Heart of Man

by George Edward Woodberry

While it is true that the object of ideal method is to reach universals, and reembody them in particular instances, this reasoning action is often obscurely felt by the imagination in its creative process. The very fact that its operation is through the concrete complicates the process. The mind of genius working out its will does not usually start with a logical attempt consciously; it does not arrive at truth in the abstract and then reduce it to concrete illustration in any systemic way; it does not select the law and then shape the plot. The poet is rather directly interested in certain characters and events that appeal to him; his sympathies are aroused, and he proceeds to show forth, to interpret, to create; and in proportion as the characters he sets in motion and the circumstances in which they are placed have moulding force, they will develop traits and express themselves in influences that he did not foresee. This is a matter of familiar knowledge to authors, who frequently discover in the trend of the imaginary tale a will of its own, which has its unforeseen way. The drama or story, once set in motion, tends to tell itself, just as life tends to develop in the world. The vitality of the clay it works in, is one of the curious experiences of genius, and occasions that mood of mystery in relation to their creatures frequently observed in great writers. In fact, this mode of working in the concrete, which is characteristic of the creative imagination, gives to its activity an inductive and experimental character, not to be confounded with the demonstrative act of the intellect which states truth after knowing it, and not in the moment of its discovery. In literature this moment of discovery is what makes that flash which is sometimes called intuition, and is one of the great charms of genius.

The concrete nature of ideal art, to touch conveniently here upon a related though minor topic, is also the reason that it expresses more than its creator is aware of. In imaging life he includes more reality than he attends to; but if his representation has been made with truth, others may perceive phases of reality that he neglected. It is the mark of genius, as has hitherto appeared, to grasp life, not fragmentarily, but in the whole. So, in a scientific experiment, intended to illustrate one particular form of energy, a spectator versed in another science may detect some truth belonging in his own field. This richer significance of great works is especially found where the union of the general and the particular is strong; where the fusion is complete, as in Hamlet. In a sense he is more real than living men, and we can analyze his nature, have doubts about his motives, judge differently of his character, and value his temperament more or less as one might with a friend. The more imaginative a character is, in the sense that his personality and experience are given in the whole so that one feels the bottom of reality there, the more significance it has. Thus in the world of art discoveries beyond the intention of the writer may be made as in the actual world; so much of reality does it contain.

Will it be said that, in making primary the universal contents and spiritual significance of type and plot, I have made literature didactic, as if the word should stop my mouth? If it is meant by this that I maintain that literature conveys truth, it may readily be admitted, since only thus can it interest the mind which has its whole life in the pursuit and its whole joy in the possession of truth. But if it be meant that abstract or moral instruction has been made the business of literature, the charge may be met with a disclaimer, as should be evident, first, from the emphasis placed on its concrete dealing with persons and actions. On the contrary, literature fails in art precisely in proportion as it becomes expressly such a teacher. Secondly, the life which literature organizes, the whole of human nature in its relation to the world, is many-sided; and imaginative genius, the creative reason, grasps it in its totality. The moral aspect is but one among many that life wears. If ethics are implicit in the mass of life, so also are beauty and passion, pathos, humour, and terror; and in literature any one of these may be the prominent phase at the moment, for literature gives out not only practical moral wisdom, but all the reality of life. Literature is didactic in the reproachful sense of the word only in proportion as type and plot are distinctly separated from the truth they embody, and ceases to be so in proportion as these are blended and unified. The fable is one of the most ancient forms of such didactic literature; in it a story is told to enforce a lesson, and animals are made the characters, in consequence of which it has the touch of humour inseparable from the spectacle of beasts playing at being men; but the very fact that the moral is of men and the tale is of beasts involves a separation of the truth from its concrete embodiment, and besides the moral is stated by itself. In the Oriental apologue an advance is made. The parables of our Lord, in particular, are admirable examples of its method. The characters are few, the situations common, the action simple, and the moral truth or lesson enforced is so completely clothed in the tale that it needs no explanation; at the same time, the mind is aware of the teacher. In the higher forms of literature, however, the fusion of ethics with life may be complete. Here the poet works so subtly that the mind is not aware of the illumination of this light which comes without the violence of the preacher, until after the fact; and, indeed, the effect is wrought more through the sympathies than the reason. In such a case literature, though it conveys moral with other kinds of truth, is not open to the charge of didacticism, which is valid only when teaching is explicit and abstract. The educative power of literature, however, is not diminished because in its art it dispenses with the didactic method, which by its very definiteness is inelastic and narrow; in fact, the more imaginative a character is, the more fruitful it may be even in moral truth; it may teach, as has been said, what the poet never dreamed his work contained.

If, then, to sum up the argument thus far, the subject-matter of literature is life in the forms of personality and experience, and the particular facts with respect to these are generalized by means of type and plot in concrete form, and so are set forth as phases of an ordered world for the intelligence, to the end that man may know himself in the same way as he knows nature in its living system—if this be so, what standing have those who would restrict literature to the actual in life? who would replace ideal types of manhood by the men of the time, and the ordered drama of the stage by the medley of life? They deny art, which is the instrument of the creative reason, to literature; for as soon as art, which is the process of creating a rational world, begins, the necessity for selection arises, and with it the whole question of values, facts being no longer equal among themselves on the score of actuality, nor in fitness for the work in hand. The trivial, the accidental, the unmeaning, are rejected, and there will be no stopping short of the end; for art, being the handmaid of truth, can employ no other than the method of all reason, wherefore idealism is to it what abstraction is to logic and induction to natural science,—the breath of its rational being. Those who hold to realism in its extreme form, as a representation of the actual only, behave as if one should say to the philosopher—leave this formulation of general notions and be content with sensible objects; or to the scientist—experiment no more, but observe the course of nature as it may chance to arise, and describe it in its succession. They bid us be all eye, no mind; all sense, no thought; all chance, all confusion, no order, no organization, no fabric of the reason. But there are no such realists; though pure realism has its place, as will hereafter be shown, it is usually found mixed with ideal method; and as commonly employed the word designates the preference merely for types and plots of much detail, of narrow application, of little meaning, in opposition to the highly generalized and significant types and plots usually associated with the term idealism. In what way such realism has its place will also appear at a later stage. Here it is necessary to say no more than that in proportion as realism uses the ideal method only at the lowest, it narrows its appeal, weakens its power, and takes from literature her highest distinction by virtue of which she grasps the whole of character and fate in her creation and informs man of the secrets of his human heart, the course of his mortal destiny, and the end of all his spiritual effort and aspiration.

I am aware that I have not proceeded so far without starting objections. To meet that which is most grave, what shall I say when it is alleged that there is no order such as I have assumed in life; or, if there be, that it is insufficiently known, too intangible and complex, too various in different races and ages, to be made the subject of such an exposition as obtains of natural order? Were this assertion true, yet there would be good reason to retain our illusion; for the mind delights in order, and will invent it. The mind is perplexed and disturbed until it finds this order; and in the progressive integration of its experience into an ordered world lies its work. Art gives pleasure to the intellect, because in its structure whatever is superfluous and extrinsic has been eliminated, so that the mind contemplates an artistic work as a unity of relations bound each to each which it fully comprehends. Such works, we say, have form, which is just this interdependence of parts wholly understood which appeals to the intellect, and satisfies it: they would please the mind, though the order they embody were purely imaginary, just as science would delight it, were the order of nature itself illusory. Creative art would thus still have a ground of being under a sceptical philosophy; man would delight to dream his dream. But it is not necessary to take this lower line of argument.

It does not appear to me to be open to question that there is in the soul of man a nature and an order obtaining in it as permanent and universal as in the material world. The soul of man has a common being in all. There could be no science of logic, psychology, or metaphysics on the hypothesis of any uncertainty as to the identity of mind in all, nor any science of ethics on the hypothesis of any variation as to the identity of the will in all, nor any ground of expression even, of communication between man and man, on the hypothesis of any radical difference in the experience and faculties to which all expression appeals for its intelligibility; neither could there be any system of life in social groups, or plan for education, unless such a common basis is accepted. The postulate of a common human nature is analogous to that of the unity of matter in science; it finds its complete expression in the doctrine of the brotherhood of man, for if race be fundamentally distinguished from race as was once thought, it is only as element is distinguished from element in the old chemistry. So, too, the postulate of an order obtaining in the soul, universal and necessary, independent of man's volition, analogous in all respects to the order of nature, is parallel with that of the constancy of physical law. A rational life expects this order. The first knowledge of it comes to us, as that of natural law, by experience; in the social world—the relations of men to one another—and in the more important region of our own nature we learn the issue of certain courses of action as well as in the external world; in our own lives and in our dealings with others we come to a knowledge of, and a conformity to, the conditions under which we live, the laws operant in our being, as well as those of the physical world. Literature assumes this order; in Aeschylus, Cervantes, or Shakspere, it is this that gives their work interest. Apart from natural science, the whole authority of the past in its entire accumulation of wisdom rests upon the permanence of this order, and its capacity to be known by man; that virtue makes men noble and vice renders them base, is a statement without meaning unless this order is continuous through ages; all principles of action, all schemes of culture, would be uncertain except on this foundation.

So near is this order to us that it was known long before science came to any maturity. We have added, in truth, little to our knowledge of humanity since the Greeks; and if one wonders why ethics came before science, let him own at least that its priority shows that it is near and vital in life as science is not. We can do, it seems, without Kepler's laws, but not without the Decalogue. The race acquires first what is most needful for life; and man's heart was always with him, and his fate near. A second reason, it may be noted, for the later development of science is that our senses, as used by science, are more mental now, and the object itself is observable only by the intervention of the mind through the telescope or microscope or a hundred instruments into which, though physical, the mind enters. Our methods, too, as well as our instruments, are things of the mind. It behooves us to remember in an age which science is commonly thought to have materialized, that more and more the mind enters into all results, and fills an ever larger place in life; and this should serve to make materialism seem more and more what it is—a savage conception. But recognizing the great place of mind in modern science, and its growing illumination of our earthly system, I am not disposed to discredit its earliest results in art and morals. I find in this penetration of the order of the world within us our most certain truth; and as our bodies exist only by virtue of sharing in the general order of nature, so, I believe, our souls have being only by sharing in this order of the inward, the spiritual world.

What, then, is this order? We do not merely contemplate it: we are immersed in it, it is vital in us, it is that wherein we live and move and have our being, ever more and more in proportion as the soul's life outvalues the body in our experience. It is necessary to expand our conception of it. Hitherto it has been presented only as an order of truth appealing to the intellect: but the intellect is only one function of the soul, and thinkers are the merest fraction of mankind. We know this order not only as truth, but as righteousness; we know that certain choices end in enlarging and invigorating our faculties, and other choices in their enfeeblement and extinction; and the race adds, acting under the profound motive of self-preservation, that it is a duty to do the one thing and avoid the other, and stores up this doctrine in conscience. We know this order again under the aspect of joy, for joy attends some choices, and sorrow others; and again under the aspect of beauty, for certain choices result in beauty and others in deformity. What I maintain is that this order exists under four aspects, and may be learned in any of them—as an order of truth in the reason, as an order of virtue in the will, as an order of joy in the emotions, as an order of beauty in the senses. It is the same order, the same body of law, operating in each case; it is the vital force of our fourfold life,—it has one unity in the intellect, the will, the emotions, the senses,—is equal to the whole nature of man, and responds to him and sustains him on every side. A lover of beauty in whom conscience is feeble cannot wander if he follow beauty; nor a cold thinker err, though without a moral sense, if he accept truth; nor a just man, nor a seeker after pure joy merely, if they act according to knowledge each in his sphere. The course of action that increases life may be selected because it is reasonable, or joyful, or beautiful, or right; and therefore one may say fearlessly, choose the things that are beautiful, the things that are joyful, the things that are reasonable, the things that are right, and all else shall be added unto you. The binding force in this order is what literature, ideal literature, most brings out and emphasizes in its generalizations, that causal union which has hitherto been spoken of in the region of plot only; but it exists in every aspect of this order, and literature universalizes experience in all these realms, in the provinces of beauty and passion no less than in those of virtue and knowledge, and its method is the same in all.

Is not our knowledge of this fourfold order in its principles, in those relations of its phenomena which constitute its laws, of the highest importance of anything of human concern? In harmony with these laws, and only thus, we ourselves, in whom this order is, become happy, righteous, wise, and beautiful. In ideal literature this knowledge is found, expressed, and handed down age after age—the knowledge of necessary and permanent relations in these great spheres which, taken together, exhaust the capacities of life. Man's moral sense is strong in proportion as he apprehends necessity in the sequence of will and act; his intellect is strong, his emotions, his sense of beauty, are strong in the same way in proportion as he apprehends necessity in each several field of experience. And conversely, the weakness of the intellect lies in a greater or less failure to realise relations of fact in their logic; and the other faculties, in proportion as they fail to realize such relations in their own region, have a similar incapacity. Insanity, in the broad sense, is involuntary error in a nature incapable of effectual enlightenment, and hence abnormal or diseased; but the state of error, whether more or less, whether voluntary or involuntary, whether curable or incurable, in itself is the same. To take an example from one sphere, in the moral world the criminal through ignorance of or distrust in or revolt from the supreme divine law seeks to maintain himself by his own power solitarily as if he might be a law unto himself; he experiences, without the intervention of any human judge, the condemnation which consigns him to enfeeblement and extinction through the decay and death of his nature, as a moral being, stage by stage; this is God's justice, visiting sin with death. Similarly, and to most more obviously, in society itself, the criminal against society, because he does not understand, or believe, or prefers not to accept arbitrary social law as the means by which necessarily the general good, including his own, is worked out, seeks to substitute for it his own intelligence, his cunning, in his search for prosperity, as he conceives it, by an adaptation of means to ends on his own account. This is why the imperfection of human law is sometimes a just excuse for social crime in those whom society does not benefit, its slaves and pariahs. But whether in God's world or in man's, the mind of the criminal, disengaging itself from reliance on the whole fabric for whatever reason, pulverizes because he fails to realize the necessary relations of the world in which he lives in their normal operation, and has no effectual belief in them as unavoidably operant in his nature or over his fortunes. This was the truth that lay in the Platonic doctrine that all sin is ignorance; but Plato did not take account of any possible depravity in the will. Nor is what has been illustrated above true of the mind and the will only. In the region of emotion and of beauty, there may be similar aberration, if these are not grasped in their vital nature, in organic relation to the whole of life.

These several parts of our being are not independent of one another, but are in the closest alliance. They act conjointly and with one result in the single soul in which they find their unity as various energies of one personal power. It cannot be that contradiction should arise among them in their right operation, nor the error of one continue undetected by the others; that the base should be joyful or the wicked beautiful in reality, is impossible. In the narrow view the lust of the eye and the pride of life may seem beautiful, but in the broad perspective of the inward world they take on ugliness; in the moment they may seem pleasurable, but in the backward reach of memory they take on pain; to assert eternity against the moment, to see life in the whole, to live as if all of life were concentrated in its instant, is the chief labour of the mind, the eye, the heart, the enduring will, all together. To represent a villain as attractive is an error of art, which thus misrepresents the harmony of our nature. Satan, as conceived by Milton, may seem to be a majestic figure, but he was not so to Milton's imagination. "The Infernal Serpent" is the first name the poet gives him; and though sublime imagery of gloom and terror is employed to depict his diminished brightness and inflamed malice, Milton repeatedly takes pains to degrade him to the eye, as when in Paradise he is surprised at the ear of Eve "squat like a toad"; and when he springs up in his own form there, as the "grisly king," he mourns most his beauty lost; neither is his resolute courage long admirable. To me, at least, so far from having any heroic quality, he seems always the malign fiend sacrificing innocence to an impotent revenge. In all great creations of art it is necessary that this consistency of beauty, virtue, reason, and joy should he preserved.