Had he stopped to subject his opinion to metaphysical criticism, he would not, I think, have found reason to change it. To subjectify the universe is not to improve it, much less to dissolve it. The space I call my idea has all the properties of the space I called my environment; it has the same inevitable presence and the same fundamental validity. Because it is a law of our intelligence that two and two make four, and the implications of that law may be traced by abstract thought, the world which is subject to that arithmetical principle is not made more amenable to our higher demands than if it had been arithmetical of its own sweet will. It is not made docile by being called our creature. Indeed, what is less docile to us than ourselves? what less subject to our correction than the foundations of our own being? So when the Kantian philosophy teaches us to look upon the enveloping universe as a figment of the understanding and on its laws as results of mental synthesis and inference, we are still pursued by the inevitable presence of that figment and confronted involuntarily by that result. Nay, the conditions of our thought, like the predispositions of our characters, are the most fatal and inexorable of our limitations.
Why the world is as it is, whether of itself or by refraction in the medium of our intellect, is not a question that affects the practical moralist. What concerns him is that the laws of the world, whatever their origin, are fixed and unchangeable conditions of our happiness. We cannot change the world, even if we boast to have made it; we must in any case learn to live with it, whether it be our parent or our child. To veil its character with euphemisms or to supply its defects with superstitious assumptions is a course unworthy of a brave man and abhorrent to a prudent one. What we should do is to make a modest inventory of our possessions and a just estimate of our powers in order to apply both, with what strength we have, to the realization of our ideals in society, in art, and in science. These will constitute our Cosmos. In building it—for there is none other that builds it for us—we shall be carrying on the work of the only race that has yet seriously attempted to live rationally, the race to which we owe the name and the idea of a Cosmos, as well as the beginnings of its realization. We shall then be making that rare advance in wisdom which consists in abandoning our illusions the better to attain our ideals.
[X]
THE ELEMENTS AND FUNCTION OF POETRY
If a critic, in despair of giving a serious definition of poetry, should be satisfied with saying that poetry is metrical discourse, he would no doubt be giving an inadequate account of the matter, yet not one of which he need be ashamed or which he should regard as superficial. Although a poem be not made by counting of syllables upon the fingers, yet "numbers" is the most poetical synonym we have for verse, and "measure" the most significant equivalent for beauty, for goodness, and perhaps even for truth. Those early and profound philosophers, the followers of Pythagoras, saw the essence of all things in number, and it was by weight, measure, and number, as we read in the Bible, that the Creator first brought Nature out of the void. Every human architect must do likewise with his edifice; he must mould his bricks or hew his stones into symmetrical solids and lay them over one another in regular strata, like a poet's lines.
Measure is a condition of perfection, for perfection requires that order should be pervasive, that not only the whole before us should have a form, but that every part in turn should have a form of its own, and that those parts should be coordinated among themselves as the whole is coordinated with the other parts of some greater cosmos. Leibnitz lighted in his speculations upon a conception of organic nature which may be false as a fact, but which is excellent as an ideal; he tells us that the difference between living and dead matter, between animals and machines, is that the former are composed of parts that are themselves organic, every portion of the body being itself a machine, and every portion of that machine still a machine, and so ad infinitum; whereas, in artificial bodies the organization is not in this manner infinitely deep. Fine Art, in this as in all things, imitates the method of Nature and makes its most beautiful works out of materials that are themselves beautiful. So that even if the difference between verse and prose consisted only in measure, that difference would already be analogous to that between jewels and clay.
The stuff of language is words, and the sensuous material of words is sound; if language therefore is to be made perfect, its materials must be made beautiful by being themselves subjected to a measure, and endowed with a form. It is true that language is a symbol for intelligence rather than a stimulus to sense, and accordingly the beauties of discourse which commonly attract attention are merely the beauties of the objects and ideas signified; yet the symbols have a sensible reality of their own, a euphony which appeals to our senses if we keep them open. The tongue will choose those forms of utterance which have a natural grace as mere sound and sensation; the memory will retain these catches, and they will pass and repass through the mind until they become types of instinctive speech and standards of pleasing expression.
The highest form of such euphony is song; the singing voice gives to the sounds it utters the thrill of tonality,—a thrill itself dependent, as we know, on the numerical proportions of the vibrations that it includes. But this kind of euphony and sensuous beauty, the deepest that sounds can have, we have almost wholly surrendered in our speech. Our intelligence has become complex, and language, to express our thoughts, must commonly be more rapid, copious, and abstract than is compatible with singing. Music at the same time has become complex also, and when united with words, at one time disfigures them in the elaboration of its melody, and at another overpowers them in the volume of its sound. So that the art of singing is now in the same plight as that of sculpture,—an abstract and conventional thing surviving by force of tradition and of an innate but now impotent impulse, which under simpler conditions would work itself out into the proper forms of those arts. The truest kind of euphony is thus denied to our poetry. If any verses are still set to music, they are commonly the worst only, chosen for the purpose by musicians of specialized sensibility and inferior intelligence, who seem to be attracted only by tawdry effects of rhetoric and sentiment.
When song is given up, there still remains in speech a certain sensuous quality, due to the nature and order of the vowels and consonants that compose the sounds. This kind of euphony is not neglected by the more dulcet poets, and is now so studied in some quarters that I have heard it maintained by a critic of relative authority that the beauty of poetry consists entirely in the frequent utterance of the sound of "j" and "sh," and the consequent copious flow of saliva in the mouth. But even if saliva is not the whole essence of poetry, there is an unmistakable and fundamental diversity of effect in the various vocalization of different poets, which becomes all the more evident when we compare those who use different languages. One man's speech, or one nation's, is compact, crowded with consonants, rugged, broken with emphatic beats; another man's, or nation's, is open, tripping, rapid, and even. So Byron, mingling in his boyish fashion burlesque with exquisite sentiment, contrasts English with Italian speech:—