our own times, we shall find that few of them have escaped being
assailed with similar imputations. In a congenial spirit it Is as-
serted by Dionysius, and has been repeated by sundry minute
critics since, that Plato's exjjulsiou of Homer and of other poets
from his ideal Republic arose out of jealousy. On the other hand
this paradox has been summarily condemned by many, who have
never taken the trouble of Inquiring how so Avise a man came to
entertain what they deem so flagrant an absurdity. Yet a thought-
ful reader would not find It easy to answer the arguments adduced
in the third and tenth books of the Republic, in proof of the mis-
chief which the poetry most popular among the Greeks would have
NOTE S. 421
' effected in Plato's ideal commonwealth, or to sliow how he, from
his point of view, could have come to any different conclusion.
With the fullest conviction of the inestimable benefits which Poe-
try, amid the conflict and whirlpool of the passions, and along
with the tendency of property and of labor, unless counteracted
by higher incentives, to degrade and embase man, has wrought,
and is fitted, Avhen a true poet strikes the epic or dramatic strain,
to work, we can readily understand how, among the early Quakers
and the Moravians, or any other community which tries practically
to fulfil the conditions of a spiritual life. Poetry will find little
matter, except for hymns and songs of praise ; and to these Plato
gives his sanction, where he lays down " that none but hymns to
the gods, and eulogies of the good, should be admitted into a
State." In fact the very characters, the passions, the struggles,
â– which have always formed the chief elements of dramatic interest,
are alien from such a community ; and where the realities are
â– wholly wanting, and, instead of awakening sympathy and admira-
tion, would be cast out, a poet will hardly be led to delineate them,
and would find no ftivor if he did. Nor would the purificatory
powers of terror and pity be of use, where the vices which need
such correctives are not to be found. In like manner, if vre lift
our contemplations to the angels in heaven, we can only conceive
of them as singing the praises of their Maker, and telling of His
wondrous works ; not as taking pleasure in the representations of
those mixed characters, which are the main theme of the drama,
representations which often throw a halo of glory around things
morally reprehensible, and which are the very works condemned
for this reason by Plato, as delusive and perversive of the moral
sense. Thus Plato's views on Poetry seem to be an instance of
those marvellous anticipations of a higher order of things, which
occur here and there in his works, anticipations which are neces-
sarily imperfect, and may easily become distorted, from their in-
congruity with the world around him, and from the aptness of op-
position to run into extremes. A similar apology might be offered
for his notions with regard to Property, which began to be realized
when the first disciples had all things common. Kay, even for
those on Marriage, though here the incompatibility with the pres-
ent condition of man is still wider and more glaring, it may be
pleaded that in the resurrection, as we are told, they neither marry,.
nor are given in marriage.
36
422 NOTE s.
lu Scbelllng's last Lecture On the Aletlwd of Academical Study,
Plato's condemnation of poetry, is explained and vindicated in a
somewhat similar manner, as resulting from the strong antithesis
between poetry and philosophy among the Greeks. " It is essen-
tial that we sliould look at the specific point of view from which
Plato pronounces his verdict upon poets. For if any philosopher
ever observed the distinctions incident to different points of view,
it was he : and unless we take this into account, it is impossible, as
in all other places, so especially in this, to comprehend his mean-
ing, which is ever full of references and allusions, or to reconcile
the contradictions in his works v»'ith regard to the selfsame object.
We must begin with recognizing that all deep philosophy, and es-
pecially that of Plato, it is to be rcgai'ded as the direct antithesis
in the cultivation of the Greeks, not merely to the sensual concep-
tions of their religion, but also to the objecfive and thoroughly real
forms of their polities. Now Avhether in a perfectly ideal and, as
it were, spiritual commonwealth, such as Plato's, poetry might be
dealt with in a different manner, and whether the restnction which
he imposes upon it is, or is not necessary, ai*' questions which we
cannot here discuss. The antithesis of all the public forms of life
to philosophy could not but produce a like opposition in philosophy
to them, of ^which Plato is neither the only, nor the first instance.
From the time of Pythagoras, and stiU further back, down to Plato,
Philosophy is conscious of being an exotic plant on the Greek soil ;
a consciousness which foimd vent in the general impulse whereby
such as had been initiated into higher doctrines, eitlicr by the wis-
dom of earlier j)hiIosophers, or by the mysteries, v.-ere led to the
mother-country of ideas, the East. But e^eu aj^art from the con-
sideration that the opposition was thus far merely historical, not
philosophical, and allowing it to have been the latter, what is Plato's
rejection of poetry, compared with his expressions in other works
in praise of enthusiastic poetry, except a polemical attack upon
poetical realism, an anticipation of the direction which the mind of
man, and poetry especially, was in after-ages to take ? Least of
all can we assume that his judgment is to have weight as against
Christian poetry, which on the whole bears the character of the
infinite, no less decidedly than ancient poetry bears that of the
finite. Our being able to determine the limits of the latter more
precisely than Plato could, who did not know its antithesis, — our
being able to rise hereby to a more comprehensive idea and con-
NOTE T. 423
struction of poetry, and to regard vrliat he deemed utterly repre-
hensible in the poetry of his age, as merely the limitation -which it
received from the principle of Beauty, — we owe to the experience
of subsequent ages, seeing the fulfilment of that which Plato pro-
phetically felt the want of. The Christian religion, and the bent
of man's mind toward the spiritual world, — which bent could
never gain its full satisfaction, nor even the means of expressing
itself, in ancient poetry, — has produced a new kind of poetry and
art, wherein it finds what it wants : and hereby the conditions of
a complete and purely objective Adew of art, even of ancient art,
are supplied."
Note T: p. 120.
In a body of young men, like that which is collected in our
Universities, comprising the flower and promise of the nation,
there will ever be found a proneness to overate the worth of intel-
lectual power, and of those moral qualities which go to make up
energy of character ; and this exaggeration wiU be accompanied
by a depreciation of the humbler graces, of that which is retiring
and orderly and submissive. This proneness will not be univer-
sal ; nor will it prevail among the majority even of the more intel-
ligent and studious. The chief part of these are wont to regard
their studies mainly as a preparation for professional and practi-
cal life, according to the established order of things, deeming con-
formity to that order a matter of course, and entertaining a sort
of repugnance to those who transgi-ess It. But a considerable
portion of the more genial and finer spirits, as well as the mass of
the frothy and turbulent, — Alciblades as well as Phldippides, —
are apt to find something uncongenial In that element of thought,
in which their fathers lived with ease and refreshment, and to
feel stirrings within them calling for something diflferent, for
something new. Now these feelings may vent themselves very
reprehensibly : they may be unjust to that which is, and dreamy
as to that which is to be : but still they have a right of a certain
kind on their side, what Niebuhr calls Das Reclit des Werdenden.
For eveiy generation has its own appointed work, and is not to
be content with treading In the footsteps of its fathers, but has
new forests to clear away, new fields of thought to plough up and
424 NOTE T.
cultivate. At times too, wlien custom aud prescription have
become torpid aud oppressive, tlie claampions of truth and right,
Aristides and Solon, may stand in the same rank •vsith Alcibiades
and Phidlppides. Now these are the very minds on which what
is genial and energetic in the literature of the day acts the most
powerfully : for herein they seem to find a response to their own
desires ; and thus, while the mass of men are slowly and slightly
moved by literature, these are hurried away by it, and may have
the fashion of their minds, and of their future lives, determined in
great measure by the impulses of thought received in their youth.
Hence is it of such moment to the wellbeing of a nation, that
what is genial and energetic in its literature should be bound in
close alliance with highmindedness, and with depth of thought,
and with practical wisdom.
We whose entrance into intellectual life took place in the
second aud third decad of this century, enjoyed a singular felicity
in this respect, in that the stimulators and trainers of our thoughts
were Wordsworth and Coleridge ; in whom practical judgment
and moral dignity and a sacred love of truth are so nobly wedded
to the highest intellectual power. By them the better part of us
were preserved from the noxious taint of Byron ; whose antago-
nism to established opinions, aud sentimental, self-ogling misan-
thropy, and lawless conception of heroic ruffians, in Avhom one
virtue was mixed up with a thousand crimes, alleged to be
redeemed and sanctified by reckless passion, profanely called
love, were sadly calculated to fascinate and delude the class of
minds I have been speaking of. About the middle of the last
century Rousseau was their European oracle. Some twenty years
later that peculiar complexion of thought and feeling, which
received its poetical rcjiresentation and embodiment in Vyertlier
and Goetz of Beiitchinf/en, heing itself drawn from the age, was
in such strong sympathy with it, that, by a not uncommon misun-
derstanding, works designed to be works of art were supposed
to have an immediate practical purpose, and to be set up, not as
imaginative pictures of humanity, but as lessons and models, with
a view to ethical instruction and to literal imitation. Utterly
morbid and corrupt as the condition of European society was in
the years Avhicli preceded the French Revolution, Avhen all ear-
nestness and simplicity seemed to have passed away from life, and
a gaudy, sugared crust lay tremblingly covering hollow depths of
NOTE T . 425
rottenness, — while they who were wasting in voluptuous frivolity
ever and anon betrayed that they were conscious of their weak-
ness and worthlessness by heartless irony and self-mockery, — it
is not surprising that works like Schiller's Robbers, expressing the
bitterest aversion to the whole order of the world, should have
operated contagiously, or that young men should have fancied
that, if they took to the highway, they should become Charles
Moors.
At present, I believe, the writer to whom the same class of
minds pay their chief homage, and who does more than any
other toward shaping their views of hfe and society, is Mr.
Carlyle. Hence, as well as from his being, I am informed, the
favorite writer witji the most thoughtful and active intellects
among the middle and lower ranks, it may be termed a matter of
national interest, that what is sound and valuable in him should
be disengaged from the errors and exaggerations with which it is
frequently combined. He himself has said indeed, and ingeniously
enough, in one of his panegyrics on Nature (Lectures on Heroes,
p. 99), that " you take wheat to east into the earth's bosom ; your
wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn sweepings,
dust, and all imaginable rubbish ; no matter : you cast it into the
kind, just earth; she grows the wheat; the whole rubbish she
silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish : the
yellow wheat is growing there ; the good earth is silent about all
the rest, has silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, and
makes no complaint about it." But clever as this is, and though
there is a portion of a grand truth in it, yet, as is often the case^in
Mr. Carlyle's writings, oftenef perhaps than in those of any other
author to whom so much living truth has been revealed, the truth
here is only a half or one-sided truth. For, without calling in
the Parable of the Sower, every ploughboy knows that Nature
does not perform the whole, nor even the chief part of the work
in bringing forth wheat. Chaff, it is true, does not spring up ;
but weeds do ; and there is no commoner proverb than that ill
tceeds grow apace. Hence it is a dangerous fallacy to teach that
it matters not how much error, how much falsehood you mix up
with your doctrine, provided there be certain pai'ticles of truth
in it. Nature does not reject weeds, even though they be poison-
ous : still less does man, except he be purified by godly discipline.
If the history of the world declares any thing, it declares this, —
36*
426 NOTE T.
this, and tliat, if the same wheat be sown over and over in gener-
ation after generation, it degenerates, and ere long will produce
little beside chaff. In fact one main theme of Mr. Carlyle's writ-
ings is the complaint of this very transitoriness, this rapid decay
and evanescence of truth and reality, of its waning and dwindling
into a mere form, a formula, a sham, as he is fond of phrasing it.
In proclaiming and exposing this miserable weakness of our na-
ture, he has done good service in an age, when, while multitudes
walk self-complaeently in the vt'orn-out shoes of their forefathers,
not a few think they are grown into giants becavise they stalk tot-
teringly along upon logical stilts, thereby losing the touch of the
earth, and aU sympathy with reality. So again has he done good
service, in an age when the means and incentlyes of loquacity are
multiplied to such excess, by proclaiming, even with a dinning re-
iteration, the paramount worth and the absolute indispensableness
of truth, sincerity, earnestness, to evei-y kind of greatness, and that
â– words, when they do not spring from a living root in the heart, are
fugitive as blossoms plucked from their stem, and can never turn
into fruit. But when It is asserted that these qualities are all in
all, that truth, — subjective truth, truth of character, sincerity,
•earnestness, — are not merely essential elements in that which is
good and great, but do of themselves and by themselves constitute
goodness and greatness. It is plain that the dismal power of evil In
man and in the world, the lawless tendencies of the will, and the
necessity of law to organize the tumultuous stirrings and heavings
in man's breast into a consistent, orderly whole, must be left out of
view : and then an admirer of mere energy will readily fall into
that abysmal error, that ]\IIght is Right.
Mr. Carlyle indeed, in his wiser moments, knows far better than
this, and at times has given utterance to the opposite truth with
his peculiar force. He knows too how much mightier light, in its
silent, beneficent operations, is than lightning, notwithstanding the
roar that follows it. Still, through his craving for energy and in-
tensity, he has a constant hankering after that primary antltruth,
which runs as an undercurrent through his writings, determining
his sympathies and antipathies, and ever and anon shoots up and
bursts forth ; for instance, in his inordinate admiration of Mira-
beau, and In the general tone gf his History of the French Revo~
lution. Again, In his Lectures on Heroes, though in them the truth
often wrestles with its opposite, It Is not brought out with distinct-
NOTE T. - 427
ness bow the informing idea alone can rentier the fermenting en-
ergies in man truly heroic, and how the latter are without form
and void until that idea vivifies and hallows them ; in a word, how
tlie truly heroio idea is that of Duty, animated by Love, and kind-
ling into self-sacrifice ; and how Law is the clearest, and for man
in almost all cases the safest, exponent and form of Duty; so that
the true hero should realize Milton's grand description of a king :
" Disciplined in the precepts and the practice of temperance and
sobriety, without the strong drink of injurious and excessive de-
sires, he should grow up to a noble strength and perfection, with
those his illustrious and sunny locks, the laws, waving and curling
about his godlike shoulders."
Let us keep this normal idea before us ; and then we shall be
able to make out when and how a hero may, for the sake of law,
contend against the law^. "Whereas the doctrine, that strength,
energy, earnestness, are the heroic principles in man, without due
reference to discipline, self-control, law, or objective truth, pam-
pers a morbid self-will and ostentation, and seems to the young to
justify the very extravagances, into which, from their buoyant ar-
dor, and their inability to perceive the fundamental grounds and
structure, and the mutual adaptation and interpeneti-ation of the
various elements that have coalesced during centuries in the exist-
ing order of society, they are so apt to run. On the other hand
the idolatry of strength will ever be accompanied by a disparage-
ment, if not contempt, of that which is calm and gentle and quiet,
of those who walk steadily and patiently and perseveringly along
the measured path of duty. It exclaims with the fallen archangel,
To he tvealc is miserahle, Doing or suffering. Those fine lines in
Schiller's Wallenstein, where the Countess Tertsky is instigating
her brothei'-in-Iaw to desert the Emperor, — ,
Necessity, impetuous remonstrant,
Who not with empty names, or shows of proxy.
Is serv'ed, who'll have the thing and not the symbol,
Ever seeks out the greatest and the best,
And at the rudder places him, e'en though
She had been forced to take him from the rabble, —
She, this necessity, it was that placed thee
Li this high office ; it was she that gave thee
Thy letters patent of inauguration.
For to the uttermost moment that they can,
428 NOTE T.
This race still help themselves fit cheapest rate
With slavish souls, with puppets. At the approach
Of extreme peril, when a hollow image
Is found a hollow image, and no more,
Then falls the power into the mighty hands
Of nature, of the spirit giant-horn,
"Who listens only to himself, knows nothing
Of stipulations, duties, reverences.
And, like the emancipated force of fire,
Unmastered scorches, ere it reaches them,
Their fine-spun webs, their artificial policy. —
For, by the laws of spirit, in the right
Is every individual character
That acts in strict consistence with itself:
Self-contradiction is the only wrong; —
the.«e lines, -which are admirably approp;-iate when designed as
stimulants to an act of treason, are set up as enunciating the first
principles of heroic morality. In fact these hnes, if we change a
word here and there, — for instance, writing, " when a hollow
sTiam Is found a hollow sham, and nothing more," — might be
taken for a versification of some one or other of the passages to
the same effect, which are perpetually occurring in Mr. Carlyle's
volumes.
As the best antidote to this whole theory, let me introduce the
following extract from the great teacher, by whom, as I have al-
ready said, I was preserved, along with many of my contempora-
ries, from a number of similar contagious delusions. In Appendix
B to his first Lay Sermon, Coleridge, in speaking of the will,
writes thus : " In its state of immanence or indwelling in reason
and religion, the will appears indifferently as wisdom or as love ;
t-svo names of the same power, the former more intclligential, the
latter more spiritual, the former more frequent in the Old, the lat-
ter in the New Testament. But in its utmost abstraction, and con-
sequent state of reprobation, the will becomes satanic pride and
rebellious self-idolatry in the relations of the spirit to itself, and
remorseless despotism relatively to others ; the moi'e hopeless, as
the more obdurate, by its subjugation of sensual impulses, by its
supei-iority to toil and pain and pleasure ; in short, by the fearful
resolve to find in itself alone the one absolute motive of action,
under which all other motives from within and from without must
be either subordinated or crushed. This is the character which
NOTE T . 429
Milton lias so pbilosopliically as well as sublimely embodied in the
Satan of bis Paradise Lost. Alas ! too often bas it been embodied
in real life. Too often has it given a dark and savage grandeur
to the historic page. And wherever it has appeared, under what-
ever circumstances of time and country, the same ingredients have
gone to its composition ; and it has been identified by the same
attributes. Hope, in which there is no cheerfulness, steadfastness
within and immovable resolve, with outward restlessness and whirl-
ing activity, violence with guile, temerity with cunning, and, as the
result of all, interminableness of object with perfect indifference
of means, — these are the qualities that have constituted the com-
manding genius ; these arc the marks that have characterized the
masters of mischief, the liberticides, and mighty hunters of man-
kind, from Nimrod to Bonaparte. And from inattention to the
possibility of such a character, as well as from ignorance of its ele-
ments, even men of honest intentions too frequently become fasci-
nated. Nay, whole nations have been so far duped by this want
of insight and reflection, as to regard with palliative admiration,
instead of wonder and abhorrence, the ISIolochs of human nature,
who are indebted for the larger portion of .their meteoric success
to their total want of principle, and who surpass the generality of
their fellow-creatures in one act of courage only, that of daring to
say with their whole heart, Evil, he thou my good. All system so
far is power : and a systematic criminal, self-consistent and entire
in wickedness, who entrenches villany within villany, and barri-
cadoes crime by crime, has removed a world of obstacles by the
mere decision that he will have no obstacles, but those of force
and brute matter."
There is a lilce i^assage, containing several of the same illustra-
tions, and even the same words, in the sixteenth essay in the first
volume of tlie Friend, where the great philosopher further says,
that " the abandonment of all principle of right enables the soul
to choose and act upon a pi-lnclple of wrong, and to subordinate
to this one principle all the various vices of human nature. For
it Is a mournful truth, that, as devastation is Incomparably an eas-
ier work than production, so may ail its means and instruments
be more easily arranged into a scheme and system ; even as in a
siege every building and gai'den, which the faithful governor must
destroy, as impeding the defensive means of the garrison, oT fur-
iilshin
430 NOTE T.
feelings â– which Virtue herself has fostered; and Virtue, because it
is virtue, loses perforce part of her energy in the rehictance with
â– which she proceeds to a business so repugnant to her â– wishes, as a
choice of evils." Yet this very rehictance â– would be stigmatized
as a -weakness, and the -want of it â– would be considered as a higher
pitch of heroism, by the Titanolaters.
In fact the â– whole theory is utterly fallacious. It is only in the
supreme, divine idea, that truth and po^wer, justice and energy,
right and might, coincide. When the idea enters into the thick
and troubled atmosphere of humanity, it is always refracted, and
splits ; and one ray of it -will attach itself to one object, another
to another : nor does the brilliancy of any one ray in any object on
"which it falls, give us reason to expect a like brightness in the rest.
No man kno^ws better than Mr. Carlyle how injustice, selfishness,
â– weakness, and folly, are perpetually becoming lords of the ascend-
ant, often for long ages ; so far is Nature from having any power
to increase and multiply and perpetuate the good committed to