CHAPTER IV.—UNITY.
The Divine Attributes, the base of all true Art.
Having already shown that the aspirations of man, made in the image of his God, are always directed toward that wondrous background from which all life projects—the Infinite, we now propose to make a few remarks upon the manifestation of some of the remaining attributes revealed to him, and which he is forever striving to incarnate in the works of art.
Beauty, in its proper expression, must be allied to or suggest the Infinite, for in it alone can ceaseless variety be united with absolute unity. Unity is an essential characteristic of life itself; variety resolving itself into unity, and unity expanding itself into variety, mark all that God has made. As a necessary consequence of the position we have assumed, viz.: 'That art is not a servile copy, but rather a creation of man in the Spirit of Nature,' Variety and Unity must characterize every great work of art, as they mark every work of the Creator. Let us take any of the humblest things which He has made, a flower, for example: Unity, Order, Proportion, and Symmetry are in all its fragile leaves—the Great Over-Soul seems to have lingered lovingly over the elaboration of its idea, and stamped upon its fragrant leaves, perishing and trivial as they may seem, the secrets of Infinity! With what variety it is marked! How many shades in the gradations of the color! What infinitesimal changes in the direction of the gentle curvature of the rounded lines! what richness in the details! what subtle and penetrating tenderness in the perfume! Love, Infinity, Unity, Order, Proportion, Symmetry, mark all the Divine Works: Unity, Order, Proportion, Symmetry, Love, as manifested in the careful rendering of the subject in hand, with the suggestion of that mystic Infinite in which all being is cradled, and from which all art is nurtured, should, on their lower level in their finite degree, mark every work of art. But to our subject: the divine attribute of unity, and its manifestation in and through the finite.
All things, except God, receive externally some perfection from other things. We will not now consider the unity of His mystical Trinity, but rather dwell upon the necessity of His inherence in all things, without which no creature could retain existence for a moment. We speak of His comprehensive unity because it is an object of hope to men; it is that of which Christ thought when he said: 'Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word: that they may be all One, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee.' There is no matter, no spirit, that is not capable of unity of some kind with other creatures, in which unity is found their several perfections, and which is a source of joy for all who see it. The Unity of Spirits is partly in their sympathy, partly in their giving and taking, and ever in their love, their inseparable dependency on each other and always on their Maker—not like the cold peace of undisturbed stones and solitary mountains, but the living peace of trust, the living power of confidence, of hands that hold each other and are still! Who has not felt the strength of united love? In the sudden emotion common to humanity which we all experience at the sight of suffering, and which brought tears from the Holy One on the death of Lazarus, in the strange shivering which we feel pervade our souls at the shrill cry of anguish, do we not recognize more than a simple resemblance of nature—do we not feel that the race is really One, that a common grief again unites it, that in this oneness we are all justly partakers in the sin of Adam, that in this oneness we may partake of the glory of the Brother who died to unite the finite with the Infinite?
It is to this essential unity of the race that the dramatist owes much of his power; for let him but strike the common strings of grief and love, and the crowd at once show by their words, their gestures, their looks, and often by their tears, their earnest sympathy. Even at the spectacle of an imaginary grief their hearts are moved, the sorrow thrills through every soul; if the poet has been true to nature, they feel that his imaginary characters are but part and parcel of themselves in their woe. Thus the emotion excited by dramatic representations has its source in the very root of our being, the unity of our common nature, in our common brotherhood; consequently, neither in the instincts of the body nor the caprices of the poetic fancy. If the poet would not break the bond, let him respect the unities of nature, whatever view he may take of those of convention. It is to this wonderful unity with our common nature that the greatest of all uninspired writers, Shakspeare, owes his universal acknowledgment, his unequalled power.
If, as we have labored to teach, matter always symbolizes mind, we should expect to find it also pervaded with the unity pertaining to its lower rank, and so indeed we find it. In its noblest form the unity of matter is that organization of it which builds it into living temples for the indwelling spirits, those houses not made with hands—the bodies of noble men, of fair and loving women.
In a lower form, it gives that sweet and strange affinity which adds the glory of orderly arrangement to its elements, gifting them with the fair variety of change and assimilation that turns the dust into crystal, and separates the waters above the firmament from those below. It is the walking and clinging together that gives power to the winds, weight to the waves, heat to the sunbeams, and stability to the mountains. It is the 'clinging together' which throws our syllables into words, gives metre to poetry, and melody and harmony to sound. Indeed, the clinging together of sounds, as seized by the ear in time, with the ever forming and living ebb and flow of widely different rhythms, exerting the most mysterious influences upon the soul, is not less remarkable than its more familiar history in space.
Manifold, indeed, would be the generalizations of the different species of unity, for it is the secret link of all being.
We have the unity of separate things subjected to one and the same influence, as the unity of clouds as they are driven by parallel winds, or ordered by electric currents: there is the unity of myriads of sea waves, of the bending and undulating of forest masses.
In creatures capable of will, there would be the unity of acts controlled, in all their apparent variety, by its directing power; and the unity of emotions in the masses, when swayed by some common impulse.
There is also the unity of the origin of things arising from one source, always suggesting their common brotherhood: in matter this is manifested in the unity of the branches of the trees, of the petals and starry rays of flowers, of the beams of light, of heat, &c., &c.; in spiritual creatures it is their filial relation to Him from whom they have their being.
There is the unity of sequence, which is that of things which form links in chains, steps in ascent, and stages in journeys; this, in matter, is the unity of communicable forces in their continuance and propagation from one thing to another; it is the passing upward and downward of beneficent effects among all things; it is the melody of sounds; the beauty of continuous lines; and orderly successions of motions and times. In spiritual creatures, it is their own constant building up by true knowledge and consecutive efforts to higher perfection, and the singleness and straightforwardness of their tendencies to more complete union with God.
There is the unity of membership, which is the union of things separately imperfect into a perfect whole; this is the great unity of which all other unities are but parts and means. In matter it is the consistency of bodies, the harmony of sounds;—with spiritual beings, it is their love, happiness, and life in God. But this unity cannot subsist between things similar to each other. Two or more equal or like things cannot be members the one of the other, nor can they form one or a whole thing. Two they must remain both in nature and in our conception unless they are united by a third. Thus the arms, which are like each other, remain always two arms in our conception, and could not be united by a third arm, but must be linked by something which is not an arm, and which, imperfect without them as they without it, will, with them, form one perfect body. Nor is unity even thus accomplished without a difference and opposition of direction in the setting on of members. Therefore, among things which are to have membership with each other, there must be difference or variety; and though it is possible that many like things may be made members of one body, yet it is very remarkable that this stricture appears rather characteristic of the lower creatures than the higher, as the many legs of the caterpillar, and the arms and suckers of Radiata seem to prove. As we rise in the order of being the number of similar members becomes less; their structure appearing based on the principle of two things united by a third;—a constant type even in matter of the Triune Existence.
Out of the necessity of unity arises that of variety, a necessity vividly felt, because it lies at the surface of things, and is assisted by our love of change and the power of contrast. It were a mistake to suppose that mere variety, without a linking principle of unity, is, necessarily, either agreeable or beautiful.
'All are needed by each one,
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home in his nest at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I could not bring home the river and sky;—
He sang to my ear,—they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my seaborn treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.'
It is not mere unrelated variety which charms us, for a forest of all manner of trees is poor in its effect, while a mass of one species of trees is sublime;—the swan, with its purity of unbroken whiteness, is one of the most beautiful of creatures. It is, indeed, only harmonious and chordal variety, that variety which is necessary to secure and extend unity (for the greater the number of objects which by their differences become members of one another, the more extended and sublime is their unity), which is essentially beautiful. Variety is never so conspicuous as when united with some intimation of unity. For example, the perpetual change of clouds is monotonous in its very dissimilarity, nor is difference ever striking where no connection is implied; but if through a range of barred clouds crossing half the heavens, all governed by the same forces, and falling into one general form, there be yet a marked and evident dissimilarity between each member of the great mass—one more finely drawn, the next more delicately moulded, the next more gracefully bent—each broken into differently modelled and variously numbered groups,—the variety is doubly striking because contrasted with the perfect unity and symmetry of which it forms a part.
Now, of that which is thus necessary to the perfection of things, all types and suggestions must be beautiful in whatever way they may suggest or manifest it. To the perfection of beauty in lines, colors, forms, masses, or multitudes, the appearance of unity is absolutely essential. Let the artist look to it, that our pictures may gain expression; our music cease to weary us through the unceasing dissimilarity of its parts, highly adorned arabesques running into each other, graceful, but without significance, without any perceptible principle of unity in the jarring 'motifs;' and our poems have some certain theme, that their highly wrought details may not confuse and bewilder the spirit always in search of some central unity. Like the burning sands which, clinging not together in any sweet union of fellowship, blind and confuse us with their drifting masses, are all such essays in art; for an idea capable of quickening an artistic creation must be vitally One, and every great work, notwithstanding its variety and the manifold complexity of its parts, must form a Whole.
The association of ideas, upon which is based the unity of the continuous life of the individual, with the pervading sense of personal identity, has been aptly called the 'cohesion of the moral world.' It is not less powerful, less irresistible, than that of the physical world. The association of ideas is a constituent and necessary phase of the unity of our mental and moral being, the indispensable condition of all development, whether of mind or soul. Without the power of association, the intellect would strive in vain to construct consecutive trains of thought; it would indeed be condemned to eternal infancy, because, as it ascertained new relations, those already acquired would escape, and a labor constantly renewed would be requisite to regain them. Without association of ideas, no voluntary virtue would be possible; and at the end of long years of effort and self-restraint, we would have gained no additional control over the course of our impetuous passions.
The fact that much of the difference in intellectual capacity so strongly characterizing different individuals arises from their various powers over the flow and logical association of ideas, has scarcely elicited the attention it so well deserves. It is of immense importance in the history of mental development. If an individual connects his ideas with difficulty, or can continue to chain them in rational sequence only with the most laborious efforts, he will have either a dull and heavy, or flighty and illogical, mind.
If another has great trouble in modifying or arranging the association of ideas which arise spontaneously in the soul, he will suffer himself to be ruled by them, in place of exercising rational domination over them; he will pursue every chimera; he will trust every impulse; he will but dream, even when he tries to think; and will be of a weak and fickle, but obstinate and self-opinionated, intellect. His whole exhaustive logic will consist in clothing in exact and reiterated assertions the heterogeneous order in which ideas are arbitrarily, accidentally, and spontaneously associated in his own imagination.
Another will associate his ideas in logical sequence, yet with startling rapidity; in a manner and through subtle relations quite unknown to common men, incapable of such vivid, rational, and consequential combinations; and will, in consequence, be a man of clear and vivid intellect.
The wonderful faculty of improvisation so often seen in Italy, is an example of the power of appropriate and rapid association. There is no doubt that this power is susceptible of development and cultivation, and that much that is brilliant in intuition is lost through the want of it. In spite of this, no system has as yet been devised for its culture. Let him who would labor for the real improvement of humanity think of it, write for it, and aid us in its development: as the law of internal unity with regard to the immense range of possible associations is so vital to our moral well being, so essential to our intellectual sanity, let our deepest thinkers devote themselves to its culture in the race!
We may distinctly trace the intuitive strivings of the human spirit for unity even in the theology of nations without revelation. In one of the ancient fragments of Greek poetry known as Orphic Hymns, we find them thus articulated:
'Jupiter is the First and Last; Jupiter is man and immortal Virgin; Jupiter is the base of Earth and Heaven; Jupiter is the living breath of all beings; Jupiter is the source of Fire; the root of the Sea; Jupiter is the Sun and Moon; Jupiter is King of the universe; He created all things; He is a Living Force; a God; the Heart of all that is;—a supernal Body which embraces all bodies, fire, water, earth, air, night, day, with Metis the first Generatrix, and Love, full of magic. All that is, is contained in the immense Body of Jupiter.'
The reader will not fail to observe how much this Greek hymn resembles in its spirit the extract we have already given him from the Vedas; how closely it coincides with the transcendental philosophy of the Hindoos.
But the idea of God, vague and indeterminate apart from revelation, soon lost its pantheistic unity in the wildest polytheistic variety. The primitive idea of unity, passing through the distorting prism of the fallen and corrupt human imagination, was divided, decomposed, clothed in a thousand colors and forms to allure and satisfy the senses. Thus there was no part of nature without its appropriate god, invested with supreme power over the class of being subjected to its care. No one had ever seen any one of these gods, but the people had no doubt of their existence. Names in close accordance with their separate functions were given them; these names became symbols destined to represent the different active principles of the physical world.
Thus in their literary and sacred language they substituted the names of Jupiter, Hyades, Hamadryads, Apollo, for those of Air, Fountains, Forests, and Sun. Nature almost disappeared under this traditionary language, which, giving play to the lighter fancy, chilled the imagination, and singularly limited the view. Indeed, it so amused and allured the fancy by its diversity that the mind scarcely cared to rise from this fantastic and grotesque world to seek the sublime principles of Infinity, of Unity. If the ancients had regarded nature as a vast system of signs designed to manifest the ideas of the Great Artist; if they had at all understood the marvellous Unity of the Divine Works, it would have been worse than idle in them to have invented a language which thus lowered nature, robbing it of its solemn majesty, its august dignity. As all these divinities had the human figure, God was banished from His own universe, man everywhere substituting his own personality. Speaking of the great dearth of vivid descriptions of natural scenery among the ancients, Chateaubriand says: 'It must not be supposed that men as full of sensibility as the ancients wanted eyes to see nature, or talent to depict it, if some powerful cause had not blinded and misled them; this cause was their mythology, which, peopling the universe with graceful phantoms, robbed creation of its solemnity, of its sublime repose. Christianity came—and fauns, satyrs, and wanton nymphs disappeared; the grottos regained their holy silence; the dim woods their mystic reveries; the vast forests their vague and sublime melancholy; the streams overturned their petty urns to drink only from the mountain tops, to pour forth only the waters of the abyss. The true and One God, in reappearing in His own mystical works, again breathed through the voice of nature the secret thrill of His perfect Unity, His incomprehensible Infinity.'
'Earth outgrows the mythic fancies
Sung beside her in her youth;
And those debonaire romances
Sound but dull beside the truth.
Phœbus' chariot race is run!
Look up, poets, to the Sun!
Pan, Pan is dead.
'Christ hath sent us down the angels;
And the whole earth and the skies
Are illumed by altar candles
Lit for blessed mysteries;
And a Priest's hand through creation
Waveth calm and consecration—
And Pan is dead.
'O brave Poets, keep back nothing;
Mix not falsehood with the whole!
Look up Godward! speak the truth in
Worthy song from earnest soul!
Hold, in high poetic duty,
Truest truth, the fairest Beauty!
Pan, Pan is dead.'
As we have already intimated, Pantheism is the negation of the Divine Personality in order to arrive at Unity; Polytheism is the negation of the Divine Unity, which is fractioned and divided that its multitudinous action may be conceived. The light fancy was delighted with such divisions, resulting in varied gods and goddesses; but the soul could find no satisfaction for its deeper needs in such conceptions; urged on by its secret instincts, it sought to recompose the broken unity of the divine nature.
All government requires a Head; and when an attempt was made to apply the heterogeneous qualities and contradictory powers of the gods to the regulation of society—when it was necessary to find in an Olympus filled with quarrels and scandals, a steady Power capable of directing the destinies of a great people toward a single aim—men were again forced to recompose the fractioned Unity, to form an idea of one God superior to those with whom they had peopled earth and heaven. They were thus forced upon the conception of a Being superior to Jupiter, who subjected all the gods to his inflexible laws; and giving wings to those instincts of dread always present in the soul of a fallen race, they invented an invisible Divinity who never manifested himself to men; who dwelt in inaccessible and dreadful regions, in which an inscrutable Horror forever reigned; and through this new Terror, Unity was again brought into the design of creation, for all beings were, in despite of themselves, forced to fulfil the decrees of its pitiless will. All struggle was vain, all effort useless, prayer was without avail, and human anguish utterly unheeded by this terrific phantom of irresistible and crushing Power without a heart!
It is this dread idea which, pervading the pages of Eschylus, gives them that peculiar character of simplicity and grandeur, with which no other tragedies are marked in a like degree. Such was the source of the inspiration of classic tragedy, the spring of that stern and severe poetry which throws the lurid hues of a melancholy so profound upon the pallid and affrighted face of humanity. Man, struggling with all the gloomy energy of despair against this vague but formidable Horror, which no virtue or agony could conciliate—this dark Fate, the creation of his own misled and perverted intuitions—and vainly seeking to escape from the inflexible circle which he had traced around himself, is an object which cannot fail to awaken the deepest pity. He asks from his fellow men, from nature, from the gods, the meaning of the dire enigma of life. Alas! they leave him to struggle in the stony hands of an unbending Fate! no reply is ever given to his wild demand, and the 'veil of Isis is never raised!' The world quivered under some strange anathema; a mystic malediction wreathed its thorns round the anguished heads of men; even in the midst of their festivals, when seeming to drink deep of joy from the brimming cup of life, the invisible hand of a Gorgon Fate was forever felt tracing upon their walls the decrees of a dark, inscrutable, inflexible, and terrible destiny!
Yet there are poets among us, who would willingly return to the days of Paganism, and resuscitate the gods of Greece!
'Get to dust as common mortals,
By a common doom and track!
Let no Schiller from the portals
Of that Hades call you back,
Or instruct us all to weep:
Everlasting be your sleep!
Pan, Pan is dead!'
''Twas the hour when one in Zion
Hung for Love's sake on a cross—
When His brow was chill with dying,
And His soul was faint with loss;
When His priestly blood dropped downward;
And His kingly eyes looked homeward—
Then Pan was dead!'
The Prometheus of the rock, the Tantalus of the fable, man, plunged in this world of woe with his lips thirsty for happiness, stretches out his hand to pluck the bitter Dead-Sea fruits of this earth. With his profound instincts of the Infinite, his craving for the Absolute, he seizes madly upon every object which suggests their image to him; the foul fiend, adapting his temptations to the nature of the tempted, still whispers, as into the ear of the mother of mankind: 'Ye shall be as gods;'—but the phenomenal flies before him, and he everywhere falls upon the thorns closely hedging in the narrow circle of the actual. Without Faith, the artist is among the most miserable of men, for through the illimitable horizons of the Infinite, genius catches secrets which it can never fully utter; symbolic signs, whose sense it cannot articulate; while the voice of the invisible Love loads every breeze. What profound and mournful aspirations for that Unknown which the mortal may not see, surge through the soul of the imaginative!
'E'en the flowing azure air
Thou hast charmed for his despair.'
While the artist strives to incorporate with the works which their presence shall render immortal, suggestions of Infinity, of Unity, let him hopefully turn to the Author of all Beauty for true inspiration and peace.
As satisfaction and response to the longings of the spirit, the Gospel has brought Life and Immortality to light. The assurance that 'God is Love' responds to the inmost wish of the soul. The problem of antiquity, the possible Union of the finite with the Infinite, has been solved in the most marvellous manner. No longer are we oppressed with the loss of all personal identity, all moral responsibility, as in pantheism; nor confused by the debasing fractioning of the Divine Unity, as in polytheism; nor bound hand and foot under the crushing despotism of a pitiless Fate;—but in the Glorified Humanity of Christ these perplexing problems of the soul are answered, and the incomprehensible union of the Infinite and finite at last accomplished, He took our nature upon Him that Infinite Love might pass through all degrees of suffering, even to the last dying gasp of agony, to release us from the horrors of the 'second death.' Every human feeling is known to Him, but in infinite purity; the Real and Ideal are in equal perfection. Far higher, indeed, than the most sublime conception that uninspired thought could ever have engendered; human, yet far above humanity; ruling all ages; winning all adoration; sublime in tender simplicity—behold the meek Lamb of God, the Holy Son of the Blessed Virgin!
Oh, eternal, immaculate Beauty! if in this world Thou but sufferest us to divine Thy Perfections; if Thou hast given us ephemeral delights which always escape our eager grasp at the very moment we dream of their full enjoyment; if the flower fades so fast—the days of spring are so fleeting; if nature, like a thick veil thrown between this world and the next, suffers but a few rays of Thy glory to pierce its folds, while it keeps us from Thee even in kindling the flame of desires which it never satisfies—it is because Thou knowest that in the inexhaustible richness of Thy Being there are everlasting fountains to quench the insatiate thirst of the human soul, when in the bosom of infinite splendor we may contemplate and adore Thee forever and ever!
'That they all may be One, as Thou, Father, in me, and I in Thee: that they also may be one in us.'
Oh, inconceivable and glorious Unity! What wonder that thy types on earth are so full of meaning—so rich in delight!