The Life of Mazzini Part 15

Ah! if you had, in England, condescended to see that the _glorious_ declaration of non-interference ought to have begun by taking away the French interference in Rome! How many troubles and sacrifices you would have saved us!--ever your truly affectionate and grateful

JOSEPH.

[In another letter to Mr Taylor, dated June 5, 1860, he says:]

Yes, I heard of Lady Byron's death and her last gift. I wish something came out, now that she is dead, to explain the separation mystery. I shall ever regret the burning of the memoirs, which was a crime towards Byron; and I have ever indulged in the dream that a copy should be extant in somebody's hands to come out after the disappearing of the princ.i.p.al actors. I saw Lady Byron twice, and she looked to me a good sharp positive somewhat dry puritanical woman, sad from the past, conscious of not having been altogether right and doing good half for good-doing's sake, half for forgetfulness' sake. But I am so thoroughly Byronian, so deeply convinced that he has been wronged by everybody, that my impression cannot be trusted.

IX

LETTER TO MRS PETER TAYLOR [February 9, 1865]

DEAR CLEMENTIA,--

I shall send back the magazine: read the article again: take away all phrases and periphrases: _squeeze_ every period; and then send to me the first idea or view which strikes you as new to yourself. I shall retract.

The whole article amounts to this: repeating fifty times in rather harmonious words that Art is the reproduction of Beauty, etc., etc.

Many thanks. Only, what is Beauty? How to discern it? Why is Nature beautiful? Are we to copy, to reproduce Nature? or to add a work of our own, finding out the idea shut in within every symbol? Is Nature anything but the symbolic representation of some truth, which we are to evolve? Or is the drapery of Nature, Nature? Miss C---- says that the Artist must choose the object which is Beautiful. Is not _every_ object more or less so? Is not the grotesque causing the beautiful to s.h.i.+ne by contrast? Are the grave-diggers to be suppressed in Hamlet?

Without sifting the nature of Beauty, without giving some definition of it, n.o.body can attempt to construct a Hierarchy of Art. Miss C. has not even attempted to do so. Still you have been in raptures.

Something, therefore, must be in the article. I have not been able to make it out. I beg pardon humbly. That is all I can say.

--ever affectionately yours, JOSEPH.

Thursday.

X

LETTER TO MR WILLIAM MALLESON [Nov. 11, 1865].

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I feel ashamed, but I have been overwhelmed by work, not flouris.h.i.+ng in health, although better now, and altogether unable to fulfil what I had promised. Then, and after all, I write to say that I cannot fulfil it. I said that I would write about the education of your son. I find that I cannot. I ought to know him, his tendencies, his capabilities, what he has already learned. To give general rules is nothing. He _may_ require special ones.

I have mentioned his tendencies. _That_ must be your special object.

Every man is a _speciality_, is capable of some definite thing. You must try to discover that _special_ tendency, and then frame his education accordingly. After a general teaching of those branches which are good for _any_ man, direct his studies towards the development of that special tendency which you will have discovered.

Education means _drawing out, educere_, what is in the boy: not creating in him what is not. You cannot create.

But one thing is, must be common to all. You must give him a proper notion of what Life is, and of what the world in which he has been put for the fulfilment of a task is.

Life is a duty, a function, a mission. For G.o.d's sake, do not teach him any Benthamite theory about happiness either individual or collective. A creed of _individual_ happiness would make him an egotist: a creed of collective happiness will reach the same result soon or late. He will perhaps dream Utopias, fight for them, whilst young; then, when he will find that he cannot realise rapidly the dream of his soul, he will turn back to himself and try to conquer _his_ own happiness: sink into egotism.

Teach him that Life has no sense unless being a task:--that happiness may, like suns.h.i.+ne on a traveller, come to him, and he must welcome it and bless G.o.d for it; but that to _look_ for it is destroying both the moral man and his duty and most likely the possibility of ever enjoying it:--that to improve himself, morally and intellectually, for the sake of improving his fellow-creatures, is his task:--that he must try to get at Truth and then represent it, in words and deeds, fearlessly and perennially:--that to get at Truth, two _criteria_ have been given to him, his own conscience and tradition, the conscience of mankind:--that whenever he will find the inspiration of his own conscience harmonising with that of mankind, sought for not in the history of a single period or of a single people, but of all periods and peoples, then he is sure of having Truth within his grasp:--that the basis of all Truth is the knowledge of the Law of Life, which is indefinite Progression:--that to this Law he must be a servant.

This knowledge of the Law of Progression must be your aim in all your teaching.

Elementary Astronomy, elementary Geology, ought to be taught as soon as possible. Then, universal History, then Languages.

The difficult thing is to get the proper teaching. When I speak, for instance, of Astronomy, I mean a survey of the Universe, of which the Earth is part, grounded on Herschel's theory and tending to prove how everything is the exponent of a Law of Progression, how the Law is one, how every part of the Universe accomplishes a function in the whole. Herschel, Nichol, Guillemin's recently translated "Heavens" are the guides to be chosen.

Languages are easily learned in boyhood. French, German, and Italian ought to be taught. Two years of study may put the boy in communication with three worlds.

I would not teach any _positive_ Religion; but the great fundamental Trinity, G.o.d, the immortality of the soul, the necessity of a religion as a common link of brotherhood for mankind, grounded on the acknowledgment of the Law of Progression. At a later period he will choose.

Geography of course will be taught. But everything taught in a _general_ way and not applied is easily forgot. The best way is to have a collection of good maps and to give him the habit of never reading a historical book or even a tale without following it up on the map. It is the best and most lasting way.

Avoid novels and tales. Give him a taste for historical books and scientific descriptive _ill.u.s.trated_ books of natural history travels, etc.

In one word, a religious conception of life--then a full notion of the world he lives in--then the special branch of activity to which he seems inclined: that is the whole of education for your boy.

Forgive these hurried notes. Apply to me freely for any detail or special suggestion. I shall be most happy to answer. Give my love to Mrs Malleson and to Miss K. M. How are they? How is your father? Where are you all now?--Ever affectionately yours,

JOSEPH MAZZINI.

Sat.u.r.day.

XI

REST.

[Written for the Pen and Pencil Club in April 1867, and privately published in 1877, with other papers written by its members.]

DEAREST FRIEND,--The subject of your meeting of to-morrow is so suggestive that I would gladly join you all, and write an essay on it, if I had health and time. I have neither, and, perhaps, better so. My essay, I candidly avow, would tend to prove that no essay ought to be written on the subject. It has no reality. A sort of intuitive instinct led you to couple "Ghosts and Rest" together.

There is, here down,[52] and there ought to be, no Rest. Life is an _aim_; an aim which can be _approached_, not _reached_, here down.

There is, therefore, no rest. Rest is immoral.

It is not mine now to give a definition of the _aim_; whatever it is, there is one, there _must_ be one. Without it, Life has no sense. It is atheistical; and moreover an irony and a deception.

I entertain all possible respect for the members of your Club; but I venture to say that any contribution on Rest which will not exhibit at the top a definition of Life will wander sadly between wild arbitrary intellectual display and commonplaces.

Life is no sinecure, no "_recherche du bonheur_" to be secured, as the promulgators of the theory had it, by guillotine, or, as their less energetic followers have it, by railway shares, selfishness, or contemplation. Life is, as Schiller said, "a battle and a march"; a battle for Good against Evil, for Justice against arbitrary privileges, for Liberty against Oppression, for a.s.sociated Love against Individualism; a march onwards to Self, through collective Perfecting to the progressive realisation of an Ideal, which is only dawning to our mind and soul. Shall the battle be finally won during life-time? Shall it on Earth? Are we believing in a millennium? Don't we feel that the spiral curve through which we ascend had its beginning elsewhere, and has its end, if any, beyond this terrestrial world of ours. Where is then a possible foundation for your essays and sketches?

Goethe's "Contemplation" has created a mult.i.tude of little sects aiming at Rest, where is no rest, falsifying art, the element of which is evolution, not reproduction, transformation, not contemplation, and enervating the soul in self-abdicating Brahmanic attempts. For G.o.d's sake let not your Club add one little sect to the fatally existing hundreds!

There is nothing to be looked for in life except the uninterrupted fulfilment of Duty, and, not Rest, but consolation and strengthening from Love. There is, not Rest, but a promise, a shadowing forth of Rest in Love. Only there must be in Love absolute _trust_; and it is very seldom that this blessing depends [? descends] on us. The child goes to sleep, a dreamless sleep, with unbounded _trust_, on the mother's bosom; but _our_ sleep is a restless one, agitated by sad dreams and alarms.

You will smile at my lugubrious turn of mind; but if I was one of _your_ Artists, I would sketch a man on the scaffold going to die for a great Idea, for the cause of Truth, with his eye looking trustfully on a loving woman, whose finger would trustfully and smilingly point out to him the unbounded. Under the sketch I would write, not Rest, but "a Promise of Rest." Addio: tell me one word about the point of view of your contributors.--Ever affectionately yours,

JOSEPH MAZZINI.

XII

LETTER TO MRS PETER TAYLOR [From Lugano, December 12, 1868.]