The Intellectual Life Part 3

Discipline becomes an evil, and a very serious evil, causing immense losses of special talents to the community, when it overrides 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 imposed 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 indispensable to it, that which it really needs is the obedience to an inward law, an obedience which is not only compatible 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s of mental refusals, and to give them the fullest consideration. Suppose the case of a man who has a fine natural capacity for painting, but whose time has been taken up by some profession 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 most 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 successive 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 n.o.ble 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 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 substantial moral basis on which the towering structure rose. When I think of his n.o.ble dissatisfaction with what he knew; his ceaseless eagerness to know more, and know it better; of the rare combination of teachableness that despised no help (for he accepted without jealousy the aid of everybody who could a.s.sist 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 splendor of intellectual light, or the beauty and solidity of the moral const.i.tution that sustained it.

LETTER III.

TO A FRIEND WHO SUGGESTED THE SPECULATION "WHICH OF THE MORAL VIRTUES WAS MOST ESSENTIAL TO THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE."

The most essential virtue is disinterestedness--The other virtues possessed by the opponents of intellectual liberty--The Ultramontane party--Difficulty of thinking disinterestedly even about the affairs of another nation--English newspapers do not write disinterestedly 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 endeavoring to be disinterested.

I think there cannot be a doubt that the most essential virtue is disinterestedness.

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 cla.s.s of persons possessed and cultivated these virtues who were nevertheless 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 necessary to the highest intellectual life--they have brilliant gifts of nature; they are well-educated; they take a delight in the exercise of n.o.ble faculties, and yet instead of employing their time and talents to help the intellectual advancement of mankind, they do all in their power to r.e.t.a.r.d it. They have many most respectable virtues, but one is wanting. They have industry, perseverance, discipline, but they have _not_ disinterestedness.

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 labor 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 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 ac.u.men; but whenever the discussion touches, however remotely, the ecclesiastical interests that are dear to them, they cease to be observers--they become pa.s.sionate advocates. It is this habit of advocacy which debars them from all elevated speculation 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 favorable 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 disinterestedness. 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 neighboring 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 consolidate a Republican form of government. How difficult it is to think out such a problem disinterestedly, and yet how necessary to the justice of our conclusions that we should think disinterestedly if we pretend to think at all! It is true that we have one circ.u.mstance in our favor--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 inst.i.tutions 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 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 inst.i.tutions. In both cases there is an impediment to the intellectual appreciation of the problem.

This difficulty is so strongly felt by those who write and read the sort of literature which aspires to permanence, and which, therefore, ought to have a substantial intellectual basis, that either our distinguished poets choose their subjects in actions long past and half-forgotten, or else, when tempted by present excitement, 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 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 bia.s.ses 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 favor 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 pa.s.sions are not often enlisted, and the intellect is sufficiently free.

It may be noted that medical men, who are a scientific cla.s.s, 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 disinterestedness 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 unfavorable to ourselves. I can ill.u.s.trate my meaning by a reference to a matter of everyday 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 endeavor to attain it, or to strengthen it, is a great virtue, and of all the virtues the one most indispensable to the n.o.bility 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 and theological partisans, yet their honesty does not preserve them from the worst intellectual habits, such as the habit of "begging the question," 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 toward 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 disinterestedness 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 s.e.xUAL MORALITY.

That the Author does not write in the spirit of advocacy--Two different kinds of immorality--Byron and Sh.e.l.ley--A peculiar temptation for the intellectual--A distinguished foreign writer--Reaction to coa.r.s.eness from over-refinement--Danger of intellectual excesses--Moral utility of culture--The most cultivated cla.s.ses at the same time the most moral--That men of high 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 consideration 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 I 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 unseasonable 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 Sh.e.l.ley of the second. Byron was really and knowingly immoral; Sh.e.l.ley, 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 G.o.dwin, 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 any one to do, considering the prodigious force of pa.s.sion.

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 companions.h.i.+p, 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 s.e.x; 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 which those who have no such wants can scarcely form a conception. A most distinguished foreign writer, of the female s.e.x, has made a succession of domestic arrangements 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 exceptional 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 companion, 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 coa.r.s.eness. 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 coa.r.s.eness of his tastes; he a.s.sociates 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 excesses, 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 favorable to morality; and we may easily understand that it should be so, when we remember that people have recourse to sensual indulgences simply from a desire for excitement, whilst intellectual 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 cla.s.ses, you will recognize the moral utility of culture. The most cultivated cla.s.ses in our own country are also the most moral, and these cla.s.ses 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 immorality, reasons which to any one who has a n.o.ble ambition 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 well enough to face the drudgery that is inevitable in every career. Even in cases where 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 d'une vie pareille il aura perdu la moitie de sa volonte, que ses pensees auront un arriere-gout habituel d'amertume et de tristesse, que son ressort interieur sera amolli ou fausse. Il s'excuse a 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 d'ame, la capacite d'agir, et a trente ans il n'est plus bon qu'a 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--Importance of proportion in the ingredients--Case of an English author--Two landscape painters--The unity and charm of character 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 knowledge--Men qualified for their work by ignorance as well as by knowledge--Men remarkable for the extent of their studies--Franz Woepke--Goethe--Hebrew 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 a.n.a.logy 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.

Amongst the dishes for which my friend had a deserved reputation was a certain _gateau de foie_ which had a very exquisite flavor. The princ.i.p.al ingredient, not in quant.i.ty hut 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 ill.u.s.tration of his theory about his art. If the parsley were omitted, the flavor he aimed at was not produced at all; but, on the other hand, if the quant.i.ty 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 promised 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 flavor 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 flavor of the mind. There is a sort of intellectual chemistry which is quite as marvellous as material chemistry, and a thousand times more difficult 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 ignorance as our science. What we call ignorance is only a smaller proportion--what we call science only a larger. The larger quant.i.ty 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 indiscriminate 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 labor had succeeded in forming a style which harmonized quite perfectly with the character of his thinking, and served as an unfailing means of communication with his readers. Every one 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 difficult 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.

I could mention an English landscape painter who diminished the pictorial excellence of his works by taking too much interest in geology. His landscapes became geological ill.u.s.trations, and no longer held together pictorially. Another landscape painter, who began by taking a healthy delight in the beauty of natural scenery, became morbidly religious after an illness, and thenceforth pa.s.sed by the loveliest European scenery as comparatively unworthy of his attention, to go and make ugly pictures of places that had sacred a.s.sociations.

For people who produce nothing these risks appear to be less serious; and yet there have been admirable characters, not productive, whose admirableness might have been lessened by the addition of certain kinds of learning. The last generation of the English country aristocracy was particularly rich in characters whose unity and charm was dependent upon the limitations of their 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 inwardly 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 is 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 depends 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 impa.s.sable gulfs of s.p.a.ce from wandering in stars where we have no business, so we are kept by the force of circ.u.mstances 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 favorable 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 favorite pursuit was the history of mathematics, but as auxiliaries he had learned Arabic, and Persian, and Sanskrit. He was cla.s.sically educated, he wrote and spoke the princ.i.p.al modern languages easily and correctly;[1] his printed works are in three languages. He had lived in several nations, and known their leading men of science. And yet this astonis.h.i.+ng list of acquirements may be reduced to the exercise of two decided and natural tastes. Franz Woepke had the gift of the linguist and an interest in mathematics, the first serving as auxiliary to the second.