The Intellectual Life Part 17

Taine suggested in the _Temps_ that subscribers to the better sort of journals might do a good deal for the enlightenment of the humbler cla.s.ses by merely lending their newspapers in their neighborhood. This was a good suggestion: the best newspapers are an important intellectual propaganda; they awaken an interest in the most various subjects, and supply not only information but a stimulus. The danger to persons of higher culture that the newspaper may absorb time which would else be devoted to more systematic study, does not exist in the cla.s.ses for whose benefit M. Taine made his recommendation. The newspaper is their only secular reading, and without it they have no modern literature of any kind. In addition to the praiseworthy habit of lending good newspapers, an intellectual man who lives in the country might adopt the practice of conversing with his neighbors about everything in which they could be induced to take an interest, giving them some notion of what goes on in the cla.s.ses which are intellectually active, some idea of such discoveries and projects as an untutored mind may partially understand. For example, there is the great tunnel under the Mont Cenis, and there is the projected tunnel beneath the Channel, and there is the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez. A peasant can comprehend the greatness of these remarkable conceptions when they are properly explained to him, and he will often feel a lively grat.i.tude for information of that kind. We ought to remember what a slow and painful operation reading is to the uneducated. Merely to read the native tongue is to them a labor so irksome that they are apt to lose the sense of a paragraph in seeking for that of a sentence or an expression. As they would rather speak than have to write, so they prefer hearing to reading, and they get much more good from it, because they can ask a question when the matter has not been made clear to them.

One of the best ways of interesting and instructing your intellectual inferiors is to give them an account of your travels. All people like to hear a traveller tell his own tale, and whilst he is telling it he may slip in a good deal of information about many things, and much sound doctrine. Accounts of foreign countries, even when you have not seen them personally, nearly always awaken a lively interest, especially if you are able to give your hearers detailed descriptions of the life led by foreigners who occupy positions corresponding to their own. Peasants can be made to take an interest in astronomy even, though you cannot tell them anything about the peasants in Jupiter and Mars, and there is always, at starting, the great difficulty of persuading them to trust science about the motion and rotundity of the earth.

A very direct form of intellectual charity is that of gratuitous teaching, both in cla.s.ses and by public lectures, open to all comers. A great deal of light has in this way been spread abroad in cities, but in country villages there is little encouragement to enterprises of this kind, the intelligence of farm laborers being less awakened than that of the corresponding urban population. Let us remember, however, that one of the very highest and last achievements of the cultivated intellect is the art of conveying to the uncultivated, the untaught, the unprepared, the best and n.o.blest knowledge which they are capable of a.s.similating.

No one who, like the writer of these pages, has lived much in the country, and much amongst a densely ignorant peasantry, will be likely in any plans of enlightenment to err far on the side of enthusiastic hopefulness. The mind of a farm laborer, or that of a small farmer, is almost always sure to be a remarkably stiff soil, in which few intellectual conceptions can take root; yet these few may make the difference between an existence worthy of a man, and one that differs from the existence of a brute in little beyond the possession of articulate language. We to whom the rich inheritance of intellectual humanity is so familiar as to have lost much of its freshness, are liable to underrate the value of thoughts and discoveries which to us have for years seemed commonplace. It is with our intellectual as with our material wealth; we do not realize how precious some fragments of it might be to our poorer neighbors. The old clothes that we wear no longer may give comfort and confidence to a man in naked dest.i.tution; the truths which are so familiar to us that we never think about them, may raise the utterly ignorant to a sense of their human brotherhood.

Above all, in the exercise of our intellectual charities, let us accustom ourselves to feel satisfied with humble results and small successes; and here let me make a confession which may be of some possible use to others. When a young man, I taught a drawing-cla.s.s gratuitously, beginning with thirty-six pupils, who dwindled gradually to eleven. Soon afterwards I gave up the work from dissatisfaction, on account of the meagre attendance. This was very wrong--the eleven were worth the thirty-six; and so long as one of the eleven remained I ought to have contentedly taught him. The success of a teacher is not to be measured by the numbers whom he immediately influences. It is enough, it has been proved to be enough in more than one remarkable instance, that a single living soul should be in unison with the soul of a master, and receive his thought by sympathy. The one disciple teaches in his turn, and the idea is propagated.

LETTER IV.

TO THE FRIEND OF A MAN OF HIGH CULTURE WHO PRODUCED NOTHING.

Joubert--"Not yet time," or else "The time is past"--His weakness for production--Three cla.s.ses of minds--A more perfect intellectual life attainable by the silent student than by authors--He may follow his own genius--Saving of time effected by abstinence from writing--The unproductive may be more influential than the prolific.

When I met B. at your house last week, you whispered to me in the drawing-room that he was a man of the most remarkable attainments, who, to the great regret of all his friends, had never employed his abilities to any visible purpose. We had not time for a conversation on this subject, because B. himself immediately joined us. His talk reminded me very much of Joubert--not that I ever knew Joubert personally, though I have lived very near to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, where Joubert lived; but he is one of those characters whom it is possible to know without having seen them in the flesh. His friends used to urge him to write something, and then he said, "_Pas encore._" "Not yet; I need a long peace."

Tranquillity came, and then he said that G.o.d had only given force to his mind for a limited time, and that the time was past. Therefore, as Sainte-Beuve observed, for Joubert there was no medium; either it was not yet time, or else the time was past.

Nothing is more common than for _other_ people to say this of us. They often say "He is too young," as Napoleon said of Ingres, or else "He is too old," as Napoleon said of Greuze. It is more rare for a man himself to shrink from every enterprise, first under the persuasion that he is unprepared, and afterwards because the time is no longer opportune. Yet there does exist a certain very peculiar cla.s.s of highly-gifted, diffident, delicate, unproductive minds, which impress those around them with an almost superst.i.tious belief in their possibilities, yet never do anything to justify that belief.

But may it not be doubted whether these minds _have_ productive power of any kind? I believe that the full extent of Joubert's productive power is displayed in those sentences of his which have been preserved, and which reveal a genius of the rarest delicacy, but at the same time singularly incapable of sustained intellectual effort. He said that he could only compose slowly, and with an extreme fatigue. He believed, however, that the weakness lay in the instrument alone, in the composing faculties, and not in the faculties of thought, for he said that behind his weakness there was strength, as behind the strength of some others there was weakness.

In saying this, it is probable that Joubert did not overestimate himself. He _had_ strength of a certain kind, or rather he had quality; he had distinction, which is a sort of strength in society and in literature. But he had no productive force, and I do not believe that his unproductiveness was a productiveness checked by a fastidious taste; I believe that it was real, that he was not organized for production.

Sainte-Beuve said that a modern philosopher was accustomed to distinguish three cla.s.ses of minds--

1. Those who are at once powerful and delicate, who excel as they propose, execute what they conceive, and reach the great and true beautiful--a rare _elite_ amongst mortals.

2. A cla.s.s of minds especially characterized by their delicacy, who feel that their idea is superior to their execution, their intelligence greater than their talent, even when the talent is very real; they are easily dissatisfied with themselves, disdain easily won praises, and would rather judge, taste, and abstain from producing, than remain below their conception and themselves. Or if they write it is by fragments, for themselves only, at long intervals and at rare moments. Their fecundity is internal, and known to few.

3. Lastly, there is a third cla.s.s of minds more powerful and less delicate or difficult to please, who go on producing and publis.h.i.+ng themselves without being too much dissatisfied with their work.

The majority of our active painters and writers, who fill modern exhibitions, and produce the current literature of the day, belong to the last cla.s.s, to which we are all greatly indebted for the daily bread of literature and art.

But Sainte-Beuve believed that Joubert belonged to the second cla.s.s, and I suspect that both Sainte-Beuve and many others have credited that cla.s.s with a potential productiveness beyond its real endowments. Minds of the Joubert cla.s.s are admirable and valuable in their way, but they are really, and not apparently, sterile.

And why would we have it otherwise? When we lament that a man of culture has "done nothing," as we say, we mean that he has not written books. Is it necessary, is it desirable, that every cultivated person should write books?

On the contrary, it seems that a more perfect intellectual life may be attained by the silent student than by authors. The writer for the public is often so far its slave that he is compelled by necessity or induced by the desire for success (since it is humiliating to write unsaleable books as well as unprofitable) to deviate from his true path, to leave the subjects that most interest him for other subjects which interest him less, and therefore to acquire knowledge rather as a matter of business than as a labor of love. But the student who never publishes, and does not intend to publish, may follow his own genius and take the knowledge which belongs to him by natural affinity. Add to this the immense saving of time effected by abstinence from writing. Whilst the writer is polis.h.i.+ng his periods, and giving hours to the artistic exigencies of mere form, the reader is adding to his knowledge.

Thackeray said that writers were not great readers, because they had not the time.

The most studious Frenchman I ever met with used to say that he so hated the pen as scarcely to resolve to write a letter. He reminded me of Joubert in this; he often said, "J'ai horreur de la plume." Since he had no profession his leisure was unlimited, and he employed it in educating himself without any other purpose than this, the highest purpose of all, to become a cultivated man. The very prevalent idea that lives of this kind are failures unless they leave some visible achievement as a testimony and justification of their labors, is based upon a narrow conception both of duty and of utility. Men of this unproductive cla.s.s are sure to influence their immediate neighborhood by the example of their life. Isolated as they are too frequently in the provinces, in the midst of populations dest.i.tute of the higher culture, they often establish the notion of it notwithstanding the contemptuous estimates of the practical people around them. A single intellectual life, thus modestly lived through in the obscurity of a country-town, may leave a tradition and become an enduring influence. In this, as in all things, let us trust the arrangements of Nature. If men are at the same time const.i.tutionally studious and const.i.tutionally unproductive, in must be that production is not the only use of study. Joubert was right in keeping silence when he felt no impulses to speak, right also in saying the little that he did say without a superfluous word. His mind is more fully known, and more influential, than many which are abundantly productive.

LETTER V.

TO A STUDENT WHO FELT HURRIED AND DRIVEN.

Some intellectual products possible only in excitement--Byron's authority on the subject--Can inventive minds work regularly?--Sir Walter Scott's opinion--Napoleon on the winning of victories--The prosaic business of men of genius--"Waiting for inspiration"--Rembrandt's advice to a young painter--Culture necessary to inspiration itself--Byron, Keats, Morris--Men of genius may be regular as students.

In my last letter to you on quiet regularity of work, I did not give much consideration to another matter which, in certain kinds of work, has to be taken into account, for I preferred to make that the subject of a separate letter. There are certain intellectual products which are only possible in hours or minutes of great cerebral excitement. Byron said that when people were surprised to find poets very much like others in the ordinary intercourse of life, their surprise was due to ignorance of this. If people knew, Byron said, that poetical production came from an excitement which from its intensity could only be temporary, they would not expect poets to be very different from other people when not under the influence of this excitement. Now, we may take the word "poet," in this connection, in the very largest sense. All men who have the gift of invention are poets. The inventive ideas come to them at unforeseen moments, and have to be seized when they come, so that the true inventor works sometimes with vertiginous rapidity, and afterwards remains for days or weeks without exercising the inventive faculty at all. The question is, can you make an inventive mind work on the principle of measured and regular advance. Is such counsel as that in my former letter applicable to inventors?

Scott said, that although he had known many men of ordinary abilities who were capable of perfect regularity in their habits, he had never known a man of genius who was so. The popular impression concerning men of genius is very strong in the same sense, but it is well not to attach too much importance to popular impressions concerning men of genius, for the obvious reason that such men come very little under popular observation. When they work it is usually in the most perfect solitude, and even people who live in the same house know very little, really, of their intellectual habits.

The truth seems to be, first, that the moments of high excitement, of n.o.blest invention, are rare, and not to be commanded by the will; but, on the other hand, that in order to make the gift of invention produce its full effect in any department of human effort, vast labors of preparation are necessary, and these labors may be pursued as steadily as you like Napoleon I. used to say that battles were won by the sudden flas.h.i.+ng of an idea through the brain of the commander at a certain critical instant. The capacity for generating this sudden electric spark was military genius. The spark flashed independently of the will; the General could not win that vivid illumination by labor or by prayer; it came only in the brain of genius from the intense anxiety and excitement of the actual conflict. Napoleon seems always to have counted upon it, always to have believed that when the critical instant arrived the wild confusion of the battle-field would be illuminated for him by that burst of sudden flame. But if Napoleon had been ignorant of the prosaic business of his profession, to which he attended more closely than any other commander, what would these moments of supreme clearness have availed him, or would they ever have come to him at all? If they had come to him, they would have revealed only the extent of his own negligence. Instead of showing him _what to do_, they would have made painfully evident what _ought to have been done_. But it is more probable that these clear moments would never have occurred to a mind unprepared by study. Clear military inspirations never occur to shopkeepers and farmers, as bright ideas about checkmates occur only to persons who have studied chess. The prosaic business, then, of the man of genius is to acc.u.mulate that preparatory knowledge without which his genius can never be available, and he can do work of this kind as regularly as he likes.

The one fatal mistake which is committed habitually by people who have the scarcely desirable gift of half-genius is "waiting for inspiration."

They pa.s.s week after week in a state of indolence, unprofitable alike to the mind and the purse, under pretext of waiting for intellectual flashes like those which came to Napoleon on his battle-fields. They ought to remember the advice given by one of the greatest artists of the seventeenth century to a young painter of his acquaintance. "Practise a.s.siduously what you already know, and in course of time other things will become clear to you." The inspirations come only to the disciplined; the indolent wait for them in vain.

If you have genius, therefore, or believe you have, it is admitted that you cannot be perpetually in a state of intense excitement. If you were in that state without ceasing, you would go mad. You cannot be expected to write poetry in the plodding ox-pace manner advocated for intellectual work generally in my last letter. As for that good old comparison between the hare and the tortoise, it may be answered for you, simply, that you are not a tortoise, and that what is a most wise procedure for tortoises may be impracticable for you. The actual composition of poetry, especially poetry of a fiery kind, like--

"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece,"

of Byron, is to be done not when the poet will, but when he can, or rather, when he _must_.

But if you are a wise genius you will feel how necessary is culture even for work of that kind. Byron would not have felt any enthusiasm for the isles of Greece if he had not known something of their history. The verses are an inspiration, but they could never have occurred to a quite uncultivated person, however bright his inspirations. Even more obviously was the genius of Keats dependent upon his culture. He did not read Greek, but from translations of Greek literature and from the direct study of Greek art he got the sort of material that he needed.

And in our own day Morris has been evidently a very diligent student of many literatures. What I insist upon is, that we could not have had the real Keats, the real Morris, unless they had prepared themselves by culture. We see immediately that the work they have done is _their_ work, specially, that they were specially adapted for it--inspired for it, if you will. But how evident it is that the inspiration could never have produced the work, or anything like it, without labor in the acc.u.mulation of material!

Now, although men of genius cannot be regularly progressive in actual production, cannot write so many verses a day, regularly, as you may spin yarn, they can be very regular as students, and some of the best of them have been quite remarkable for unflinching steadiness of application in that way. The great principle recommended by Mr. Galton, of not looking forward eagerly to the end of your journey, but interesting yourself chiefly in the progress of it, is as applicable to the studies of men of genius as to those of more ordinary persons.

LETTER VI.

TO AN ARDENT FRIEND WHO TOOK NO REST.

On some verses of Goethe--Man not const.i.tuted like a planet--Matthew Arnold's poem, "Self-dependence"--Poetry and prose--The wind more imitable than the stars--The stone in Glen Croe--Rest and be thankful.

"Rambling over the wild moors, with thoughts oftentimes as wild and dreary as those moors, the young Carlyle, who had been cheered through his struggling sadness, and strengthened for the part he was to play in life, by the beauty and the wisdom which Goethe had revealed to him, suddenly conceived the idea that it would be a pleasant and a fitting thing if some of the few admirers in England forwarded to Weimar a trifling token of their admiration. On reaching home Mr. Carlyle at once sketched the design of a seal to be engraved, the serpent of eternity encircling a star, with the words _ohne Hast, ohne Rast_ (unhasting, unresting), in allusion to the well-known verses--

'Wie das Gestirn, Ohne Hast Aber ohne Rast Drehe sich jeder Um die eigne Last.'

(Like a star, unhasting, unresting, be each one fulfilling his G.o.d-given 'hest.')"[10]

This is said so beautifully, and seems so wise, that it may easily settle down into the mind as a maxim and rule of life. Had we been told in plain prose to take no rest, without the beautiful simile of the star, and without the wise restriction about haste, our common sense would have rebelled at once; but as both beauty and wisdom exist together in the gem-like stanza, our judgment remains silent in charmed acquiescence.

Let us ask ourselves, however, about this stella example, whether man is naturally so const.i.tuted as to be able to imitate it. A planet moves without haste, because it is incapable of excitement; and without rest, because it is incapable of fatigue. A planet makes no effort, and encounters no friction or resistance of any kind. Man is so const.i.tuted as to feel frequently the stimulus of excitement, which immediately translates itself either into actual acceleration or into the desire for acceleration--a desire which cannot be restrained without an effort; and whatever man undertakes to do he encounters friction and resistance, which, for him, always sooner or later inevitably induce fatigue. Man is neither const.i.tuted like a star nor situated like a star, and therefore it is not possible for him to exist as stars exist.

You will object to this criticism that it handles a delicate little poem very roughly, and you may tell me that I am unfit to receive the wisdom of the poets, which is always uttered with a touch of Oriental exaggeration. Certainly Goethe could never mean that a man should kill himself by labors literally incessant. Goethe's own life is the best elucidation of his true meaning. The example of the star was held up to us to be followed only within the limits of our human nature, as a Christian points to the example of Christ. In the same spirit Matthew Arnold wrote his n.o.ble poem "Self-dependence," in which he tells us to live like the stars and the sea:--

"Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters, On my heart your mighty charm renew; Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you, Feel my soul becoming vast like you."

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, Over the lit sea's unquiet way, In the rustling night-air came the answer: "Wouldst thou _be_ as these are? _Live_ as they.

"Unaffrighted by the silence round them, Undistracted by the sights they see, These demand not that the things without them Yield them love, amus.e.m.e.nt, sympathy."

The true intention of poetical teachings like these is in the influence they have over the feelings. If a star makes me steadier in my labor, less of a victim to vain agitation, in consequence of Goethe's verses; if the stars and the sea together renew more fully their mighty charm upon my heart because those stanzas of Arnold have fixed themselves in my memory, the poets have done their work. But the more positive _prosateur_ has his work to do also, and you, as it seems to me, need this positive help of prose.

You are living a great deal too much like a star, and not enough like a human being. You do not hasten often, but you _never_ rest, except when Nature mercifully prostrates you in irresistible sleep. Like the stars and the sea in Arnold's poem, you do not ask surrounding things to yield you love, amus.e.m.e.nt, sympathy. The stars and the sea can do without these refreshments of the brain and heart, but you cannot. Rest is necessary to recruit your intellectual forces; sympathy is necessary to prevent your whole nature from stiffening like a rotifer without moisture; love is necessary to make life beautiful for you, as the plumage of certain birds becomes splendid when they pair; and without amus.e.m.e.nt you will lose the gayety which wise men try to keep as the best legacy of youth.