grandeur.
This infinite element in art is independent of
progress. It may have, and it certainly has, duties
to fulfil toward progress ; but it is not dependent
upon it. It is dependent upon none of the more
perfect processes of the future, upon no transfor-
mation of language, upon no death or birth of
idioms. It has within itself the incommensurable
and the innumerable; it can be subdued by no
rivalry; it is as pure, as complete, as sidereal, as
divine, in the heart of barbarism as in the heart of
civilization. It is the beautiful, having the infi-
nite variety of genius, but always equal to itself,
always supreme.
Such is the law, scarcely known, of Art.
1 " Chez cette race nouvelle,
Oil j'aurai quelque credit,
Vous ne passerez pour belle
Qu'autant que je I'aurai dit."
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 105
CHAPTER IV.
Science is different. The relative, which gov-
erns it, leaves its impression ; and these successive
stamps of the relative, more and more resembling
the real, constitute the changing certainty of man.
In Science, certain things have been masterpieces
which are so no more. The hydraulic machine of
Marly was a masterpiece.
Science seeks perpetual motion. She has found
it : it is Science herself
Science is continually changing in the benefit
she confers.
In Science, all tends to stir, to change, to form
fresh surfaces. All denies, destroys, creates, re-
places all. What was ground yesterday is put
into the hopper again to-day. The colossal
machine, Science, never rests. It is never satis-
fied; it is insatiable for improvement, of which
the absolute knows nothing. Vaccination is called
in question, the lightning-rod is called in question.
Jenner may have erred, Franklin may have been
mistaken ; let us search again. This agitation is
noble. Science is restless around man; she has
her own reasons. Science plays in progress the
part of utility. Let us reverence this superb
handmaiden.
Science makes discoveries ; Art composes works.
Science is an acquirement of man; Science is a
ladder : one savant mounts above his fellow. Poe-
try is a soaring flight.
Do you want examples ? They abound. Here
is one, the first which comes to mind.
Jacob Metzu (scientifically Metius) discovers the
telescope by chance, as Newton discovered gravita-
tion, and Christopher Columbus, America. Let
us open a parenthesis : there is no chance in the
creation of ' The Oresteia ' or of ' Paradise Lost.'
A masterpiece is the offspring of will. After Metzu
comes Galileo, who improves the discovery of
Metzu ; then Kepler, who improves on the im-
provement of Galileo ; then Descartes, who, al-
though going somewhat astray in taking a concave
glass for eyepiece instead of a convex one, makes
fruitful the improvement of Kepler; then the Ca-
puchin Reita, who rectifies the reversing of objects ;
then Huyghens, who makes a great step by plac-
ing the two convex glasses at the focus of the
objective; and in less than fifty years, from 1610
to 1659, during the short interval which separates
the * Nuncius Sidereus ' of Galileo from the ' Oculus
Eliae et Enoch ' of Father Reita, behold the origi-
nal inventor, Metzu, obliterated. And it is con-
stantly the same in science.
Vegetius was count of Constantinople ; but that
did not prevent his tactics being forgotten, — for-
gotten like the strategy of Polybius, forgotten like
the strategy of Folard. The pig's-head of the pha-
lanx and the pointed order of the legion reappeared
for a moment, two hundred years ago, in the wedge
of Gustavus Adolphus ; but in our days, when
there are no more pikemen, as in the fourth cen-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 10/
tury, nor lansquenets, as in the seventeenth, the
ponderous triangular attack, which was formerly
the basis of all tactics, is replaced by a swarm of
zouaves charging with the bayonet. Some day,
sooner perhaps than people think, the bayonet
charge will itself be superseded by peace, — at first
European, by-and-by universal ; and then the whole
military science will vanish away. For that science,,
improvement lies in disappearance.
Science goes on unceasingly erasing itself, —
fruitful erasures ! Who knows now what is the
Homceomeria of Anaximenes, which perhaps be-
longs really to Anaxagoras? Cosmography is
notably amended since the time when this same
Anaxagoras told Pericles that the sun was almost
as large as the Peloponnesus. Many planets, and
satellites of planets, have been discovered since the
four stars of Medicis. Entomology has made some
advance since the time when it was asserted that
the scarabee was something of a god and a cousin
to the sun — first, on account of the thirty toes
on its feet, which correspond to the thirty days of
the solar month, secondly, because the scarabee
is without a female, like the sun — and the time
when Saint Clement of Alexandria, outbidding Plu-
tarch, made the remark that the scarabee, like the
sun, passes six months on the earth, and six months
imder it. Would you verify this? Refer to the
* Stromata,' paragraph iv. Scholasticism itself, chi-
merical as it is, gives up the ' Holy Meadow ' of
Moschus, laughs at the ' Holy Ladder ' of John
Climacus, and is ashamed of the century in which
Saint Bernard, adding fuel to the pyre which the
108 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Viscounts of Campania wished to put out, called
Arnaldo de Brescia " a man with the dove's head
and the scorpion's tail." The Cardinal Virtues are
no longer the law in anthropology. The Steyardes
of the great Arnauld are decayed. However un-
certain is meteorology, it is far from discussing
now, as it did in the second century, whether a rain
which saves an army from dying of thirst is due to
the Christian prayers of the Melitine legion or to the
pagan intervention of Jupiter Pluvius. The astrol-
oger Marcian Posthumus was for Jupiter ; Tertul-
lian was for the Melitine legion : no one was for
the cloud and the wind. Locomotion, if we go
from the antique chariot of Laius to the railway,
passing by \}s\& patache, the track-boat, the turgotine,
the diligence, and the mail-coach, has indeed made
some progress. The time has gone by for the fa-
mous journey from Dijon to Paris, lasting a month ;
and we could not understand to-day the amazement
of Henry IV., asking of Joseph Scaliger: "Is it
true. Monsieur I'Escale, that you have been from
Paris to Dijon without relieving your bowels?"
Micrography is now far beyond Leuwenhoeck, who
was himself far beyond Swammerdam. Look at
the point at which spermatology and ovology have
already arrived, and recall Mariana reproaching Ar-
naud de Villeneuve (who discovered alcohol and
the oil of turpentine) with the strange crime of
having attempted human generation in a pumpkin.
Grand-Jean de Fouchy, the not over-credulous life-
secretary of the Academy of Sciences a hundred
years ago, would have shaken his head if any one
had told him that from the solar spectrum one
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. lOQ
would pass to the igneous spectrum, then to the
stellar spectrum, and that by aid of the spectrum
of flames and of the spectrum of stars would be
discovered an entirely new method of grouping the
heavenly bodies and what might be called the
chemical constellations. Orffyreus, who destroyed
his machine rather than allow the Landgrave of
Hesse to see inside it, — Orffyreus, so admired by
S'Gravesande, the author of the ' Matheseos Uni-
versalis Elementa,' — would be laughed at by our
mechanicians. A country horse-doctor would not
inflict on horses the remedy with which Galen
treated the indigestions of Marcus Aurelius. What
is the opinion of the eminent specialists of our
times, Desmarrfes at the head of them, respecting
the learned discoveries of the seventeenth century
by the Bishop of Titiopolis concerning the nasal
chambers? The mummies have got on ; M. Gannal
makes them differently, if not better, than the Tari-
cheutes, the Paraschistes, and the Cholchytes made
them in the days of Herodotus, — the first by
washing the body, the second by opening it, and
the third by embalming. Five hundred years be-
fore Jesus Christ, it was perfectly scientific, when
a king of Mesopotamia had a daughter possessed
of the devil, to send to Thebes for a god to cure
her. It is not exactly our way of treating epilepsy.
In the same way we have given up expecting the
kings of France to cure scrofula.
In 371, under Valens, son of Gratian the rope-
maker, the judges summoned to the bar a table
accused of sorcery. This table had an accomplice
named Hilarius. Hilarius confessed the crime.
no WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Ammianus Marcellinus has preserved for us his
confession, received by Zosimus, count and fiscal
advocate. " Construximus, magnifici judices, ad
cortinae similitudinem Delphicae infaustam hanc
mensulam quam videtis ; movimus tandem." Hi-
larius was beheaded. Who was his accuser ? A
learned geometrician and magician, the same who
advised Valens to decapitate all those whose names
began with TJieod. To-day you may call yourself
Theodore, and even make a table tip, without the
fear of a geometrician causing your head to be
cut off.
One would very much astonish Solon the son of
Execestidas, Zeno the Stoic, Antipater, Eudoxus,
Lysis of Tarentum, Cebes, Menedemus, Plato, Epi-
curus, Aristotle, and Epimenides, if one were to
say to Solon that it is not the moon which regu-
lates the year ; to Zeno, that it is not proved that
the soul is divided into eight parts ; to Antipater,
that the heaven is not formed of five circles; to
Eudoxus, that it is not certain that, between the
Egyptians embalming the dead, the Romans burn-
ing them, and the Pseonians throwing them into
ponds, the Paeonians are those who are right ; to
Lysis of Tarentum, that it is not correct that the
sight is a hot vapor ; to Cebes, that it is false that
the principle of the elements is the oblong tri-
angle and the isosceles triangle ; to Menedemus,
that it is not true that, in order to know the secret
bad intentions of men, it suffices to stick on one's
head an Arcadian hat decorated with the twelve
signs of the zodiac ; to Plato, that sea-water does
not cure all diseases; to Epicurus, that matter is
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. IIT^
infinitely divisible ; to Aristotle, that the fifth ele-
ment has not an orbicular movement, for the reason
that there is no fifth element ; to Epimenides, that
the plague cannot be infallibly got rid of by letting
black and white sheep go at random, and sacrificin-g
to unknown gods in the places where the sheep
happen to stop.
If you should try to hint to Pythagoras how
improbable it is that he should have been wounded
at the siege of Troy — he, Pythagoras — by Men-
elaus, two hundred and seven years before his
birth, he would reply that the fact is incontestable,
and that it is proved by the fact that he perfectly
recognizes, as having already seen it, the shield of
Menelaus suspended under the statue of Apollo
at Branchidae, although entirely rotted away, ex-
cept the ivory face ; that at the siege of Troy his
own name was Euphorbus, and that before being
Euphorbus he was ^thalides, son of Mercury, and
that after having been Euphorbus he was Her-
motimus, then Pyrrhus, fisherman at Delos, then
Pythagoras ; that it is all evident and clear, — as
clear as that he was present the same day and the
same minute at Metapontum and at Crotona, as
evident as that by writing with blood on a mirror
exposed to the moon one may see in the moon
what one wrote on the mirror ; and lastly, that he
is Pythagoras, living at Metapontum, in the Street
of the Muses, the inventor of the multiplication-
table and of the square of the hypothenuse, the
greatest of mathematicians, the father of exact
science ; and that as for you, you are an imbecile.
Chrysippus of Tarsus, who lived about the
112 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
hundred and thirtieth olympiad, forms an era in
science. This philosopher (the same who died —
actually died — of laughter caused by seeing a don-
key eat figs out of a silver basin) had studied
everything, gone to the bottom of everything, and
had written seven hundred and five volumes, of
which three hundred and eleven were of dialectics,
without having dedicated a single one to a king, —
a fact which astounds Diogenes Laertius. He con-
densed in his brain all human knowledge. His
contemporaries named him " Light." Chrysippus
signifying " golden horse," they said that he had
got detached from the chariot of the sun. He
had taken for device " TO ME." He knew innu-
merable things; among others, these, — the earth
is flat; the universe is round and limited; the best
food for man is human flesh; the community of
wives is the basis of social order ; the father ought
to espouse his daughter; there is a word which
kills the serpent, a word which tames the bear, a
word which arrests the flight of eagles, and a word
which drives the cattle from the bean-field ; by
pronouncing from hour to hour the three names
of the Egyptian Trinity, Amon^Mouth-Khons^ An-
•dron of Argos contrived to cross the deserts of
Libya without drinking; coffins ought not to be
^made of cypress wood, the sceptre of Jupiter being
•made of that wood ; Themistoclea, priestess of
i Delphi, had given birth to children, yet remained
a virgin ; the just alone having authority to swear,
Jupiter very properly receives the name of " The
Swearer; " the phoenix of Arabia and the moths
live in the fire ; the earth is carried by the air as
WILL/AM SHAKESPEARE. 1 1 3
by a car; the sun drinks from the ocean, and the
moon from the rivers. For these reasons the Athe-
nians raised a statue to him on the Ceramicus,
with this inscription : " To Chrysippus, who knew
everything."
At very nearly the same time Sophocles wrote
• (Edipus Rex.'
And Aristotle believed in the story about An-
dron of Argos, and Plato in the social principle of
the community of wives, and Gorgisippus in the
earth's being flat, and Epicurus admitted as a fact
that the earth was supported by the air, and Her-
modamantes that magic words mastered the ox
and the eagle and the bear and the serpent, and
Echecrates believed in the immaculate maternity
of Themistoclea, and Pythagoras in Jupiter's scep-
tre made of cypress wood, and Posidonius in the
ocean afi'ording drink to the sun and the rivers
quenching the thirst of the moon, and Pyrrho in
the moths living in fire.
Except in this one particular, Pyrrho was a
sceptic. He made up for his belief in that by
doubting everything else.
Such is the long groping course of Science.
Cuvier was mistaken yesterday, Lagrange the day
before yesterday; Leibnitz before Lagrange, Gas-
sendi before Leibnitz, Cardan before Gassendi,
Cornelius Agrippa before Cardan, Averroes, before
Agrippa, Plotinus before Averroes, Artemidorus
Daldian before Plotinus, Posidonius before Ar-
temidorus, Democritus before Posidonius, Em-
pedocles before Democritus, Carneades before
Empedocles, Plato before Carneades, Pherecydes
8
1 14 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
before Plato, Pittacus before Pherecydes, Thales
before Pittacus ; and before Thales, Zoroaster, and
before Zoroaster, Sanchoniathon, and before San-
choniathon, Hermes : Hermes, which signifies
science, as Orpheus signifies art. O wonderful
marvel, this mount swarming with dreams which
engender the real ! O sacred errors, slow, blind,
and sainted mothers of truth !
Some savants, such as Kepler, Euler, Geoffroy
St. Hilaire, Arago, have brought into science
nothing but Hght; they are rare.
At times Science is an obstacle to Science; the
savants give way to scruples, and cavil at study.
Pliny is scandalized at Hipparchus ; Hipparchus,
with the aid of an imperfect astrolabe, tries to
count the stars and to name them, — "A deed evil
in the sight of God," says Pliny {Ausus rem Deo
improbam).
To count the stars is to commit a sin toward
God. This accusation, started by Pliny against
Hipparchus, is continued by the Inquisition
against Campanella.
Science is the asymptote of truth ; it approaches
unceasingly, and never touches. Nevertheless, it
has every kind of greatness. It has will, precision,
enthusiasm, profound attention, penetration, shrewd-
ness, strength, patience in concatenation, permanent
watchfulness of phenomena, the ardor of progress,
and even fits of bravery. Witness La Perouse ;
witness Pilastre des Rosiers ; witness Sir John
Franklin ; witness Jacquemont ; witness Living-
stone; witness Mazet; witness, at this very hour,
Nadar.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. II5
But Science is series. It proceeds by proofs
superposed one above the other, whose obscure
stratification rises slowly to the level of Truth.
Art has nothing like it. Art is not successive.
All Art is ensemble.
Let us sum up these few pages.
Hippocrates is outrun, Archimedes is outrun,
Aratus is outrun, Avicennus is outrun, Paracelsus
is outrun, Nicholas Flamel is outrun, Ambroise
Pare is outrun, Vesalius is outrun, Copernicus is
outrun, Galileo is outrun, Newton is outrun, Clair-
aut is outrun, Lavoisier is outrun, Montgolfier is
outrun, Laplace is outrun. Pindar is not, Phidias
is not.
Pascal the savant is outrun; Pascal the writer
is not.
We no longer teach the astronomy of Ptolemy,
the geography of Strabo, the climatology of
Cleostratus, the zoology of Pliny, the algebra of
Diophantus, the medicine of Tribunus, the surgery
of Ronsil, the dialectics of Sphoerus, the myology
of Steno, the uranology of Tatius, the stenography
of Trithemius, the pisciculture of Sebastien de
Medicis, the arithmetic of Stifels, the geometry of
Tartaglia, the chronology of Scaliger, the meteor-
ology of Stoffler, the anatomy of Gassendi, the
pathology of Fernel, the jurisprudence of Robert
Barmne, the agronomy of Quesnay, the hydrog-
raphy of Bouguer, the navigation of Bourde de
Villehuet, the ballistics of Gribeauval, the veter-
inary practice of Garsault, the architectonics of
Desgodets, the botany of Tournefort, the scho-
lasticism of Abelard, the politics of Plato, the
Il6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
mechanics of Aristotle, the physics of Descartes,
the theology of Stillingfleet. We taught yesterday,
we teach to-day, we shall teach to-morrow, we
shall teach forever, the " Sing, goddess, the wrath
of Achilles."
Poetry lives a potential life. The sciences may
extend its sphere, not increase its power. Homer
had but four winds for his tempests; Virgil who
has twelve, Dante who has twenty-four, Milton who
has thirty-two, do not make their storms grander.
And it is probable that the tempests of Orpheus
were as beautiful as those of Homer, although
Orpheus had, to raise the waves, but two winds,
the Phcenicias and the Aparctias ; that is to say,
the south wind and the north wind, — often con-
founded, by the way, with the Argestes, the west
wind of summer, and the Libs, the west wind of
winter.
Religions die away, and in dying bequeath a
great artist to other religions coming after them.
Serpio makes for the Venus Aversative of Athens
a vase which the Holy Virgin accepts from Venus,
and which serves to-day as a baptismal urn at '
Notre Dame of Gaeta.
eternity of Art !
A man, a corpse, a shade from the depth of the
past, stretching a hand across the centuries, lays
hold of you.
1 remember one day of my youth, at Romorantin, \
in a hut we had there, with its vine-trellis through
which the air and light sifted in, that I espied a
book upon a shelf, the only book there was in the
house, — Lucretius, De Rerum Natura. My pro-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 11/
fessors of rhetoric had spoken very ill of it, —
a circumstance which recommended it to me.
I opened the book. It must have been at that
moment about noonday. I happened on these
powerful and serene verses : ^ " Religion does not
consist in turning unceasingly toward the veiled
stone, nor in approaching all the altars, nor in
throwing one's self prostrate on the ground, nor in
raising the hands before the habitations of gods,
nor in deluging the temples with the blood of
beasts, nor in heaping vows upon vows ; but in
beholding all with a peaceful soul." I stopped in
thought; then I began to read again. Some
moments afterward I could see nothing, hear
nothing; I was immersed in the poet At the
dinner-hour, I made a sign that I was not hungry;
and at sunset, when the flocks were returning to
their folds, I was still in the same place, reading
the wonderful book ; and by my side, my white-
haired father, indulgent to my prolonged reading,
was seated on the door-sill of the low room where
his sword hung on a nail, and was gently calling
the sheep, which came one after another to eat a
little salt in the hollow of his hand.
1 Nee pietas ulla est, velatum ssepe videri
Vertier ad lapidem, atque omnes accedere ad aras,
Nee procumbere humi prostratum, et pandere palmas
Ante deum delubra, neque aras sanguine multo
Spargere quadrupedum, nee votis nectere vota;
Sed mage placata posse omnia mente tu^i.
Il8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER V.
Poetry cannot grow less. Why ? Because it
cannot grow greater.
Those words, so often used, even by the let-
tered, " decadence," " renascence," show to what
an extent the essence of Art is unknown. Super-
ficial intellects, easily becoming pedantic, take for
renascence or decadence some effects of juxta-
position, some optical mirage, some event in the
history of a language, some ebb and flow of ideas,
all the vast movement of creation and thought, the
result of which is universal Art. This movement
is the very work of the Infinite passing through
the human brain.
Phenomena are seen only from the culminating
point, and poetry thus viewed is immanent. There
is neither rise nor decHne in Art. Human genius
is always at its full; all the rain of heaven adds
not a drop of water to the ocean. A tide is an
illusion ; water ebbs on one shore, only to rise on
another. Oscillations are taken for diminutions.
To say " there will be no more poets," is to say
" there will never be flood-tide again."
Poetry is elemental. It is irreducible, incorrup-
tible, and refractory to manipulation. Like the
sea, it says on each occasion all it has to say;
then it begins anew with a tranquil majesty, and
with the inexhaustible variety which belongs only
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 19
to unity. This diversity in what seems monoto-
nous is the marvel of immensity.
Wave upon wave, billow after billow, foam behind
foam, movement, and again movement. The Iliad
is moving away, the Romancero comes ; the Bible
sinks, the Koran surges up ; after the aquilon
Pindar comes the hurricane Dante. Does ever-
lasting poetry repeat itself? No. It is the same,
and it is different; the same breath, a different
sound.
Do you take the Cid for a plagiarist of Ajax?
Do you take Charlemagne for a copier of Aga-
memnon? "There is nothing new under the sun."
" Your novelty is the repetition of the old," etc.
Oh, the strange process of criticism ! Then Art is
but a series of counterfeits ! Thersites has a thief,
— Falstaff. Orestes has an ape, — Hamlet. The
Hippogriff is the jay of Pegasus. All these poets !
A crew of cheats ! They pillage each other, and
there 's an end. Inspiration is involved with swin-
dling. Cervantes plunders Apuleius, Alceste cheats
Timon of Athens. The Smynthian Wood is the
Forest of Bondy. Out of whose pocket was Shake-
speare seen to draw his hand? Out of the pocket
of -^schylus.
No ! neither decadence, nor renascence, nor
plagiarism, nor repetition, nor imitation. Identity
of heart, difference of spirit; that is all. Each
great artist, as we have already said, stamps Art
anew in his own image. Hamlet is Orestes in the
image of Shakespeare ; Figaro is Scapin in the
image of Beaumarchais ; Grangousier is Silenus in
the image of Rabelais.
120 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
With the new poet everything begins anew, and
at the same time nothing is interrupted. Each
new genius is an abyss. Nevertheless, tradition
exists. Tradition from abyss to abyss, such is —
in Art, as in the firmament — the mystery; and
men of genius communicate by their effluence, Hke
the stars. What have they in common ? Nothing.
Everything.
From the pit that is called Ezekiel to the preci-
pice that is called Juvenal, there is no interruption
of continuity for the thinker. Lean over this anath-
ema, or over that satire, and the same vertigo is
whirling around both. The Apocalypse is reflected
from the Polar Sea of Ice, and you have that aurora
borealis, the Nibelungen. The Edda replies to the
Vedas.