The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865
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Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865
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For five hours the contest rages. Now the Union forces are driven back;
then, charging up the hill, they regain the lost ground, and from behind
rocks and trees pour in their murderous volleys. Then again they are
driven back, and again they charge up the hill, strewing the ground with
corpses. So the bloody work goes on; so the battle wavers, till the
setting sun, wheeling below the hills, glances along the dense lines of
Rebel steel moving down to envelop the weary eleven hundred. It is an
awful moment, big with the fate of Kentucky. At its very crisis two
figures stand out against the fading sky, boldly defined in the
foreground.
One is in Union blue. With a little band of heroes about him, he is
posted on a projecting rock, which is scarred with bullets, and in full
view of both armies. His head is uncovered, his hair streaming in the
wind, his face upturned in the darkening daylight, and from his soul is
going up a prayer,--a prayer for Sheldon and Cranor. He turns his eyes
to the northward, and his lip tightens, as he throws off his coat, and
says to his hundred men,--"Boys, _we_ must go at them!"
The other is in Rebel gray. Moving out to the brow of the opposite hill,
and placing a glass to his eye, he, too, takes a long look to the
northward. He starts, for he sees something which the other, on lower
ground, does not distinguish. Soon he wheels his horse, and the word
"RETREAT" echoes along the valley between them. It is his last
word; for six rifles crack, and the Rebel Major lies on the ground
quivering.
The one in blue looks to the north again, and now, floating proudly
among the trees, he sees the starry banner. It is Sheldon and Cranor!
The long ride of the scout is at last doing its work for the nation. On
they come like the rushing wind, filling the air with their shouting.
The rescued eleven hundred take up the strain, and then, above the swift
pursuit, above the lessening conflict, above the last boom of the
wheeling cannon, goes up the wild huzza of Victory. The gallant Garfield
has won the day, and rolled back the disastrous tide which has been
sweeping on ever since Big Bethel. In ten days Thomas routs Zollicoffer,
and then we have and hold Kentucky.
* * * * *
Every one remembers a certain artist, who, after painting a "neighing
steed," wrote underneath the picture, "This is a horse," lest it should
be mistaken for an alligator. I am tempted to imitate his example, lest
the reader, otherwise, may not detect the rambling parallel I have
herein drawn between a Northern and a Southern "poor white man."
President Lincoln, when he heard of the Battle of Middle Creek, said to
a distinguished officer, who happened to be with him,--
"Why did Garfield in two weeks do what would have taken one of you
Regular folks two months to accomplish?"
"Because he was not educated at West Point," answered the West-Pointer,
laughing.
"No," replied Mr. Lincoln. "That wasn't the reason. It was because, when
he was a boy, he had to work for a living."
But our good President, for once, was wrong,--for once, he did not get
at the core of the matter. Jordan, as well as Garfield, "had, when a
boy, to work for a living." The two men were, perhaps, of about equal
natural abilities,--both were born in log huts, both worked their own
way to manhood, and both went into the war consecrating their very lives
to their country: but one came out of it with a brace of stars on his
shoulder, and honored by all the nation; the other never rose from the
ranks, and went down to an unknown grave, mourned only among his native
mountains. Something more than _work_ was at the bottom of this contrast
in their lives and their destinies. It was FREE SCHOOLS, which
the North gave the one, and of which the South robbed the other. Plant a
free school at every Southern cross-road, and every Southern Jordan will
become a Garfield. Then, and not till then, will this Union be
"reconstructed."
FOOTNOTES:
[B] The Baine is a small stream which puts into the Big Sandy, a short
distance from the town of Louisa, Ky.
NOEL.[C]
L'Academie en respect,
Nonobstant l'incorrection,
A la faveur du sujet,
Ture-lure,
N'y fera point de rature;
Noel! ture-lure-lure.
GUI-BAROZAI.
1.
Quand les astres de Noel
Brillaient, palpitaient au ciel,
Six gaillards, et chacun ivre,
Chantaient gaiment dans le givre,
"Bons amis,
Allons done chez Agassiz!"
2.
Ces illustres Pelerins
D'Outre-Mer, adroits et fins,
Se donnant des airs de pretre,
A l'envi se vantaient d'etre
"Bons amis
De Jean Rudolphe Agassiz!"
3.
Oeil-de-Perdrix, grand farceur,
Sans reproche et sans pudeur,
Dans son patois de Bourgogne,
Bredouillait comme un ivrogne,
"Bons amis,
J'ai danse chez Agassiz!"
4.
Verzenay le Champenois,
Bon Francais, point New-Yorquois,
Mais des environs d'Avize,
Fredonne, a mainte reprise,
"Bons amis,
J'ai chante chez Agassiz!"
5.
A cote marchait un vieux
Hidalgo, mais non mousseux;
Dans le temps de Charlemagne
Fut son pere Grand d'Espagne!
"Bons amis,
J'ai dine chez Agassiz!"
6.
Derriere eux un Bordelais,
Gascon, s'il en fut jamais,
Parfume de poesie
Riait, chantait plein de vie,
"Bons amis,
J'ai soupe chez Agassiz!"
7.
Avec ce beau cadet roux,
Bras dessus et bras dessous,
Mine altiere et couleur terne,
Vint le Sire de Sauterne:
"Bons amis,
J'ai couche chez Agassiz!"
8.
Mais le dernier de ces preux
Etait un pauvre Chartreux,
Qui disait, d'un ton robuste,
"Benedictions sur le Juste!
Bons amis,
Benissons Pere Agassiz!"
9.
Ils arrivent trois a trois,
Montent l'escalier de bois
Clopin-clopant! quel gendarme
Peut permettre ce vacarme,
Bons amis,
A la porte d'Agassiz!
10.
"Ouvrez donc, mon bon Seigneur,
Ouvrez vite et n'ayez peur;
Ouvrez, ouvrez, car nous sommes
Gens de bien et gentilshommes,
Bons amis
De la famille Agassiz!"
11.
Chut, ganaches! taisez-vous!
C'en est trop de vos glouglous;
Epargnez aux Philosophes
Vos abominables strophes!
Bons amis,
Respectez mon Agassiz!
FOOTNOTES:
[C] Sent to Mr. Agassiz, with a basket of wine, on Christmas Eve, 1864.
WILHELM MEISTER'S APPRENTICESHIP.
SECOND PAPER.
In a preceding paper I have sought to trace the main lines of spiritual
growth, as these appear in Goethe's great picture. But is such growth
possible in this world? Do the circumstances in which modern men are
placed comport with it? Or is it, perhaps, a cherub only _painted_ with
wings, and despite the laws of anatomy? These questions are pertinent.
It concerns us little to know what results the crescent powers of life
might produce, if, by good luck, Eden rather than our struggling
century, another world instead of this world, were here. This world, it
happens, is here undoubtedly; our century and our place in it are facts,
which decline to take their leave, bid them good morning and show them
the door how one may. Let us know, then, what of good sufficing may be
achieved in their company. If Goethe's picture be only a picture, and
not a possibility, we will be pleased with him, provided his work prove
pleasant; we will partake of his literary dessert, and give him his meed
of languid praise. But if, on the other hand, his book be written in
full, unblinking view of all that is fixed and limitary in man and
around him, and if, in face of this, it conduct growth to its
consummation, then we may give him something better than any
praise,--namely, heed.
Is it, then, written in this spirit of reality? In proof that it is so,
I call to witness the most poignant reproach, save one, ever uttered
against it by a superior man. Novalis censured it as "thoroughly modern
and prosaic." Well, _on one side_, it is so,--just as modern and prosaic
as the modern world and actual European civilization. What is this but
to say that Goethe faces the facts? What is it but to say that he
accepts the conditions of his problem? He is to show that the high
possibilities of growth can be realized _here_. To run off, get up a
fancy world, and then picture these possibilities as coming to fruition
_there_, would be a mere toying with his readers. Here is modern
civilization, with its fixed forms, its rigid limits, its traditional
mechanisms. Here is this life, where men make, execute, and obey laws,
own and manage property, buy and sell, plant, sail, build, marry and
beget children and maintain households, pay taxes, keep out of debt, if
they are wise, and go to the poorhouse, or beg, or do worse, if they are
unwise or unfortunate. Here such trivialities as starched collars,
blacked boots, and coats according to the mode compel attention. Society
has its fixed rules, by which it enforces social continuity and
connection. To neglect these throws one off the ring; and, with rare
exceptions, isolation is barrenness and death. One cannot even go into
the street in a wilfully strange costume, without establishing
repulsions and balking relations between him and his neighbors which
destroy their use to each other. Every man is bound to the actual form
of society by his necessities at least, if not by his good-will.
To step violently out of all this puts one in a social vacuum,--a
position in which few respire well, while most either perish or become
in some degree monstrous. It is necessary that one should live and work
with his fellows, if he is to obtain the largest growth. On the other
hand, to be merely in and of this--a wheel, spoke, or screw, in this
vast social mechanism--makes one, not a man, but a thing, and precludes
all growth but such as is obscure and indirect. Thousands, indeed, have
no desire but to obtain some advantageous place in this machinery.
Meanwhile this enormous conventional civilization strives, and must
strive, to make every soul its puppet. Let each fall into the routine,
pursue it in some shining manner, asking no radical questions, and he
shall have his heart's desire. "Blessed is he," it cries, "who
handsomely and with his whole soul reads upwards from man to position
and estate,--from man to millionnaire, judge, lord, bishop! Cursed is he
who questions, who aims to strike down beneath this great mechanism, and
to connect himself with the primal resources of his being! There are no
such resources. It is a wickedness to dream of them. Man has no root but
in tradition and custom, no blessing but in serving them."
As that assurance is taken, and as that spirit prevails, man forfeits
his manhood. His life becomes mechanical. Ideas disappear in the forms
that once embodied them; imagination is buried beneath symbol; belief
dies of creed, and morality of custom. Nothing remains but a world-wide
pantomime. Worship itself becomes only a more extended place-hunting,
and man the walking dummy of society. And then, since man no longer is
properly vitalized, disease sets in, consumption, decay, putrefaction,
filling all the air with the breath of their foulness.
The earlier part of the eighteenth century found all Europe in this
stage. Then came a stir in the heart of man: for Nature would not let
him die altogether. First came recoil, complaint, reproach, mockery.
Voltaire's light, piercing, taunting laugh--with a screaming wail inside
it, if one can hear well--rang over Europe. "Aha, you are found out! Up,
toad, in your true shape!" Then came wild, shallow theories, half true;
then wild attempt to make the theories real; then carnage and chaos.
Accompanying and following this comes another and purer phase of
reaction. "Let us get out of this dead, conventional world!" cry a few
noble spirits, in whose hearts throbs newly the divine blood of life.
"Leave it behind; it is dead. Leave behind all formal civilization; let
us live only from within, and let the outward be formless,--momentarily
created by our souls, momentarily vanishing."
The noblest type I have ever known of this _extra-vagance_, this
wandering outside of actual civilization, was Thoreau. With his purity,
as of a newborn babe,--with his moral steadiness, unsurpassed in my
observation,--with his indomitable persistency,--by the aid also of that
all-fertilizing imaginative sympathy with outward Nature which was his
priceless gift,--he did, indeed, lend to his mode of life an
indescribable charm. In him it came at once to beauty and to
consecration.
Yet even he must leave out marriage, to make his scheme of life
practicable. He must ignore Nature's demand that humanity continue, or
recognize it only with loathing. "Marriage is that!" said he to a
friend,--and held up a carrion-flower.
Moreover, the success of his life--nay, the very quality of his
being--implied New England and its civilization. To suppose him born
among the Flathead Indians were to suppose _him_, the Thoreau of our
love and pride, unborn still. The civilization he slighted was an air
that he breathed; it was implied, as impulse and audience, in those
books of his, wherein he enshrined his spirit, and whereby he kept its
health.
A fixed social order is indirectly necessary even to him who, by rare
gifts of Nature, can stand nobly and unfalteringly aside from it. And it
is directly, instantly necessary to him who, either by less power of
self-support or by a more flowing human sympathy, _must_ live with men,
and _must_ comply with the conditions by which social connection is
preserved.
The problem, therefore, recurs. Here are the two terms: the soul, the
primal, immortal imagination of man, on the one side; the enormous,
engrossing, dehumanizing mechanism of society, on the other. A noble few
elect the one; an ignoble multitude pray to its opposite. The
reconciling word,--is there a reconciling word?
Here, now, comes one who answers, Yes. And he answers thus, not by a
bald assertion, but by a picture wherein these opposites lose their
antagonism,--by a picture which is true to both, yet embraces both, and
shapes them into a unity. That is Goethe. This attempt represents the
grand _nisus_ of his life. It is most fully made in "Wilhelm Meister."
Above the world he places the growing spirit of man, the vessel of all
uses, with his resource in eternal Nature. Then he seizes with a
sovereign hand upon actual society, upon formal civilization, and of it
all makes food and service for man's spirit. This prosaic civilization,
he says, is prosaic only in itself, not when put in relation to its true
end. So he first recognizes it with remorseless verity, depicts it in
all its littleness and limitation; then strikes its connection with
growth: and lo, the littleness becomes great in serving the greater; the
harsh prosaicism begins to move in melodious measure; and out of that
jarring, creaking mechanism of conventional society arise the grand
rolling organ-harmonies of life.
That he succeeds to perfection I do not say. I could find fault enough
with his book, if there were either time or need. There is no need: its
faults are obvious. In binding himself by such unsparing oaths to
recognize and admit all the outward truth of society, he has, indeed,
grappled with the whole problem, but also made its solution a little
cumbrous and incomplete. Nay, this which he so admits in his picture was
also sufficiently, perhaps a touch more than sufficiently, admitted in
his own being. He would have been a conventionalist and epicurean,
unless he had been a seer. He would have been a mere man of the world,
had he not been Goethe. But whereas a man of the world reads up from man
to dignity, estate, and social advantage, he reverses the process, and
reads up from these to man. Say that he does it with some stammering,
with some want of the last nicety. What then? It were enough, if he set
forth upon the true road, though his own strength fail before the end is
reached. It is enough, if, falling midway, even though it be by excess
of the earthly weight he bears, he still point forward, and his voice
out of the dust whisper, "There lies your way!" This alone makes him a
benefactor of mankind.
This specific aim of Goethe's work makes it, indeed, a novel.
Conventional society and the actual conditions of life are, with respect
to eternal truth, but the _novelties_ of time. The novelist is to
picture these, and, in picturing, subordinate them to that which is
perpetual and inspiring. Just so far as he opens the ravishing
possibilities of life in commanding reconciliation with the formal
civilization of a particular time, he does his true work.
The function of the poet is different. His business it is simply to
_refresh_ the spirit of man. To its lip he holds the purest ichors of
existence; with ennobling draughts of awe, pity, sympathy, and joy, he
quickens its blood and strengthens its vital assimilations. The
particular circumstances he uses are merely the cup wherein this wine of
life is contained. This he may obtain as most easily he can; the world
is all before him where to choose.
The novelist has no such liberty. His business it is to find the ideal
possibilities of man _here_, in the midst of actual society. He shall
teach us to free the heart, while respecting the bonds of circumstance.
And the more strictly he clings to that which is central in man on the
one hand, and the more broadly and faithfully he embraces the existing
prosaic limitations on the other, the more his work answers to the whole
nature of his function. Goethe has done the latter thoroughly, his
accusers themselves being judges; that he has done the other, and how he
has done it, I have sought to show in a preceding paper. He looks on
actual men and actual society with an eye of piercing observation; he
depicts them with remorseless verity; and through and by all builds,
builds at the great architectures of spiritual growth.
Hence the difference between him and satirists like Thackeray, who
equal him in keenness of observation, are not behind him in verity of
report, while surpassing him often in pictorial effect,--but who bring
to the picture out of themselves only a noble indignation against
baseness. They contemn; he uses. They cry, "Fie!" upon unclean
substances; he ploughs the offence into the soil, and sows wheat over
it. They see the world as it is; he sees it, and through it. They probe
sores; he leads forth into the air and the sunshine. They tinge the
cheek with blushes of honorable shame; he paints it with the glow of
wholesome activity. Their point of view is that of pathology; his, that
of physiology. The great satirists, at best, give a medicine to
sickness; Goethe gives a task to health. They open a door into a
hospital; he opens a door _out_ of one, and cries, "Lo, the green earth
and blue heaven, the fields of labor, the skies of growth!"
On the other hand, by this relentless fidelity to observation, by his
stern refusal to give men supposititious qualities and characters, by
his resolute acceptance of European civilization, by his unalterable
determination to practicable results, by always limiting himself _to
that which all superior men might be expected not merely to read of with
gusto, but to do_, he is widely differenced from novelists like the
authoress of "Consuelo." He does not propose to furnish a moral luxury,
over which at the close one may smack the lips, and cry, "How sweet!" No
gardener's manual ever looked more simply to results. His aim is, to get
something _done_, to get _all_ done which he suggests. Accordingly, he
does not gratify us with vasty magnanimities, holy beggaries voluntarily
assumed, Bouddhistic "missions"; he shows us no more than high-minded,
incorruptible men, fixed in their regards upon the high ends of life,
established in noble, fruitful fellowship, willing and glad to help
others so far as they can clearly see their way, not making public
distribution of their property, but managing it so that it shall in
themselves and others serve culture, health, and all well-being of body
and mind. Wealth here is a trust; it is held for use; its uses are, to
subserve the high ends of Nature in the spirit of man. Lothario seeks
association with all who can aid him in these applications. So intent is
he, that he _loves_ Theresa because she has a genius at once for
economizing means and for seeing where they may be applied to the
service of the more common natures. He keeps the great-minded,
penetrating, providential Abbe in his pay, that this inevitable eye may
distinguish for him the more capable natures, and find out whether or
how they may be forwarded on their proper paths. Here are no sublime
professions, but a steady, modest, resolute, discriminate doing.
For suggestion of what one may really _do_, and for impelling one toward
the practicable best, I find this book worth a moonful of "Consuelos."
The latter work has, indeed, beautiful pictures; and simply as a picture
of a fresh, sweet, young life, it is charming. But in its aim at a
higher import I find it simply an arrow shot into the air, going _so_
high, but at--nothing! If one crave a moral luxury, it is here. If he
desire a lash for egoism, this, perhaps, is also here. If he is already
praying the heavens for a sufficing worth and work in life, and is
asking only the _what_ and _how_, this book, taken in connection with
its sequel, says, "Distribute your property, and begin wandering about
and 'doing good.'"
I decline. After due consideration, I have fully determined to own a
house, and provide each day a respectable dinner for my table, if the
fates agree; to secure, still in submission to the fates, such a
competency as will give me leisure for the best work I can do; to
further justice and general well-being, so far as is in me to further or
hinder, but always on the basis of the existing civilization; to cherish
sympathy and good-will in myself, and in others by cherishing them in
myself; to help another when I clearly can; and to give, when what I
give will obviously do more service toward the high ends of life, in
the hands of another than in my own. Toward carrying out these purposes
"Consuelo" has not given me a hint, not one; "Wilhelm Meister" has given
me invaluable hints. Therefore I feel no great gratitude to the one, and
am profoundly grateful to the other.
It is not the mere absence of suffering, it is not a pound of beef on
every peasant's plate, that makes life worth living. Health, happiness,
even education, however diffused, do not alone make life worth living.
Tell me the quality of a man's happiness before I can very rapturously
congratulate him upon it; tell me the quality of his suffering before I
can grieve over it without solace. Noble pain is worth more than ignoble
pleasure; and there is a health in the _dying_ Schiller which beggars in
comparison that of the fat cattle on a thousand hills. All the world
might be well fed, well clothed, well sheltered, and very properly
behaved, and be a pitiful world nevertheless, were this all.
Let us get out of this business of merely improving _conditions_. There
are two things which make life worth living. First, the absolute worth
and significance of man's spirit in its harmonious completeness; and
hence the absolute value of culture and growth in the deepest sense of
the words. Secondly, the relevancy of actual experience and the actual
world to these ends. Goethe attends to both these, and to both in a
spirit of great sanity. He fixes his eye with imperturbable steadiness
on the central fact, then with serene, intrepid modesty suggests the
relevancy to this of the world as it is around us, and _then trusts the
healthy attraction of the higher to modify and better the lower_. Give
man, he says, something to work _for_, namely, the high uses of his
spirit; give him next something to work _with_, namely, actual
civilization, the powers, limits, and conditions which actually exist in
and around him; and if these instruments be poor, be sure he will begin
to improve upon them, the moment he has found somewhat inspiring and
sufficing to do with them. Actual conditions will improve precisely in
proportion as _all_ conditions are utilized, are placed in relations of
service to a result which contents the soul of men. And to establish in
this relation all the existing conditions of life, natural and
artificial, is the task which Goethe has undertaken.
I invite the reader to dwell upon this fact, that, the moment life has
an inspiring significance, and the moment also the men, industries, and
conditions around us become instrumental toward resolving that, in this
moment one must begin, so far as he may, bettering these conditions. If
I hire a man to work in my garden, how much is it worth to me, if he
bring not merely his hands and gardening skill, but also an appreciable
soul, with him! So soon as that fact is apparent, fruitful relations are
established between us, and sympathies begin to fly like bees, bearing
pollen and winning honey, from each heart to the other. To let a man be
degraded, or stupid, or thwarted in all his inward life, when I _can_
make it otherwise? Not unless I am insensate. To allow anywhere a
disserviceable condition, when I could make it serviceable? Not in full
view of the fact that all which thwarts the inward being of another
thwarts me. If there be in the world a man who might write a grand book,
but through ill conditions cannot write it, then in me and you a door
will remain closed, which might have opened--who knows upon what
treasure? With the high ends of life before him, no man can _afford_ to
be selfish. With the fact before him that formal civilization is
instrumental, no man can afford to run away from it. With the fact in
view that each man needs every other, and needs that every other should
do and be the best he can, no one can afford to withhold help, where it
can be rendered. Finally, seeing that means are limited, and that the
means and services which are crammed into others, without being
spiritually assimilated, breed only indigestion, no one must throw his
services about at random, but see where Nature has prepared the way for
him, and there in modesty do what he can.
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