluded to would have wanted to send them home toTHE POWER OF TIME. 153 the dictionary or the desk. Topffer and Claude Tillier, both men of delicate and observant genius, attached the greatest importance to hours of idleness. Tdpffer said that a year of downright loitering was a desirable element in a liberal education; whilst Claude Tillier went even farther, and boldly affirmed that “ le temps le mieux employ6 est celui que Ton perd.” Let us not think too contemptuously of the miscal- culators of time, since not one of us is exempt from their folly. We have all made miscalculations, or more frequently have simply omitted calculation altogether, preferring childish illusion to a manly examination of realities; and afterwards as life advances another illusion steals over us not less vain than the early one, but bitter as that was sweet. We now begin to reproach ourselves with all the opportunities that have been neglected, and now our folly is to imagine that we might have done impossible wonders if we had only exercised a little resolution. We might have been thorough classical scholars, and spoken all the great modern languages, and written immortal books, and made a colossal fortune. Miscalculations again, and these the most imbecile of all; for the youth who forgets to reason in the glow of happiness and hope, is wiser than the man who over- estimates what was once possible that he may embitter the days which remain to him. PART iv. LETTER II. Tillier. The illusion of youth The ilhis ion of matiirity.*54 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IV. LETTER III. Victor yacqne- mont. German workers. LETTER III. TO A MAN OF BUSINESS WHO DESIRED TO MAKE HIMSELF BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH LITERATURE, BUT WHOSE TIME FOR READ- ING WAS LIMITED. Victor Jacquemont on the intellectual labours of the Germans— Business may be set off as the equivalent to one of their pursuits —Necessity for regularity in the economy of time—What may be done in two hours a day—Evils of interruption—Florence Nightingale—Real nature of interruption—Instance from the Apology of Socrates. In the charming and precious letters of Victor Jacque- mont, a man whose life was dedicated to culture, and who not only lived for it, but died for it, there is a passage about the intellectual labours of Germans, which takes due account of the expenditure of time. “ Comme j’etais etonne,” he says, “ de la prodigieuse variete et de l’e'tendue de connaissances des Allemands, je demandai un jour a Tun de mes amis, Saxon de naissance et l’un des premiers geologues de l’Europe, comment ses com- patriotes s’y prenaient pour savoir tant de choses. Voici sa re'ponse, k peu pres : ‘ Un Allemand (moi excepte qui suis le plus paresseux des homines) se leve de bonne heure, e'te et hiver, k cinq heures environ. II travaille quatre heures avant le dejeuner, fumant quelquefois pen- dant tout ce temps, sans que cela nuise k son application. Son dejeuner dure une demi-heure, et il reste, aprhs, une autre demi-heure k causer avec sa femme et k faire jouer ses enfants. II retourne au travail pour six heures ; dine sans se presser ; fume une heure apres le diner, jouant encore avec ses enfants; et avant de se coucher il tra-THE POWER OF TIME. 155 vaille encore quatre heures. II recommence tous les jours, ne sortant jamais.—Voilk/ me dit mon ami, ‘com- ment Oersted, le plus grand physicien de TAllemagne, en est aussi le plus grand mddecin; voilk comment Kant le metaphysicien etait un des plus savants astronomes de l’Europe, et comment Goethe, qui en est actuellement le premier litterateur, dans presque tous les genres, et le plus fecond, est excellent botaniste, mineralogiste, physicien/ ” 1 * * Here is something to encourage, and something to discourage you at the same time. The number of hours which these men have given in order to become what they were, is so great as to be past all possibility of imi- tation by a man occupied in business. It is clear that, with your counting-house to occupy you during the best hours of every day, you can never labour for your intel- 1 44 Being astonished at the prodigious variety and at the extent of knowledge possessed by the Germans, I begged one of my friends, Saxon by birth, and one of the foremost geologists in Europe, to tell me how his countrymen managed to know so many things. Here is his answer, nearly in his own words :—4 A German (except myself, who am the idlest of men) gets up early, summer and winter, at about five o’clock. He works four hours before breakfast, sometimes smoking all the time, which does not interfere with his application. His breakfast lasts half an houi, and he remains, after- wards, another half-hour talking with his wife and playing with his children. He returns to his work for six hours, dines without hurrying himself, smokes an hour after dinner, playing again with his children, and before he goes to bed he works four hours more. He begins again every day, and never goes out. This is how it comes to pass that Oersted, the greatest natural philospher in Germany, is at the same time the greatest physician ; this is how Kant the metaphy sician was one of the most learned astronomers in Europe, and how Goethe, who is at present the first and most fertile author in Germany in almost all kinds of literature, is an excellent botanist, mineralogist, and natural philosopher/ ” PART IV. LETTER III. Discourage ‘ merit and encourage- ment. Quotation from Victor Jac que- rn o?i t.156 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IV. LETTER III. Varied pursuits. Practical People. Inference. lectual culture with that unremitting application which these men have given for theirs. But, on the other hand, you will perceive that these extraordinary workers have hardly ever been wholly dedicated to one pursuit, and the reason for this in most cases is clear. Men who go through a prodigious amount of work feel the ne- cessity for varying it. The greatest intellectual workers I have known personally have varied their studies as Kant and Goethe did, often taking up subjects of the most opposite kinds, as for instance imaginative litera- ture and the higher mathematics, the critical and practi- cal study of fine art and the natural sciences, music, and political economy. The class of intellects which arrogate to themselves the epithet “ practical,” but which we call Philistine, always oppose this love of variety, and have an unaffected contempt for it, but these are matters beyond their power of judgment. They cannot know the needs of the intellectual life, because they have never lived it. The practice of all the greatest intellects has been to cultivate themselves variously, and if they have always done so, it must be because they have felt the need of it. The encouraging inference which you may draw from this in reference to your own case is that, since all intel- lectual men have had more than one pursuit, you may set off your business against the most absorbing of their pursuits, and for the rest be still almost as rich in time as they have been. You may study literature as some painters have studied it, or science as some literary men have studied it. The first step is to establish a regulated economy of your time, so that, without interfering with a due atten- tion to business and to health, you may get two clearTHE POWER OF TIME 157 hours every day for reading of the best kind. It is not much, some men would tell you that it is not enough, but I purposely fix the expenditure of time at a low figure because I want it to be always practicable consistently with all the duties and necessary pleasures -of your life. If I told you to read four hours every day, I know before- hand what would be the consequence. You would keep the rule for three days, by an effort, then some engage- ment would occur to break it, and you would have no rule at all. And please observe that the two hours are to be given quite regularly, because, when the time given is not much, regularity is quite essential. ,Two hours a day, regularly, make more than seven hundred hours in a year, and in seven hundred hours, wisely and uninter- ruptedly occupied, much may be done in anything. Permit me to insist upon that word uninterruptedly. Few people realize the full evil of an interruption, few people know all that is implied by it. After warning nurses against the evils of interruption, Florence Nightin- gale says :— “ These things are not fancy. If we consider that, with sick as with well, every thought decomposes some nervous matter—that decomposition as well as re-com- position of nervous matter is always going on, and more quickly with the sick than with the well,—that to ob- trude another thought upon the brain whilst it is in the act of destroying nervous matter by thinking, is calling upon it to make a new exertion—if we consider these things, which are facts, not fancies, we shall remember that we are doing positive injury by interrupting, by startling a ‘ fanciful ’ person, as it is called. Alas, it is no fancy. “If the invalid is forced by his avoc?tions to con- PART IV, LETTER III. Practicable rules. Two hours daily. Evils of interrup• tion.153 THE INTELLECTUAL PART IV. LETTER III. Effects of intercep- tion on the sick On the healthy also. Different ki?ids of interrupt tion. tinue occupations requiring much thinking, the injury is doubly great. In feeding a patient suffering under deli- rium or stupor you may suffocate him by giving him his food suddenly, but if you rub his lips gently with a spoon and thus attract his attention, he will swallow the food unconsciously, but with perfect safety. Thus it is with the brain. If you offer it a thought, especially one requiring a decision, abruptly, you do it a real, not fanci- ful, injury.. Never speak to a sick person suddenly; but, at the same time, do not keep his expectation on the tiptoe.” To this you will already have answered, mentally, that you are not a patient suffering under either delirium or stupor, and that nobody needs to rub your lips gently with a spoon. But Miss Nightingale does not consider interruption baneful to sick persons only. “ This rule indeed,” she continues, “ applies to the well quite as much as to the sick. I have never known persons who exposed themselves for years to constant interruption who did not muddle away their intellects by it at last. The process, with them, may be accomplished without pain. With the sick, pain gives warning of the injury.” Interruption is an evil to the reader which must be estimated very differently from ordinary business inter- ruptions. The great question about interruption is not whether it compels you to divert your attention to other facts, but whether it compels you to tune your whole mind to another diapason. Shopkeepers are incessantly compelled to change the subject; a stationer is asked for notepaper one minute, for sealing-wax the next, and immediately afterwards for a particular sort of steel pen. The subjects of his thoughts are changed very rapidly, but the general state of his mind is not changed; he isTHE POWER OF TIME. 159 always strictly in his shop, as much mentally as phy- sically. When an attorney is interrupted in the study of a case by the arrival of a client who asks him questions about another case, the change is more difficult to bear ; yet even here the general state of mind, the legal state of mind, is not interfered with. But now suppose a reader perfectly absorbed in his author, an author belonging very likely to another age and another civilization entirely different from ours. Suppose that you are reading the Defence of Socrates in Plato, and have the whole scene before you as in a picture : the tribunal of the Five Hundred, the pure Greek architecture, the interested Athenian public, the odious Melitus, the envious enemies, the beloved and grieving friends whose names are dear to us, and immortal; and in the centre you see one figure draped like a poor man, in cheap and common cloth, that he wears winter and summer, with a face plain to downright ugliness, but an air of such genuine courage and self-possession that no acting could imitate it; and you hear the firm voice saying— PART iv. LETTER III. Interrup- tion iu readi7ig. Instci7ice fro7)i Plat Os Ti/uLarai 5* ovv juoi di/r)p Oavarov. E lev.1 You are just beginning the splendid paragraph where Socrates condemns himself to maintenance in the Prytaneum, and if you can only be safe from interrup- tion till it is finished, you will have one of those minutes of noble pleasure which are the rewards of intellectual toil. But if you are reading in the daytime in a house where there are women and children, or where people can fasten upon you for pottering details of business, you may be sure that you will not be able to get to the 1 The man, then, judges me worthy of death. Be it so.i6o THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IV. LETTER III. Interrup- tion. LETTER IV. Uses of hurry. end of the passage without in some way or other being rudely awakened from your dream, and suddenly brought back into the common world. The loss intellectually is greater than anyone who had not suffered from it could imagine. People think that an interruption is merely the unhooking of an electric chain, and that the current will flow, when the chain is hooked on again, just as it did before. To the intellectual and imaginative student an interruption is not that; it is the destruction of a picture. LETTER IV. TO A STUDENT WHO FELT HURRIED AND DRIVEN. People who like to be hurried—Sluggish temperaments gain vivacity under pressure—Routine work may be done at increased speed —The higher intellectual work cannot be done hurriedly—The art of avoiding hurry consists in Selection—How it was practised by a good landscape painter—Selection in reading and writing—• Some studies allow the play of selection more than others do— Languages permit it less than natural sciences—Difficulty of using selection in the fulfilment of literary engagements. So you have got yourself into that pleasant condi- tion which is about as agreeable, and as favourable to fruitful study and observation, as the condition of an over-driven cab-horse! Very indolent men, who will not work at all unless under the pressure of immediate urgency, sometimes tell us that they actually like to be hurried; but although certain kinds of practical work which have become per- fectly easy from habit may be got through at a great pace when the workman feels that there is an immediateTHE POWER OF TIME. 161 necessity for effort, it is certainly not true that hurry is favourable to sound study of any kind. Work which merely runs in a fixed groove may be urged on occa- sionally at express speed without any perceptible injury to the quality of it. A clever violinist can play a passage prestissimo as correctly as if he played it a banker’s clerk can count money very rapidly writh posi- tively less risk of error than if he counted it as you and I do. A person of sluggish temperament really gains in vivacity when he is pressed for time, and becomes during those moments of excited energy a clearer-headed and more able person than he is under ordinary cir- cumstances. It is therefore not surprising that he should find himself able to accomplish more under the great stimulus of an immediate necessity than he is able to do in the dulness of his every-day existence. Great prodigies of labour have been performed in this way to avert im- pending calamity, especially by military officers in critical times like those of the Sepoy rebellion ; and in the obscurer lives of tradesmen, immense exertions are often made to avert the danger of bankruptcy, when without the excitement of a serious anxiety of that kind the tradesman would not feel capable of more than a mode- rate and reasonable degree of attention to his affairs. But notwithstanding the many instances of this kind which might be cited, and the many more which might easily be collected, the truth remains that the highest kinds of intellectual labour can hardly ever be properly performed when the degree of pressure is in the least excessive. You may, for example, if you have the kind of ability which makes a good journalist, write an effec- tive leader with your watch lying on the table, and finish it exactly when the time is up ; but if you had the kind of PART IV. LETTER IV. Vivacity gained under pressure. Prodigies labour wider Pressure.THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 162 PART IV. LETTER IV. PcL ts and discoverers. Selection. In painting'. ability which makes a good poet, you could not write anything like highly-finished poetry against time. It is equally clear that scientific discovery, which, though it may flash suddenly upon the mind of the discoverer, is always the result of long brooding over the most patient observations, must come at its own moments, and cannot be commanded. The activity of poets and discoverers would be paralysed by exigencies which stimulate the activity of soldiers and men of business. The truth is, that intelligence and energy are beneficially stimulated by pressure from without, whereas the working of the higher intellect is impeded by it, and that to such a degree that in times of the greatest pressure the high intellectual life is altogether suspended, to leave free play to the lower but more immediately serviceable intelligence. This being so, it becomes a necessary part of the art of intellectual living so to order our work as to shield ourselves if possible, at least during a certain portion of our time, from the evil consequences of hurry. The whole secret lies in a single word—Selection. An excellent landscape painter told me that whatever he had to do, he always took the greatest pains to arrange his work so as never to have his tranquillity disturbed by haste. His system, which is quite applicable to many other things than landscape painting, was based on the principle of selection. He always took care to determine beforehand how much time he could devote to each sketch or study, and then, from the mass of natural facts before him, selected the most valuable facts which could be recorded- in the time at his disposal. But however short that time might be, he was always per- fectly cool and deliberate in the employment of it.THE POWER OF TIME. Indeed this coolness and his skill in selection helped each other mutually, for he chose wisely because he was cool, and he had time to be cool by reason of the wisdom of his selection. In his little memoranda, done in five minutes, the1 lines were laid just as deliberately as the tints on an elaborate picture; the difference being in choice only, not in speed. Now, if we apply this art of selection to all our labours it will give us much of that landscape painter’s enviable coolness, and enable us to work more satisfactorily. Suppose that instead of painting and sketching we have to do a great deal of reading and writing: the art is to select the reading which will be most useful to our pur- pose, and, in writing, to select the words which will express our meaning with the greatest clearness in a little space. The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again. And even of the books we decide to read, there are almost always large portions which do not concern us, and which we are sure to forget the day after we have read them. The art is to skip all that does not concern us, whilst missing nothing that we really need. No external guidance can teach us this; for nobody but ourselves can guess what the needs of our intellect may be. But let us select with decisive firmness, independently of other people’s advice, inde- pendently of the authority of custom. In every news- paper that comes to hand there is a little bit that we ought to read ; the art is to find that little bit, and waste no time over the rest. Some studies permit the exercise of selection better than others do. A language, once undertaken, permits M 2 163 PART IV. LETTER IV. Selection in reading and writing. Skipping.164 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IV. LETTER IV. Selection i?t writing. LETTER V. Compensa- tion. very little selection indeed, since you must know the whole vocabulary, or nearly so, to be able to read and speak. On the other hand, the natural sciences permit the most prudent exercise of selection. For example, in botany you may study as few plants as you choose. In writing, the art of selection consists in giving the utmost effect to expression in the fewest words; but of this art I say little, for who can contend against an in- evitable trade-necessity? Almost every author of ordi- nary skill could, when pressed for time, find a briefer expression for his thoughts, but the real difficulty in fulfilling literary engagements does not lie in the ex- pression of the thought, it lies in the sufficiently rapid production of a certain quantity of copy. For this pur- pose I fear that selection would be of very little use—of no more use, in fact, than in any other branch of manu- facture where (if a certain standard is kept up to) quantity in sale is more important than quality of material. LETTER V. TO A FRIEND WHO, THOUGH HE HAD NO PROFESSION, COULD NOT FIND TIME FOR HIS VARIOUS INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS. Compensations resulting from the necessity for time—Opportunity only exists for us so far as we have time to make use of it—This cum- stances. \ N 1178 PART V. LETTER II. Pernicious effects of necessity. THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. usually suffice to record the outcome of a month’s research. Necessity, instead of advancing your studies, stops them. Whenever her harsh voice speaks it becomes your duty to shut your books, put aside your instru- ments, and do something that will fetch a price in the market. The man of science has to abandon the pursuit of a discovery to go and deliver a popular lecture a hundred miles off, for which he gets five pounds and his railway fare. The student of ancient literature has to read some feeble novel, and give three days of a valuable life to write an anonymous review which will bring him two pounds ten. The artist has to leave his serious picture to manufacture “ pot-boilers,” which will teach him nothing, but only spoil his hands and vitiate the public taste. The poet suspends his poem (which is promised to a publisher for Christmas, and will be spoiled in consequence by hurry at the last) in order to write newspaper articles on subjects of which he has little knowledge and in which he takes no interest. And yet these are instances of those comparatively happy and fortunate needy who are only compelled to suspend their intellectual life, and who can cheer themselves in their enforced labour with the hope of shortly renewing it. What of those others who are pushed out of their path for ever by the buffets of unkindly fortune ? Many a fine intellect has been driven into the deep quagmire, and has struggled in it vainly till death came, which but for that grim necessity might have scaled the immortal mountains. This metaphor of the mountains has led me, by a natural association of ideas, to think of a writer who has added to our enjoyment of their beauty, and I think of him the more readily that his career will serve as anTHE INFL UENCES OF MONE K 179 illustration—far better than any imaginary career—of the very subject which just now occupies my mind. Mr. Ruskin is not only one of the best instances, but he is positively the very best instance except the two Humboldts, of an intellectual career which has been greatly aided by material prosperity, and which would not have been possible without it. This does not in the least detract from the merit of the author of “ Modern Painters,” for it needed a rare force of resolution, or a powerful instinct of genius, to lead the life of a severe student under every temptation to indolence. Still it is true that Mr. Ruskin’s career would have been impos- sible for a poor man, however gifted. A poor man would not have had access to Mr. Ruskin’s materials, and one of his chief superiorities has always been an abundant wealth of material. And if we go so far as to suppose that the poor man might have found other materials perhaps equivalent to these, we know that he could not have turned them to that noble use. The poor critic would be immediately absorbed in the ocean of anony- mous periodical literature; he could not find time for the incubation of great works. “ Modern Painters,” the result of seventeen years of study, is not simply a work of genius, but of genius seconded by wealth. Close to it on my shelves stand four volumes which are the monument of another intellectual life devoted to the investigation of nature. De Saussure, whom Mr. Ruskin reverences as one of his ablest teachers, and whom all sincere students of nature regard as a model observer, pursued for many laborious years a kind of life which was not, and could not be, self-supporting in the pecu- niary sense. Many other patient labourers, who have not the celebrity of these, work steadily in the same way, N 2 PART V. LETTER II. Adva?itages of wealth in the case of M r. R us kin. 1 Also in that of DeSaussiLrti8o PART V. ' LETTER II. Work spoiled i?i the execution by pecuniary necessity. THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. and are enabled to do so by the possession of inde- pendent fortune. I know one such who gives a whole summer to the examination of three or four acres of mountain-ground, the tangible result being comprised in a few memoranda, which, considered as literary material, might (in the hands of a skilled professional writer) just possibly be worth five pounds. Not only do narrow pecuniary means often render high intellectual enterprises absolutely impossible, but they do what is frequently even more trying to the health and character, they permit you to undertake work that would be worthy of you if you might only have time and ma- terials for the execution of it, and then spoil it in the doing. An intellectual labourer will bear anything ex- cept that. You may take away the very table he is writing upon, if you let him have a deal board for his books and papers; you may take away all his fine editions, if you leave him common copies that are legible; you may remove his very candlestick, if you leave him a bottle- neck to stick his candle in, and he will go on working cheerfully still. But the moment you do anything to spoil the quality of the work itself, you make him irri- table and miserable. “You think,” says Sir Arthur Helps, “ to gain a good man to manage your affairs because he happens to have a small share in your under- taking. It is a great error. You want him to do some- thing well which you are going to tell him to do. If he has been wisely chosen, and is an able man, his pecuniary interest in the matter will be mere dust in the balance, when compared with the desire which belongs to all such men to do their work well.” Yes, this is the central passion of all men of true ability, do their work well; J their happiness lies in that, and not in the amount ofTHE I NFL UENCES OF MONE K 1S1 their profits, or even in their reputation. But then, on the other hand, they suffer indescribable mental misery when circumstances compel them to do their work less well than they know that, under more favourable circum- stances, they would be capable of doing it. The want of money is, in the higher intellectual pursuits, the most common hindrance to thoroughness and excellence of work. De Senancour, who, in consequence of a strange concatenation of misfortunes, was all his life struggling in shallows, suffered not from the privations themselves, but from the vague feeling that they stunted his intellec- tual growth ; and any experienced student of human nature must be aware that De Senancour was right. With larger means he would have seen more of the world, and known it better, and written of it with riper wisdom. He said that the man “ who only saw in poverty the direct effect of the money-privation, and only compared, for instance, an eight-penny dinner to one that cost ten shillings, would have no conception of the true nature of misfortune, for not to spend money is the least of the evils of poverty.” Bossuet said that he “ had no attachment to riches, and still if he had only what is barely necessary, if he felt himself narrowed, he would lose more than half his talents.” Sainte-Beuve said, “ Only think a little what a difference there is in the starting-point and in the employment of the faculties between a Due de Luynes and a Senancour.” How many of the most distinguished authors have been dependent upon private means, not simply for physical sustenance, but for the opportunities which they afforded of gaining that experience of life which was absolutely essential to the full growth of their mental faculties. Shelley’s writings brought him no profit whatever, and PART V. LETTER II. Bad effects of poverty in the case of De Senancour.1$2 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART V. LETTER II. Words- worth. Scott. Kepler. His struggles for bread. Tycho Brahe. Schiller and Goethe. without a private income he could not have produced them, for he had not a hundred buyers. Yet his whole time was employed in study or in travel, which for him was study of another kind, or else in the actual labour of composition. Wordsworth tried to become a London journalist and failed. A young man called Raisley Calvert died and left him 900/.; this saved the poet in Wordsworth, as it kept him till the publication of the “ Lyrical Ballads,” and afterwards other pieces of good luck happened to him, so that he could think and com- pose at leisure. Scott would not venture to devote himself to literature until he had first secured a com- fortable income outside of it. Poor Kepler struggled with constant anxieties, and told fortunes by astrology for a livelihood, saying that astrology as the daughter of astronomy ought to keep her mother; but fancy a man of science wasting precious time over horoscopes ! “ I supplicate you,” he writes to Mcestlin, “ if there is a situation vacant at Tubingen, do what you can to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread and wine and other necessaries of life, for my wife is not accus- tomed to live on beans.” He had to accept all sorts of jobs; he made almanacks, and served anyone who would pay him. His only tranquil time for study was when he lived in Styria, on his wife’s income, a tranquillity that did not last for long, and never returned. How different is this from the princely ease of Tycho Brahe, who laboured for science alone, with all the help that the ingenuity of his age could furnish! There is the same contrast, in a later generation, between Schiller and Goethe. Poor Schiller “ wasting so much of his precious life in literary hack-work, translating French books for , a miserable pittance; ” Goethe, fortunate in his pecuniaryTHE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 183 independence as in all the other great circumstances of his life, and this at a time when the pay of authors was so miserable that they could hardly exist by the pen. Schiller got a shilling a page for his translations. Merck the publisher offered three pounds sterling for a drama of Goethe. “ If Europe praised me,” Goethe said, “what has Europe done for me? Nothing. my works have been an expense to meP The pecuniary rewards which men receive for their labour are so absurdly (yet inevitably) disproportionate to the intellectual power that is needed for the task, and also to the toil involved, that no one can safely rely upon the higher intellectual pursuits as a protection from money-anxieties. I will give you two instances of this disproportion, real instances, of men who are known to me personally. One of them is an eminent Englishman of most remarkable intellectual force, who for many years past has occupied his leisure in the composition of works that are valued by the thinking public to a degree which it would be difficult to exaggerate. But this thinking public is not numerous, and so in the year 1866 this eminent philosopher, “ unable to continue losing money in endeavouring to enlighten his contemporaries, was com- pelled to announce the termination of his series.” On the other hand, a Frenchman, also known to me per- sonally, one day conceived the fortunate idea that a new primer might possibly be a saleable commodity. So he composed a little primer, beginning with the alphabet, advancing to a, b, ab;b, a, and even going so far in history as to affirm that Adam was the first man and Abraham the father of the faithful. He had the wisdom to keep the copyright of this little publication, which em- ployed (in the easiest of all imaginable literary labour) PART V. LETTER II. Goethe. An eminent E nglish philosopher. An ingen ions Frenchman184 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART V. LETTER II. A successful author. Loss of time in money• getting. Professional authorship. the evenings of a single week. It has brought him in, ever since, a regular income of 120/. a year, which, so far from showing any signs of diminution, is positively im- proving. This success encouraged the same intelligent gentleman to compose more literature of the same order, and he is now the enviable owner of several other such copyrights, all of them very valuable; in fact as good properties as house-leases in London. Here is an author who, from the pecuniary point of view, was incomparably more successful than Milton, or Shelley, or Goethe. If every intellectual man could shield his higher life by writing primers for children which should be as good as house-leases, if the proverb Quipent leplus peut le moinswere a true proverb, which it is not, then of course all men of culture would be perfectly safe, since they all certainly know the contents of a primer. But you may be able to write the most learned philosophical treatise and still not be able to earn your daily bread. Consider, too, the lamentable loss of time which people of high culture incur in making experiments on public taste, when money becomes one of their main objects. Whilst they are writing stories for children, or elementary educational books which people of far inferior attainment could probably do much better, their own self- improvement comes to a stand-still. If it could only be ascertained without delay what sort of work would bring in the money they require, then there would be some chance of apportioning time so as to make reserves for self improvement; but when they have to write a score of volumes merely to ascertain the humour of the public, there is little chance of leisure. The life of the profes- sional author who has no reputation is much less favour- able to high culture than the life of a tradesman inTHE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 185 ■ .I-.. I. - ■ — - — moderately easy circumstances who can reserve an hour or two every day for some beloved intellectual pursuit. Sainte-Beuve tells us that during certain years of his life he had endeavoured, and had been able, so to arrange his existence that it should have both sweetness and dignity, writing from time to time what was agreeable, reading what was both agreeable and serious, cultivating friendships, throwing much of his mind into the intimate relations of every day, giving more to his friends than to the public, reserving what was most tender and delicate for the inner life, enjoying with moderation; such for him was the dream of an intellectual existence in which things truly precious were valued according to their worth. And “above all," he said, above all his desire was not to write too much, “ surtout nepas trop And then comes the regret for this wise, well-ordered life enjoyed by him only for a time. “ La necessite depuis m’a saisi et m’a contraint de renoncer a ce que je conside'rais comme le seul bonheur ou la consolation exquise du melancolique et du sage.” Auguste Comte lamented in like manner the evil intel- lectual consequences of anxieties about material needs. “There is nothing,” he said, “more mortal to my mind than the necessity, pushed to a certain degree, to have to think each day about a provision for the next. Happily I think little and rarely about all that; but whenever this happens to me I pass through moments of discouragement and positive despair, which if the influence of them became habitual would make me re- nounce all my labours, all my philosophical projects, to end my days like an ass." There are a hundred rules for getting rich, but the instinct of accumulation is worth all such rules put part v. LETTER II. Sai?ite- Bctive's ideal life• August6 Comte•186 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART V. LETTER II. Mere hoarders. Rich and poor. M07iey f^'otects the intellectual life. together. This instinct is rarely found in comlination with high intellectual gifts, and the reason is evident. To advance from a hundred pounds to a thousand is not an intellectual advance, and there is no intellectual interest in the addition of a cipher at the bankers’. Simply to accumulate money that you are never to use is, from the intellectual point of view, as stupid an operation as can be imagined. We observe, too, that the great accumulators, the men who are gifted by nature with the true instinct, are not usually such persons as we feel any ambition to become. Their faculties are con- centrated on one point, and that point, as it seems to us, of infinitely little importance. We cannot see that it signifies much to the intellectual well-being of humanity that John Smith should be worth his million when he dies, since we know quite well that John Smith’s mind will be just as ill-furnished then as it is now. In places where much money is made we easily acquire a positive disgust for it, and the curate seems the most distinguished gentle- man in the community, with his old black coat and his seventy pounds a year. We come to hate money-matters when we find that they exclude all thoughtful and disin- terested conversation, and we fly to the society of people with fixed incomes, not large enough for much saving, to escape the perpetual talk about investments. Our happiest hours have been spent with poor scholars, and artists, and men of science, whose words remain in the memory and make us rich indeed. Then we dislike money because it rules and restrains us, and because it is unintelligent and seems hostile, so far as that which is unintelligent can be hostile. And yet the real truth is that money is the strong protector of* the intellectual life. The student sits and studies, too often despising theTHE I NFL FENCES OF ALONE Y. 187 power that shelters him from the wintry night, that gives him roof and walls, and lamp, and books, and fire. For money is simply the accumulated labour of the past, guarding our peace as fleets and armies guard the in- dustry of England, or like some mighty fortress-wall within which men follow the most peaceful avocations. The art is to use money so that it shall be the protector and not the scatterer of our time, the body-guard of the sovereign Intellect and Will. PART V LETTER ^ «• LETTER III. TO A STUDENT IN GREAT POVERTY. Poverty really a great obstacle—Difference between a thousand rich men and a thousand poor men taken from persons of average natural gifts—The Houses of Parliament—The English recognize the natural connection between wealth and culture—Connection between ignorance and parsimony in expenditure—What may be honestly said for the encouragement of a very poor student. LETTER III. As it seems to me that to make light of the difficulties which lie in the path of another is not to show true sympathy for him, even though it is done sometimes out of a sort of awkward kindness and for his encourage- ment, I will not begin by pretending that poverty is not a great obstacle to the perfection of the intellectual life. It is a great obstacle; it is one of the very greatest of all obstacles. Only observe how riches and poverty operate upon mankind in the mass. Here and there no doubt a very poor man attains intellectual distinction when he has exceptional strength of will, and health enough to bear a great strain of extra labour that he imposes upon himself, and natural gifts so brilliant that he can learn in Poverty a great obstac le188 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART V. LETTER III. Two assemblies of rich men. Want of experience in poverty. an hour what common men learn in a day. But consider mankind in the mass. Look, for instance, at our two Houses of Parliament. They are composed of men taken from the average run of Englishmen with very little reference to ability, but almost all of them are rich men ; not one of them is poor, as you are poor; not one of them has to contend against the stem realities of poverty. Then consider the very high general level of intellectual attainment which distinguishes those two assemblies, and ask yourself candidly whether a thousand men taken from the beggars in the streets, or even from the far superior class of our manufacturing operatives, would be likely to understand, as the two Houses of Parliament understand, the many complicated questions of legisla- tion and of policy which are continually brought before them. We all know that the poor are too limited in knowledge and experience, from the want of the neces- sary opportunities, and too little accustomed to exercise their minds in the tranquil investigations of great ques- tions, to be competent for the work of Parliament. It is scarcely necessary to insist upon this fact to an English- man, because the English have always recognized the natural connection between wealth and culture, and have preferred to be governed by the rich from the belief that they are likely to be better informed, and better situated for intellectual activity of a disinterested kind, than those members of the community whose time and thoughts are almost entirely occupied in winning their daily bread by the incessant labour of their hands. And if you go out into the world, if you mix with men of very different classes, you will find that in a broad average way (I am not speaking just now of the exceptions) the richer classes are much more capable of entering into the sortTHE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 189 of thinking which may be called intellectual than those whose money is less plentiful, and whose opportunities have therefore been less abundant. Indeed it may be asserted, roughly and generally, that the narrowness of men’s ideas is in direct proportion to their parsimony in expenditure. I do not mean to affirm that all who spend largely attain large intellectual results, for of course we know that a man may spend vast sums on pursuits which do not educate him in anything worth knowing, but the advantage is that with habits of free expenditure the germs of thought are well tilled and watered, whereas parsimony denies them every external help. The most spending class in Europe is the English gentry, it is also the class most strikingly characterized by a high general average of information ;1 the most parsimonious class in Europe is the French peasantry, it is also the class most strikingly characterized by ignorance and intellectual apathy. The English gentleman has cultivated himself by various reading and extensive travel, but the French peasant will not go anywhere except to the market-town, and could not pardon the extravagance of buying a book, or a candle to read it by in the evening. Between these extremes we have various grades of the middle classes in which culture usually increases very much in proportion to the expenditure. The rule is not without its excep- tions ; there are rich vulgar people who spend a great deal without improving themselves at all—who only, by unlimited self-indulgence, succeed in making themselves so uncomfortably sensitive to every bodily inconvenience 1 The reader will please to bear in mind that I am speaking here of broad effects on great numbers. I do not think that aristocracy, in its spirit, is quite favourable to the exceptionally highest intel- lectual life. PART V. LETTER III. Expenditurt and parsimony. | English ge?itlemen and French peasants.THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 190 LETTER III. Effects of ancient wealth. part v. | that they have no leisure, even in the midst of an un- occupied life, to think of anything but their own bellies and their own skins—people whose power of attention is so feeble that the smallest external incident distracts it, and who remember nothing of their travels but a catalogue of trivial annoyances. But people of this kind do not generally belong to families on whom wealth has had time to produce its best effects. What I mean is, that a family which has been for generations in the habit' of spending four thousand a year will usually be found to have a more cultivated tone than one that has only spent four hundred. I have come to the recognition of this truth very re- luctantly indeed, not because I dislike rich people, but merely because they are necessarily a very small minority, and I should like every human being to have the best benefits of culture if it were only possible. The plain living and high thinking that Wordsworth so much valued is a cheering ideal, for most men have to live plainly, and if they could only think with a certain elevation we might hope to solve the great problem of human life, the reconciliation of poverty and the soul. There certainly is a slow movement in that direction, and the shortening of the hours of labour may afford some margin of leisure ; but we who work for culture every day, and all day long, and still feel that we know very little, and have hardly skill enough to make any effective use of the little that we know, can scarcely indulge in very enthusiastic anti - cipations of the future culture of the poor. Still, there are some things that may be rationally and truly said to a poor man who desires culture, and which are not without a sort of Spartan encouragement. You are restricted by your poverty, but it is not always a bad Possible culture of the poor.THE I NFL UENCES OF MONE Y. thing to be restricted, even from the intellectual point of of view. The intellectual powers of well-to-do people are very commonly made ineffective by the enormous multiplicity of objects that are presented to their attention, and which claim from them a sort of polite notice like the greeting of a great lady to each of her thousand guests. It requires the very rarest strength of mind, in a rich man, to concentrate his attention on anything—there are so many things that he is expected to make a pretence of knowing ; but nobody expects you to know anything, and this is an incalculable advantage. I think that all poor men who have risen to subsequent distinction have been greatly indebted to this independence of public opinion as to what they ought to know. In trying to satisfy that public opinion by getting up a pretence of various sorts of knowledge, which is only a sham, we sacrifice not only much precious time, but we blunt our natural interest in things. That interest you preserve in all its virgin force, and this force carries a man far. Then, again, although the opportunities of rich people are very superior to yours, they are not altogether so superior as they seem. There exists a great equalizing power, the limitation of human energy. A rich man may sit down to an enormous ban- quet, but he can only make a good use of the little that he is able to digest. So it is with the splendid intellectual banquet that is spread before the rich man’s eyes. He can only possess w'hat he has energy to master, and too frequently the manifest impossibility of mastering every- thing produces a feeling of discouragement that ends in his mastering nothing. A poor student, especially if he lives in an out-of-the-way place where there are no big libraries to bewilder him, may apply his energy with effect in the study of a few authors. 191 PART V. LETTER III. Effects oj opinion on the rich The poor moi'e independe7it of opinion. L Z77llts Of hwnan energy.192 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART V. LETTER III. The rich man does not always get jnost benefit. I used to believe a great deal more in opportunities and less in application than I do now. Time and health are needed, but with these there are always opportunities. Rich people have a fancy for spending money very use- lessly on their culture because it seems to them more valuable when it has been costly; but the truth is, that by the blessing of good and cheap literature, intellectual light has become almost as accessible as daylight. I have a rich friend who travels more, and buys more costly things, than I do, but he does not really learn more or advance '"farther in the twelvemonth. If my days are fully occupied, what has he to set against them ? only other well-occupied days, no more. If he is getting benefit at St. Petersburg he is missing the benefit I am getting round my house, and in it. The sum of the year’s benefit seems to be surprisingly alike in both cases. So if you are reading a piece of thoroughly good literature, Baron Rothschild may possibly be as well occupied as you—he is certainly not better occupied. When I open a noble volume I say to myself, “ Now the only Croesus that I envy is he who is reading a better book than this.”PART VI. CUSTOM AND TRADITION. LETTER L TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO HAD FIRMLY RESOLVED NEVER. TO WEAR ANYTHING BUT A GREY COAT.1 Secret enjoyment of rebellion against custom, and of the disabilities resulting from it—Penalties imposed by Society and by Nature out of proportion to the offence—Instances—What we consider penalties not really penalties, but only consequences—Society likes harmony, and is offended by dissonance—Utility of rebels against custom—That they ought to reserve their power of re- bellion for great occasions—Uses of custom—Duty of the intel- lectual class—Best way to procure the abolition of a custom we disapprove—Bad customs—Eccentricity sometimes a duty. When I had the pleasure of staying at your father’s house, you told me, rather to my surprise, that it was impossible for you to go to balls and dinner-parties because you did not possess such a thing as a dress-coat. The reason struck me as being scarcely a valid one, considering the rather high scale of expenditure adopted in the paternal mansion. It seemed clear that the eldest son of a family 1 The title of this letter seems so odd, that it may be necessary to inform the reader that it was addressed to a real person. PART VI. LETTER I. A dress coat. o194 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER I. Secret enjoyment of disobedie7ice to custom. Penalties and con- sequences. which lived after the liberal fashion of Yorkshire country gentlemen could afford himself a dress-coat if he liked. Then I wondered whether you disliked dress-coats from a belief that they were unbecoming to your person; but a very little observation of your character quite satis- factorily convinced me that, whatever might be your weaknesses (for everybody has some weaknesses), anxiety about personal appearance was not one of them. The truth is, that you secretly enjoy this little piece of disobedience to custom, and all the disabilities which result from it. This little rebellion is connected with a larger rebellion, and it is agreeable to you to demonstrate the unreasonableness of society by incurring a very severe penalty for a very trifling offence. You are always dressed decently, you offend against no moral rule, you have cul- tivated your mind by study and reflection, and it rather pleases you to think that a young gentleman so well quali- fied for society in everything of real importance should be excluded from it because he has not purchased a per- mission from his tailor. The penalties imposed by society for the infraction of very trifling details of custom are often, as it seems, out of all proportion to the offence ; but so are the penalties of nature. Only three days before the date of this letter, an intimate friend of mine was coming home from a day’s shooting. His nephew, a fine young man in the full enjoyment of existence, was walking ten paces in advance. A covey of partridges suddenly cross the road : my friend in shouldering his gun touches the trigger just a second too soon, and kills his nephew. Now, think of the long years of mental misery that will be the punishment of that very trifling piece of carelessness ! My poor friend has passed, in the space of a single instant, from a joyous» CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 195 life to a life that is permanently and irremediably saddened. It is as if he had left the summer sunshine to enter a gloomy dungeon and begin a perpetual imprisonment. And for what? For having touched a trigger, without evil intention, a little too precipitately. It seems harder still for the victim, who is sent out of the world in the bloom of perfect manhood because his uncle was not quite so cool as he ought to have been. Again, not far from where I live, thirty-five men were killed last week in a coal-pit from an explosion of fire-damp. One of their number had struck a lucifer to light his pipe : for doing this in a place where he ought not to have done it, the man suffers the penalty of death, and thirty-four others with him. The fact is simply that Nature will be obeyed, and makes no attempt to proportion punishments to offences: indeed, what in our human way we call punish- ments are not punishments, but simple consequences. So it is with the great social penalties. Society if you refuse obedience, you must take the consequences. Society has only one law, and that is custom. Even religion itself is socially powerful only just so far as it has custom on its side. Nature does not desire that thirty-five men should be destroyed because one could not resist the temptation of a pipe; but fire-damp is highly inflammable, and the explo- sion is a simple consequence. Society does not desire to exclude you because you will not wear evening dress; but the dress is customary, and your exclusion is merely a consequence of your nonconformity. The view of society goes no farther in this than the artistic con- ception (not very delicately artistic, perhaps) that it is prettier to see men in black coats regularly placed between ladies round a dinner-table than men in grey coats or PART vi. LETTEP I. Nat urt 'will be obeyed. Society will be obeyed. Society's artistic conceptions O 2196 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER I. Society will have peace. Rebels against ci+stom. brown coats. The uniformity of costume appears to represent uniformity of sentiment and to ensure a sort of harmony amongst the convives. What society really cares for is harmony; what it dislikes is dissent and noncon- formity. It wants peace in the dining-room, peace in the drawing-room, peace everywhere in its realm of tranquil pleasure. You come in your shooting-coat, which was in tune upon the moors, but is a dissonance amongst ladies in full dress. Do you not perceive that fustian and velveteen, which were natural amongst game- keepers, are not so natural on gilded chairs covered with silk, with lace and diamonds at a distance of three feet ? You don’t perceive it? Very well: society does not argue the point with you, but only excludes you. It has been said that in the life of every intellectual man there comes a time when he questions custom at all points. This seems to be a provision of nature for the reform and progress of custom itself, which without such questioning would remain absolutely stationary and irre- sistibly despotic. You rebels against the established custom have your place in the great work of progressive civilization. Without you, Western Europe would have been a second China. It is to the continual rebellion of such persons as yourself that we owe whatever progress has been accomplished since the times of our remotest forefathers. There have been rebels always, and the rebels have not been, generally speaking, the most stupid part of the nation. But what is the use of wasting this beneficial power of rebellion on matters too trivial to be worth attention ? Does it hurt your conscience to appear in a dress-coat ? Certainly not, and you would be as good-looking in it as you are in your velveteen shooting-jacket with theCUSTOM AND TRADITION. 197 pointers on the bronze buttons. Let us conform in these trivial matters, which nobody except a tailor ought to con- sider worth a moment’s attention, in order to reserve our strength for the protection of intellectual liberty. Let society arrange your dress for you (it will save you infi- nite trouble), but never permit it to stifle the expression of your thought. You find it convenient, because you are timid, to exclude yourself from the world by refusing to wear its costume; but a bolder man would let the tailor do his worst, and then go into the world and courageously defend there the persons and causes that are misunder- stood and slanderously misrepresented. The fables of Spenser are fables only in form, and a noble knight may at any time go forth, armed in the panoply of a tail-coat, a dress waistcoat, and a manly moral courage, to do battle across the dinner-table and in the drawing-room for those who have none to defend them. It is unphilosophical to set ourselves obstinately against custom in the mass, for it multiplies the power of men by settling useless discussion and clearing the ground for our best and most prolific activity. The business of the world could not be carried forward one day without a most complex code of customs; and law itself is little more than custom slightly improved upon by men reflecting together at their leisure, and reduced to codes and systems. We ought to think of custom as a most precious legacy of the past, saving us infinite per- plexity, yet not as an infallible rule. The most intelligent community would be conservative in its habits, yet not obstinately conservative, but willing to hear and adopt the suggestions of advancing reason. The great duty of the intellectual class, and its especial function, is to con- firm what is reasonable in the customs that have been PART VI. LETTER I. Conformity in trifles. True courage. Utility custom*THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER I. The art of iveakenitig customs. \ Open resistance. handed down to us, and so maintain their authority, yet at the same time to show that custom is not final, but merely a form suited to the world’s convenience. And whenever you are convinced that a custom is no longer serviceable, the way to procure the abolition of it is to lead men very gradually away from it, by offering a sub- stitute at first very slightly different from what they have been long used to. If the English had been in the habit of tattooing, the best way to procure its abolition would have been to admit that it was quite necessary to cover the face with elaborate patterns, yet gently to suggest that these patterns would be still more elegant if delicately painted in water-colours. Then you might have gone on arguing—still admitting, of course, the absolute necessity for ornament of some kind—that good taste demanded only a moderate amount of it; and so you would have brought people gradually to a little flourish on the nose or forehead, when the most advanced reformers might have set the example of dispensing with ornament altogether. Many of our contemporaries have abandoned shaving in this gradual way, allowing the whiskers to encroach imperceptibly, till at last the razor lay in the dressing-case unused. The abominable black cylinders that covered our heads a few years ago were vainly resisted by radicals in costume, but the moderate reformers gradually reduced their elevation, and now they are things of the past. Though I think we ought to submit to custom in matters of indifference, and to reform it gradually, whilst affecting submission in matters not altogether indifferent, still there are other' matters on which the only attitude worthy of a man is the most bold and open resistance to its dictates. Custom may have a right to authority ovet your wardrobe, but it cannot have any right to ruin yourCUSTOM AND TRADITION. 199 self-respect. Not only the virtues most advantageous to well-being, but also the most contemptible and degrading vices, have at various periods of the world’s history been sustained by the full authority of custom. There are places where forty years ago drunkenness was conformity to custom, and sobriety an eccentricity. There are socie- ties, even at the present day, where licentiousness is the rule of custom, and chastity the sign of weakness or want of spirit. There are communities (it cannot be necessary to name them) in which successful fraud, especially on a large scale, is respected as the proof of smartness, whilst a man who remains poor because he is honest is despised for slowness and incapacity. There are whole nations in which religious hypocrisy is strongly approved by cus- tom, and honesty severely condemned. The Wahabee Arabs may be mentioned as an instance of this, but the Wahabee Arabs are not the only people, nor is Nejed the only place, where it is held to be more virtuous to lie on the side of custom than to be an honourable man in independence of it. In all communities where vice and hypocrisy are sustained by the authority of custom, eccentricity is a moral duty. In all communities where a low standard of thinking is received as infallible com- mon sense, eccentricity becomes an intellectual duty. There are hundreds of places in the provinces where it is impossible for any man to lead the intellectual life with- out being condemned as an eccentric. It is the duty of intellectual men who are thus isolated to set the example of that which their neighbours call eccentricity, but which may be moie accurately described as superiority. PART VI. LETTER I. Bad customs. Eccentricity somet hues a duty.200 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER II. TJie Japanese. Leaving the ages of tradition. LETTER II. TO A CONSERVATIVE WHO HAD ACCUSED THE AUTHOR OF A WANT OF RESPECT FOR TRADITION. Transition from the ages of tradition to that of experiment—At- traction of the future—Joubert — Saint-Marc Girardin—Solved and unsolved problems—The introduction of a new element— Inapplicability of past experience—An argument against Re publics—The lessor.s of history—Mistaken predictions that have been based on them—Morality and ecclesiastical authority— Compatibility of hopes for the future with gratitude to the past —That we are more respectful to the past than previous ages have been—Our feelings towards tradition—An incident at War- saw—The reconstruction of the navy. The astonishing revolution in thought and practice which is taking place amongst the intelligent Japanese, the throwing away of a traditional system of living in order to establish in its stead a system which, for an Asiatic people, is nothing more than a vast experiment, has its counterpart in many an individual life in Europe. We are like travellers crossing an isthmus between two seas, who have left one ship behind them, who have not yet seen the vessel that waits on the distant shore, and who experience to the full all the discomforts and incon- veniences of the passage from one sea to the other. There is a break between the existence of our fore- fathers and that of our posterity, and it is we who have the misfortune to be situated exactly where the break occurs. We are leaving behind us the security, I do not say the safety, but the feeling of tranquillity which belonged to the ages of tradition; we are entering upon ages whose spirit we foresee but dimly, whose institu-CUSTOM AND TRADITION. tions are the subject of guesses and conjectures. And yet this future, of which we know so little, attracts us more by the very vast ness of its enigma than the rich history of the past, so full of various incident, of power- ful personages, of grandeur, and suffering, and sorrow. Joubert already noticed this forward-looking of the modern mind. “ The ancients,” he observed, “ said, ‘ Our ancestors ; ’ we say, ‘ Posterity.’ We do not love as they did la patrie, the country and laws of our fore- fathers ; we love rather the laws and the country of our children. It is the magic of the future, and not that of the past, which seduces us.” Commenting on this thought of Joubert’s, Saint-Marc Girardin said that we loved the future because we loved ourselves, and fashioned the future in our own image 3 and he added, with partial but not complete injustice, that our ignorance of the past was a cause of this tendency in our minds, since it is shorter to despise the past than to study it. These critics and accusers of the modern spirit are not, how- ever, altogether fair to it. If the modern spirit looks so much to the future, it is because the problems of the past are solved problems, whilst those of the future have the interest of a game that is only just begun. We know what became of feudalism, we know the work that it accomplished and the services that it rendered, but we do not yet know what will be the effects of modern democracy and of the scientific and industrial spirit. It is the novelty of this element, the scientific spirit and the industrial development which is a part (but only a part) of its results, that makes the past so much less reliable as a guide than it would have been if no new element had intervened, and therefore so much less interesting for us. As an example of the inapplicability 201 PART VI. LETTER II. A ncestors and Posterity The modern spirit looks to the future.202 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER II. The lessons of history. Deceptions of the historical pa?‘ty. of past experience, I may mention an argument against Republics which has been much used of late by the partisans of Monarchy in France. They have frequently told us that Republics had only succeeded in very small States, and this is true of ancient democracies; but it is not less true that railways, and telegraphs, and the news- paper press have made great countries like France and the United States just as capable of feeling and acting simultaneously as the smallest Republics of antiquity. The parties which rely on what are called the lessons of history are continually exposed to great deceptions. In France, what may be called the historical party would not believe in the possibility of a united Germany, because fifty years ago, with the imperfect means of communication which then existed, Germany was not and could not be united. The same historical party refused to believe that the Italian kingdom could ever hold together. In England, the historical party pre- dicted the dismemberment of the United States, and in some other countries it has been a favourite article of faith that England could not keep her possessions. But theories of this kind are always of very doubtful applicability to the present, and their applicability to the future is even more doubtful still. Steam and electricity have made great modern States practically like so many great cities, so that Manchester is like a suburb of London, and Havre the Piraeus of Paris, whilst the most trifling occasions bring the Sovereign of Italy to any of the Italian capitals. In the intellectual sphere the experience of the past is at least equally unreliable. If the power of the Catholic Church had been suddenly removed from the Europe of the fourteenth century, the consequence would haveCUSTOM AND TRADITION. / been a moral anarchy difficult to conceive ; but in our own day the real regulator of morality is not the Church, but public opinion, in the formation of which the Church has a share, but only a share. It would therefore be unsafe to conclude that the weakening of ecclesiastical authority must of necessity, in the future, be followed by moral anarchy, since it is possible, and even probable, that the other great influences upon public opinion may gain strength as this declines. And in point of fact we have already lived long enough to witness a remarkable decline of ecclesiastical authority, which is proved by the avowed independence of scientific writers and thinkers, and by the open opposition of almost all the European Governments. The secular power resists the ecclesiastical in Germany and Spain. In France it establishes a form of government which the Church detests. In Ireland it disestablishes and disendows a hierarchy. In Switzerland it resists the whole power of the Papacy. In Italy it seizes the sacred territory and plants itself within the very walls of Rome. And yet the time which has witnessed this unprecedented self-assertion of the laity has witnessed a positive increase in the morality of public sentiment, especially in the love of justice and the willingness to hear truth, even when truth is not altogether agreeable to the listener, and in the respect paid by opponents to able and sincere men, merely for their ability and sincerity. This love of justice, this patient and tolerant hearing of new truth, in which our age immeasurably exceeds all the ages that have preceded it, are the direct results of the scientific spirit, and are not only in themselves eminently moral, but conducive to moral health generally. And this advancement may be observed in countries which were least supposed to be capable of it. Even the 203 PART VI. LETTER II. Moral anarchy and ecclesiastical authority. R e si stance of the secular power. Increase of morality in public sentimen t.I 204 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER II. Public opinion in France. The present age not ex- ceptionally scornful of the past. French, of whose immorality we have heard so much, have a public opinion which is gradually gaining a salu- tary strength, an increasing dislike for barbarity and injustice, and a more earnest desire that no citizen, except by his own fault, should be excluded from the benefits of civilization. The throne which has lately fallen was undermined by the currents of this public opinion before it sank in military disaster. “ Aussi me contenterai-je,” says Littre, “d’appeler l’attention sur la guerre, dont l’opinion publique ne tolere plus les antiques barbaries; sur la magistrature, qui repudie avec horreur les tortures et la question; sur la tole'rance, qui a banni les persecutions religieuses; sur l’equite, qui soumet tout le monde aux charges communes; sur le sentiment de solidarity qui du sort des classes pauvres fait le plus pres- sant et le plus noble probleme du temps present. Pour moi, je ne sais caracteriser ce spectacle si hautement moral qu’en disant que l’humanite, amelioree, accepte de plus en plus le devoir et la tacbe d’etendre le domaine de la justice et de la bonty.” Yet this partial and comparative satisfaction that we find in the present, and our larger hopes for the future, are quite compatible with gratitude to all who in the past have rendered such improvement possible for us, and the higher improvement that we hope for possible to those who will come after us. I cannot think that the present age may be accused with justice of exceptional igno- rance or scorn of its predecessors. We have been told that we scorn our forefathers because old buildings are removed to suit modern convenience, because the walls of old York have been pierced for the railway, and a tower of Conway Castle has been undermined that the Holyhead mail may pass. But the truth is, that whilstCUSTOM AND TRADITION. / 205 we care a little for our predecessors, they cared still less for theirs. The mediaeval builders not only used as quarries any Roman remains that happened to come in their way, but they spoiled the work of their own fathers and grandfathers by intruding their new fashions on buildings originally designed in a different style of art. When an architect in the present day has to restore some venerable church, he endeavours to do so in har- mony with the design of the first builder; but such humility as this was utterly foreign to the mediaeval mind, which often destroyed the most lovely and neces- sary details to replace them with erections in the fashion of the day, but artistically unsuitable. The same dis- dain for the labours of other ages has prevailed until within the memory of living men, and our age is really the first that has made any attempt to conform itself, in these things, to the intentions of the dead. I may also observe, that although history is less relied upon as a guide to the future than it was formerly, it is more care- fully and thoroughly investigated from an intellectual interest in itself. To conclude. It seems to me that tradition has much less influence of an authoritative kind than it had formerly, and that the authority which it still possesses is everywhere steadily declining; that as a guide to the future of the world it is more likely to mislead than to enlighten us, and still that all intellectual and educated people must always take a great interest in tradition, and have a certain sentiment of respect for it. Con- sider what our feelings are towards the Church of Rome, the living embodiment of tradition. No well- informed person can forget the immense services that in former ages she has rendered to European civiliza- PART VI. LETTER II. Modem architects. Decline oj the fiowe, V tradition. The Church of Rome.2 o6 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER II. An incidejil t IVarsaw. Keconstruc- tion of the British navy. tion, and yet at the same time such a person would scarcely wish to place modern thought under her direc- tion, nor would he consult the Pope about the ten- dencies of the modern world. When in 1829 the city of Warsaw erected a monument to Copernicus, a scientific society there waited in the Church of the Holy Cross for a service that was to have added solemnity to their com- memoration. They waited vainly. Not a single priest appeared. The clergy did not feel authorized to coun- tenance a scientific discovery which, in a former age, had been condemned by the authority of the Church. This incident is delicately and accurately typical of the relation between the modern and the traditional spirit. The modern spirit is not hostile to tradition, and would not object to receive any consecration which tradition might be able to confer, but there are difficulties in bringing the two elements together. We need not, however, go so far as Warsaw, or back to the year 1829, for examples of an unwillingness on the part of the modern mind to break entirely with the traditional spirit. Our own country is remarkable both for the steadiness of its advance towards a future widely different from the past, and for an affectionate respect for the ideas and institutions that it gradually abandons, as it is forced out of them by new conditions of existence. I may mention, as one example out of very many, our feeling about the reconstruction of the navy. Here is a matter in which science has compelled us to break with tradition absolutely and irrevocably; we have done so, but we have done so with the greatest regret. The ships of the line that our hearts and imaginations love are the ships of Nelson and Collingwood and Cochrane. We think of the British fleets that bore down upon the enemy with theCUSTOM AND TRADITION. 207 breeze in their white sails; we think of the fine qualities of seamanship that were fostered in our Agamemnons, and Victories, and Temerciires. Will the navies of the future ever so clothe their dreadful powers with beauty, as did the ordered columns of Nelson, when they came with a fair wind and all sails set, at eleven o'clock in the morn- ing into Trafalgar Bay? We see the smoke of their broadsides rising up to their sails like mists to the snowy Alps, and high above, against heaven's blue, the uncon- quered flag of England ! Nor do we perceive now for the first time that there was poetry in those fleets of old; our forefathers felt it then, and expressed it in a thousand songs.1 1 I had desired to say something about the uses of tradition in the industrial arts and in the fine arts, but the subject is a very large one, and I have not time or space to treat it properly here. I may observe, however, briefly, that the genuine spirit of tradition has almost entirely disappeared from English industry and art, where it has been replaced by a spirit of scientific investigation and experi- ment. The true traditional spirit was still in full vigour in Japan a few years ago, and it kept the industry and art of that country up to a remarkably high standard. The traditional spirit is most favourable to professional skill, because, under its influence, the apprentice learns thoroughly, whereas under other influences he often learns very imperfectly. The inferiority of English painting to French (considered technically) has been due to the prevalence of a traditional spirit in the French school which was almost entirely absent from our own. PART VI. LETTER II. The ships of Nelson. Tradition favourable to technical skill.208 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER III. Separation in families on religious subjects rwhen there is sincerity. LETTER III. TO A LADY WHO LAMENTED THAT HER SON HAD INTELLECTUAL DOUBTS CONCERNING THE DOGMAS OF THE CHURCH. The situation of mother and son a very common one—Painful only when the parties are in earnest—The knowledge of the difference evidence of a deeper unity—Value of honesty—Evil of a splendid official religion not believed by men of culture—Diversity of be- lief an evidence of religious vitality—Criticism not to be ignored —Desire for the highest attainable truth—Letter from Lady Westmorland about her son, Julian Fane. The difference which you describe as having arisen between your son and you on the most grave and impor- tant subject which can occupy the thoughts of men, gives the outline of a situation painful to both the parties con- cerned, and which lays on each of them new and delicate obligations. You do not know how common this situa- tion is, and how sadly it interferes with the happiness of the very best and most pure-minded souls alive. For such a situation produces pain only where both parties are earnest and sincere; and the more earnest both are, the more painful does the situation become. If you and your son thought of religion merely from the conventional point of view, as the world does only too easily, you would meet on a common ground, and might pass through life without ever becoming aware of any gulf of separa- tion, even though the hollowness of your several pro- fessions were of widely different kinds. But as it happens, unfortunately for your peace (yet would you have it otherwise?), that you are both in earnest, both anxious to believe what is true and do what you believe to be right, you are likely to cause each other much sufferingCUSTOM AND TRADITION. 209 I of a kind altogether unknown to less honourable and devoted natures. There are certain forms of suffering which affect only the tenderest and truest hearts ; they nave so many privileges, that this pain has been imposed upon them as the shadow of their sunshine. Let me suggest, as some ground of consolation and of hope, that your very knowledge of the difference which pains you is in itself the evidence of a deeper unity. If your son has told you the full truth about the changes in his belief, it is probably because you yourself have educated him in the habit of truthfulness, which is as much a law of religion as it is of honour. Do you wish this part of his education to be enfeebled or obliterated ? Could the Church herself reasonably or consistently blame him for practising the one virtue which, in a peace- ful and luxurious society, demands a certain exercise of courage ? Our beliefs are independent of our will, but our honesty is not; and he who keeps his honesty keeps one of the most precious possessions of all true Christians and gentlemen. What state of society can be more repugnant to high religious feeling than a state of smooth external unanimity combined with the indifference of the heart, a state in which some splendid official religion performs its daily ceremonies as the costliest functionary of the Government, whilst the men of culture take a share in them out of conformity to the customs of society, without either the assent of the intellect or the emotion of the soul ? All periods of great religious vitality have been marked by great and open diversity of belief; and to this day those countries where religion is most alive are the farthest removed from unanimity in the details of religious doctrine. If your son thinks these things of such importance to his conscience that p PART VI. LETTER III. The habit of truth- fulness. Honesty a precious possession. Diversity o.f belief a sigt\ of religious vitality.210 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE,. PART VI. LETTER III. Critical inquiry in times of great mental acti7>ity% {Ze't and unrest. he feels compelled to inflict upon you the slightest pain on their account, you may rest assured that his religious fibre is still full of vitality. If it were deadened, he would argue very much as follows. He would say: “ These old doctrines of the Church are not of sufficient consequence for me to disturb my mother about them. What is the use of alluding to them ever?” And then you would have no anxiety; and he himself would have the feeling of settled peace which comes over a battle- field when the dead are buried out of sight. It is the peculiarity—some would say the evil, but I cannot think it an evil—of an age of great intellectual activity to pro- duce an amount of critical inquiry into religious doctrine which is entirely unknown to times of simple tradition. And in these days the critical tendency has received a novel stimulus from the successive suggestions of scien- tific discovery. No one who, like your son, fully shares in the intellectual life of the times in which he lives, can live as if this criticism did not exist. If he affected to ignore it, as an objection already answered, there, would be disingenuousness in the affectation. Fifty years ago, even twenty or thirty years ago, a highly intellectual young man might have hardened into the fixed convic- tions of middle age without any external disturbance, except such as might have been easily avoided. The criticism existed'then, in certain circles ; but it was not in the air, as it is now. The life of mankind resembles that of a brook which has its times of tranquillity, but farther on its times of trouble and unrest. Our imme- diate forefathers had the peaceful time for their lot; those who went before them had passed over very rough ground at the Reformation. For us, in our turn, comes the recurrent restlessness, though not in the same pla~e.CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 211 What we are going to, who can tell ? What we suffer just now, you and many others know too accurately. There are gulfs of separation in homes of the most perfect love. Our only hope of preserving what is best in that purest of earthly felicities lies in the practice of an immense charity, a wide tolerance, a sincere respect for opinions that are not ours, and a deep trust that the loyal pursuit of truth cannot but be in perfect accord- ance with the intentions of the Creator, who endowed the noblest races of mankind with the indefatigable curiosity of science. Not to inquire was possible for our forefathers, but it is not possible for us. With our intellectual growth has come an irrepressible anxiety to possess the highest truth attainable by us. This desire is not sinful, not presumptuous, but really one of the best and purest of our instincts, being nothing else than the sterling honesty of the intellect, seeking the harmony of concordant truth, and utterly disinterested. I may quote, as an illustration of the tendencies pre- valent amongst the noblest and most cultivated young men, a letter from Lady Westmorland to Mr. Robert Lytton about her accomplished son, the now celebrated Julian Fane. “We had,” she said, “several conver- sations, during his last illness, upon religious subjects, about which he had his own peculiar views. The dis- putes and animosities between High and Low Church, and all the feuds of religious sectarianism, caused him the deepest disgust. I think, indeed, that he carried this feeling too far. He had a horror of cant, which I also think was exaggerated ; for it gave him a repulsion for all outward show of religious observances. He often told me that he never missed the practice of prayer, part VI. letter* III. I mpossible for us not to inquire• Julian Fane. His religiou I views. P 2212 THE INTELLECTUAL . PART VI. letter III. Conversions to the Church of Rome. at morning and evening, and at other times. But hia prayers were his own : his own thoughts in his own words. He said that he could not pray in the set words of another; nor unless he was alone. As to joining in family prayers, or praying at church, he found it impos- sible. He constantly read the New Testament. He deprecated the indiscriminate reading of the Bible. He firmly believed in the efficacy of sincere prayer; and was always pleased when I told him I had prayed for him.” To this it may be added, that many recent conver- sions to the Church of Rome, though apparently of an exactly opposite character, have in reality also been brought about by the scientific inquiries of the age. The religious sentiment, alarmed at the prospect of a possible taking away of that which it feeds upon, has sought in many instances to preserve it permanently under the guardianship of the strongest ecclesiastical authority. In an age of less intellectual disturbance this anxiety would scarcely have been felt; and the degree of authority claimed by one of the reformed Churches would have been accepted as sufficient. Here again the agitations of the modern intellect have caused division in families ; and as you are lamenting the heterodoxy of your son, so other parents regret the Roman orthodoxy of theirs. * 4CUSTOM AND TRADITION. LETTER IV. ro THE SON OF THE LADY TO WHOM THE PRECEDING LETTER WAS ADDRESSED. Difficulty of detaching intellectual from religious questions—The sacerdotal system—Necessary to ascertain what religion is—Intel- lectual religion really nothing but philosophy—The popular in- stinct—The test of belief—Public worship—The intellect moral, but not religious—Intellectual activity sometimes in contradiction to dogma—Differences between the intellectual and religious lives. Your request is not so simple as it appears. You ask me for a frank opinion as to the course your mind is taking in reference to very important subjects; but you desire only intellectual, and not religious guidance. The difficulty is to effect any clear demarcation between the two. Certainly I should never take upon myself to offer religious advice to anyone ; it is difficult for those who have not qualified themselves for the priestly office to do that with force and effect. The manner in which a priest leads and manages a mind that has from the first been moulded in the beliefs and observances of his Church, cannot be imitated by a layman. A priest starts always from authority; his method, which has been in use from the earliest ages, consists first in claiming your unquestioning assent to certain doctrines, from which he immediately proceeds to deduce the inferences that may affect your conduct or regulate your thoughts. It is a method perfectly adapted to its own ends. It can d,eal with all humanity, and produce the most immediate practical results. So long as the assent to the doctrines 213 PART VI. LETTER IV. The sacerdotal method.214 TIIE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER IV. What religion is. lnlellectnal religion. is sincere, the sacerdotal system may contend success- fully against some of the strongest forms of evil; but when the assent to the doctrines has ceased to be com- plete, when some of them are half-believed and others not believed at all, the system loses much of its primi- tive efficiency. It seems likely that your difficulty, the difficulty of so many intellectual men in these days, is to know where the intellectual questions end and the purely religious ones can be considered to begin. If you could once ascertain that, in a manner definitely satisfac- tory, you would take your religious questions to a clergy- man and your intellectual ones to a man of science, and so get each solved independently. Without presuming to offer a solution of so complex a difficulty as this, I may suggest to you that it is of some importance to your intellectual life to ascertain what religion is. A book was published many years ago by a very learned author, in which he endeavoured to show that what is vulgarly called scepticism may be intellec- tual religion. Now, although nothing can be more dis- tasteful to persons of culture than the bigotry which refuses the name of religion to other people’s opinions, merely because they are other people’s opinions, I suspect that the popular instinct is right in denying the name of religion to the inferences of the intellect. The description which the author just alluded to gave of what he called intellectual religion was in fact simply a descrip- tion of philosophy, and of that discipline which the best philosophy imposes upon the heart and the passions. On the other hand, Dr. Arnold, when he says that by religion he always understands Christianity, narrows the word as much as he would have narrowed the word “ patriotism ” had he defined it to mean a devotion toCUSTOM AND TRADITION. 215 the interests of England. I think the popular instinct, though of course quite unable to construct a definition of religion, is in its vague way very well aware of the peculiar nature of religious thought and feeling. The popular instinct would certainly never confound religion with philosophy on the one hand, nor, on the other, unless excited to opposition, would it be likely to refuse the name of religion to another worship, such as Mahometanism, for instance. According to the popular instinct, then, which on a subject of this kind appears the safest of all guides, a religion involves first a belief and next a public practice. The nature of the belief is in these days wholly peculiar to religion ; in other times it was not so, because then people believed other things much in the same way. But. in these days the test of religious belief is that it should make men accept as certain truth what they would disbelieve on any other authority. For example, a true Roman Catholic believes that the consecrated host is the body of Christ, and so long as he lives in the purely religious spirit he continues to believe this ; but so soon as the power of his religious sentiment declines he ceases to believe it, and the wafer appears to him a wafer, and no more. And so amongst Protestants the truly religious believe many things which no person not being under the authority of religion could by any effort bring himself to believe. It is easy, for example, to believe that Joshua arrested the sun's apparent motion, so long as the religious authority of the Bible remains perfectly intact; but no sooner does the reader become critical than the miracle is disbelieved. In all ages, and in all countries, religions have narrated marvellous things, and the people have always affirmed that not to PART VI. LETT ER IV. Nature of rehg ion. Belief in tnt otherwise unbelievable. hista7ice qf a miracle.210 THE INTELLECTUAL LLFE. PART VI. LETTER IV. Religion and philosophy* Philosophy. believe these narratives constituted the absence of religion, or what they called atheism. They have equally, in all ages and countries, held the public act of participation in religious worship to be an essential part of what they called religion. They do not admit the sufficiency of secret prayer. Can these popular instincts help us to a definition ? They may help us at least to mark the dividing line between religion and morality, between religion and philosophy. No one has ever desired, more earnestly and eagerly than I, to discover the foundations of the intellectual religion; no one has ever felt more chilling disappointment in the perception of the plain bare fact that the intellect gives morality, philo- sophy, precious things indeed, but not religion. It is like seeking art by science. Thousands of artists, whole schools from generation to generation, have sought fine art through anatomy and perspective ; and although these sciences did not hinder the. born artists from coming to art at last, they did not ensure their safe arrival in the art-paradise; in many instances they even led men away from art. So it is with the great modern search for the intellectual religion ; the idea of it is scientific in its source, and the result of it, the last definite attainment, is simply intellectual morality, not religion in the sense which all humanity has attached to religion during all the ages that have preceded ours. We may say that philosophy is the religion of the intellectual; and if we go scrupulously to Latin derivations, it is so. But taking frankly the received meaning of the word as it is used by mankind everywhere, we must admit that, although high intellect would lead us inevitably to high and pure morality, and to most scrupulously beautifulCUSTOM AND TRADITION. 217 conduct in everything, towards men, towards women, towards even the lower and lowest animals, still it does not lead us to that belief in the otherwise unbelievable, or to that detailed cultus which is meant by religion in the universally accepted sense. It is disingenuous to take a word popularly respected and attribute to it another sense. Such a course is not strictly honest, and therefore not purely intellectual; for the foundation of the intellectual life is honesty. The difficulty of the intellectual life is, that whilst it can never assume a position of hostility to religion, which it must always recognize as the greatest natural force for the amelioration of mankind, it is nevertheless compelled to enunciate truths which may happen to be in contra- diction with dogmas received at this or that particular time. That you may not suspect me of a disposition to dwell continually on safe generalities and to avoid details out of timidity, let me mention two cases on which the intellectual and scientific find themselves at variance with the clergy. The clergy tell us that mankind descend from a single pair, and that in the earlier ages the human race attained a longevity counted not by decades but by centuries. Alexander Humboldt disbelieves the first of these propositions, Professor Owen disbelieves the second. Men of science generally are of the same opinion. Few men of science accept Adam and Eve, few accept Methuselah. Professor Owen argues that, since the oldest skeletons known have the same system of teething that we have, man can never have lived long enough to require nine sets of teeth. In regard to these, and a hundred other points on which science advances new views, the question which concerns us is how we are to maintain the integrity of the intellectual life. The 1 ART VI LETTER IV. Difficulty of the intellectual life, Tradition and science.2X8 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER IV. Preserva- tion of our honesty. Intellectual and religious lives. danger is the loss of inward ingenuousness, the attempt to persuade ourselves that we believe opposite state- ments. If once we admit disingenuousness into the mind, the intellectual life is no longer serene and pure. The plain course for the preservation of our honesty, which is the basis of truly intellectual thinking, is to receive the truth, whether agreeable or the contrary, with all its train of consequences, however repulsive or dis- couraging. In attempting to reconcile scientific truth with the oldest traditions of humanity, there is but one serious danger, the loss of intellectual integrity. Of that possession modern society has little left to lose. But let us understand that the intellectual life and the religious life are as distinct as the scientific and the artistic lives. They may be led by the same person, but by the same person in different moods. They coincide on some points, accidentally. Certainly, the basis of high thinking is perfect honesty, and honesty is a recog- nized religious virtue. Where the two minds differ is on the importance of authority. The religious life is based upon authority, the intellectual life is based upon personal investigation. From the intellectual point of view I cannot advise you to restrain the spirit of investi gation, which is the scientific spirit It may lead you very far, yet always to truth, ultimately,—you, or those after you, whose path you may be destined to prepare. Science requires a certain inward heat and heroism in her votaries, notwithstanding the apparent coldness of her statements. Especially does she require that intel- lectual fearlessness which accepts a proved fact without reference to its personal or its social consequences.CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 219 LETTER V. TO A FRIEND WHO SEEMED TO TAKE CREDIT TO HIMSELF, INTEL- LECTUALLY, FROM THE NATURE OF HIS RELIGIOUS BELIEF. Anecdote of a Swiss gentleman—Religious belief protects traditions, but does not weaken the critical faculty itself—Illustration from the art of etching—Sydney Smith—Dr. Arnold—Earnest reli- gious belief of Ampere—Comte and Sainte-Beuve—Faraday— Belief or unbelief proves nothing for or against intellectual ’ capacity. I happened once to be travelling in Switzerland with an eminent citizen of that country, and I remember how in speaking of some place we passed through he associated together the ideas of Protestantism and intellectual supe- riority in some such phrase as this: “The people here are very superior; they are Protestants.” There seemed to exist, in my companion’s mind, an assumption that Protestants would be superior people intellectually, or that superior people would be Protestants; and this set me thinking whether, in the course of such experience as had fallen in my way, I had found that religious creed made much difference in the matter of intellectual acumen or culture. The exact truth appears to be this. A religious belief protects this or that subject against intellectual action, but it does not affect the energy of the intellectual action upon subjects which are not so protected. Let me illus- trate this by a reference to one of the fine arts, the art of etching. The etcher protects a copper-plate by means of a waxy covering called etching-ground, and wherever this ground is removed the acid bites the copper. The PART VI. LETTER V. A ?iecdote of a Swiss gentleman. Effects of religious belie/.220 TIIE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER V. Protection I tradition by belief. Intellectual acumen of the clergy. A mpere a sincere Catholic. waxy ground does not in the least affect the strength of the acid, it only intervenes between it and the metal plate. So it is in the mind of man with regard to his intellectual acumen and his religious creed. The creed may protect a tradition from the operation of the critical faculty, but it does not weaken the critical faculty itself. In the English Church, for example, the Bible is pro- tected against criticism; but this does not weaken the critical faculty of English clergymen with reference to other literature, and many of them give evidence of a strong critical faculty in all matters not protected by their creed. Think of the vigorous common-sense of Sydney Smith, exposing so many abuses, at a time when it needed not only much courage but great originality to expose them ! Remember the intellectual force of Arnold, a great natural force if ever there was one—so direct in action, so independent of contemporary opinion ! Intellectual forces of this kind act freely not only in the Church of England, but in other Churches, even in the Church of Rome. Who amongst the scientific men of this century has been more profoundly scientific, more capable of original scientific discovery, than Ampere ? Yet Ampere was a Roman Catholic, and not a Roman Catholic in the conventional sense merely, like the majority of educated Frenchmen, but a hearty and enthusiastic believer in the doctrines of the Church of Rome. The belief in transubstantiation did not prevent Ampere from becoming one of the best chemists of his time, just as the belief in the plenary inspiration of the New Testament does not prevent a good Protestant from becoming an acute critic of Greek literature generally. A man may have the finest scientific faculty, the most advanced scientific culture, and still believe theCUSTOM AND TRADITION. 221 consecrated wafer to be the body of Jesus Christ. For since he still believes it to be the body of Christ under the apparent form of a wafer, it is evident that the wafer under chemical analysis would resolve itself into the same elements as before consecration; therefore why consult chemistry? What has chemistry to say to a mystery of this kind, the essence of which is the com- plete disguise of a human body under a form in all respects answering the material semblance of a wafer? Ampere must have foreseen the certain results of analysis as clearly as the best chemist educated in the principles of Protestantism, but this did not prevent him from adoring the consecrated host in all the sincerity of his heart. I say that it does not follow, because M. or N. happens to be a Protestant, that he is intellectually superior to Ampere, or because M. or N. happens to be a Unitarian, or a Deist, or a Positivist, that he is intel- lectually superior to Dr. Arnold or Sydney Smith. And on the other side of this question it is equally unfair to conclude that because a man does not share whatever may be our theological beliefs on the positive side, he must be less capable intellectually than we are. Two of the finest and most disciplined modern intellects, Comte and Sainte-Beuve, were neither Catholics, nor Protes- tants, nor Deists, but convinced atheists; yet Comte until the period of his decline, and Sainte-Beuve up to the very hour of his death, were quite in the highest rank of modern scientific and literary intellect. The inference from these facts which concerns every one of us is, that we are not to build up any edifice of intellectual self-satisfaction on the ground that in theo- logical matters we believe or disbelieve this thing or PART VI. LETTER V. Transub- stantiation. Comte and Sainte- Beuve.222 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LICTTER V. Faraday. Sainte- Beuve. LETTER VI. that. If Ampere believed the doctrines of the Church of Rome, which to us seem so incredible, if Faraday re- mained throughout his brilliant intellectual career (cer- tainly one of the most brilliant ever lived through by a human being) a sincere member of the obscure sect of the Sandemanians, we are not warranted in the con- clusion that we are intellectually their betters because our theology is more novel, or more fashionable, or more in harmony with reason. Nor, on the other hand, does our orthodoxy prove anything in favour of our mental force and culture. Who, amongst the most orthodox writers, has a more forcible and cultivated intellect than Sainte-Beuve ?—who can better give us the tone of perfect culture, with its love of justice, its thorough- ness in preparation, its superiority to all crudeness and violence ? Anglican or Romanist, dissenter or heretic, may be our master in the intellectual sphere, from which no sincere and capable labourer is excluded, either by his belief or by his unbelief. LETTER VI. TO A ROMAN CATHOLIC FRIEND WHO ACCUSED THE INTELLECTUAL . I CLASS OF A WANT OF REVERENCE FOR AUTHORITY. Necessity for treating affirmations as if they were doubtful—The Papal Infallibility—The Infallibility of the Sacred Scriptures— Opposition of method between Intellect and Faith—The perfec- tion of the intellectual life requires intellectual methods—In- evitable action of the intellectual forces. It is very much the custom, in modern writing about liberty of thought, to pass lightly over the central diffi- culty, which sooner or later will have to be considered.CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 223 The difficulty is this, that the freedom of the intellectual life can never be secured except by treating as if they were doubtful several affirmations which large masses of mankind hold to be certainties as indisputable as the facts of science. One of the most recently con- spicuous of these affirmations is the infallibility of the Pope of Rome. Nothing can be more certain in the opinion of immense numbers of Roman Catholics than the infallible authority of the Supreme Pontiff on all matters affecting doctrine. But then the matters affecting doctrine include many subjects which come within the circle of the sciences. History is one of those subjects which modern intellectual criticism takes leave to study after its own methods, and yet certain prevalent views of history are offensive to the Pope and explicitly condemned by him. The consequence is, that in order to study history with mental liberty, we have to act practically as if there existed a doubt of the Papal infallibility. The same difficulty occurs with refer- ence to the great Protestant doctrine which attributes a similar infallibility to the various authors who com- posed what are now known to us as the Holy Scriptures. Our men of science act, and the laws of scientific investigation compel them to act, as if it were not quite certain that the views of scientific subjects held by those early writers were so final as to render modern investigation superfluous. It is useless to disguise the fact that there is a real opposition of method between intellect and faith, and that the independence of the intellectual life can never be fully secured unless all affirmations based u, on authority are treated as if they were doubtful. This implies no change of manner in the intellectual classes towards those classes whose PART vi. LETTER VI. Infall bility of the Pope. Infallibility of the Scriptures. Opposition of method between i?itellect and faith.224 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VI. LETTER VI. The intellect does not recognize authority. The perfec- tion of the intellectual life. mental habits are founded upon obedience. I mean that the man of science does not treat the affirmations of any priesthood with less respect than the affirmations of his own scientific brethren ; he applies with perfect impartiality the same criticism to all affirmations, from whatever source they emanate. The intellect does not recognize authority in any one, and intellectual men do not treat the Pope, or the author of Genesis, with less consideration than those famous persons who in their day have been the brightest luminaries of science. The difficulty, however, remains, that whilst the intellectual class has no wish to offend either those who believe in the infallibility of the Pope, or those who believe in the infallibility of the author of Genesis, it is compelled to conduct its own investigations as if those infallibilities were matters of doubt and not of certainty. Why this is so, may be shown by a reference to the operation of Nature in other ways. The rewards of physical strength and health are not given to the most moral, to the most humane, to the most gentle, but to those who have acted, and whose forefathers have acted, in the most perfect accordance with the laws of their physical constitution. So the perfection of the intellec- tual life is not given to the most humble, the most be- lieving, the most obedient, but to those who use their minds according to the most purely intellectual methods. One of the most important truths that human beings can know is the perfectly independent working of the natural laws : one of the best practical conclusions to be drawn from the observation of Nature is that in the conduct of our own understandings we should use a like indepen- dence. It would be wrong, in writing to you on subjects soCUSTOM AND TRADITION. 225 important as these, to shrink from handling the real difficulties. Everyone now is aware that science must and will pursue her own methods and work according to her own laws, without concerning herself with the most authoritative affirmations from without. But if science said one thing and authoritative tradition said another, no perfectly ingenuous person could rest contented until he had either reconciled the two or decidedly rejected one of them. It is impossible for a mind which is honest towards itself to admit that a proposition is true and false at the same time, true in science and false in theology. Therefore, although the intellectual methods are entirely independent of tradition, it may easily happen that the indirect results of our following those methods may be the overthrow of some dogma which has for many gene- rations been considered indispensable to man’s spiritual welfare. With regard to this contingency it need only be observed that the intellectual forces of humanity must act, like floods and winds, according to their own laws; and that if they cast down any edifice too weak to resist them, it must be because the original constructors had not built it substantially, or because those placed in charge of it had neglected to keep it in repair. This is their business, not ours. Our work is simply to ascertain truth by our own independent methods, alike without hostility to any persons claiming authority, and without deference to them. PART VI. LETTE VI. ~ Science and authority. Possible onsequences of intellectual activity. QPART VII. PART VII. LETTER I. How little we know about marriage• WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. LETTER I. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF INTELLECTUAL TASTES, WHO, WITHOUT HAVING AS YET ANY PARTICULAR LADY IN VIEW, HAD EXPRESSED, IN A GENERAL WAY, HIS DETERMINATION TO GET MARRIED. How ignorant we all are about marriage—People wrong in their estimates of the marriages of others—Effects of marriage on the intellectual life—Two courses open—A wife who would not interfere with elevated pursuits—A wife capable of under- standing them--Madame Ingres—Difference in the education of the sexes—Difficulty of educating a wife. The subject of marriage is one concerning which neither I nor anybody else can have more than an infinitesimally small atom of knowledge. Each of us knows how his or her own marriage has turned out; but that, in com- parison with a knowledge of marriage generally, is like a single plant in comparison with the flora of the globe. The utmost experience on this subject to be found in this country extends to about three trials or experiments. A man may become twice a widower, and then marry a third time, but it may be easily shown that the variety of his experience is more than counterbalanced by its incom- pleteness in each instance. For the experiment to beWOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 227 conclusive even as to the wisdom of one decision, it must extend over half a lifetime. A true marriage is not a mere temporary arrangement, and although a young couple are said to be married as soon as the lady has changed her name, the truth is that the real marriage is a long slow intergrowth, like that of two trees planted quite close together in the forest The subject of marriage generally is one of which men know less than they know of any other subject of uni- versal interest. People are almost always wrong in their estimates of the marriages of others, and the best proof how little we know the real tastes and needs of those with whom we have been most intimate, is our unfail- ing surprise at the marriages they make. Very old and experienced people fancy they know a great deal about younger couples, but their guesses, there is good reason to believe, never exactly hit the mark. Ever since this idea, that marriage is a subject we are all very ignorant about, had taken root in my own mind, many little incidents were perpetually occurring to con- firm it; they proved to me, on the one hand, how often I had been mistaken about other people, and, on the other hand, how mistaken about people were concerning the only marriage I profess to know anything about, namely, my own. Our ignorance is all the darker that few men tell us the little that they know, that little being too closely bound up with that innermost privacy of life which every man of right feeling respects in his own case, as in the case of another. The only instances which are laid bare to the public view are the unhappy marriages, which are really not marriages at all. An unhappy alliance bears exactly the same relation to a true marriage that disease does to Q 2 PART VII. LETTER I. Our mis- takes about the viarriages of others. * Privacy 0/ marriage. Unhappy marriages•228 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER I. Only two courses open for the intellectual. Daiiger of unequal marriages. health, and the quarrels and misery of it are the crises by which Nature tries to bring about either the recovery of happiness, or the endurable peace of a settled separation. All that we really know about marriage is that it is based upon the most powerful of all our instincts, and that it shows its own justification in its fruits, especially in the prolonged and watchful care of children. But marriage is very complex in its effects, and there is one set of effects, resulting from it, to which remarkably little attention has been paid hitherto,—I mean its effects upon the intellectual life. Surely they deserve consi- deration by all who value culture. I believe that for an intellectual man, only two courses are open ; either he ought to marry some simple dutiful woman who will bear him children, and see to the house- hold matters, and love him in a trustful spirit without jealousy of his occupations ; or else, on the other hand, he ought to marry some highly intelligent lady, able to carry her education far beyond school experiences, and willing to become his companion in the arduous paths of intel- lectual labour. The danger in the first of the two cases is that pointed out by Wordsworth in some verses addressed to lake-tourists who might feel inclined to buy a peasant’s cottage in Westmoreland. The tourist would spoil the little romantic spot if he bought it; the charm of it is subtly dependent upon the poetry of a simple life, and would be brushed away by the influence of the things that are necessary to people in the middle class. I remember dining in a country inn with an English officer whose ideas were singularly unconventional. We were waited upon by our host’s daughter, a beautiful girl, whose manners were remarkable for their natural elegance and distinction. It seemed to us both that no lady of rankWOMEN AND MARRIA GE. 229 could be more distinguished than she was; and my companion said that he thought a gentleman might do worse than ask that girl to marry him, and settle down quietly in that quiet mountain village, far from the cares and vanities of the world. That is a sort of dream which has occurred no doubt to many an honourable man. Some men have gone so far as to try to make the dream a reality, and have married the beautiful peasant. But the difficulty is that she does not remain what she was; she becomes a sort of make-belief lady, and then her ignorance, which in her natural condition was a charming naivete, becomes an irritating defect. If, however, it were possible for an intellectual man to marry some simple-hearted peasant girl, and keep her carefully in her original condition, I seriously believe that the venture would be less perilous to his culture than an alliance with some woman of our Philistine classes, equally incapable of comprehending his pursuits, but much more likely to interfere with them. I once had a con- versation on this subject with a distinguished artist, who is now a widower, and who is certainly not likely to be prejudiced against marriage by his own experience, which had been an unusually happy one. His view was that a man devoted to art might marry either a plain-minded woman, who would occupy herself exclusively with household matters and shield his peace by taking these cares upon herself, or else a woman quite capable of entering into his artistic life ; but he was convinced that a marriage which exposed him to unintelligent criticism and interference would be dangerous in the highest degree. And of the two kinds of marriage which he considered possible he preferred the former, that with the entirely ignorant and simple person from whom no PART VII. LETTER I. Peasant girls. Opinion of a dis- tinguished artist. 1230 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER I. Madame Ingres, *Ideal marriage of a man of culture. Separation of the sexes in early mental trai?ii?ig. interference was to be apprehended. He considered the first Madame Ingres the true model of an artist’s wife, • because she did all in her power to guard her ' husband’s peace against the daily cares of life and never herself disturbed it, acting the part of a breakwater which protects a space of calm, and never destroys the peace that it has made. This may be true for artists whose occupation is rather aesthetic than intellectual, and does not get much help or benefit from talk; but the ideal marriage for a man of great literary culture would be one permitting some equality of companionship, or, if not equality, at least interest. That this ideal is not a mere dream, but may consolidate into a happy reality, several examples prove ; yet these examples are not so numerous as to relieve me from anxiety about your chances of finding such companionship. The different education of the two sexes separates them widely at the beginning, and to meet on any common ground of culture a second education has to be gone through. It rarely happens that there is resolution enough for this. The want of thoroughness and reality in the education of both sexes, but especially in that of women, may be attributed to a sort of policy which is not very favour- able to companionship in married life. It appears to be thought wise to teach boys things which women do not learn, in order to give women a degree of respect for men’s attainments, which they would not be so likely to feel if they were prepared to estimate them critically; whilst girls are taught arts and languages which until recently were all but excluded from our public schools, and won no rank at our universities. Men and women had consequently scarcely any common ground to meet upon, and the absence of serious mental discipline inWOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 231 the training of women made them indisposed to submit to the irksomeness of that earnest intellectual labour which might have remedied the deficiency. The total lack of accuracy in their mental habits was then, and is still for the immense majority of women, the least easily surmountable impediment to culture. The history of many marriages which have failed to realize intellectual companionship is comprised in a sentence which was actually uttered by one of the most accomplished of my friends: “She knew nothing when I married her. I tried to teach her something; it made her angry, and I gave it up.” LETTER II. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE. The foundations of the intellectual marriage—Marriage not a snare or pitfall for the intellectual — Men of culture, who marry badly, often have themselves to blame—For every grade of the masculine intellect there exists a corresponding grade of the feminine intellect—Difficulty of finding the true mate —French University Professors—An extreme case of intellectual separation—Regrets of a widow—Women help us less by adding to our knowledge than by understanding us. In several letters which have preceded this I have indi- cated some of the differences between the female sex and ours, and it is time to examine the true foundations of the intellectual marriage. Let me affirm, to begin with, my profound faith in the natural arrangement. There is in nature so much evident care for the deve- lopment of the intellectual life, so much protection of it in the social order, there are such admirable contrivances for continuing it from century to century, that we may PART VII. LETTER I. History of many marriages that have failed. LETTER II. Faith in thi natural arrange- ment•232 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER II. The intellectual marriage. Men have themselves to tlame for ill-assorted unions* fairly count upon some provision for its necessities in marriage. Intellectual men are not less alive to the charms of women than other men are ; indeed the greatest of them have always delighted in the society of women. If marriage were really dangerous to the intellectual life, it would be a moral snare or pitfall, from which the best and noblest would be least likely to escape. It is hard to believe that the strong passions which so often accom- pany high intellectual gifts were intended either to drive their possessors into immorality or else to the misery of ill-assorted unions. No, there is such a thing as the intellectual marriage, in which the intellect itself is married. If such marriages are not frequent, it is that they are not often made the deliberate purpose of a wise alliance. Men choose their wives because they are pretty, or because they are rich, or because they are well-connected, but rarely for the permanent interest of their society. Yet who that had ever been condemned to the dreadful embarrassments of i a tete-a-tete with an uncompanionable person, could reflect without apprehension on a lifetime of such tete-a-tetes ? When intellectual men suffer from this misery they have themselves to blame. What is the use of having any mental superiority, if, in a matter so enormously im- portant as the choice of a companion for life, it fails to give us a warning when the choice is absurdly unsuitable ? When men complain, as they do not unfrequently, that their wives have no ideas, the question inevitably suggests itself, why the superiority of the masculine intellect did not, in these cases, permit it to discover the defect in time ? If we are so clever as to be bored by ordinary women, why cannot our cleverness find out the feminine cleverness which would respond to it ?WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 233 »■ " 1 ■ ■1,1 ■ 1 * - 1 .11 —. ■ , ■ 1 What I am going to say now is in its very nature in- capable of proof, and yet the longer I live the more the truth of it is “ borne in upon me.” I feel convinced that for every grade of the masculine intellect there exists a corresponding grade of the feminine intellect, so that a precisely suitable intellectual marriage is always possible for everyone. But since the higher intellects are rare, and rare in proportion to their elevation, it follows that the difficulty of finding the true mate increases with the mental strength and culture of the man. If the “ mental princes,” as Blake called himself, are to marry the mental princesses, they will not always discover them quite so easily as kings’ sons find kings’ daughters. This difficulty of finding the true mate is the real reason why so many clever men marry silly or stupid women. The women about them seem to be all very much alike, mentally; it seems hopeless to expect any real companionship, and the clever men are decided by the colour of a girl’s eyes, or a thousand pounds more in her dowry, or her relationship to a peer of the realm. It was remarked to me by a French university professor, that although men in his position had on the whole much more culture than the middle class, they had an extra- ordinary talent for winning the most vulgar and ignorant wives. The explanation is, that their marriages are not intellectual marriages at all. The class of French pro- fessors is not advantageously situated ; it has not great facilities for choice. Their incomes are so small that, unless helped by private means, the first thing they can prudently look to in a wife is her utility as a domestic servant, which, in fact, it is her destiny to become. The intellectual disparity is from the beginning likely to be PART VII. LETTER II* Dijfictilty of finding the true ?nate. French university professors*234 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER II. Course of warned life wit/i an iniediicated woman. very great, because the professor is confined to the country- town where his Lyce'e happens to be situated, and in that town he does not always see the most cultivated society. He may be an intellectual prince, but where is he to find his princess ? The marriage begins without the idea of intellectual companionship, and it continues as it began. The girl was uneducated ; it seems hopeless to try to educate the woman ; and then there is the supreme diffi- culty, only to be overcome by two wills at once most resolute and most persistent, namely, how to find the time. Years pass ; the husband is occupied all day ; the wife needs to cheer herself with a little society, and goes to sit with neighbours who are not likely to add anything valuable to her knowledge or to give any elevation to her thoughts. Then comes the final fixing and crystalli- zation of her intellect, after which, however much pains and labour might be taken by the pair, she is past the possibility of change. These women are often so good and devoted that their husbands enjoy great happiness ; but it is a kind of happiness curiously independent of the lady’s presence. The professor may love his wife, and fully appreciate her qualities as a housekeeper, but he passes a more interest- ing evening with some male friend whose reading is equal to his own. Sometimes the lady perceives this, and it is an element of sadness in her life. “ I never see my husband,” she tells you, not in anger. “ His work occupies him all day, and in the evening he sees his friends.” The pair walk out together twice a week. I sometimes wonder what they say to each other during those conjugal promenades. They talk about their children, probably, and the little recurring diffi- culties about money. He cannot talk about his studies,235 WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. or the intellectual speculations which his studies con- tinually suggest. The most extreme case of intellectual separation be- tween husband and wife that ever came under my observation was, however, not that of a French pro- fessor, but a highly-cultivated Scotch lawyer. He was one of the most intellectual men I ever knew—a little cynical, but full of original power, and uncommonly well- informed. His theory was, that women ought not to be admitted into the region of masculine thought—that it was not good for them ; and he acted so consistently up to this theory, that although he would open his mind with the utmost frankness to a male acquaintance over the evening whisky-toddy, there was not whisky enough in all Scotland to make him frank in the presence of his wife. She really knew nothing whatever about his intel- lectual existence ; and yet there was nothing in his ways of thinking which an honourable man need conceal from an intelligent woman. His theory worked well enough in practice, and his reserve was so perfect that it may be doubted whether even feminine subtlety ever suspected it. The explanation of his system may perhaps have been this. He was an exceedingly busy man ; he felt that he had not time to teach his wife to know him as he was, and so preferred to leave her with her own concep- tion of him, rather than disturb that conception when he believed it impossible to replace it by a completely true one. We all act in that way with those whom we con- sider quite excluded from our private range of thought. All this may be very prudent and wise : there may be degrees of conjugal felicity, satisfactory in their way, without intellectual intercourse, and yet I cannot think that any man of high culture could regard his marriage PART VII. LETTER II. An exti'cme instatice of intellectual separation in marriage.236 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER* II. Regrets of a widow. Women good pupils and bad solitary learners. How women kelp ui. as altogether a successful one so long as his wife re- » mained shut out from his mental life. Nor is the ex- clusion always quite agreeable for the lady herself. A widow said to me that her husband had never thought it necessary to try to raise her to his own level, yet she believed that with his kindly help she might have attained it. You, with your masculine habits, may observe, as to this, that if the lady had seriously cared to attain a higher level she might have achieved it by her own private independent effort. But this is exactly what the feminine nature never does. A clever woman is the best of pupils, when she loves her teacher, but the worst of solitary learners. It is not by adding to our knowledge, but by under- standing us, that women are our helpers. They understand us far better than men do, when once they have the degree of preliminary information which enables them to enter into our pursuits. Men are occupied with theii personal works and thoughts, and have wonderfully little sympathy left to enable them to comprehend us; but a woman, by her divine sympathy—divine indeed, since it was given by God for this—can enter into our inmost thought, and make allowances for all our difficulties. Talk about your work and its anxieties to a club of masculine friends, they will give very little heed to you; they are all thinking about themselves, and they will dislike your egotism because they have so much egotism of their own, which yours invades and inconveniences. But talk in the same way to any woman who has educa- tion enough to enable her to follow you, and she will listen so kindly, and so very intelligently, that you will be betraved into interminable confidences.WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 237 Now, although an intellectual man may not care to make himself understood by all the people in the street, it is not a good thing for him to feel that he is under- stood by nobody. The intellectual life is sometimes a fearfully solitary one. Unless he lives in a great capital the man devoted to that life is more than all other men liable to suffer from isolation, to feel utterly alone be- neath the deafness of space and the silence of the stars. Give him one friend who can understand him, who will not leave him, who will always be accessible by day and night—one friend, one kindly listener, just one, and the whole universe is changed. It is deaf and indifferent no longer, and whilst she listens, it seems as if all men and angels listened also, so perfectly his thought is mirrored in the light of her answering eyes. PART VII. LETTER II. Isolation prevented by marriagi* LETTER III. t TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE. LETTER III. The intellectual ideal of marriage—The danger of dulness—To be counteracted only by the renewal of both minds—Example of Lady Baker—Separation of the sexes by an old prejudice about education—This prejudice on the decline—Influence of the late Prince Consort. How far may you hope to realize the intellectual ideal of marriage ? Have I ever observed in actual life any approximate realization of that ideal ? These are the two questions which conclude and epitomize the last of your recent letters. Let me endeavour to answer them as satisfactorily as the obscurity of the subject will permit. Intellectual ideal of marriage. *238 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. rART VII. LETTER III. b riends who7n we know too well. Dnlness of perfect intimacy• The evil 77iay be counter- acted. The intellectual ideal seems to be that of a conversa- tion on all the subjects you most care about, which should never lose its interest. Is it possible that two people should live together and talk to each other every day for twenty years without knowing each other’s views too well for them to seem worth expressing or worth listening to ? There are friends whom we know well, so that our talk with them has less of refreshment and entertainment than a conversation with the first in- telligent stranger on the quarter-deck of the steamboat. It is evident that from the intellectual point of view this is the great danger of marriage. It may become dull, not because the mental force of either of the parties has declined, but because each has come to know so accu- rately beforehand what the other will say on any given topic, that inquiry is felt to be useless. This too perfect intimacy, which has ended many a friendship outside of marriage, may also terminate the intellectual life in matrimony itself. Let us not pass too lightly over this danger, for it is not to be denied. Unless carefully provided against, it will gradually extinguish the light that plays between the wedded intelligences as the electric light burns between two carbon points. I venture to suggest, however, that this evil may be counteracted by persons of some energy and originality. This is one of those very numerous cases in which an evil is sure to arrive if nothing is done to prevent it, yet in which the evil need not arrive when those whom it menaces are forewarned. To take an illustration intelli- gible in these days of steam-engines. We know that if the water is allowed to get very low in the boiler a destructive explosion will be the consequence ; yet, since239 WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. every stoker is aware of this, such explosions are not of frequent occurrence. That evil is continually approach- ing and yet continually averted by the exercise of human foresight. Let us suppose that a married couple are clearly aware that in the course of years their society is sure to become mutually uninteresting unless something is done to preserve the earlier zest of it. What is that something ? That which an author does for the unknown multitude of his readers. Every author who succeeds takes the trouble to renew his mind either by fresh knowledge or new thoughts. Is it not at least equally worth while to do as much to preserve the interest of marriage ? Without undervaluing the friendly adhesion of many readers, without affecting any contempt for fame, which is dearer to the human heart than wealth itself whenever it appears to be not wholly unattainable, may not I safely affirm that the interest of married life, from its very , has a still stronger influence upon the mind of any thinking person, of either sex, than the approbation of unnumbered readers in distinct countries or continents? You never see the effect of your thinking on your readers ; they live and die far away from you, a few write letters of praise or criticism, the thousands give no sign. But the wife is with you always, she is almost as near to you as your own body; the world, to you, is a figure-picture in which there is one figure, the rest is merely background. And if an author takes pains to renew his mind for the people in the background, is it not at least equally worth your while to bring fresh thought for the renewal of your life with her ? PART VII. LETTER III.I Means of prcventiiig diilness in marriage.240 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII- LETTER III. Instances of women renewing their minds for their husbands. i This, then, is my theory of the intellectual marriage, that the two wedded intellects ought to renew them- selves continually for each other. And I argue that if this were done in earnest, the otherwise inevitable dulness would be perpetually kept at bay. To the other question, whether in actual life I have ever seen this realized, I answer yes, in several in- stances. Not in very many instances, yet in more than one. Women, when they have conceived the idea that this renewal is necessary, have resolution enough for the realization of it. There is hardly any task too hard for them, if they believe it essential to the conjugal life. I could give you the name and address of one who mastered Greek in order not to be excluded from her husband’s favourite pursuit; others have mastered other languages for the same object, and even some branch of science, for which the feminine mind has less natural affinity than it has for imaginative literature. Their remarkable incapacity for independent mental labour is accompanied by an equally remarkable capacity for labour under an accepted masculine guidance. In this connec- tion I may without impropriety mention one English- woman, for she is already celebrated, the wife of Sir Samuel Baker, the discoverer of the Albert Nyanza. She stood with him on the shore of that unknown sea, when first it was beheld by English eyes; she had passed with him through all the hard preliminary toils and trials. She had learned Arabic with him in a year of necessary but wearisome delay; her mind had travelled with his mind as her feet had followed his footsteps. Scarcely less beautiful, if less heroic, is the picture of the geologist’s wife, Mrs. Buckland, who taught herself to reconstructWOMEN AND MARRIAGE. broken fossils, and did it with a surprising delicacy, and patience, and skill, full of science, yet more than science, the perfection of feminine art. The privacy of married life often prevents us from knowing the extent to which intelligent women have renewed their minds by fresh and varied culture for the purpose of retaining their ascendency over their husbands, or to keep up the interest of their lives. It is done much more frequently by women than by men. They have so much less egotism, so much more adaptability, that they fit themselves to us oftener than we adapt ourselves to them. But in a quite perfect marriage these efforts would be mutual. The husband would endeavour to make life interesting to his companion by taking a share in some pursuit which was really her own. It is easier for us than it was for our ancestors to do this—at least for our imme- diate ancestors. There existed, fifty years ago, a most irrational prejudice, very strongly rooted in the social conventions of the time, about masculine and feminine accomplishments. The educations of the two sexes were so trenchantly separated that neither had access to the knowledge of the other. The men had learned Latin and Greek, of which the women were ignorant; the women had learned French or Italian, which the men could neither read nor speak. The ladies studied fine art, not seriously, but it occupied a good deal of their time and thoughts ; the gentlemen had a manly contempt for it, which kept them, as contempt always does, in a state of absolute ignorance. The intellectual separation of the sexes was made as complete as possible by the conventionally received idea that a man could not learn what girls learned without effeminacy, and that if women aspired to men’s knowledge they would forfeit 241 PART VII. LETTER III. Renewal 0/ minds after marriage. Separation of the sexes in education. R242 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER III. Culture independent of sex. The Prince Consort. the delicacy of their sex. This illogical prejudice was based on a bad syllogism of this kind :— Girls speak French, and learn music and drawing. Benjamin speaks French, and learns music and drawing. Benjamin is a girl. And the prejudice, powerful as it was, had not even the claim of any considerable antiquity. Think how strange and unreasonable it would have seemed to Lady Jane Grey and Sir Philip Sidney ! In their time, ladies and gentlemen studied the same things, the world of culture was the same for both, and they could meet in it as in a garden. Happily we are coming back to the old rational notion of culture as independent of the question of sex. Latin and Greek are not unfeminine; they were spoken by women in Athens and Rome; the modern languages are fit for a man to learn, since men use them continually on the battle-fields and in the parliaments and exchanges of the world. Art is a manly business, if ever any human occupation could be called manly, for the utmost efforts of the strongest men are needed for success in it. The increasing interest in the fine arts, the more impor- tant position given to modern languages in the universi- ties, the irresistible attractions and growing authority of science, all tend to bring men and women together on subjects understood by both, and therefore operate directly in favour of intellectual interests in marriage. You will not suspect me of a snobbish desire to pay compliments to royalty if I trace some of these changes in public opinion to the example and influence of the Prince Consort, operating with some effect during his life, yet with far greater force since he was taken away fromWOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 243 us. The truth is, that the most modern English ideal of gentlemanly culture is that which Prince Albert, to a great extent, realized in his own person. Perhaps his various accomplishments may be a little embellished or exaggerated in the popular belief, but it is unquestionable that his notion of culture was very large and liberal, and quite beyond the narrow pedantry of the preceding age. There was nothing in it to exclude a woman, and we know that she who loved him entered largely into the works and recreations of his life. LETTER IV. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE. Women do not of themselves undertake intellectual labour—Their resignation to ignorance — Absence of scientific curiosity in women—They do not accumulate accurate knowledge—Archi- medes in his bath—Rarity of inventions due to women—Ex- ceptions. Before saying much about the influence of marriage on the intellectual life, it is necessary to make some inquiry into the intellectual nature of women. The first thing to be noted is that, with exceptions so rare as to be practically of no importance to an argu- ment, women do not of themselves undertake intellec- tual labour. Even in the situations most favourable for labour of that kind, women do not undertake it unless they are urged to it, and directed in it, by some powerful masculine influence. In the absence of that influence, although their minds are active, that activity neither tends to discipline nor to the accumulation of know- ledge. Women who are not impelled by some masculine PART VII. LETTER III. His notion of culture. LETTER IV. Women do ?iot of themselves tindertake intellectual labour. R 2244 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER IV. Resignation to ig7iorance. Absence of intellectual initiative. influence are not superior, either in knowledge or dis- cipline of the mind, at the age of fifty to what they were at the age of twenty-five. In other words, they nave not in themselves the motive powers which can cause an intellectual advance. The best illustration of this is a sisterhood of three or four rich old maids, with all the advantages of leisure. You will observe that they invariably remain, as to their education, where they were left by their teachers many years before. They will often lament, perhaps, that in their day education was very inferior to what it is now; but it never occurs to them that the large leisure of sub- sequent years might, had it been well employed, have supplied those deficiencies of which they are sensible. Nothing is more curiously remote from masculine habits than the resignation to particular degrees of ignorance, as to the inevitable, which a woman will express in a manner which says: “You know I am so; you know that I cannot make myself better informed.” They are like perfect billiard-balls on a perfect table, which stop when no longer impelled, wherever they may happen to be. It is this absence of intellectual initiative which causes the great ignorance of women. What they have been well taught, that they know, but they do not increase their stores of knowledge. Even in what most interests them, theology, they repeat, but do not extend, their information. All the effort of their minds appears (so far as an outside observer may presume to judge) to act like water on a picture, which brings out the colours that already exist upon the canvas but does not add anything to the design. There is a great and perpetual freshness and vividness in their conceptions, which is often lackingWOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 245 in our own. Our conceptions fade, and are replaced; theirs are not replaced, but refreshed. What many women do for their theological concep- tions or opinions, others do with reference to the in- numerable series of questions of all kinds which present themselves in the course of life. They attempt to solve them by the help of knowledge acquired in girlhood; and if that cannot be done, they either give them up as beyond the domain of women, or else trust to hearsay for a solution. What they will not do is to hunt the matter out unaided, and get an accurate answer by dint of independent investigation. There is another characteristic of women, not peculiar to them, for many men have it in an astonishing degree, and yet more general in the female sex than in the male : I allude to the absence of scientific curiosity. Ladies see things of the greatest wonder and interest working in their presence and for their service without feeling im- pelled to make any inquiries into the manner of their working. I could mention many very curious instances of this, but I select one which seems typical. Many years ago I happened to be in a room filled with English ladies, most of whom were highly intelligent, and the conversa- tion happened to turn upon a sailing-boat which belonged to me. One of the ladies observed that sails were not of much use, since they could only be available to push the boat in the direction of the wind; a statement which all the other ladies received with approbation. Now, all these ladies had seen ships working under canvas against head- winds, and they might have reflected that without that por- tion of the art of seamanship every vessel unprovided with steam would assuredly drift upon a lee-shore; but it was not in the feminine nature to make 3 scientific observa- PART VII. LETTER IV. Absence of scientific curiosity* A n example.246 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER IV. Absence of scientific curiosity extends to every-day things. Its conse- quences. tion of that kind. Vou will answer, perhaps, that I could scarcely expect ladies to investigate men’s business, and that seamanship is essentially the business of our own sex. But the truth is, that all English people, no matter of what sex, have so direct an interest in the maritime activity of England, that they might reasonably be ex- pected to know the one primary conquest on which for many centuries that activity has depended, the conquest of the opposing wind, the sublimest of the early victories of science. And this absence of curiosity in women extends to things they use every day. They never seem to want to know the insides of things as we do. All ladies know that steam makes a locomotive go; but they rest satisfied with that, and do not inquire further how the steam sets the wheels in motion. They know that it is necessary to wind up their watches, but they do not care to inquire into the real effects of that little exercise of force. Now this absence of the investigating spirit has very wide and important consequences. The first conse- quence of it is that women do not naturally accumulate accurate knowledge. Left to themselves, they accept various kinds of teaching, but they do not by any analysis of their own either put that teaching to any serious intellectual test, or qualify themselves for any extension of it by independent and original discovery. We of the male sex are seldom clearly aware how much of our practical force, of the force which discovers and originates, is due to our common habit of analytical observation; yet it is scarcely too much to say that most of our inventions have been suggested by actually or intellectually pulling something else in pieces. And such of our discoveries as cannot be traced directly to \WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 247 analysis are almost always due to habits of general observation which lead us to take note of some fact apparently quite remote from what it helps us to arrive at. One of the best instances of this indirect utility of habitual observation, as it is one of the earliest, is what occurred to Archimedes in his bath. When the water displaced by his body overflowed, he noticed the fact of displacement, and at once perceived its applicability to the cubic measurement of complicated bodies. It is possible that if his mind had not been exercised at the time about the adulteration of the royal crown, it would not have been led to anything by the overflowing of his bath; but the capacity to receive a suggestion of that kind is, I believe, a capacity exclusively masculine. A woman would have noticed the overflowing, but she I would have noticed it only as a cause of disorder or inconvenience. This absence of the investigating and discovering tendencies in women is confirmed by the extreme rarity of inventions due to women, even in the things which most interest and concern them. The stocking-loom and the sewing-machine are the two inventions which would most naturally have been hit upon by women, for people are naturally inventive about things which relieve themselves of labour, or which increase their own possibilities of production ; and yet the stocking- loom and the sewing-machine are both of them mascu- line ideas, carried out to practical efficiency by masculine energy and perseverance. So I believe that all the improvements in pianos are due to men, though women have used pianos much more than men have used them. PART VII. LETTER IV. Masculine capacity for receiving suggestions. 1 Rarity of inventions due to women. 1248 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. I PART VII. LETTER IV. Cultivated women encouraged by masculine injl uence. Exceptional women. This, then, is in my view the most important negative characteristic of women, that they do not push forwards intellectually by their own force. There have been a few instances in which they have written with power and originality, have become learned, and greatly superior, no doubt, to the majority of men. There are three or four women in England, and as many on the Continent, who have lived intellectually in harness for many years, and who unaffectedly delight in strenuous intellectual labour, giving evidence both of fine natural powers and the most persevering culture; but these women have usually been encouraged in their work by some near masculine influ- ence. And even if it were possible, which it is not, to point to some female Archimedes or Leonardo da Vinci, it is not the rare exceptions which concern us, but the prevalent rule of Nature. Without desiring to compare our most learned ladies with anything so disagreeable to the eye as a bearded woman, I may observe that Nature generally has a few exceptions to all her rules, and that as women having beards are a physical exception, so women who naturally study and investigate are intel- lectual exceptions. Once more let me repudiate any malicious intention in establishing so unfortunate and maladroite an association of ideas, for nothing is less agreeable than a woman with a beard, whilst, on the con- trary, the most intellectual of women may at the same time be the most permanently charming.WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 249 LETTER V. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE. The danger of deviation—Danger from increased expenditure— Nowhere so great as in England—Complete absorption in business—Case of a tradesman—Case of a solicitor—The pursuit of comfort dangerous to the Intellectual Life—The meanness of its results—Fireside purposes—Danger of deviation in rich marriages—George Sand’s study of this in her story of “ Valvedre.” Amongst the dangers of marriage, one of those most to be dreaded by a man given to intellectual pursuits is the deviation which, in one way or other, marriage inevi- tably produces. It acts like the pointsman on a railway, who, by pulling a lever, sends the train in another direc- tion. The married man never goes, or hardly ever goes, exactly on the same intellectual lines which he would have followed if he had remained a bachelor. This de- viation may or may not be a gain; it is always a most serious danger. Sometimes the deviation is produced by the necessity for a stricter attention to money, causing a more unre- mitting application to work that pays well, and a propor- tionate neglect of that which can only give extension to our knowledge and clearness to our views. In no country is this danger so great as it is in Eng- land, where the generally expensive manner of living, and the prevalent desire to keep families in an ideally perfect state of physical comfort, produce an absorption in busi- ness which in all but the rarest instances leaves no margin for intellectual labour. There are, no doubt, some re- markable examples of men earning a large income by a PART VII. LETTER V. Deviation resulting from marriage. Sometimes caused by pecitniary considera- tions.250 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER V. Case of an E nglish tradesvia?L. Case of a solicitor. laborious profession, who have gained reputation in one of the sciences or in some branch of literature, but these are very exceptional cases. A man who works at his profession as most Englishmen with large families have to work, can seldom enjoy that surplus of nervous energy which would be necessary to carry him far in literature or science. I remember meeting an English tradesman in the railway between Paris and the coast, who told me that he was obliged to visit France very frequently, yet could not speak French, which was a great deficiency and inconvenience to him. “Why not learn?” I asked, and received the following answer :— “ I have to work at my business all day long, and often far into the night. When the day’s work is over I gene- rally feel very tired, and want rest; but if I don’t happen to feel quite so tired, then it is not work that I need, but recreation, of which I get very little. I never feel the courage to set to work at the French grammar, though it would be both pleasant and useful to me to know French ; indeed, I constantly feel the want of it. It might, per- haps, be possible to learn from a phrase-book in the rail- way train, but to save time I always travel at night. Being a married man, I have to give my whole attention to my business.” A solicitor with a large practice in London held nearly the same language. He worked at his office all day, and often brought home the most difficult work for the quiet of his own private study after the household had gone to bed. The little reading that he could indulge in was light reading. In reality the profession intruded even on his few hours of leisure, for he read many of the columns in the Times which relate to law or legislation, and these make at the end of a few years an amount of readingWOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 251 sufficient for the mastery of a foreign literature. This gentleman answered very accurately to M. Taine’s descrip- don of the typical Englishman, absorbed in business and the Times. In these cases it is likely that the effect of marriage was not inwardly felt as a deviation ; but when culture has been fairly begun, and marriage hinders the pursuit of it, or makes it deviate from the chosen path, then there is often an inward consciousness of the fact, not without its bitterness. A remarkable article on “ Luxury,” in the second volume of the Cornhill Magaz, deals with this sub- ject in a manner evidently suggested by serious reflection and experience. The writer considers the effects of the pursuit of comfort (never carried so far as it is now) on the higher moral and intellectual life. The comforts of a bachelor were not what the writer meant; these are easily procured, and seldom require the devotion of all the energies. The “ comfort ” which is really dangerous to intellectual growth is that of a family establishment, because it so easily becomes the one absorbing object of existence. Men who began life with the feeling that they would willingly devote their powers to great purposes, like the noble examples of past times who laboured and suffered for the intellectual advancement of their race, and had starvation for their reward, or in some cases even the prison and the stake—men who in their youth felt themselves to be heirs of a nobility of spirit like that of Bruno, of Swammerdam, of Spinoza, have too often found themselves in the noon of life concentrating all the energies of body and soul on the acquisition of ugly millinery and uglier upholstery, and on spreading extra- vagant tables to feed uncultivated guests. PART VII. LETTER V. Inward conscious- ness of deviation. Effects of the pursuit of comfort.THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 252 PA RT VII. LETTER V. What men •were intended to know and do. Idolatry of domestic happiness. Men do lower work than they might have done. “ It is impossible,” says the writer of the article just alluded to, “ it is impossible to say why men were made, but assuming that they were made for some purpose, of which the faculties which they possess afford evidence, it follows that they were intended to do many other things besides providing for their families and enjoying their society. They were meant to know, to act, and to feel —to know everything which the mind is able to con- template, to name, and to classify; to do everything which the will, prompted by the passions and guided by the conscience, can undertake ; and, subject to the same guidance, to feel in its utmost vigour every emotion which the contemplation of the various persons and objects which surround us can excite. This view of the objects of life affords an almost infinite scope for human activity in different directions ; but it also shows that it is in the highest degree dangerous to its beauty and its worth to allow any one side of life to become the object of idolatry; and there are many reasons for thinking that domestic happiness is rapidly assuming that position in the minds of the more comfortable classes of English- men. ... It is a singular and affecting thing, to see how every manifestation of human energy bears witness to the shrewdness of the current maxim that a large income is a necessary of life. Whatever is done for money is done admirably well. Give a man a specific thing to make or to write, and pay him well for it, and you may with a little trouble secure an excellent article; but the ability which does these things so well, might have been and ought to have been trained to far higher things, which for the most part are left undone, because the clever workman thinks himself bound to earn what will keep himself, his wife, and his six or seven children, upWOMEN AMD MARRIAGE. 253 wA^jrn to the established standard of comfort. What was at first a necessity, perhaps an unwelcome one, becomes by degrees a habit and a pleasure, and men who might have done memorable and noble things, if they had learnt in time to consider the doing of such things an object worth living for, lose the power and the wish to live for other than fireside purposes.” But this kind of intellectual deviation, you may answer, is not strictly the consequence of marriage, qua marriage ; it is one of the consequences of a degree of relative poverty, produced by the larger expenditure of married life, but which might be just as easily pro- duced by a certain degree of money-pressure in the con- dition of a bachelor. Let me therefore point out a kind of deviation which may be as frequently observed in rich marriages as in poor ones. Suppose the case of a bachelor with a small but perfectly independent income amounting to some hundreds a year, who is devoted to intellectual pursuits, and spends his time in study or with cultivated friends of his own, choosing friends whose society is an encouragement and a help. Suppose that this man makes an exceedingly prudent marriage, with a rich woman, you may safely predict, in this instance, intellectual deviations of a kind perilous to the highest culture. He will have new calls upon his time, his society will no longer be entirely of his own choosing, he will no longer be able to devote himself with absolute singleness of purpose to studies from which his wife must necessarily be excluded. If he were to continue faithful to his old habits, and shut himself up every day in his library or laboratory, or set out on frequent scientific expeditions, his wife would either be a lady of quite extraordinary perfection of temper, or else entirely PART VII. LETTER V. Deviation in rick mai'riages. New calls on time.254 TEE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER V. Loss of time after marriage. \ Valve dre avd his zvfe. i indififerent in her feelings towards him, if she did not regard his pursuits with quickly-increasing jealousy. She would think, and justifiably think, that he ought to give more of his time to the enjoyment of her society, that he ought to be more by her side in the carriage and in the drawing-room, and if he loved her he would yield to these kindly and reasonable wishes. He would spend many hours of every day in a manner not profitable to his great pursuits, and many weeks of every year in visits to her friends. His position would be even less favour- able to study in some respects than that of a professional man. It would be difficult for him, if an amateur artist, to give that unremitting attention to painting which the professional painter gives. He could not say, “ I do this for you and for our children he could only say, “ I do it for my own pleasure,” which is not so graceful an excuse. As a bachelor, he might work as professional people work, but his marriage would strongly accentuate the amateur character of his position. It is possible that if his labours had won great fame the lady might bear the separation more easily, for ladies always take a noble pride in the celebrity of their husbands ; but the best and worthiest intellectual labour often brings no fame whatever, and notoriety is a mere accident of some departments of the intellectual life, and not its ultimate object. George Sand, in her admirable novel “ Valvhdre,” has depicted a situation of this kind with the most careful delicacy of touch. Valvedre was a man of science, who attempted to continue the labours of his intellectual life after marriage had united him to a lady incapable. of sharing them. The reader pities both, and sympathises with both. It is hard, on the one hand, that a manWOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 255 endowed by nature with great talents for scientific work should not go on with a career already gloriously begun ; and yet, on the other hand, a woman who is so frequently abandoned for science may blamelessly feel some jealousy of science. Valvedre, in narrating the story of his unhappy wedded life, said that Alida wished to have at her orders a perfect gentleman to accompany her, but that he felt in himself a more serious ambition. He had not aimed at fame, but he had thought it possible to become a useful servant, bringing his share of patient and courageous seekings to the edifice of the sciences. He had hoped that Alida would understand this. “ ‘There is time enough for everything,’ she said, still retaining him in the useless wandering life that she had chosen. ‘ Perhaps,’ he answered, ‘ but on condition that I lose no more of it; and it is not in this wandering life, cut to pieces by a thousand unforeseen interruptions, that I can make the hours yield their profit.’ “ ‘ Ah ! we come to the point ! ’ exclaimed Alida im- petuously. ‘ You wish to leave me, and to travel alone in impossible regions.’ “ ‘ No, I will work near you and abandon certain ob- servations which it would be necessary to make at too great a distance, but you also will sacrifice something: we will not see so many idle people, we will settle some- where for a fixed time. It shall be where you will, and if the place does not suit you, we will try another; but from time to time you will permit me a phase of seden- tary work.’ “ ‘Yes, yes, you want to live for yourself alone; you have lived enough for me. I understand ; your love is satiated and at an end. PART VII LETTE? V.2S6 PART VII. LETTER V. Valvhdre and his wife. THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. “ Nothing could conquer her conviction study 7ms her rival, and that love was only possible in idleness. “ ‘To love is everything,’ she said; ‘and he who loves has not time to concern himself with anything else. Whilst the husband is intoxicating himself with the marvels of science, the wife languishes and dies. It is the destiny which awaits me; and since I am a burden to you, I should do better to die at once.’ “ A little later ValvMre ventured to hint something about work, hoping to conquer his wife’s ennui, on which she proclaimed the hatred of work as a sacred right of her nature and position. “ ‘Nobody ever taught me to work,’she said, ‘and l did not marry under a promise to begin again at the , , c of things. Whatever I know I have learned by intui- tion, by reading without aim or method. I am a woman; my destiny is to love my husband and bring up children. It is very strange that my husband should be the person who counsels me to think of something better.’ ” I am far from suggesting that Madame Valvedre is an exact representative of her sex, but the sentiments which in her are exaggerated, and expressed with passionate plainness, are in much milder form very prevalent senti- ments indeed; and Valvedre’s great difficulty, how to get leave to prosecute his studies with the degree of devotion necessary to make them fruitful, is not at all an uncommon difficulty with intellectual men after marriage. The cha- racter of Madame Valvedre, being passionate and exces- sive, led her to an open expression of her feelings; but feelings of a like kind, though milder in degree, exist fre- quently below the surface, and may be detected by any vigilant observer of human nature. That such feelings* WOMEN AND MARRIA GE. are very natural it is impossible even for a savant to deny; but whilst admitting the clear right of a woman to be preferred by a man to science when once he has married her, let me observe that the man might perhaps do wisely, before the knot is tied, to ascertain whether her intellectual dowry is rich enough to compensate him for the sacrifices she is likely to exact. LETTER VI. TO A SOLITARY STUDENT. Need of a near intellectual friendship in solitude—Persons who live independently of custom run a peculiar risk in marriage— Women by nature more subservient to custom than men are— Difficulty of conciliating solitude and marriage— De Senan- cour—The marriages of eccentrics—Their wives either protect them or attempt to reform them. Isolated as you are, by the very superiority of your culture, from the ignorant provincial world around you, I cannot but believe that marriage is essential to your intellectual health and welfare. If you married some cultivated woman, bred in the cultivated society of a great capital, that companionship would give you an independence of surrounding influences which nothing else can give. You fancy that by shutting yourself up in a country house you are uninfluenced by the world around you. It is a great error. You know that you are isolated, that you are looked upon and probably ridiculed as an eccentric, and this knowledge, which it is impossible to banish from your mind, deprives your thinking of elasticity and grace. You urgently need the support of an intellectual friendship quite near to you, S 257 PART VII. LETTER , V. LETTER VI. Valve of a cultivated •wife. Evil of isolation*25S THE INTELLECTUAL LLFE. PART VII. LETTER VI. Danger of marriage for eccentrics• Value of solitude. De Senancour. under your own roof. Bachelors in great cities feel this necessity less. Still remember, that whoever has arranged his life independently of custom runs a peculiar risk in mar- riage. Women are by nature far more subservient to custom than we are, more than we can easily conceive. The danger of marriage, for a person of your tastes, is that a woman entering your house might enter it as the representative of that minutely-interfering authority which you continually ignore. And let us never forget that a perfect obedience to custom requires great sacrifices of time and money that you might not be disposed to make, and which certainly would interfere with study. You value and enjoy your solitude, well knowing how great a thing it is to be master of all your hours. It is difficult to conciliate solitude, or even a wise and suit- able selection of acquaintances, with the semi-publicity of marriage. Heads of families receive many persons in their houses whom they would never have invited, and, from whose society they derive little pleasure and no profit. De Senancour had plans of studious retire- ment, and hoped that the “douce intimite” of marriage might be compatible with these cherished projects. But marriage, he found, drew him into the circle of ordi- nary provincial life, and he always suffered from its influences. You are necessarily an eccentric. In the neighbour- hood where you live it is an eccentricity to study, for nobody but you studies anything. A man so situated is fortunate when this feeling of eccentricity is alleviated, and unfortunate when it is increased. A wife would certainly do one or the other. Married to a very superior woman, able to understand the devotion to intellectualWOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 2j9 aims, you would be much relieved of the painful con- sciousness of eccentricity; but a woman of less capacity would intensify it. So far as we can observe the married life of others, it seems to me that I have met with instances of men, con- stituted and occupied very much as you are, who have found in marriage a strong protection against the igno- rant judgments of their neighbours, and an assurance of intellectual peace; whilst in other cases it has appeared rather as if their solitude were made more a cause of . 'conscious suffering, as if the walls of their cabinets were pulled down for the boobies outside to stare at them and laugh at them. A woman will either take your side against the customs of the little world around, or she will take the side of custom against you. If she loves you deeply, and if there is some visible result of your labours in fame and money, she may possibly do the first, and then she will protect your tranquillity better than a force of policemen, and give you a delightful sense of reconciliation with all humanity; but many of her most powerful instincts tend the other way. She has a natural sympathy with all the observances of custom, and you neglect them; she is fitted for social life, which you are not. Unless you win her wholly to your side, she may undertake the enterprise of curing your eccentricities and adapting you to the ideal of her caste. This may be highly satisfactory to the operator, but it is full of inconveniences to the patient. PART VII. LETTER VI. Protection of marriage. Curing eccentric u ties.2 Go \ THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER VII. LETTER VII. TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE WHO FOUND IT DIFFICULT TO ASSOCIATE WITH PERSONS OF HER OWN SEX, Men are not very good judges of feminine conversation—The interest of it would be increased if women could be more freely initiated into great subjects—Small subjects interesting when seen in relation to central ideas—That ladies of superior faculty ought rather to elevate female society than withdraw from it—Women when displaced do not appear happy. Deficiencies'1 i?i female society What you confided to me in our last interesting conver- sation has given me material for reflection, and afforded a glimpse of a state of things which I have sometimes suspected without having data for any positive conclu- sion. The society of women is usually sought by men during hours of mental relaxation, and we naturally find such a charm in their mere presence, especially when they are graceful or beautiful, that we are not very severe or even accurate judges of the abstract intellectual quality of their talk. But a woman cannot feel the indescribable charm which wins us so easily, and I have sometimes thought that a superior person of your sex • might be aware of certain deficiencies in her sisters which men very readily overlook. You tell me that you feel embarrassed in the society of ladies, because they know so little about the subjects which interest you, and are astonished when you speak about anything really worth attention. On the other hand, you feel perfectly at ease with men of ability and culture, and most at your ease with men of the best ability and the most eminent attain- ments. What you complain of chiefly in women seemsWOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 261 to be their impatience of varieties of thought which are unfamiliar to them, and their constant preference for small topics. It has long been felt by men that if women could be more freely initiated into great subjects the interest of general conversation would be much increased. The difficulty appears to lie in their instinctive habit of making all questions personal questions. The etiquette of society makes it quite impossible for men to speak to ladies in the manner which would be intellectually most profitable to them. We may not teach because it is pedantic, and we may not contradict, because it is rude. Most of the great subjects are conventionally held to be closed, so that it is a sin against good taste to discuss them. In every house the ladies have a set of fixed convictions of some kind, which it is not polite in any man to appear to doubt. The consequence of these conventional rules is that women live in an atmosphere of acquiescence which makes them intolerant of anything like bold and original thinking on important subjects. But as the mind always requires free play of some kind, when all the great subjects are forbidden it will use its activity in playing about little ones. For my part I hardly think it desirable tor any ot us to be incessantly coping with great subjects, and the ladies are right in taking a lively interest in the small events around them. But even the small events would have a deeper interest if they were seen in their true relations to the great currents of European thought and action. It is probably the ignorance of these relations which, more than the smallness of the topics themselves, makes femi- nine talk fatiguing to you. Very small things indeed have an interest when exhibited in relation to larger, as PART VII. LETTER VII. Etiquette unfavour- able to women. Closed subjects. Interest in small events.I 262 4 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER VII. I What gives interest to conversa- tion. The tone of conversatio7i may he raised. \ men of science are continually demonstrating. I have been taking note lately of the talk that goes on around me, and I find that when it is shallow and wearisome it is always because the facts mentioned bear no reference to any central or governing idea, and do not illustrate anything. Conversation is interesting in proportion to the originality of the central ideas which serve as pivots, and the fitness of the little facts and observations which are contributed by the talkers. For instance, if people happened to be talking about rats, and some one in- formed you that he had seen a rat last week, that would be quite uninteresting; but you would listen with greater attention if he said : “ The other night, as I was going upstairs very late, I followed a very fine rat who was going upstairs too, and he was not in the least hurried, but stopped after every two or three steps to have a look at me and my candle. He was very prettily marked about the face and tail, so I concluded that he was not a common rat, but probably a lemming. Two nights afterwards I met him again, and this time he seemed almost to know me, for he quietly made room for me as I passed. Very likely he might be easily tamed.” This is interesting, because, though the fact narrated is still trifling, it illustrates animal character. If you will kindly pardon an “ improvement ” of this subject, as a preacher would call it, I might add that an intellectual lady like yourself might, perhaps, do better to raise the tone of the feminine talk around her than to withdraw from it in weariness. There are always, in every circle, a few superior persons who, either from natural diffidence, or because they are not very rich, or because they are too young, suffer themselves to be entirely overwhelmed by the established mediocrityWOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 263 around them. What they need is a leader, a deliverer. Is it not in your power to render services of this kind? Could you not select from the younger ladies whom you habitually meet, a few who, like yourself, feel bored by the dulness or triviality of what you describe as the current feminine conversation ? There is often a painful shyness which prevents people of real ability from using it for the advantage of others, and this shyness is nowhere so common as in England, especially provincial England. It feels the want of a hardy example. A lady who talked really well would no doubt run some risk of being rather unpleasantly isolated at first, but surely, if she tried, she might ultimately find accomplices. You could do much, to begin with, by recommending high-toned literature, and gradually awakening an interest in what is truly worth attention. It seems lamentable that every culti- vated woman should be forced out of the society of her own sex, and made to depend upon ours for conversation of that kind which is an absolute necessity to the intel- lectual. The truth is, that women so displaced never appear altogether happy. And culture costs jso much downright hard work, that it ought not to be paid for by any suffering beyond those toils which are its fair and natural price. PART VII LETTER VII. Shyness of able people Need of a hardy exa?nple. Displaced wojnen. 1264 THE INTELLECTUAL LITE. PART VII. LETTER VIII. What men say to women. How men address wo me 71. LETTER VIII. TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE. Greatest misfortune in the intellectual life of women—They do not hear truth—Men disguise their thoughts for women—Cream and cura9oa—Probable permanence of the desire to please women—Most truth in cultivated society—Hopes from the increase of culture. I think that the greatest misfortune in the intellectual life of women is that they do not hear the truth from men. All men in cultivated society say to women as much as possible that which they may be supposed to wish to hear, and women are so much accustomed to this that they can scarcely hear without resentment an expression of opinion which takes no account of their personal and private feeling. The consideration for the feelings of women gives an agreeable tone to society, but it is fatal to the severity of truth. Observe a man of the world whose opinions are well known to you,—notice the little pause before he speaks to a lady. During that little pause he is turning over what he has to say, so as to present it in the manner that will please her best; and you may be sure that the integrity of truth will suffer in the process. If we compare what we know of the man with that which the lady hears from him, we perceive the immense disadvantages of her position. He ascertains what will please her, and that is what he administers. He professes to take a deep interest in things which he does not care for in the least, and he passes lightly over subjects and events which he knows to be of the most )WOMEN AND MARRIA GE. 265 momentous importance to the world. The lady spends an hour more agreeably than if she heard opinions which would irritate, and prognostics which would alarm her, but she has missed an opportunity for culture, she has been confirmed in feminine illusions. If this happened only from time to time, the effect would not tell so much on the mental constitution ; but it is incessant, it is con- tinual. Men disguise their thoughts for women as if to venture into the feminine world wrere as dangerous as travelling in Arabia, or as if the thoughts themselves were criminal. There appeared two or three years ago in Punch a clever drawing which might have served as an illustration to this subject. A fashionable doctor was visiting a lady in Belgravia who complained that she suffered from debility. Cod-liver oil being repugnant to her taste, the agreeable doctor, wise in his generation, blandly suggested as an effective substitute a mixture of cream and curagoa. What that intelligent man did for his patient’s physical constitution, all men of politeness do for the intellectual constitution of ladies. Instead of administering the truth which would strengthen, though unpalatable, they administer intellectual cream and cura^oa. The primary cause of this tendency to say what is most pleasing to women is likely to be as permanent as the distinction of sex itself. It springs directly from sexual feelings, it is hereditary and instinctive. Men will never talk to women with that rough frankness which they use between themselves. Conversation be- tween the sexes will always be partially insincere. Still I think that the more women are respected, the more men will desire to be approved by them for what they are in reality, and the less they will care for approval which PART VII. LETTER VIII. Men dis- guise their thoughts for women. Cream and cura$oa. Sexual feeling.266 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER VIII. Good effects cf high culture. Hopes for the future. is obtained by dissimulation. It may be observed already that, in the most intellectual society of great capitals, men are considerably more outspoken before women than they are in the provincial middle-classes. Where women have.most culture, men are most open and sincere. Indeed, the highest culture has a direct tendency to command sincerity in others, both because it is tolerant of variety in opinion, and because it is so penetrating that dissimulation is felt to be of no use. By the side of an uncultivated woman, a man feels that if he saps anything different from what she has been accustomed to she will take offence, whilst if he says anything beyond the narrow range of her information he will make her cold and uncomfortable. The most honest of men, in such a position, finds it necessary to be very cautious, and can scarcely avoid a little insin- cerity. But with a woman of culture equal to his own, these causes for apprehension have no existence, and he can safely be more himself. These considerations lead me to hope that as culture becomes more general women will hear truth more frequently. Whenever this comes to pass, it will be, to them, an immense intellectual gain.WOMEN AND MAR El A GE. 267 LETTER IX. TO A YOUNG MAN OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, WELL EDU- CATED, WHO COMPLAINED THAT IT WAS DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO LIVE AGREEABLY WITH HIS MOTHER, A PERSON OF SOMEWHAT AUTHORITATIVE DISPOSITION, BUT UNEDUCATED. A sort of misunderstanding common in modern households— Intolerance of inaccuracy—A false position—A lady not easily intimidated — Difficulty of arguing when you have to teach —Instance about the American War—The best course in discussion with ladies—Women spoilt by non-contradiction— They make all questions personal—The strength of their feelings—Their indifference to matters of fact. I have been thinking a good deal, and seriously, since we last met, about the subject of our conversation, which though a painful one is not to be timidly avoided. The degree of unhappiness in your little household, which ought to be one of the pleasantest of households, yet which, as you confided to me, is overshadowed by a continual misunderstanding, is, I fear, very common indeed at the present day. It is only by great forbear- ance, and great skill, that any household in which persons of very different degrees of culture have to live together on terms of equality, can be maintained in perfect peace ; and neither the art nor the forbearance is naturally an attribute of youth. A man whose scholarly attainments were equal to your own, and whose experience of men and women was wider, could no doubt offer you counsel both wise and practical, yet. I can hardly say that I should like you better if you followed it. I cannot blame you for having the natural characteristics of your years, an honest love of the best truth. that you have attained to, part 1 LETTIM IX. Unhap fine, 1 in certain households. Character* Jstics of youth*26S THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER IX. A false position. A talkative lady. an intolerance of inaccuracy on all subjects, a simple faith in the possibility of teaching others, even elderly ladies, when they happen to know less than yourself. All these characteristics are in themselves blameless; and yet in your case, and in thousands of other similar cases, they often bring clouds of storm and trial upon houses which, in a less rapidly progressive century than our own, might have been blessed with uninterrupted peace. The truth is, that you are in a false position relatively to your mother, and your mother is in a false position rela- tively to you. She expects deference, and deference is scarcely compatible with contradiction ; certainly, if there be contradiction at all, it must be very rare, very careful, and very delicate. You, on the other hand, although no doubt full of respect and affection for your mother in your heart, cannot hear her authoritatively enunciating anything that you know to be erroneous, without feeling irresistibly urged to set her right. She is rather a talka- tive lady; she does not like to hear a conversation going forward without taking a part in it, and rather an impor- tant part, so that whatever subject is talked about in her presence, that subject she will talk about also. Even before specialists your mother has an independence of opinion, and a degree of faith in her own conclusions, which would be admirable if they were founded upon right reason and a careful study of the subject. Medical men, and even lawyers, do not intimidate her; she is convinced that she knows more about disease than the physician, and more about legal business than an old attorney. In theology no parson can approach her; but here a woman may consider herself on her own ground, as theology is the speciality of women. All this puts you out of patience, and it is intelligibleWOMEN AND MARRIA GE. 269 that, for a young gentleman of intellectual habits and somewhat ardent temperament like yourself, it must be at times rather trying to have an Authority at hand ever ready to settle all questions in a decisive manner. To you I have no counsel to offer but that of uncon- ditional submission. You have the weakness to enter into arguments when to sustain them you must assume the part of a teacher. In arguing with a person already well-informed upon the subject in dispute, you may politely refer to knowledge which he already possesses, but when he does not possess the knowledge you cannot argue with him; you must first teach him, you must become didactic, and therefore odious. I remember a great scene which took place between you and your mother concerning the American War. It was brought on by a too precise answer of yours relatively to your friend B., who had emigrated to America. Your mother asked to what part of America B. had emigrated, and you answered, “ The Argentine Republic.” A shade of displeasure clouded your mother’s countenance, because she did not know where the Argentine Republic might be, and betrayed it by her manner. You imprudently added that it was in South America. “Yes, yes, I know very well,” she answered; “there was a great battle there during the American War. It is well your friend was not there under Jefferson Davis.” Now, permit me to ob- serve, my estimable young friend, that this was what the French call a fine opportunity for holding your tongue, but you missed it. Fired with an enthusiasm for truth (always dangerous to the peace of families), you began to explain to the good lady that the Argentine Republic, though in South America, was not one of the Southern States of the Union. This led to a scene of which I PART VII. LETTER IX. Impossi- bility 0/ arguing with the ignorant. A family scene.\ 270 PART VII. LETTER IX. A discussion. The best course in discussion with ladies. THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. was the embarrassed and unwilling witness. Your mother vehemently affirmed that all the Southern States had been ' under Jefferson Davis, that she knew the fact perfectly, that it had always been known to everyone during the war, and that, consequently, as the Argentine Republic was in South America, the Argentine Republic had been under Jefferson Davis. Rapidly warming with this dis- cussion, your mother “ supposed that you would deny next that there had ever been such a thing as a war be- tween the North and the South.” Then you, in your turn, lost temper, and you fetched an atlas for the pur- pose of explaining that the Southern division of the con- tinent of America was not the Southern half of the United States. You were landed, as people always are landed when they prosecute an argument with the igno- rant, in the thankless office of the schoolmaster. You were actually trying to give your mother a lesson in geo- graphy ! She was not grateful to you for your didactic attentions. She glanced at the book as people glance at an offered dish which they dislike. She does not under- stand maps ; the representation of places in geographical topography has never been quite clear to her. Your little geographical lecture irritated, but did not inform ; it clouded the countenance, but did not illuminate the un- derstanding. The distinction between South America and the Southern States is not easy to the non-analytic mind under any circumstances, but when amour is involved it becomes impossible. I believe that the best course in discussions of this % kind'with ladies is simply to say once what is true, for the acquittal of your own conscience, but after that to remain silent on that topic, leaving the last word to the lady, who will probably simply re-affirm what she has alreadyWOMEN AND . 271 said. For example, in the discussion about the Argen- tine Republic, your proper course would have been to say first, firmly, that the territory in question was not a part of the seceded States and had never been in the Union, with a brief and decided geographical explana- tion. Your mother would not have been convinced by this, and would probably have had the last word, but the matter would have ended there. Another friend of mine, who is in a position very like your own, goes a step farther, and is determined to agree with his mother-in- law in everything. He always assents to her proposi- tions. She is a Frenchwoman, and has been accustomed to use Algcrie and Afrique as convertible terms. Some- body spoke of the Cape of Good Hope as being in Africa. “ Then it belongs to France, as Africa be- longs to France.” “ Oui, chere mbre,” he answered, in his usual formula; “ vous avez raison.” _ He alluded to this afterwards when we were alone together. “ I was foolish enough some years since,” he said, “ to argue with my belle mere and try to teach her little things from time to time, but it kept her in a state of chronic ill-humour and led to no good ; it spoiled her temper, and it did not improve her mind. But since I have adopted the plan of perpetual assent we get on charmingly. Whatever she affirms I assent to at once, and all is well. My friends are in the secret, and so no contradictory truth disturbs our amiable tranquillity.” A system of this kind spoils women completely, and makes the least contradiction intolerable to them. It is better that they should at least have the opportunity of hearing truth, though no attempt need be made to force it upon them. The position of ladies of the generation which preceded ours is in many respects a very trying PART VIL LETTER IX. Resolution to agree. Perpetual assent• That it spoils women•272 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VII. LETTER IX. That women make all questions personal questions. one, and we do not always adequately realize it. A lady like your mother, who never really went through any intellectual discipline, who has no notion of intel- lectual accuracy in anything, is compelled by the irre- sistible feminine instinct to engage her strongest feelings in every discussion that arises. A woman can rarely detach her mind from questions of persons to apply it to questions of fact. She does not think simply, “ Is that true of such a thing ? ” but she thinks, “ Does he love me or respect me ? ” The facts about the Argentine Republic and the American War were probably quite indifferent to your mother; but your opposition to what she had asserted seemed to her a failure in affection, and your attempt to teach her a failure in respect. This feeling in women is far from being wholly egoistic. They refer everything to persons, but not necessarily to their own persons. Whatever you affirm as a fact, they find means of interpreting as loyalty or disloyalty to some person whom they either venerate or love, to the head of religion, or of the State, or of the family. Hence it is always dangerous to enter upon intellectual discussion of any kind with women, for you are almost certain to offend them by setting aside the sentiments of veneration, affection, love, which they have in great strength, in order to reach accuracy in matters of fact, which they neither have nor care for.PART VIII. ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. LETTER I. TO A YOUNG ENGLISH NOBLEMAN. A contrast—A poor student—His sad fate—Class-sentiment— Tycho Brahe—Robert Burns—Shelley’s opinion of Byron— Charles Dickens—Shopkeepers in English literature—Pride of aristocratic ignorance—Pursuits tabooed by the spirit of caste— Affected preferences in intellectual pursuits—Studies that add to gentility—Sincerity of interest needed for genuine culture—The exclusiveness of scholarly caste—Its bad influence on outsiders —Feeling of Burns towards scholars—Sureness of class-instinct— Unforeseen effect of railways—Return to nomadic life and the chase—Advantages and possibilities of life in the higher classes. It is one of the privileges of authorship to have corre- spondents in the most widely different positions, and by means of their frank and friendly letters (usually much more frank than any oral communication) to gain a singu- larly accurate insight into the working of circumstances on the human intellect and character. The same post .that brought me your last letter brought news about mother of my friends whose lot has been a striking con- trast to your own.1 1 I think it right to inform the reader that there is no fiction in this letter. T PART VIII. LETTER I.274 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VIII. letter I. Advantages of a young nobleman* C 'ujfrijp. necessity of classical reading to distinction of thought and manner, and yet to be aware at the same time, from close observation of their habits, that those very men entirely neglected the sources of that culture in which they professed such earnest faith. The explanation is, that as classical accomplishments are considered to be one of the evidences of gentility, whoever speaks loudly in their favour affirms that he has the tastes and pre- ferences of a gentleman. It is like professing the fashionable religion, or belonging to an aristocratic shade of opinion in politics. I have not a doubt that all affectations of this kind are injurious to genuine culture, for genuine culture requires sincerity of interest before everything, and the fashionable affectations, so far from attracting sincere men to the departments of learn- ing which happen to be d la mode, positively drive them away, just as many have become Nonconformists be- cause the established religion was considered necessary to gentility, who might have remained contented with its ordinances as a simple discipline for their souls. I dislike the interference of genteel notions in our studies for another reason. They deprive such culture as we may get from them, of one of the most precious results of culture, the enlargement of our sympathy for others. If we encourage ourselves in the pride of scholarly caste, so far as to imagine that we who have made Latin verses are above comparison with all who have never exercised their ingenuity in that particular way, we are not likely to give due and serious attention to the ideas of people whom we are pleased to consider uneducated ; and yet it may happen that these people are sometimes our intellectual superiors, and that their ideas concern us very closely. But this is only half theARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 283 evil. The consciousness of our contempt embitters the feelings of men in other castes, and prevents them from accepting our guidance when it might be of the greatest practical utility to them. I may mention Robert Burns as an instance of a man of genius who would have been happier and more fortunate if he had felt no barrier of separation between himself and the culture of his time. His poetry is as good rustic poetry as the best that has come down to us from antiquity, and instead of feeling towards the poets of times past the kind of soreness which a parvenu feels towards families of ancient descent, he ought rather to have rejoiced in the consciousness that he was their true and legitimate successor, as the clergy of an authentic Church feel themselves to be successors and representatives of saints and apostles who are gathered to their everlasting rest. But poor Burns knew that in an age when what is called scholarship gave all who had acquired it a right to look down upon poets who had only genius as the illegitimate offspring of nature, his position had not that solidity which belonged to the scholarly caste, and the result was a perpetual uneasiness which broke out in frequent defiance. “ There’s ither poets, much your betters, Far seen in Greek, deep men o’ letters, Hae thought they had ensur’d their debtors A’ future ages; Now moths deform i shapeless tatters, Their unknown pages." And again, in another poem— “ A set o’ dull, conceited hashes Confuse their brains in college classes! They gang in stirks, and come out asses, Plain truth to speak An' syne they think to climb Parnassus By dint o' Greek ” .PART VIII. LETTER I. How Burns felt himself separated from culture.284 I THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VIII. LETTER I. Injlist ice of Burris towards scholars. Employment of the learned languages as a defence of caste. It was the influence of caste that made Burns write in this way, and how unjust it was every modem reader knows. The great majority of poets have been well- educated men, and instead of ganging into college like stirks and coming out like asses, they have, as a rule, improved their poetic faculty by an acquaintance with the masterpieces of their art. Yet Burns is not to be blamed for this injustice; he sneered at Greek because Greek was the mark of a disdainful and exclusive caste, but he never sneered at French or Italian. He had no soreness against culture for its own sake; it was the pride of caste that galled him. How surely the wonderful class-instinct guided the aristocracy to the kind of learning likely to be the most effectual barrier against fellowship with the mercantile classes and the people ! The uselessness of Greek in industry and commerce was a guarantee that those who had to earn their bread would never find time to master it, and even the strange difficult look of the alphabet (though in reality the alphabet was a gate of gossamer), ensured a degree of awful veneration for those initiated into its mysteries. Then the habit our forefathers had of quoting Latin and Greek to keep the ignorant in their places, was a strong defensive weapon of their caste, and they used it without scruple. Every year removes this passion for exclusiveness farther and farther into the past; every year makes learning of every kind less avail- able as the armour of a class, and less to be relied upon as a means of social advancement and consideration. Indeed, we have already reached a condition which is drawing back many members of the aristocracy to a state of feeling about intellectual culture resembling that of their forefathers in the middle ages. The old bar-ARTS TO CRA CY AND DEMOCRA C Y. 285 barian feeling has revived of late, a feeling which (if it were self-conscious enough) might find expression in some such words as these :— “It is not by learning and genius that we can hold the highest place, but by the dazzling exhibition of ex- ternal splendour in those costly pleasures which are the plainest evidence of our power. Let us have beautiful equipages on the land, beautiful yachts upon the sea; let our recreations be public and expensive, that the people may not easily lose sight of us, and may know that there is a gulf of difference between our life and theirs. Why should we toil at books that the poorest students read, we who have lordly pastimes for every month in the year? To be able to revel immensely in pleasures which those below us taste rarely or not at all, this is the best evidence of our superiority. So let us take them magnificently, like English princes and lords.” Even the invention of railways has produced the entirely unforeseen result of a return in the direction of barbarism. If there is one thing which distinguishes civilization it is fixity of residence; and it is essential to the tranquil following of serious intellectual purposes that the student should remain for many months of the year in his own library or laboratory, surrounded by all his implements of culture. But there are people of the highest rank in the England of to-day whose existence is as much nomadic as that of Red Indians in. the reserved territories of North America. You cannot ascertain their whereabouts without consulting the most recent news- paper. Their life may be quite accurately described as a return, on a scale of unprecedented splendour and com- fort, to the life of tribes in that stage of human develop- PART VIII. LETTER I. Ostentation in amusement• Unforeseen result of railways.286 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VIII. LETTER I. ment which is known as the period of the chase. They migrate from one hunting-ground to another as the dimi- nution of the game impels them. Their residences, vast and substantial as they are, serve only as tents and wigwams. The existence of a monk in the cloister, of a prisoner in a fortress, is more favourable to the intellect than theirs. Advantages of an English noble. And yet, notwithstanding these re-appearances of the savage nature at the very summit of modern civilization, the life of a great English nobleman of to-day commands so much of what the intellectual know to be truly de- sirable, that it seems as if only a little firmness of reso- lution were needed to make all advantages his own. Surrounded by every aid, and having all gates open, he sees the paths of knowledge converging towards him like railways to some rich central city. He has but to choose his route, and travel along it with the least possible hindrance from every kind of friction, in the society of the best companions, and served by the most perfectly- trained attendants. Might not our lords be like those brilliant peers who shone like intellectual stars around the throne of Elizabeth, and our ladies like that great lady of whom said a learned Italian, “che non vi aveva altra dama al mondo che la pareggiasse nella cognizione delle arti e nella notizia delle scie,nze e delle lingue,” wherefore he called her boldly, in the enthusiasm of his admiration, “grande anfitrite, Diana name della terra!”ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. LETTER II. TO AN ENGLISH DEMOCRAT. The liberal and illiberal spirit of aristocracy—The desire to draw a line—Substitution of external limitations for realities—The high life of nature—Value of gentlemen in a State—Odiousness of the narrow class-spirit —Julian Fane—Perfect knighthood—Demo- cracies intolerant of dignity—Tendency of democracies to fix one uniform type of manners—That type not a high one —A de- scriptive anecdote—Knowledge and taste reveal themselves in manners—Dr. Arnold on the absence of gentlemen in France and Italy—Absence of a class with traditional good manners— Language defiled by the vulgarity of popular taste—Influence of aristocratic opinion limited, that of democratic opinion universal —Want of elevation in the French bourgeoisie—Spirit of the provincial democracy—Spirit of the Parisian democracy—Senti- ments and acts of the Communards—Romantic feeling towards the past—Hopes for liberal culture in the democratic idea— Aristocracies think too much of persons and positions—That we ought to forget persons and apply our minds to things, and phenomena, and ideas. All you say against the narrowness of the aristocratic spirit is true and to the point; but I think that you and your party are apt to confound together two states of feeling which are essentially distinct from each other. There is an illiberal spirit of aristocracy, and there is also a liberal one. The illiberal spirit does not desire to improve itself, having a full and firm belief in its own absolute perfection ; its sole anxiety is to exclude others, to draw a circular line, the smaller the better, provided always that it gets inside and can keep the millions out. We see this spirit, not only in reference to birth, but in even fuller activity with regard to education and employ- ment—in the preference for certain schools and colleges, 287 PART vm. LETTER II. Illiberal spirit of aristocracy.2S S THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VIII. letter II. Substitution of external limitations Joy realities. Reality of high life (is a fact in nature. for class reasons, without regard to the quality of the teaching—in the contempt for all professions but two or three, without regard to the inherent baseness or nobility of the work that has to be done in them : so that the question asked by persons of this temper is not whether a man has been well trained in his youth, but if he has been to Eton and Oxford; not whether he is honourably laborious in his manhood, but whether he belongs to the Bar, or the Army, or the Church. This spirit is evil in its influence, because it substitutes external limitations for the realities of the intellect and the soul, and makes those realities themselves of no account wherever its traditions prevail. This spirit cares nothing for culture, nothing for excellence, nothing for the superiorities that make men truly great; all it cares for is to have reserved seats in the great assemblage of the world. Whatever you do, in fairness and honesty, against this evil and inhuman spirit of aristocracy, the best minds of this age approve ; but there is another spirit of aristocracy which does not always receive the fairest treatment at your hands, and which ought to be resolutely defended against you. There is really, in nature, such a thing as high life. There is really, in nature, a difference between the life of a gentleman who has culture, and fine bodily health, and independence, and the life of a Sheffield dry-grinder who cannot have any one of these three things. It is a good and not a bad sign of the state of popular intelli- gence when the people does not wilfully shut its eyes to the differences of condition amongst men, and when those who have the opportunity c f leading what is truly the high life accept its discipline joyfully and have a just pride in keeping themselves up to their ideal. A life ofARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 289 health, of sound morality, of disinterested intellectual activity, of freedom from petty cares, is higher than a life of disease, and vice, and stupidity, and sordid anxiety. I maintain that it is right and wise in a nation to set before itself the highest attainable ideal of human life as the existence of the complete gentleman, and that an envious democracy, instead of rendering a service to itself, does exactly the contrary when it cannot endure and will not tolerate the presence of high-spirited gentle- men in the State. There are things in this world that it is right to hate, that we are the better for hating with all our hearts; and one of the things that I hate most, and with most reason, is the narrow class-spirit when it sets itself against the great interests of mankind. It is odious in the narrow-minded, pompous, selfish, pitiless aristocrat who thinks that the sons of the people were made by Almighty God to be his lacqueys and their daughters to be his mistresses; it is odious also, to the full as odious, in the narrow-minded, envious democrat who cannot bear to see any elegance of living, or grace of manner, or culture of mind above the range of his own capacity or his own purse. Let me recommend to your consideration the following words, written by one young nobleman about another young nobleman, and reminding us, as we much need to be reminded, that life may be not only honest and vigorous, but also noble and beautiful. Robert Lytton says of Julian Fane— “ He was, I think, the most graceful and accom- plished gentleman of the generation he adorned, and t by this generation, at least, appropriate place should be reserved for the memory of a man in w’hose character the most universal sympathy with all the PART VIII.’ LETTER II. Value of a high ideal. Odiousness of class- sfii7~it in aristocrats 2 and also in democrats. Julian Fane.290 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VIII. LETTER IT. A rtistry of life. E nvioiis disposition of some democracies. Intolerance 9f dignity. Uniformity o / type i?i democratic manners. intellectual culture of his age was united to a refinement of social form, and a perfection of personal grace, which, in spite of all its intellectual culture, the age is sadly in want of. There is an artistry of life as well as of literature, and the perfect knighthood of Sidney is no less precious to the world than the genius of Spenser.” It is just this “ perfect knighthood ” that an envious democracy sneers at and puts down. I do not say that all democracies are necessarily envious, but they often are so, especially when they first assert themselves, and whilst in that temper they are very willing to ostracise gentlemen, or compel them to adopt bad manners. I have some hopes that the democracies of the future may be taught by authors and artists to appreciate natural gentlemanhood; but so far as we know them hitherto they seem intolerant of dignity, and disposed to attribute it (very unjustly) to individual self-conceit. The person- ages most popular in democratic countries are often remarkably deficient in dignity, and liked the better for the want of it, whilst if on the positive side they can display occasional coarseness they become more popular still. Then I should say, that although democratic feeling raises the lower classes and increases their self-respect, which is indeed one of the greatest imaginable benefits to a nation, it has a tendency to fix one uniform type of behaviour and of thought as the sole type in conformity with what is accepted for “ common sense,” and that type can scarcely, in the nature of things, be a very elevated one. I have been much struck, in France, by the prevalence of what may be not inaccurately defined as the commercial traveller type, even in classes where you would scarcely expect to meet with it. One little descriptive anecdote will illustrate what I mean. HavingARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 291 been invited to a stag-hunt in the Cote d’Or, I sat down to dejeuner with the sportsmen in a good country-house or chateau (it was an old place with four towers), and in the midst of the meal in came a man smoking a cigar. After a bow to the ladies he declined to eat anything, and took a chair a little apart, but just opposite me. He resumed his hat and went on smoking with a that rather surprised me under the circumstances. He put one arm on the side-board : the hand hung down, and I perceived that it was dirty (so was the shirt), and that the nails had edges of ebony. On his chin there was a black stubble of two days’ growth. He talked very loudly, and his dress and manners were exactly those of a bagman just arrived at his inn. Who and what could the man be ? I learned afterwards that he had begun life as a distinguished pupil of the Ecole Poly technique, that since then he had distinguished himself as an officer of artil- lery and had won the Legion of Honour on the field of battle, that he belonged to one of the principal families in the neighbourhood, and had nearly 2,000/. a year from landed property. Now, it may be a good thing for the roughs at the bottom of the social scale to level up to the bagman-ideal, but it does seem rather a pity (does it not ?) that a born gentleman of more than common bravery and ability should level down to it. And it is here that lies the principal objection to democracy from the point of view of culture, that its notion of life and manners is a uniform notion, not admitting much variety of classes, and not allowing the high development of graceful and accomplished humanity in any class which an aristocracy does at least encourage in one class, though it may be numerically a small class. I have not forgotten what Saint-Simon and La Bruybre have u 2 PART VIII. LETTER II. Anecdote of a French officer. His dress (Old manners. Reflections suggested by them.292 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VIII. LETTER II. Talent itl manners. A bsence of gentlemen in Fra7ice and Italy. Dr. A mold. Exceptions. testified about the ignorance of the old noblesse. Saint- Simon said that they were fit for nothing but fighting, and only qualified for promotion even in the army by seniority; that the rest of their time was passed in “ the most deadly uselessness, the consequence of their indo- lence and distaste for all instruction.” I am sure that my modern artillery captain, notwithstanding his bad manners, knew more than any of his forefathers; but where was his “perfect knighthood?” And-we easily forget “ how much talent runs into manners,” as Emerson says. From the artistic and poetical point of view, behaviour is an expression of knowledge and taste and feeling in combination, as clear and legible as literature or painting, so that when the behaviour is coarse and unbecoming we know that the perceptions cannot be delicate, whatever may have been learned at school. When Dr. Arnold travelled on the Continent, nothing struck him more than the absence of gentlemen. “We see no gentlemen anywhere,” he writes from Italy. From France he writes: “ Again I have been struck with the total absence of all gentlemen, and of all persons of the education and feelings of gentlemen.” Now, although Dr. Arnold spoke merely from the ex- perience of a tourist, and was perhaps not quite com- petent to judge of Frenchmen and Italians otherwise than from externals, still there was much truth in his observation. It was not quite absolutely true. I have known two or three Italian officers, and one Savoyard nobleman, and a Frenchman here and there, wTho were as perfect gentlemen as any to be found in England, but they were isolated like poets, and wrere in fact poets in behaviour and self-discipline. The plain truth is, that there is no distinct class in France maintaining goodARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY,\ 293 manners as a tradition common to all its members; and this seems to be the inevitable defect of a democracy. It may be observed, further, that language itself is defiled by the vulgarity of the popular taste; that expres- sions are used continually, even by the upper middle class, which it is impossible to print, and which are too grossly indecent to find a place even in the dictionaries; that respectable men, having become insensible to the meaning of these expressions from hearing them used without intention, employ them constantly from habit, as they decorate their speech with oaths, whilst only purists refrain from them altogether. An aristocracy may be very narrow and intolerant, but it can only exclude from its own pale, whereas when a democracy is intolerant it excludes from all human intercourse. Our own aristocracy, as a class, rejects Dissenters, and artists, and men of science, but they flourish quite happily outside of it. Now try to picture to yourself a great democracy having the same prejudices, who could get out of the democracy ? All aristocracies are intolerant with reference, I will not say to religion, but, more accurately, with reference to the outward forms of religion, and yet this aristocratic intolerance has not prevented the development of religious liberty, because the lower classes were not strictly bound by the customs of the nobility and gentry. The unwritten law appears to be that members of an aristocracy shall conform either to what is actually the State Church or to what has been the State Church at some former period of the national history. Although England is a Protestant country, an English gentleman does not lose caste when he joins the Roman Catholic communion; but he loses caste when he becomes a Dissenter. The influence of PART VIII. LETTER II. Degradation of language. Aristocratic intolerance.294 4 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VIII. LETTER II. Dangers of intolerance in a democracy. Want of elevatioit in the French bourgeoisie. Quotatio7i from Flaubert. this caste-law in keeping the upper classes within the Churches of England and of Rome has no doubt been very considerable, but its influence on the nation generally has been incomparably less considerable than that of some equally decided social rule in the entire mind of a democracy. Had this rule of conformity to the religion of the State been that of the English democracy, religious liberty would have been extinguished through- out the length and breadth of England. I say that the customs and convictions of a democracy are more dangerous to intellectual liberty than those of an aristo- cracy, because, in matters of custom, the gentry rule only within their own park-palings, whereas the people, when power resides with them, rule wherever the breezes blow. A democracy that dislikes refinement and good manners can drive men of culture into solitude, and make morbid hermits of the very persons who ought to be the lights and leaders of humanity.' It can cut short the traditions of good-breeding, the traditions of polite learning, the traditions of thoughtful leisure, and reduce the various national types of character to one type, that of the com- mis-voyctgeur. All men of refined sentiment in modern France lament the want of elevation in the They read nothing, they learn nothing, they think of nothing but money and the satisfaction of their appetites. There are exceptions, of course, but the tone of the class is mean and low, and devoid of natural dignity or noble aspiration. Their ignorance passes belief, and is accom- panied by an absolute self-satisfaction. “ La fin de la bourgeoisie,” says an eminent French author, “com- mence parcequ’elle a les sentiments de la populace. Je ne vois pas qu’elle lise d’autres journaux, qu’elle se regale d’une musique differente, qu’elle ait des plaisirsARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 295 plus eleves. Chez l’une comme chez l’autre, c’est le meme amour de l’argent, le meme respect du fait accompli, le meme besoin d’idoles pour Its detruire, la meme haine de toute sup^riorite, le meme esprit de denigrement, la meme crasse ignorance ! ” M. Renan also complains that during the Second Empire the country sank deeper and deeper into vulgarity, forgetting its past history and its noble enthusiasms. “ Talk to the peasant, to the socialist of the International, of France, of her past history, of her genius, he will not understand you. Military honour seems madness to him; the taste for great things, the glory of the mind, are vain dreams ; money spent for art and science is money thrown away foolishly. Such is the provincial spirit.” And if this is the provincial spirit, what is the spirit of the metropolitan democracy? Is it not clearly known to us by its acts? It had the opportunity, under the Commune, of showing the world how ten- derly it cared for the monuments of national history, how anxious it was for the preservation of noble architecture, of great libraries, of pictures that can never be replaced. Whatever may have been our illusions about the character of the Parisian democracy, we know it very accurately now. To say that it is brutal would be an inadequate use of language, for the brutes are only indifferent to history and civilization, not hostile to them. So far as it is .possible for us to understand the temper of that demo- cracy, it appears to cherish an active and intense hatred for every conceivable kind of superiority, and an instinc- tive eagerness to abolish the past; or, as that is not possible, since the past will always have beat in spite of it, then at least to efface all visible memorials and destroy the bequests of all preceding generations. If anyone had affirmed, before the fall of Louis Napoleon, PART VIII. LETTEK II. Quotation from M. Renan„ The Provincial spirit. The Parisian democracy.296 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VIII. LETTER II. The extreme democratic temper. True stewardship. Ultra- democratic hostility to cultitre. that the democratic spirit was capable of setting fire to the Louvre and the national archives and libraries, of deliberately planning the destruction of all those mag- nificent edifices, ecclesiastical and civil, which were the glory of France and the delight of Europe, we should have attributed such an assertion to the exaggerations of reactionary fears. But since the year 1870 we do not speculate about the democratic temper in its in- tensest expression; we have seen it at Avork, and we know it. We know that every beautiful building, every precious manuscript and picture, has to be protected against the noxious swarm of Communards as a sea- jetty against the Pholas and the Teredo. Compare this temper with that of a Marquis of Hert- ford, a Duke of Devonshire, a Due de Luynes! True guardians of the means of culture, these men have given splendid hospitality to the great authors and artists of past times, by keeping their works for the future with tender and reverent care. Nor has this function of high stewardship ever been more nobly exercised than it is to-day by that true knight and gentleman, Sir Richard Wallace. Think of the difference between this great- hearted guardian of priceless treasures, keeping them for the people, for civilization, and a base-spirited Com- munard setting fire to the library of the Louvre. The ultra-democratic spirit is hostile to culture, from its hatred of all delicate and romantic sentiment, from its scorn of the tenderer and finer feelings of our nature, and especially from its brutish incapacity to comprehend the needs of the higher life. If it had its way wre should be compelled by public opinion to cast all the records of our ancestors, and the shields they wore in battle, into the foul waters of an eternal Lethe. The intolerance of theARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 297 sentiment of birth, that noble sentiment which has ani- mated so many hearts with heroism, and urged them to deeds of honour, associated as it is with a cynical dis- belief in the existence of female virtue,1 is one of the commonest signs of this evil spirit of detraction. It is closely connected with an ungrateful indifference towards all that our forefathers have done to make civilization possible for us. Now, although the intellectual spirit studies the past critically, and does not accept history as a legend is accepted by the credulous, still the intel- lectual spirit has a deep respect for all that is noble in the past, and would preserve the record of it for ever. Can you not imagine, have you not actually seen, the heir of some ancient house who shares to the full the culture and aspirations of the age in which we live, and who nevertheless preserves, with pious reverence, the towers his forefathers built on the ancestral earth, and the oaks they planted, and the shields that were carved on the tombs where the knights and their ladies rest? Be sure that a right understanding of the present is com- patible with a right and reverent understanding of the past, and that, although we may closely question history and tradition, no longer with child-like faith, still the spirit of true culture would never efface their vestiges. It was not Michelet, not Renan, not Hugo, who set fire to the Palace of Justice and imperilled the Sainte- Chapelle. And yet, notwithstanding all these vices and excesses of the democratic spirit, notwithstanding the meanness of the middle classes and the violence of the mob, there 1 The association between the two is this. If you believe that you are descended from a distinguished ancestor, you are simple enough to believe in his wife’s fidelity. PART VIII. LETTER II. Ingratitude to ancestors. Intellectual respect for the past.298 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART VIII. XETTER II. A ifsto- *racies think •too much 0/ persojis a?id positions. Forgetful- ness of station, A nonymous joiir?ialis}n. is one all-powerful reason why our best hopes for the liberal culture of the intellect are centred in the demo- cratic idea. The reason is, that aristocracies think too much of persons and positions to weigh facts and opinions justly. In an aristocratic society it is thought unbecoming to state your views in their full force in the presence of any social superior. If you state them at all you must soften them to suit the occasion, or you will be a sinner against good-breeding. Observe how timid and acqui- escent the ordinary Englishman becomes in the presence of a lord. No right-minded person likes to be thought impudent, and where the tone of society refers every- thing to position, you are considered impudent when you forget your station. But what has my station to do with the truths the intellect perceives, that lie entirely outside of me ? From the intellectual point of view, it is a necessary virtue to forget your station, to forget yourself entirely, and to think of the subject only, in a manner perfectly disinterested. Anonymous journalism was a device to escape from that continual reference to the rank and fortune of the speaker which is an inveterate habit in all aristocratic communities. A young man without title or estate knows that he would not be listened to in the presence of his social superiors, so he holds his tongue in society and relieves himself by an article in the Times. The anonymous newspapers and reviews are a necessity in an aristocratic community, for they are the only means of attracting attention to facts and opinions without attracting it to yourself, the only way of escaping the personal question, “ Who and what are you, that you venture to speak so plainly, and where is your stake in the country ? ” The democratic idea, by its theoretic equality amongstARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 299 men, affords an almost complete relief from this impedi- ment to intellectual conversation. The theory of equality is good, because it negatives the interference of rank and wealth in matters that appertain to the intellect or to the moral sense. It may even go one step farther with advantage, and ignore intellectual authority also. The perfection of the intellectual spirit is the entire forgetful- ness of persons, in the application of the whole power of the mind to things, and phenomena, and ideas. Not to mind whether the speaker is of noble or humble birth, rich or poor; this indeed is much, but we ought to attain a like indifference to the authority of the most splendid reputation. “ Every great advance in natural know- ledge,” says Professor Huxley, “ has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scep- ticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith ; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest con- victions, not because the men he most venerates hold them, not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders, but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature—whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation—Nature will confirm them.” PART VIII. LETTER II. Forgetful- ness of persons. Rejection of authority •I PART IX. LETTER I. Temporary nature of intellectual frie?idships. PART IX. SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. LETTER I. TO A LADY WHO DOUBTED THE REALITY OF INTELLECTUAL FRIENDSHIPS. That intellectual friendships are in their nature temporary, when there is no basis of feeling to support them—Their freshness soon disappears—Danger of satiety—Temporary acquaintances —Succession in friendships—Free communication of intellectual results—Friendships between ripe and immature men—Rem- brandt and Hoogstraten—Tradition transmitted through these friendships. I heartily agree with you so far as this, that intellectual relations will not sustain friendship for very long, unless there is also some basis of feeling to sustain it. And still there is a certain reality in the friendships of the in- tellect whilst they last, and they are remembered grate- fully for their profit when in the course of nature they have ceased. We may wisely contract them, and blame- lessly dissolve them when the occasion that created them has gone by. They are like business partnerships, con- tracted from motives of interest, and requiring integrity • above all things, with mutual respect and consideration,SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 301 yet not necessarily either affection or the semblance of it. Since the motive of the intellectual existence is the desire to ascertain and communicate truth, a sort of positive and negative electricity immediately establishes itself between those who want to know and those who desire to communicate their knowledge; and the con- nection is mutually agreeable until these two desires are satisfied. When this happens, the connection naturally ceases; but the memory of it usually leaves a permanent feeling of good-will, and a permanent disposition to render services of the same order. This, in brief, is the whole philosophy of the subject; but it may be observed farther, that the purely intellectual intercourse which often goes by the name of friendship affords excellent opportunities for the formation of real friendship, since it cannot be long continued without revealing much of the whole nature of the associates. We do not easily exhaust the mind of another, but we easily exhaust what is accessible to us in his mind ; and when we have done this, the first benefit of inter- course is at an end. Then comes a feeling of dulness and disappointment, which is full of the bitterest discourage- ment to the inexperienced. In maturer life we are so well prepared for this that it discourages us no longer. We know beforehand that the freshness of the mind that was new to us will rapidly wear away, that we shall soon assimilate the fragment of it which is all that ever can be made our own, so we enjoy the freshness whilst it lasts, and are even careful of it as a fruiterer is of the bloom upon his grapes and plums. It may seem a hard and worldly thing to say, but it appears to me that a wise man might limit his intercourse with others before there was any danger of satiety, as it is wisdom in eating to rise PART IX. LETTER I. Nature and results of intellectual friendships. Exhaustion of what is accessible to us in other minds.302 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IX. LETTER I. Temporary acquaint- ances. Succession °s friendships. A dis- tinguished English- man. from table with an appetite. Certainly, if the friends of our intellect live near enough for us to anticipate no per- manent separation by mere distance, if we may expect to meet them frequently, to have many opportunities for a more thorough and searching exploration of their minds, it is a wise policy not to exhaust them all at once. With the chance acquaintances we make in travelling, the case is altogether different; and this is, no doubt, the reason why men are so astonishingly communicative when they never expect to see each other any more. You feel an intense curiosity about some temporary companion; you make many guesses about him ; and to induce him to tell you as much as possible in the short time you are likely to be together, you win his confidence by a frankness that would perhaps considerably surprise your nearest neighbours and relations. This is due to the shortness of the opportunity; but with people who live in the same place, you will proceed much more deliberately. Whoever would remain regularly provided with intel- lectual friends, ought to arrange a succession of friend- ships, as gardeners do with peas and strawberries, so that, whilst some are fully ripe, others should be ripening to replace them. This doctrine sounds like blasphemy against friendship ; but it is not intended to apply to the sacred friendship of the heart, which ought to be perma- nent like marriage, only to the friendship of the head, which is of the utmost utility to culture, yet in its nature temporary. I know a distinguished Englishman who is quite remarkable for the talent with which he arranges his intellectual friendships, so as never to be dependent on anyone, but always sure of the intercourse he needs, both now and in the future. He will never be isolated,SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 303 never without some fresh and living interest in humanity. It may seem to you that there is a lamentable want of faith in this ; and I grant at once that a system of this kind does presuppose the extinction of the boyish belief in the permanence of human relations; still, it indicates a large-minded confidence in the value of human inter- course, an enjoyment of the present, a hope for the future, and a right appreciation of the past. Nothing is more beautiful in the intellectual life than the willingness of all cultivated people—unless they happen to be accidentally soured by circumstances that have made them wretched—to communicate to others the results of all their toil. It is true that they appa- rently lose nothing by the process, and that a rich man who gives some portion of his material wealth exercises a greater self-denial; still, when you consider that men of culture, in teaching others, abandon something of their relative superiority, and often voluntarily incur the sacrifice of what is most precious to them, namely, their time, I think you will admit that their readiness in this kind of generosity is one of the finest characteristics of highly-developed humanity. Of all intellectual friend- ships, none are so beautiful as those which subsist between old and ripe men and their younger brethren in science, or literature, or art. It is by these private friendships, even more than by public performance, that the tradition of sound thinking and great doing is per- petuated from age to age. Hoogstraten, who was a pupil of Rembrandt, asked him many questions, which the great master answered thus:—“Try to put well in practice what you already know; in so doing you will, in good time, discover the hidden things which you now inquire about.” That answer of Rembrandt’s is typical PART IX. LETTER I. Willingness of the cultivated ta communi- cate results. Friendships between old and young. Rembrandt a?id Hoog- sttatetu3°4 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IX. LETTER I. The tradition of kindness. LETTER II. of the maturest teaching. How truly friendly it is; hovi full of encouragement; how kind in its admission that the younger artist did already know something worth putting into practice; and yet, at the same time, how judicious in its reserve ! Few of us have been so ex- ceptionally unfortunate as not to find, in our own age, some experienced friend who has helped us by precious counsel, never to be forgotten. We cannot render it in kind; but perhaps in the fulness of time it may become our noblest duty to aid another as we have ourselves been aided, and to transmit to him an invaluable trea- sure, the tradition of the intellectual life. LETTER II. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN FASHIONABLE SOCIETY. Certain dangers to the intellectual life—Difficult to resist the influ- ences of society—Gilding—Fashionable education—Affectations of knowledge—Not easy to ascertain what people really know— Value of real knowledge diminished—Some good effects of affectations—Their bad effect on workers—Skill in amusements. The kind of life which you have been leading for the last three or four years will always be valuable to you as a past experience, but if the intellectual ambition you confessed to me is quite serious, I would venture to suggest that there are certain dangers in the continuation of your present existence if altogether uninterrupted. Pray do not suspect me of any narrow prejudice against human intercourse, or of any wish to make a hermit of you before your time, but believe that the few obser- vations I have to make are grounded simply on theSOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 3°5 desire that your career should be entirely satisfactory to your own maturer judgment, when you will look back upon it after many years. An intellectual man may go into general society quite safely if only he can resist its influence upon his serious work; but such resistance is difficult in maturity and impossible in youth. The sort of influence most to be dreaded is this. Society is, and must be, based upon appearances, and not upon the deepest realities. It requires some degree of reality to produce the appearance, but not a sub- stantial reality. Gilding is the perfect type of what So- ciety requires. A certain quantity of gold is necessary for the work of the gilder, but a very small quantity, and skill in applying the metal so as to cover a large surface is of greater consequence than the weight of the metal itself. The mind of a fashionable person is a carefully gilded mind. Consider fashionable education. Society imperatively requires an outside knowledge of many things; not per- mitting the frank confession of ignorance, whilst it is yet satisfied with a degree of knowledge differing only from avowed ignorance in permitting you to be less sincere. All young ladies, whether gifted by nature with any musical talent or not, are compelled to say that they have learned to play upon the piano; all young gen- tlemen are compelled to affect to know Latin. In the same way the public opinion of Society compels its mem- bers to pretend to know and appreciate the masterpieces of literature and art. There is, in truth, so much com- pulsion of this kind that it is not easy to ascertain what people do really know and care about until they admit you into their confidence. part ix. LETTER II. Society not based iipon the deepest realities. Gilding, ' Fashionable education. X$o6 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE PART IX. LETTER II. Depreci- ating effect of fashion- able ideas. Utility of fashionable affectatioTis. Their bad effects. The inevitable effect of these affectations is to diminish the value, in Society, of genuine knowledge and accom- plishment of all kinds. I know a man who is a Latin scholar; he is one of the few moderns who have really learned Latin ; but in fashionable society this brings him no distinction, because we are all supposed to know Latin, and the true scholar, when he appears, cannot be distinguished from the multitude of fashionable pretenders. I know another man who can draw; there are not many men, even amongst artists, who can draw soundly; yet in fashionable society he does not get the serious sort of respect which he deserves, because fashionable people believe that drawing is an accomplishment generally at- tainable by young ladies and communicable by gover- nesses. I have no wish to insinuate that Society is wrong in requiring a certain pretence to education in various subjects, and a certain affectation of interest in master- pieces, for these pretences and affectations do serve to deliver it from the darkness of a quite absolute ignorance. A society of fashionable people who think it necessary to be able to talk superficially about the labours of men really belonging to the intellectual class, is always sure to be much better informed than a Society such as that of the French peasantry, for example, where nobody is ex- pected to know anything. It is well for Society itself that it should profess a deep respect for classical learning, for the great modern poets and painters, for scientific dis- coverers, even though the majority of its members do not seriously care about them. The pretension itself requires a certain degree of knowledge, as gilding requires a cer- tain quantity of gold. The evil effects of these affectations may be summed up in a sentence. They diminish the apparent value ofSOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 307 the realities which they imitate, and they tend to weaken our enthusiasm for those great realities, and our ardour in the pursuit of them. The impression which fashion- able society produces upon a student who has strength enough to resist it, is a painful sense of isolation in his earnest work. If he goes back to the work with courage undiminished, he still clearly realizes—what it would be better for him not to realize quite so clearly—the use- lessness of going beyond fashionable standards, if he aims at social success. And there is still another thing to be said which concerns you just now very particularly. Whoever leads the intellectual life in earnest is sure on some points to fail in strict obedience to the exigencies of fashionable life, so that, if fashionable successes are still dear to him, he will be constantly tempted to make some such reflections as the following :—“ Here am I, giving years and years of labour to a pursuit which brings no external reward, when half as much work would keep me abreast of the society I live with, in everything it really cares about. I know quite well all that my learn- ing is costing me. Other men outshine me easily in social pleasures and accomplishments. My skill at bil- liards and on the moors is evidently declining, and I cannot ride or drive so well as fellows who do very little else. In fact, I am becoming an old muff, and all I have to show on the other side is a degree of scholarship which only six men in Europe can appreciate, and a speciality in natural science in which my little discoveries are sure to be either anticipated or left behind.” The truth is, that to succeed well in fashionable society the higher intellectual attainments are not so useful as distinguished skill in those amusements which are the Skill in real business of the fashionable world. The three things amusements' PART IX. LETTER II. Isolation in earnest •work. I A conse- q2tence of earnestness* X 2308 THE INTELLECTUAL . PART IX. LETTER II. Time required for amusements. LETTER III. which tell best in your favour amongst young gentlemen are to be an excellent shot, to ride well to hounds, and to play billiards with great skill. I wish to say nothing against any of these accomplishments, having an espe- cially hearty admiration and respect for all good horse- men, and /Considering the game of billiards the most perfectly beautiful of games; still, the fact remains that to do these things as well as some young gentlemen do them, we must devote the time which they devote, and if we regularly give nine hours a day to graver occupations, pray, how and where are we to find it ? LETTER III. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN FASHIONABLE SOCIETY. Some exceptional men may live alternately in different worlds— Instances—Differences between the fashionable and the intel- lectual spirit—Men sometimes made unfashionable by special natural gifts—Sometimes by trifling external circumstances— Anecdote of Ampere—He did not shine in society—His wife’s anxieties about his material wants—Apparent contrast between Ampere and Oliver Goldsmith. You ask me why there should be any fundamental in- compatibility between the fashionable and the intellectual lives. It seems to you that the two might possibly be reconciled, and you mention instances of men who attained intellectual distinction without deserting the fashionable world. Yes, there have been a few examples of men endowed with that overflow of energy which permits the most opposite pursuits, and enables its possessors to live, ap-SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 3°9 wtmy > parently, in two worlds between which there is not any natural affinity. A famous French novelist once took the trouble to elaborate the portrait of a lady who passed one half of her time in virtue and churches, whilst she employed the other half in the wildest adventures. In real life I may allude to a distinguished English engraver, who spent a fortnight over his plate and a fortnight in some fashionable watering-place, alternately, and who found this distribution of his time not unfavourable to the elasticity of his mind. Many hard-working Londoners, who fairly deserve to be considered intellec- tual men, pass their days in professional labour and their evenings in fashionable society. * But in all instances of this kind the professional work is serious enough, and regular enough, to give a very substantial basis to the life, so that the times of recreation are kept daily subor- dinate by the very necessity of circumstances. If you had a profession, and were obliged to follow it in earnest six or eight hours a day, the more Society amused you, the better. The danger in your case is that your whole existence may take a fashionable tone. The esprit or tone of fashion differs from the intellec- tual tone in ways which I will attempt to define. Fashion is nothing more than the temporary custom of rich and idle people who make it their principal business to study the external elegance of life. This custom incessantly changes. If your habits of mind and life change with it you are a fashionable person, but if your habits of mind and life either remain permanently fixed or follow some law of your own individual nature, then you are outside of fashion. The intellectual spirit is remarkable for its independence of custom, and therefore on many occa- sions it will clash with the fashionable spirit. It does PART IX. LETTER III. People who live alter- na tely in different worlds. The tone of fashion. Definition of fashion. N Intellectual spirit independent of custom.3*° THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IX. LETTER III. Intellectual specialities. A mechanical genius. A mpere. so most frequently in the choice of pursuits, and in the proportionate importance which the individual student will (in his own case) assign to his pursuits. The regu- lations of fashionable life have fixed, at the least tem- porarily, the degree of time and attention which a fashionable person may devote to this thing or that. The intellectual spirit ignores these regulations, and devotes its possessor, or more accurately its , to the intellectual speciality for which he has most natural aptitude, often leaving him ignorant of what fashion has decided to be essential. After living the intellectual life for several years he will know too much of one thing and too little of some other things to be in conformity with the fashionable ideal. For example, the fashionable ideal of a gentleman requires classical scholarship, but it is so difficult for artists and men of science to be classical scholars also that in this respect they are likely to fall short. I knew a man who became unfashionable because he had a genius for mechanics. He was always about steam-engines, and, though a gentle- man by birth, associated from choice with men who understood the science that chiefly interested him, of which all fashionable people were so profoundly ignorant that he habitually kept out of their way. He, on his part, neglected scholarship and literature and all that “ artistry of life,” as Mr. Robert Lytton calls it, in which fashionable society excels. Men are frequently driven into unfashionable existence by the very force and vigour of their own intellectual gifts, and sometimes by external circumstances, apparently most trifling, yet of infinite influence on human destiny. There is a good instance of this in a letter from Ampere to his young wife, that “Julie ” who was lost to him so soon. “ I went to dineSOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 311 yesterday at Madame Beauregard’s with hands blackened by a harmless drug which stains the skin for three or four days. She declared that it looked like manure, and ended by leaving the table, saying that she would dine when I was at a distance. I promised not to return there before my hands were white. Of course I shall never enter the house again.” Here we have an instance of a man of science who has temporarily disqualified himself for polite society by an experiment in the pursuit of knowledge. What do you think of the vulgarity of Madame Beauregard ? To me it appears the perfect type of that pre-occupation about appearances which blinds the genteel vulgar to the true nobility of life. Were not Ampere’s stained hands nobler than many white ones ? It is not necessary for every intellectual worker to blacken his fingers with chemicals, but a kind of rust very frequently comes over him which ought to be as readily forgiven, yet rarely is forgiven. “ In his relations with the world,” writes the biographer of Ampere, “ the authority of superiority disappeared. To this the course of years brought no alternative. Ampere become celebrated, laden with honourable distinctions, the great Ampere ! outside the speculations of the intellect, was hesitating and timid again, disquieted and troubled, and more disposed to accord his confidence to others than to himself.” Intellectual pursuits did not qualify Ampere, they do lot qualify anyone, for success in fashionable society. To succeed in the world you ought to be of the world, so as to share the things which interest it without too wide a deviation from the prevalent current of your thoughts. Its passing interests, its temporary customs, its transient phases of sentiment and opinion, ought to be PART IX. LETTER III. A ne'cdote oj A mpire. Genteel vulgarity. On being of the wo7 td.312 THE INTELLECTUAL LLFE. PART IX LETTER III. Madame A mpkre's anxiety about her husband A mfidre's clothes* for the moment your own interests, your own feelings and opinions. A mind absorbed as Ampere’s was in the contemplation and elucidation of the unchangeable laws of nature, is too much fixed upon the permanent to adapt itself naturally to these ever-varying estimates. He did not easily speak the world’s lighter language, he could not move with its mobility. Such men forget even what they eat and what they put on ; Ampere’s young wife was in constant anxiety, whilst the pair were sepa- rated by the severity of their fate, as to the sufficiency of his diet and the decency of his appearance. One day she writes to him to mind not to go out in ‘his shabby old coat, and in the same letter she entreats him to purchase a bottle of wine, so that when he took no milk or broth he would find it, and when it was all drunk she tells him to buy another bottle. Afterwards she asks him whether he makes a good fire, and if he has any chairs in his room. In another letter she inquires if his bed is comfortable, and in another she tells him to mind about his acids, for he has burnt holes in his blue stockings. Again, she begs him to try to have a passably decent appearance, because that will give pleasure to his poor wife. He answers, to tran- quillize her, that he does not burn his things now, and that he makes chemical experiments only in his old breeches with his grey coat and his waistcoat of greenish velvet. But one day he is forced to confess that she must send him new trousers if he is to appear before MM. Delambre and Villars. He “does not'know what to do,” his best breeches still smell of turpentine, and, having wished to put on trousers to go to the Society of Emulation, he saw the hole which Barrat fancied he had mended become bigger than ever, so that it showedSOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 3*3 the piece of different cloth which he had sown under it. He adds that his wife will be afraid that he will spoil his “beau pantalon,”but he promises to send it back to her as clean as when he received it. How different is all this from that watchful care about externals which marks the man of fashion ! Ampere was quite a young man then, still almost a bridegroom, yet he is already so absorbed in the intellectual life as to forget appearances utterly, except when Julie, with feminine watchfulness, writes to recall them to his mind. I am not defend- ing or advocating this carelessness. It is better to be neat and tidy than to go in holes and patches; but I desire to insist upon the radical difference between the fashionable spirit and the intellectual spirit. And this difference, which shows itself in these external things, is not less evident in the clothing or preparation of the mind. Ampere’s intellect, great and noble as it was, could scarcely be considered more suitable for le grand monde than the breeches that smelt of turpentine, or the trousers made ragged by aquafortis. A splendid contrast, as to tailoring, was our own dear Oliver Goldsmith, who displayed himself in those wonder- ful velvet coats and satin small-clothes from Mr. Filby’s, which are more famous than the finest garments ever worn by prince or peer. Who does not remember that bloom-coloured coat which the ablest painters have studiously immortalized, made by John Filby, at the Harrow, in Water Lane (best advertised of tailors !), and that charming blue velvet suit, which Mr. Filby was never paid for? Surely a poet so splendid was fit for the career of fashion ! No, Oliver Goldsmith’s velvet and lace were the expression of a deep and painful sense of personal unfitness. They were the fine frame which is PART IX. LETTER III. A mpere unsuited fot the grand monde. Goldsmith' $ fine clothes.3H THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IX. LETTER III. Johnson's neglect of fashion. Living men of genius. LETTER IV. intended to pass off an awkward and imperfect picture. There was a quieter dignity in Johnson’s threadbare sleeves. Johnson, the most influential though not the most elegant intellect of his time, is grander in his neglect of fashion than Goldsmith in his ruinous subser- vience. And if it were permitted to me to speak of two or three great geniuses who adorn the age in which we ourselves are living, I might add that they seem to follow the example of the author of “Rasselas” rather than that of Mr. Filby’s illustrious customer. They remind me of a good old squire who, from a fine sentiment of duty, permitted the village artist to do his worst upon him, and incurred thereby this withering observation from his metropolitan tailor: “You are covered, sir, but you are not dressed !” LETTER IV. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN FASHIONABLE SOCIETY. Test of professions—Mobility of fashionable taste—Practical service of an external deference to culture—Incompatibility between fashionable and intellectual lives—What each has to offer. Your polite, almost diplomatic answer to my letter about fashionable society may be not unfairly concen- trated into some such paragraph as the following :— “What grounds have I for concluding that the pro- fessed tastes and opinions of Society are in any degree insincere ? May not society be quite sincere in the pre- ferences which it professes, and are not the preferences themselves almost always creditable to the good tasteSOCIETY AND . 315 and really advanced culture of the Society which I suspect of a certain degree of affectation ? ” This is the sense of your letter, and in reply to it I give you a simple but sure test. Is the professed opinion carried out in practice, when there are fair opportunities for practice ? Let us go so far as to examine a particular instance. Your friends profess to appreciate classical literature. Do they read it ? Or, on the other hand, do they confine themselves to believing that it is a good thing for other people to read it ? When I was a schoolboy, people told me that the classical authors of antiquity were eminently useful, and indeed absolutely necessary to the culture of the human mind, but I perceived that they did not read them. So I have heard many people express great respect for art and science, only they did not go so far as to master any department of art or science. If you will apply this test to the professions of what is especially called fashionable society, it is probable that you will arrive at the conclusions of the minority, which I have endeavoured to express. You will find that the fashionable world remains very contentedly outside the true working intellectual life, and does not really share either its labours or its aspirations. Another kind of evidence, which tells in the same direction, is the mobility of fashionable taste. At one time some studies are fashionable, at another time these are neglected and others have taken their place. You wil not find this fickleness in the true intellectual world, which steadily pursues all its various studies, and keeps them well abreast, century after century. If I insist upon this distinction with reference to you, PART IX. LETTER IV. Test of professions. Mobility of fashionable taste.316 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART IX. LETTER IV. Good effect of external deference to culture. Nominal esteem for great pursuits. do not accuse me of hostility even to fashion itself. Fashion is one of the great Divine institutions of human society, and the best philosophy rebels against none of the authorities that be, but studies and endeavours to explain them. The external deference which Society yields to culture is practically of great service, although (I repeat the epithet) it is external. The sort of good effect is in the intellectual sphere what the good effect of a general religious profession is in the moral sphere. All fashionable society goes to church. Fashionable religion differs from the religion of Peter and Paul as fashionable science differs from that of Humboldt and Arago, yet, notwithstanding this difference, the profession of religion is useful to Society as some restraint, at least during one day out of seven, upon its inveterate tendency to live exclusively for its amusement. And if any soul happens to come into existence in the fashionable world which has the genuine religious nature, that nature has a chance of developing itself, and of finding ready to hand certain customs which are favourable to its well- being. So it is, though in quite a different direction, with the esteem which Society professes for intellectual pursuits. It is an esteem in great part merely nominal, as fashionable Christianity is nominal, and still it helps and favours the early development of the genuine faculty where it exists. It is certainly a great help to us that fashionable society, which has such a tremendous, such an almost irresistible power for good or evil, does not openly discourage our pursuits, but on the con- trary regards them with great external deference and respect. The recognition which Society has given to artists has been wanting in frankness and in promp- titude, though even in this case much may be saidSOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 3!7 to excuse a sort of hesitation rather than refusal which eave off working, and Montaigne did wisely to have his study up in a tower from which he had extensive views. There is a well-known objection to extensive views as wanting in snugness and comfort, but this objection scarcely applies to the especial case of literary men. What we want is not so much snugness as relief, re- freshment, suggestion, and we get these, as a general rule, much better from wide prospects than from limited ones. I have just alluded to Montaigne,—will you permit me to imitate that dear old philosopher in his egotism and describe to you the view from the room I write in, which cheers and amuses me continually ? But before describing this, let me describe another of which the recollection is very dear to me and as vivid as a freshly- painted picture. In years gone by, I had only to look up from my desk and see a noble loch in its inexhaustible loveliness, and a mountain in its majesty. It was a daily and hourly delight to watch the breezes play about the enchanted isles, on the delicate silvery surface, dim- ming some clear reflection, or trailing it out in length, or cutting sharply across it with acres of rippling blue. It was a frequent pleasure to see the clouds play about the crest of Cruachan and Ben Vorich’s golden head, grey mists that crept upwards from the valleys till the sunshine suddenly caught them and made them brighter than the snows they shaded. And the leagues and leagues of heather on the lower land to the southward that became like the aniline dyes of deepest purple and blue, when the sky was grey in the evening—all save one orange-streak ! Ah, those were spectacles never to be forgotten, splendours of light and glory, and sadness of deepening gloom when the eyes grew moist in the twilight and secretly drank their tears. PART XII LETTER III. Montaigne'i private study. The author** prospect in the Highlands,44$ THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. PART XII. LETTER III. A bsence of human interest. Soror et ce mulct Romce. And yet, wonderful as it was, that noble and pas- sionately beloved Highland scenery was wanting in one great element that a writer imperatively needs. In all that natural magnificence humanity held no place. Hidden behind a fir-clad promontory to the north, there still remained, it is true, the grey ruin of old Kilchurn, and far to the south-west, in another reach of the lake, the island-fortress of Ardhonnel. But there was not a visible city with spires and towers, there were only the fir-trees on the little islands and a few gravestones on the largest. Beyond, were the depopulated deserts of Breadalbane. Here, where I write to you now, it seems as if man- kind were nearer, and the legends of the ages written out for me on the surface of the world. Under the shadow of Jove’s hill rises before me one of the most ancient of European cities, soror et cemula Romce. She bears on her walls and edifices the record of sixty gene- rations. Temple, and arch, and pyramid, all these bear witness still, and so do her ancient bulwarks, and many a stately tower. High above all, the cathedral spire is drawn dark in the morning mist, and often in the clear summer evenings it comes brightly in slanting sunshine against the steep woods behind. Then the old city arrays herself in the warmest and mellowest tones, and glows as the shadows fall. She reigns over the whole width of her valley to the folds of the far blue hills. Even so ought our life to be surrounded by the loveli- ness of nature—surrounded, but not subdued.INDEX. A. Abundance of objects, 78. Academical graues, 103. Accomplishments of a modem gentle- man, 80. Accumulation, the instinct of, 186. Accuracy, lack of, in women, 231. Acquaintances, 302. Active temperament, 24. Activity, intellectual, need of it, 347. Adults, their power of resistance, 122. Affectation of preferences, 281. Affectations, effect of, 306. Albert, Prince, 100. Alcibiades, education of, 84. Amateurship, 99. Ambition, self-government, for the sake of. 72. Ampere, his religious faith, 220; in society, 311 ; his clothes, 312. Amusements, 321. Anatomy, ea-ily forgotten, 83. Ancient thought, modern indifference to, 108. Archimedes at the siege of Syracuse, 438- Aristocracies, their restriction of stu- dies, 75'. Aristocracy, the English, of the last generation, 76 ; its liberal and illi- beral spirit, 287. Arnold, Dr., his definition of religion, 214; his intellectual force, 220; his travels on the Continent, 292 ; his longing for natural beauty, 434. Arnold, Matthew, a consideration sug- gested by, 349; his poem, *1 Self- dependence,^” 366. Associations, incongruous, 129. Athletic Englishman, 24. Attractiveness of intellectual labour, 45- . Authority, central, in the mind, 57 ; not recognized by the intellect, 224 ; re- jection of, 299. Author, the, views from his windows, 447» 448- Authors, their want of discipline, 50 ; professional, their lives not alwavs favourable to culture, itU. Avarice, in time, 148. B Baker, Lady, 240. Balzac, 339. Barbarian feeling, expression of, 285. Baudelaire, Charles, on daily labour, 58. Beckford, Mr.,how he wrote “ Vathek,” 8 ; his riches, 168. Beer, 17. Beginnings, 107. Beliefs of the intellectual, their pro- visional character, 399. Beranger, effects of Paris on his mind, 442. Bernard, St., his absorption in thought, 444- Birth, the sentiment of, 297. Bixio, Alexandre, 31. Bossuet on riches, 181. Botany, 96. Botch-work, 406. Bourgeoisie, French, want of elevation in, 294. Boy, who spoke Latin, 93 ; the author’s eldest, 120. Boys, two, their muscular and intellec- tual tendencies, 22. Brahe, Tycho, 182. Brain, demands repose when ex- hausted, 9; state of, at different times, 388 ; in youth and maturity, 391- 44 Bramleighs, The,” quoted, 406. Breakfast, 14. Browning, effect of locality on, 432. Bruno, Giordano, 53; his indifference to external events 440. Bucklanu, Mrs., 240. Buckle, Mr., his love of town life, 437- Buffon, 409. GG450 INDEX. Bunyan, his imprisonment, 331. Burns, his rusticity, 278; his uneasi- ness and defiance, 283. Byron, effect of poetical excitement upon his health, 4 ; his morality, 69; * his classical education and foreign travel, 97 ; his aristocracy, 278 ; his dislike to hear poetry called a “ pro- fession/’ 409. C. Carpenter, Dr., his early experience, I73* . Caste, its pride in ignorance, 279; and religion, 293. Caste-sentiment, 281. Cerebral symptoms occasioned by mental labour, 3. Charities, intellectual, 351. Chemists dependent upon the indus- trial class, 421. Children, the best teachers of lan- guages, 116 ; their power of imita- tion, 122. Church, the, its felicities and advan- tages as a profession, 396. ft Claribel,” a Frenchman's reading of, 8q. Classics, patronized by pedants, 385. Class views, 277 ; spirit, when odious, 289. Clergy, the English, their position, 396; their difficulty in attaining disinter- estedness of thought, 397. Clerical life, its attractions for the in- tellectual, 398. Clock, minute slavery to, 393. Coffee, 20. Coleridge, his idea of a profession, 411. Comfort, dangers of it, 251. Commerce, absurd prejudices against, 424. Compensation, in the effects of time, 164. Competence, certificates of, 105. Comte, Auguste, 221 ; his isolation, 331 ; his abstinence from news- papers, 377 ; his peculiar gift, ib. Conformity in trivial matters, 197. Contemporaries, jealousy of, 383. Contempt, effects of, 283. Conversation, general, 321. Conversations, general, in England, 320. Cook, lesson learned from a, 73. Cookery, importance of scientific, 16. Coolness of the experienced, 338. Cotton-manufacture leaves little spare time for culture, 427. Cotton-manufacturers, 426. Cowp^r, his horror of towns, 437. Cream and curagoa, 265. Creeds, how they protect tradition^ 220. Cripple, a poor, 274. Criticism cannot be ignored, 210. Culture, guardians of, 296 ; the life most favourable to, 332; and indus- trial occupations, 418 Custom and tradition, ir,j. Custom, uses of, 197; art of reforming, 198. Customs, bad, to be resisted, 198. Cuvier, his paralysis, 41 ; a model student, 344 ; his remarkable power of self-direction, 392 ; and the expe- dition to Egypt, 403. D. Degrees, 104. Dejeuner, 14. Delane, Mr. W. F. A., his caie of his health, 6. Delusions al?but time, 146. Democracy, inevitable defect of a, 293 ; its power of exclusion, ib. ; the Parisian, 295. Democratic idea, hopes for, 298. Deviation in marriage, danger of, 249. Dickens, his works, 278 ; effect of locality on, 432 ; his need of the London streets, 433. Dictionaries, time wasted over, 148. Dignity, want of, in democratic com- munities, 290. Dilettantism, 100. Diplomacy as a field for the intellect, 427* . Discipline, work done for, 54; the want of, 55. Discussions with ladies, 270. Diseased persons, how they injure themselves, 21 ; their peculiar expe- rience, 32. Diseases often permit mental activity, .33- Disingenuousness, 218. Disinterestedness, 62; want of it in newspapers, 65. Dore, Gustave, his studio, 445. Drinks, 16. Drudgery, 46. Dryden, his fluctuation of spirits, 343. Dumas, Alexandre, his capacity foi work, 9. Diirer, Albert, his “ Melencolia/’ 342. E. Eagerness, bad effects of, 335. Ear, innocence of, 123. Early and late work, 389 Eccentricity of study, 258.INDEX, 451 Ecclesiastical authority, weakening of, 203. Economy of time, 135. Education, modern, 100 ; fashionable, 3°5- Efficiency, much of it owing to nar- rowness, 77. Effort, intense, 8; the principal in the day, 387. ^ Emerson, his suggestion about stan- dard authors, 379; his suggestion , about secondary writers, 382. Enault, Louis, 138. England, public opinion in, 425. Englishman, an, in Paris, 123. Engravers, their labour, 51. Ennui of the intellectual, 341. Enthusiasm for knowledge, 418. Equality, theory of, 299. Erdan, M., his letters in the Temps, 380. Etching, technical difficnlty of, 50. Etiquette unfavourable to the culture of women, 261. Etonian in a cotton factory, 426. Excitement, present, bad effects of it on work, 65. Exercise, privation of, 8 ; difficulty of taking an interest in, 25 ; neglect of, 26 ; faith in, 27 ; concentration of, 28. Experience of the moderns, 109. F. Fane, Julian, his gentlemanhood, 289. Faraday, his religious faith, 222 ; not professional, 410. Fashion, definition of, 309. Fashionable and intellectual lives, 309, 3*7- Fearlessness, intellectual, 218. Feudalism, remains of, 425. Fine arts as a profession, 403. Fortresses untaken in the rear, 141. French, the, their public opinion, 204. Frenchmen as English scholars, 88. Freshness, the mind’s, 340. Friends, intellectual, their succession, 302. Friendships, intellectual, 300, 303. G. Galileo, his recollection of Padua, 437. Genius, men of, their habits, 361. Oenteel notions, 282. Gentleman, fashionable ideal of a, 310. Gentlemen, want of, on the Continent, 292. Germans, in France, 123 ; in London, ib.\ their intellectual labours, 154. Gifted people, their power in society, 323- Gladstone, Mr., address delivered by, 428. Goethe, his habits in eating and drink- ing, 15 ; his delight in exercise, 30 ; his studies, 126 ; variety of his stu- dies, 156; fortunate in money mat- ters, 183 ; regularity of his intellec- tual life, 344 ; at the bombardment of Verdun, 439 ; effects of Frankfort upon his childhood, 441 ; effects of the tranquillity of Weimar on his mind, 442 ; his private study, 444. Goldsmith, Oliver, his wayward ex- periences, 97 ; his dress, 313 ; on hack-writing, 413. Gothic builders, an artistic error of, 146. Governments, their protection of the fine arts, 102. Greek, abandonment of, 106; as a weapon of caste, 284. Gymnastics, 29. H. Habit, minute regularity of, objection- able, 13 ; operation of, 386. Habits, regularity of, 394. ‘‘ Half-educated,” the, 130. Happiness, domestic, 252. Harness, 371. Health, effect of mental labour upon, 2. Heine, his longing for sylvan scenery, 433- Help, mutual, of different pursuits, 140; intellectual, 352. Helps, Sir Arthur, on good workmen, 180. Hermit-life, imperfection of, 325. High life, 288. History not written disinterestedly, 66. Holden, Francis, 98. Honesty, 67 ; value of, 209. Humboldt, Alexander, the moral basis of his greatness, 62 ; his use of for- tune, 174; his views of the origin of the species, 217 ; equality of his tem- perament, 344 ; sale of his estate, 418 ; how he appreciated Paris, 437. Humboldts, the, their youth at Tegel, 437- I. Idle moments, value of, 152. Idleness, uses of, 370. Immorality, peculiar temptation of the intellectual to, 69; effects of, upon the mind, 71.452 INDEX. Impatience, causes of, 337. Incompatibility between pursuits, 419. Individuals in society, 319. Indocility of great workers, 54. Indolence of men of genius, 9. Industry, chiefs of, 417; leaders of, 428. Influence desired by the intellectual, 348* . Ingres, his advice to his pupils, 339. Ingres, Madame, a model wife, 230. Initiative, absence of intellectual, in women, 244. Inspiration, waiting for, 362. Intellectual methods independent of tradition, 225. Interruption, evils of, 157- Intimacy, dangers of too perfect, 238. Intoxication, mental, 44. Island, dream of a Latin, 93. Isolation of high culture, 328. Italian, an, who spoke French per- fectly, 117. j- Jacquemont, Victor, quoted, T54. Jealousy between intellectual and in- dustrial classes, 420. Jesuit, sermon by a, 397. Johnson, Dr., his love of town-life, 437. Joubert, easily fatigued, 9; his small production, 355. Journalism, anonymous, 298 ; in Eng- land, 414 ; practice of, 415. K. Kant, his habits, 10 ; his attention to the physical life, 12. Keats, his genius and culture, 363. Kepler, his struggles, 182. Knowledge, selection of, 76 ; indirectly useful to authors, 97 ; pride of, 408. L. Ladies, discussions with, 270. Laity, self-assertion of, 203. Language, lost, recovery of, 121; de- filed by popular taste, 293. Languages, modern, no, 112 ; illu- sions about modern, 113 ; five pro- positions about, X13, 114; foreign, difficulty of learning, 115 ; too many attempted, 124 ; limits in, 139, 140. Late risers, 387. Latin and Greek, the reading of, 139. Latin, a scholar in, 79 ; doubts whether any modern ever mastered it, 87 ; pronunciation of, 91 ; made a spoken language, 92 ; the study of, 109. Law, the inward, 60; profession of, _ 399- o Lawyer, a Scotch, 235. Lawyers, 425 ; their admirable disci- pline, 59; often narrowed by pro- fessional views, 400 ; their sense of affairs, 401. Learned, the, 131. Leonardo da Vinci, 131. Leslie, his painting-room, 446. Lewis, John, his studies, 49. * Limits, utility of, 138. Literary engagements, 164. Literature, professional,'413. Livingstone, his sacrifices, 419. Locality, power of, 432. Locke on liberty of mental action, 57. London, the true home of the intellec- tual, 328. Longevity, value of, to the intellectual life, 41. Lullo, the Oriental missionary, 440. M. Magnificence, effect of natural, upon the mind, 431. Manners, democratic, 291. Marriage, how little is known about it, 227; two kinds of, suitable to the in- tellectual, 228 ; the intellectual, 232, 240 ; intellectual ideal of, 238. Marriages, unhappy, 227 ; rich, dan- gers of, 253. Mature life, its duties, 107. Medicine, profession of, 401. Meissonier, his studies, 49. Memories, selecting, 125; bad, 126; defective, cures for, 127. Memory, in painting, 127; rational art of, 128. Mental labour, effects of excess in, 5 ; indirect effects of, zb. Meryon, the etcher, 50. Michelet, his manner of composition, 412. “Midshipman Easy,” 144. Military profession, the, 402. Milton, his retirement, 331. Mind, tuning of the, 392. Minds, three classes of, 357. Miscalculation about time, 151. Mitford, Miss, on the selfishness of authors, 381. Mnemotechnic art, objections to, 128. Modern mind, its unwillingness to break with tradition, 206. Modern spirit, not hostile to tradition, 206. Money, the protector of the intellec- tual life, 186 ; art of using, 187. Montaigne, his infancy, 88 ; corruption of his Latin, 94 ; his books, 166 ; his study, 447.INDEX. 453 Moore, Thomas, his labour in lt Lalla Rookh,” 47. Morality, 69. Morris, William, his “ Earthly Para- dise, ” 98 ; his culture, 363. Mother-tongue, partially lost, 117. Mulready, his preparations for work, 49*. Multiplicity of pursuits, 82. Music, its influence, 23,96; its effects on general cultu-re, 97 ; the study of, 140. N. Napoleon I., his advice to do nothing, 145 ; on the winning of battles, 361. Napoleon III., 100. Narrowness, aristocratic, in English authors, 279. Nature, penalties of, 194. Naval profession, the, 402. Necessity of the intellectual class, 423- Necessity, a stimulus in some careers, 176; effect of, in the higher pur- suits, 177 ; bad effects of it on study, 178. Nervous system, 1. Newspaper correspondents, 373. Newspapers, abstinence from, 372; contents of, 374 ; utility of, 377. Nightingale, Florence, on interruption, ?57- . . . Night-work, medical objection to, 390. Noblemen, English, their advantages, 286, Noblesse, old French, its ignorance, 292. Nomads, English, 430. Novelty, importance of, in newspapers, 374- O. Obscure persons, their influence, 34. Opportunities, 192 ; in society, 320. Oratory, excitement of, 44. Order in study, 141. Organs of sense, their importance in intellectual pursuits, 37. Orleans, Duchess of, 171. Owen, Professor, his views of human longevity, 217. P. Painter, a, his knowledge and skill, 133. Painters, what they suffer from visi- tors, 33° > experienced, their methods of work, 339. Painting, the French and Belgian schools, 48. Parliament, Houses of, 188. Parsimony, its effects, 189. Partisan writing, 375. Partisans, their intellectual defects, 64. Passion, the, of able men, 180. Patriotism and self-respect, 350. Patronage, the use for it not altogether passed away, 173. Pedants, 385. Penalties for rebellion against custom, T94* . Perfection, the labour that it costs, 100. Pets of Nature, 32. Phillip, John, his principle of work, 339- ^ , Philosopher, a Greek, anecdote of, 419. Photographic processes, 422. Physical and intellectual lives, 30. Physicians, 425. Pioneers, intellectual, 418. Pitfalls, 144. Pleasure, the love of intellectual, 43. Poems, prize, 102, Poets, their excitement, 360. Poor students, encouragement for, 190. Pope, infallibility of, 223. Posterity, 201. Poverty, a great obstacle, 187. Prescott, the historian, 39. Present age not exceptionally scornful of preceding ages, 204. Pressure injurious to the highest kinds of labour, 161. Priests, their method, 213. Primer, a French, its pecuniary value, 183. Prince Consort, his influence 011 public opinion, 242. Procrastination often time’s best pre- server, 145. Profession of literature, 409. Professors in the French university, their marriages, 233. Proportion in knowledge, 75. Protection in intellectual pursuits, 101. Protestantism and intellectual supe- riority, 219. R. Ravignan, Father, 444. Reading, illusions about, 147; painful to the uneducated, 353 ; as practised by most people, 384. Reality the reward of labour, 318. Rebels useful to civilization, 196. Rebellion against custom, 194. Recluses, 329. Refinement, reactions from, 71. Refusals, mental, their importance, 59.454 INDEX. Regimen, effect of, 14. Religion, intellectual, 214, 216; fashion- able, 316. Religious belief, the test of it, 215. Rembrandt, his advice to Hoogstraten, 303- Republics, argument against, 202. Residence, fixity of, 285 ; selection of, 432. “ Rest and be thankful,’* 368. Rest and haste, 365. Results, humble, 355. Reynolds, his faith in labour, 49. Rich man, the, his temptations, 172. Rich, the, their social duties, 171. Riches, intellectual, 341. Romans, the ancient, their education, 85- Roscoe, William, consequences of his study of Italian, 98. Rosse, Lord, 171. Rossini, his advice to a young com- poser, 149. Rubens, 403. Kuskin, Mr., his use of sight, 38; his career aided by wealth, 179 ; effect of locality on, 432. Rust, 82. S. Sainte-Beuve, his horror of the £ j>eu pres, 56 ; his plan of life, 185 ; a convinced atheist, 221. Sand, George, how she bore extra pressure, 6 ; on mental indiscipline, 58. Saussure, De, his career aided by wealth, 179. Schiller wasting time in hack-work, 182. Scholar, the, 132. Scholars of the sixteenth century, 88. Scholarship, in Latin, 88 ; of a French- man in English, 89 ; an illusion of, 91 ; old-fashioned, 136. Scott, Sir Walter, effect of labour and anxiety upon his health, 4 ; his field sports, 7 ; his habits in eating and drinking, 15 ; his pedestrianism, 29; “ half-educated,” 86; antiquarian element in, 97 ; his principle ot work, 33p; on Dryden’s inequality of spirits, 343. Scriptures, infallibility of, 223. Selection, value of, 162 ; in writing, 164. Senancour, De, on poverty, 181. Senses, perfection of, 36 ; their pre- servation, 40 ; the lower, importance of. ib. Separation of the senses, 241. Serenity of thought interfered with by a too minute division of time, 394. Sergeant, a Garibaldian, 118. Servant, a Neapolitan, 119. Shelley, his delight in boating, 7 ; effect of literary composition on his health, 9 ; his morality* 69 ; had no profit from his writings, 182 ; his dislike to society, 329. Shopkeepers in literature, 279. Shyness, its bad effects, 263. Sincerity and culture, 266. Skill, 407.; contempt for, 408. Small things, interest of, 261. Smith, Sydney, on carelessness, 175. Smoking, 19. Society will be obeyed, 195 ; its in- fluence, 305 ; conditions for success in it, 307 ; test of its sincerity, 315 ; its professed respect for culture, 317. Socrates, his health, 30 ; defence of, 159- Solicitor, a London, 250. Solitude, necessary, 324 ; uses of, 325 ; effects of, 327 ; that which is really injurious, 332. Sound, importance of, in literature, 90. Soundness in knowledge, definition of, I37* Southey, his cerebral breakdown, 4. Sport, 25. Stael, Madame de, how she obtained literary material, 37. Sterility, intellectual, 358. St. Hilaire, Geoffroy, 34; at Alex- andria, 439, 440. Stimulants, 18, 21. Students, classical, hi. Studies, bad effects of, 75, 76; held to be useless, 95; pet, 103. Studio, building of a, 443. Study for literary men, 411. Sue, Eugene, his habits in the country, 7- ■ . Suffering, its teachings, 31. Surgeons and physicians, 402. Surgeons, their discipline, 59. Sydney Smith, his vigorous common- sense, 220. T. Taine, M., a suggestion of, 352. Talk, printed, 414. Taste, fashionable, its mobility, 315. Tea, 20. Teaching, gratuitous, 354. Technical difficulty of painting, 50. Tennyson, his finish, 416 ; quotations from his poem “ Maud,” 345. Tests, severe, 112. Thier3, M., his elevation, 375. Tillier, Claude, quoted, 153. Time and occasion, 142. Time, power of, 134; brevity of, 143 ; thrift of, 145 ; economy of, 369 ; lostfINDEX. 455 369 ; division of, 391 ; small spaces of, how to be utilized, 392 ; fragments of, useless in some pursuits, 393 ; in masses, ib. Time-savers, the best, 135. Titian at Venice, 443. Tobacco, 18. Topffer quoted, 153. Towns, effect of ugly, upon the mind, 431- Trade, effects of it upon the mind, 428. Trades, distinctions between, 425. Tradition, abandonment of, 200 ; de- cline of its influence, 205 ; favour- able to professional skill, 207. • Travel, Mr. Galton’s advice about, 334- Travels, 354. ... s Turgot, his habits in eating and work, I5* Tycho Brahe, 277 ; his fear of losing caste, 28-0; his establishment of Uranienborg, 436. Ultramontane party, 63. Unsoundness in knowledge, 137. V. Valvedre, 254. Vernet, Horace, his principle of work, .339- Vinci, Leonardo da, 131. Virtue of trying to be disinterested, 6~>. Vulgarity in France, 295. W. Waiters, polyglot, 124. Warwickshire, scenery of, repulsive to Dr. Arnold, 434. Wasted time, 136. Weakness, work done in, 33. Wealth, the temptations of it to which Englishmen yield, 170 ; its favour- able effect on culture, 190; the science of, 421. Westmoreland, scenery of, effects on Dr. Arnold, 435. Westmorland, Lady, a letter of hers about Julian Fane, 211. Wines, 16. Wives, their great influence, 239. Woepke, Franz, mathematician and Orientalist, 74, 77. Women, education of, 230; good pupils, bad solitary learners, 2 .6; how they help us, zb.] their intebee- tual nature, 243; absence of scien- tific curiosity in, 245.; do not in- vent, 247 ; their subservience to custom, 258 ; greatest misfortune of their intellectual life, 264 ; their reference to persons, 272. Woollen manufacturers, 426. Work spoiled in the doing, 180. Workers, decided, 339. Wordsworth, effect of literary compo- sition upon, 2; his pedestrianism, 29; his dread of writing, 47 ; his good fortune in money matters, 182 ; his ignorance of modern works, 381. THB END.