of all mistakes. “Pour être assez bon il faut l’être trop:” we all need
more mercy than we deserve.
28
How often in this world the actions that we condemn are the result of
sentiments that we love and opinions that we admire!
23.
A
.—— observed in reference to some of her friends who had gone
over to the Roman Catholic Church, “that the peace and comfort
which they had sought and found in that mode of faith was like the
drugged sleep in comparison with the natural sleep: necessary,
healing perhaps, where there is disease and unrest, not otherwise.”
24.
“A
poet,” says Coleridge, “ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him
borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing.
29
Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more
to your imagination than your memory.”
This advice is even more applicable to the painter, but true perhaps in
its application to all artists. Raphael and Mozart were, in this sense,
great borrowers.
25.
“W
hat is the difference between being good and being bad? the good do
not yield to temptation and the bad do.”
This is often the distinction between the good and the bad in regard
to act and deed; but it does not constitute the difference between
being good and being bad.
30
26.
T
he Italians say (in one of their characteristic proverbs) Sospetto
licenzia Fede. Lord Bacon interprets the saying “as if suspicion did
give a passport to faith,” which is somewhat obscure and ambiguous.
It means, that suspicion discharges us from the duty of good faith;
and in this, its original sense, it is, like many of the old Italian
proverbs, worldly wise and profoundly immoral.
27.
I
t was well said by Themistocles to the King of Persia, that “speech
was like cloth of arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery
doth appear in figure, whereas in thoughts they lie but in packs” ( i. e.
rolled up or packed up). Dryden had evidently this passage in his
mind when he wrote those beautiful lines:
“Speech is the light, the morning of the mind;
It spreads the beauteous images abroad,
Which else lie furled and shrouded in the
soul.”
Here the comparison of Themistocles, happy in itself, is expanded
into a vivid poetical image.
31
28.
“T
hose are the killing griefs that do not speak,” is true of some, not all
characters. There are natures in which the killing grief finds utterance
while it kills; moods in which we cry aloud, “as the beast crieth,
expansive not appealing.” That is my own nature: so in grief or in joy,
I say as the birds sing:
“Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Qual
verstummt,
Gab mir ein Got zu sagen was ich leide!”
29.
B
lessed is the memory of those who have kept themselves unspotted
from the world!—yet more blessed and more dear the memory of
those who have kept themselves unspotted in the world!
32
30.
E
verything that ever has been, from the beginning of the world till now,
belongs to us, is ours, is even a part of us. We belong to the future,
and shall be a part of it. Therefore the sympathies of all are in the
past; only the poet and the prophet sympathise with the future.
When Tennyson makes Ulysses say, “I am a part of all that I have
seen,” it ought to be rather the converse,—“What I have seen
becomes a part of me.”
31.
I
n what regards policy—government—the interest of the many is
sacrificed to the few; in what regards society, the morals and
happiness of individuals are sacrificed to the many.
33
32.
W
e spoke to-night of the cowardice, the crime of a particular suicide: O.
G. agreed as to this instance, but added: “There is a different aspect
under which suicide might be regarded. It is not always, I think, from
a want of religion, or in a spirit of defiance, or a want of confidence in
God that we quit life. It is as if we should flee to the feet of the
Almighty and embrace his knees, and exclaim, ‘O my father! take me
home! I have endured as long as it was possible; I can endure no
more, so I come to you!’”
Of an amiable man with a disagreeable expressionless face, she
said: “His countenance always gives me the idea of matter too strong,
too hard for the soul to pierce through. It is as a plaster mask which I
long to break (making the gesture with her hand), that I may see the
countenance of his heart, for that must be beautiful!”
34
33.
C
arlyle said to me: “I want to see some institution to teach a man the
truth, the worth, the beauty, the heroism of which his present
existence is capable; where’s the use of sending him to study what
the Greeks and Romans did, and said, and wrote? Do ye think the
Greeks and Romans would have been what they were, if they had
just only studied what the Phœnicians did before them?” I should
have answered, had I dared: “Yet perhaps the Greeks and Romans
would not have been what they were if the Egyptians and Phœnicians
had not been before them.”
34.
C
an there be progress which is not progression—which does not leave
a past from which to start—on which to rest our foot when we spring
forward? No wise man kicks the ladder from beneath him, or
obliterates the traces of the road through which he has travelled, or
pulls down the memorials he has built by the way side. We cannot get
on without linking our present and our future with our past. All
reaction is destructive—all progress conservative.
35
When we have destroyed that which the past built up, what reward
have we?—we are forced to fall back, and have to begin anew.
“Novelty,” as Lord Bacon says, “cannot be content to add, but it must
deface.” For this very reason novelty is not progress, as the French
would try to persuade themselves and us. We gain nothing by
defacing and trampling down the idols of the past to set up new ones
in their places—let it be sufficient to leave them behind us, measuring
our advance by keeping them in sight.
35.
E
—— was compassionating to-day the old and the invalided; those
whose life is prolonged in spite of suffering; and she seemed, even
out of the excess of her pity and sympathy, to wish them fairly out of
the world; but it is a mistake in reasoning and feeling. She does not
know how much of happiness may consist with suffering, with
physical suffering, and even with mental suffering.
36
36.
“R
enoncez dans votre âme, et renoncez y fermement, une fois pour
toutes, à vouloir vous connaître au-delà de cette existence passagère
qui vous est imposée, et vous redeviendrez agréable à Dieu, utile aux
autres hommes, tranquille avec vous-mêmes.”
This does not mean “renounce hope or faith in the future.” No! But
renounce that perpetual craving after a selfish interest in the
unrevealed future life which takes the true relish from the duties and
the pleasures of this. We can conceive of no future life which is not a
continuation of this: to anticipate in that future life, another life, a
different life; what is it but to call in doubt our individual identity?
If we pray, “O teach us where and what is peace!” would not the
answer be, “In the grave ye shall have it—not before?” Yet is it not
strange that those who believe most absolutely in an after-life, yet
think of the grave as peace? Now, if we carry this life with us—and
what other life can we carry with us, unless we cease to be
ourselves—how shall there be peace?
As to the future, my soul, like Cato’s, “shrinks back upon herself and
startles at destruction;” but
37
I do not think of my own destruction, rather of that which I love. That I
should cease to be is not very intolerable; but that what I love, and do
now in my soul possess, should cease to be—there is the pang, the
terror! I desire that which I love to be immortal, whether I be so myself
or not.
Is not the idea which most men entertain of another, of an eternal life,
merely a continuation of this present existence under pleasanter
conditions? We cannot conceive another state of existence,—we only
fancy we do so.
“I conceive that in all probability we have immortality already. Most
men seem to divide life and immortality, making them two distinct
things, when, in fact, they are one and the same. What is immortality
but a continuation of life—life which is already our own? We have,
then, begun our immortality even now.”
For the same reason, or, rather, through the same want of reasoning
by which we make life and immortality two (distinct things), do we
make time and eternity two, which like the others are really one
38
and the same. As immortality is but the continuation of life, so eternity
is but the continuation of time; and what we call time is only that part
of eternity in which we exist now.— The New Philosophy.
37.
S
trength does not consist only in the more or the less. There are
different sorts of strength as well as different degrees:—The strength
of marble to resist; the strength of steel to oppose; the strength of the
fine gold, which you can twist round your finger, but which can bear
the force of innumerable pounds without breaking.
38.
G
oethe used to say, that while intellectual attainment is progressive, it
is difficult to be as good when we are old, as we were when young.
Dr. Johnson has expressed the same thing.
39
Then are we to assume, that to do good effectively and wisely is the
privilege of age and experience? To be good, through faith in
goodness, the privilege of the young.
To preserve our faith in goodness with an extended knowledge of
evil, to preserve the tenderness of our pity after long contemplation of
pain, and the warmth of our charity after long experience of
falsehood, is to be at once good and wise—to understand and to love
each other as the angels who look down upon us from heaven.
We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is
impossible completely to understand what we do not love.
I observe, that in our relations with the people around us, we forgive
them more readily for what they do, which they can help, than for
what they are, which they cannot help.
40
39.
“W
hence springs the greatest degree of moral suffering?” was a
question debated this evening, but not settled. It was argued that it
would depend on the texture of character, its more or less
conscientiousness, susceptibility, or strength. I thought from two
sentiments—from jealousy, that is, the sense of a wrong endured, in
one class of characters; from remorse, that is, from the sense of a
wrong inflicted, in another.
40.
T
he bread of life is love; the salt of life is work; the sweetness of life,
poesy; the water of life, faith.
41.
I
have seen triflers attempting to draw out a deep intellect; and they
reminded me of children throwing pebbles down the well at
Carisbrook, that they might hear them sound.
41
42.
A
bond is necessary to complete our being, only we must be careful
that the bond does not become bondage.
“The secret of peace,” said A. B., “is the resolution of the lesser into
the greater;” meaning, perhaps, the due relative appreciation of our
duties, and the proper placing of our affections: or, did she not rather
mean, the resolving of the lesser duties and affections into the
higher? But it is true in either sense.
The love we have for Genius is to common love what the fire on the
altar is to the fire on the hearth. We cherish it not for warmth or for
service, but for an offering, as the expression of our worship.
All love not responded to and accepted is a species of idolatry. It is
like the worship of a dumb beautiful image we have ourselves set up
and deified,
42
but cannot inspire with life, nor warm with sympathy. No!—though we
should consume our own hearts on the altar. Our love of God would
be idolatry if we did not believe in his love for us—his responsive
love.
In the same moment that we begin to speculate on the possibility of
cessation or change in any strong affection that we feel, even from
that moment we may date its death: it has become the fetch of the
living love.
“Motives,” said Coleridge, “imply weakness, and the reasoning
powers imply the existence of evil and temptation. The angelic nature
would act from impulse alone.” This is the sort of angel which
Angelico da Fiesole conceived and represented, and he only.
Again:—“If a man’s conduct can neither be ascribed to the angelic or
the bestial within him, it must be fiendish. Passion without appetite is
fiendish.”
And, he might have added, appetite without passion, bestial. Love in
which is neither appetite nor passion is angelic. The union of all is
human; and according as one or other predominates, does the
43
human being approximate to the fiend, the beast, or the angel.
43.
I
don’t mean to say that principle is not a finer thing than passion; but
passions existed before principles: they came into the world with us;
principles are superinduced.
There are bad principles as well as bad passions; and more bad
principles than bad passions. Good principles derive life, and
strength, and warmth from high and good passions; but principles do
not give life, they only bind up life into a consistent whole. One great
fault in education is, the pains taken to inculcate principles rather than
to train feelings. It is as if we took it for granted that passions could
only be bad, and are to be ignored or repressed altogether,—the old
mischievous monkish doctrine.
44
44.
I
t is easy to be humble where humility is a condescension—easy to
concede where we know ourselves wronged—easy to forgive where
vengeance is in our power.
“You and I,” said H. G., yesterday, “are alike in this:—both of us so
abhor injustice, that we are ready to fight it with a broomstick if we
can find nothing better!”
45.
“T
he wise only possess ideas—the greater part of mankind are
possessed by them. When once the mind, in despite of the
remonstrating conscience, has abandoned its free power to a
haunting impulse or idea, then whatever tends to give depth and
vividness to this idea or indefinite imagination, increases its
despotism, and in the same proportion renders the reason and free
will ineffectual.” This paragraph from Coleridge sounds like a truism
until we have felt its truth.
45
46.
“L
a Volonté, en se déréglant, devient passion; cette passion continuée
se change en habitude, et faute de résister à cette habitude elle se
transforme en besoin.”— St. Augustin. Which may be rendered—“out
of the unregulated will, springs passion, out of passion gratified, habit;
out of habits unresisted, necessity.” This, also, is one of the truths
which become, from the impossibility of disputing or refuting them,
truisms—and little regarded, till the truth makes itself felt.
47.
I
wish I could realise what you call my “grand idea of being
independent of the absent.” I have not a friend worthy the name,
whose absence is not pain and dread to me;—death itself is terrible
only as it is absence. At some moments, if I could, I would cease to
love those who are absent from me, or to speak more correctly, those
whose path in life diverges from mine—whose dwelling house is far
off;—with whom I am united in the strongest bonds of sympathy while
separated by duties and interests by space and time. The presence
of those whom we love is as a double life; absence, in its anxious
46
longing, and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death.
“La mort de nos amis ne compte pas du moment où ils meurent, mais
de celui où nous cessons de vivre avec eux;” or, it might rather be
said, pour eux; but I think this arises from a want either of faith or
faithfulness.
“La peur des morts est une abominable faiblesse! c’est la plus
commune et la plus barbare des profanations; les mères ne la
connaissent pas!”—And why? Because the most faithful love is the
love of the mother for her child.
48.
A
t dinner to-day there was an attempt made by two very clever men to
place Theodore Hook above Sydney Smith. I fought with all my might
against both. It seems to me that a mind must be strangely warped
that could ever place on a par two men with aspirations and purposes
so different, whether we consider them merely as individuals, or
called before the bar of the public as writers. I do not take to Sydney
Smith personally, because
47
my nature feels the want of the artistic and imaginative in his nature;
but see what he has done for humanity, for society, for liberty, for
truth,—for us women! What has Theodore Hook done that has not
perished with him? Even as wits—and I have been in company with
both—I could not compare them; but they say the wit of Theodore
Hook was only fitted for the company of men—the strongest proof
that it was not genuine of its kind, that when most bearable, it was
most superficial. I set aside the other obvious inference, that it
required to be excited by stimulants and those of the coarsest,
grossest kind. The wit of Sydney Smith almost always involved a
thought worth remembering for its own sake, as well as worth
remembering for its brilliant vehicle: the value of ten thousand pounds
sterling of sense concentrated into a cut and polished diamond.
It is not true, as I have heard it said, that after leaving the society of
Sydney Smith you only remembered how much you had laughed, not
the good things at which you had laughed. Few men—wits by
profession—ever said so many memorable things as those recorded
of Sydney Smith.
48
49.
“W
hen we would show any one that he is mistaken our best course is to
observe on what side he considers the subject,—for his view of it is
generally right on this side,—and admit to him that he is right so far.
He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not wrong
in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole of the
case.”— Pascal.
50.
“W
e should reflect,” says Jeremy Taylor, preaching against ambition,
“that whatever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not
so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and
unregarded on the pavement of heaven.”
Very beautiful and poetical, but certainly no good argument against
the sin he denounces. The star is inaccessible, and what tempts our
pride or our ambi
49
tion is only that which we consider with hope as accessible. That we
look up to the stars not desiring, not aspiring, but only loving—therein
lies our hearts’ truest, holiest, safest devotion as contrasted with
ambition.
It is the “desire of the moth for the star,” that leads to its burning itself
in the candle.
51.
T
he brow stamped “with the hieroglyphics of an eternal sorrow,” is a
strong and beautiful expression of Bishop Taylor’s.
He says truly: “It is seldom that God sends such calamities upon men
as men bring upon themselves and suffer willingly.” And again: “What
will not tender women suffer to hide their shame!” What indeed! And
again: “Nothing is intolerable that is necessary.” And again: “Nothing
is to be esteemed evil which God and nature have fixed with eternal
sanctions.”
There is not one of these ethical sentences which might not be
treated as a text and expounded, opening into as many “branches” of
consideration as ever did a Presbyterian sermon. Yet several involve