LETTER III.
TO A FRIEND WHO SUGGESTED THE SPECULATION “WHICH OF THE MORAL VIRTUES WAS MOST ESSENTIAL TO THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE.”
The most essential virtue is disinterestedness—The other virtues possessed by the opponents of intellectual liberty—The Ultramontane party—Difficulty of thinking disinterestedly even about the affairs of another nation—English newspapers do not write disinterestedly about foreign affairs—Difficulty of disinterestedness in recent history—Poets and their readers feel it—Fine subjects for poetry in recent events not yet available—Even history of past times rarely disinterested—Advantages of the study of the dead languages in this respect—Physicians do not trust their own judgment about their personal health—The virtue consists in endeavoring to be disinterested.
I think there cannot be a doubt that the most essential virtue is disinterestedness.
Let me tell you, after this decided answer, what are the considerations which have led me to it. I began by taking the other important virtues one by one—industry, perseverance, courage, discipline, humility, and the rest; and then asked myself whether any class of persons possessed and cultivated these virtues who were nevertheless opposed to intellectual liberty. The answer came immediately, that there have in every age been men deservedly respected for these virtues who did all in their power to repress the free action of the intellect. What is called the Ultramontane party in the present day includes great numbers of talented adherents who are most industrious, most persevering, who willingly submit to the severest discipline—who are learned, self-denying, and humble enough to accept the most obscure and ill-requited duties. Some of these men possess nine-tenths of the qualifications that are necessary to the highest intellectual life—they have brilliant gifts of nature; they are well-educated; they take a delight in the exercise of noble faculties, and yet instead of employing their time and talents to help the intellectual advancement of mankind, they do all in their power to retard it. They have many most respectable virtues, but one is wanting. They have industry, perseverance, discipline, but they have not disinterestedness.
I do not mean disinterestedness in its ordinary sense as the absence of selfish care about money. The Church of Rome has thousands of devoted servants who are content to labor in her cause for stipends so miserable that it is clear they have no selfish aim; whilst they abandon all those possibilities of fortune which exist for every active and enterprising layman. But their thinking can never be disinterested so long as their ruling motive is devotion to the interests of their Church. Some of them are personally known to me, and we have discussed together many of the greatest questions which agitate the continental nations at the present time. They have plenty of intellectual acumen; but whenever the discussion touches, however remotely, the ecclesiastical interests that are dear to them, they cease to be observers—they become passionate advocates. It is this habit of advocacy which debars them from all elevated speculation about the future of the human race, and which so often induces them to take a side with incapable and retrograde governments, too willingly overlooking their deficiencies in the expectation of services to the cause. Their predecessors have impeded, as far as they were able, the early growth of science—not for intellectual reasons, but because they instinctively felt that there was something in the scientific spirit not favorable to those interests which they placed far above the knowledge of mere matter.
I have selected the Ultramontane party in the Church of Rome as the most prominent example of a party eminent for many intellectual virtues, and yet opposed to the intellectual life from its own want of disinterestedness. But the same defect exists, to some degree, in every partisan—exists in you and me so far as we are partisans. Let us suppose, for example, that we desired to find out the truth about a question much agitated in a neighboring country at the present time—the question whether it would be better for that country to attempt the restoration of its ancient Monarchy or to try to consolidate a Republican form of government. How difficult it is to think out such a problem disinterestedly, and yet how necessary to the justice of our conclusions that we should think disinterestedly if we pretend to think at all! It is true that we have one circumstance in our favor—we are not French subjects, and this is much. Still we are not disinterested, since we know that the settlement of a great political problem such as this, even though on foreign soil, cannot fail to have a powerful influence on opinion in our own country, and consequently upon the institutions of our native land. We are spectators only, it is true; but we are far from being disinterested spectators. And if you desire to measure the exact degree to which we are interested in the result, you need only look at the newspapers. The English newspapers always treat French affairs from the standpoint of their own party. The Conservative journalist in England is a Monarchist in France, and has no hopes for the Republic; the Liberal journalist in England believes that the French dynasties are used up, and sees no chance of tranquillity outside of republican institutions. In both cases there is an impediment to the intellectual appreciation of the problem.
This difficulty is so strongly felt by those who write and read the sort of literature which aspires to permanence, and which, therefore, ought to have a substantial intellectual basis, that either our distinguished poets choose their subjects in actions long past and half-forgotten, or else, when tempted by present excitement, they produce work which is artistically far inferior to their best. Our own generation has witnessed three remarkable events which are poetical in the highest degree. The conquest of the Two Sicilies by Garibaldi is a most perfect subject for a heroic poem; the events which led to the execution of the Emperor Maximilian and deprived his Empress of reason, would, in the hands of a great dramatist, afford the finest possible material for a tragedy; the invasion of France by the Germans, the overthrow of Napoleon III., the siege of Paris, are an epic ready to hand that only awaits its Homer; yet, with the exception of Victor Hugo, who is far gone in intellectual decadence, no great poet has sung of these things yet. The subjects are as good as can be, but too near. Neither poet nor reader is disinterested enough for the intellectual enjoyment of these subjects: the poet would not see his way clearly, the reader would not follow unreservedly.
It may be added, however, in this connection, that even past history is hardly ever written disinterestedly. Historians write with one eye on the past and the other on the pre-occupations of the present. So far as they do this they fall short of the intellectual standard. An ideally perfect history would tell the pure truth, and all the truth, so far as it was ascertainable.
Artists are seldom good critics of art, because their own practice biasses them, and they are not disinterested. The few artists who have written soundly about art have succeeded in the difficult task of detaching saying from doing; they have, in fact, become two distinct persons, each oblivious of the other.
The strongest of all the reasons in favor of the study of the dead languages and the literatures preserved in them, has always appeared to me to consist in the more perfect disinterestedness with which we moderns can approach them. The men and events are separated from us by so wide an interval, not only of time and locality, but especially of modes of thought, that our passions are not often enlisted, and the intellect is sufficiently free.
It may be noted that medical men, who are a scientific class, and therefore more than commonly aware of the great importance of disinterestedness in intellectual action, never trust their own judgment when they feel the approaches of disease. They know that it is difficult for a man, however learned in medicine, to arrive at accurate conclusions about the state of a human body that concerns him so nearly as his own, even although the person who suffers has the advantage of actually experiencing the morbid sensations.
To all this you may answer that intellectual disinterestedness seems more an accident of situation than a virtue. The virtue is not to have it, but to seek it in all earnestness; to be ready to accept the truth even when it is most unfavorable to ourselves. I can illustrate my meaning by a reference to a matter of everyday experience. There are people who cannot bear to look into their own accounts from a dread that the clear revelation of figures may be less agreeable to them than the illusions which they cherish. There are others who possess a kind of virtue which enables them to see their own affairs as clearly as if they had no personal interest in them. The weakness of the first is one of the most fatal of intellectual weaknesses; the mental independence of the second is one of the most desirable of intellectual qualities. The endeavor to attain it, or to strengthen it, is a great virtue, and of all the virtues the one most indispensable to the nobility of the intellectual life.
Note.—The reader may feel some surprise that I have not mentioned honesty as an important intellectual virtue. Honesty is of great importance, no doubt, but it appears to be (as to practical effects) included in disinterestedness, and to be less comprehensively useful. There is no reason to suspect the honesty of many political and theological partisans, yet their honesty does not preserve them from the worst intellectual habits, such as the habit of “begging the question,” of misrepresenting the arguments on the opposite side, of shutting their eyes to every fact which is not perfectly agreeable to them. The truth is, that mere honesty, though a most respectable and necessary virtue, goes a very little way toward the forming of an effective intellectual character. It is valuable rather in the relations of the intellectual man to the outer world around him, and even here it is dangerous unless tempered by discretion. A perfect disinterestedness would ensure the best effects of honesty, and yet avoid some serious evils, against which honesty is not, in itself, a safeguard.