Men may win great admiration and great fame, but not great love; though they gain, perhaps, as much as they give. Only by writing out of the bosom of a great humanity to the great humanity, can one fill the measure of good art or good culture. Even Goethe, of whom Professor Seeley says, that "he found every thing interesting except the fact that Napoleon was trampling upon Germany"—a fatal exception: even Goethe, with all his art, his marvellous versatility and fine accomplishment, failed to reach the highest place, either in the best self-culture, or in men's best love. Savant, poet, novelist, of high mark, as he was, he has no such place as Newton, Wordsworth, and Walter Scott, in men's love. Schiller and Richter, I believe, are more beloved in Germany, than Goethe.
In mere art, in perfection of style, no writers have equalled Homer and Shakspeare. But they did not say, "Art for art's sake." They had no thought but to communicate their thought. If singular felicities appear in their style, little eddyings of exquisitely turned conceits, as especially in Shakspeare, they made a part of, and swept on the strong current of their ideas. They were not introduced for their own sake, or merely to please the writer.
It has been said that great authors are born of great occasions. Some remarkable era, some turn or tide in human thought, or in human affairs, have borne them on to their supreme greatness. Will not the time come, when men shall so look into the depths of the human heart, into the tragic or blissful experiences of all human life, that no great era shall be necessary to make great writers?
I believe it. I believe in a perpetual human progress—progress in every kind, material, mental, moral, religious, divine; and I greatly desire to say a few words in close, if you will indulge me upon this point. For I found this faith in progress, on the two principles which I have been considering in this lecture. Selfhood obliges a man to take care of himself. To go out of himself is the only way, in which he can take care of himself—can take care, that is to say, of his own improvement and happiness. In selfhood, necessary as it is, there is no virtue, and little joy. Outflow from it—love, generosity, disinterestedness—embraces the whole sphere of our culture and welfare.
Can there be any doubt upon either of these points—either the culture or welfare?
Upon the culture, I say; upon what makes for human improvement. There is evil enough in the world; but what nation or age ever approved of it? What people ever praised selfishness, injustice, falsifying of speech or trust? No literature ever celebrated them. No religion ever enjoined them. No laws ever enacted them. Imagine a law that proposed to reward villains and to punish honest men. The world would spit upon it. Imagine a book or essay or poem or oration, that plainly set about to tell what a beautiful and noble thing it is, to lie, to defraud, to wrong, corrupt, and ruin our fellows. No man ever had the face to do such a thing. No; books may have taught such things, but they never taught them as noble things. The man never lived, that would stand up and say, "It is a glorious thing to betray trust, or to ruin one's country, or to blaspheme God." Men do such things, but they don't reverence nor respect themselves for doing them.
This then being settled—and it is a stupendous fact—the right principle about culture, being thus set up, high and irrepealable in the human conscience and in the sentiments of all mankind—what says the common judgment of men about the happiness or misery of following the right? Does it say—"It is a blessed thing to be a bad man; it is good and wise to be a base or cruel man." Does it say—"Happy is the miser, the knave, the drunkard." No, it does not. There is temptation to do wrong; that all know; there is a notion that it may promote some temporary interest or pleasure; there is a disposition in many, to prefer some sensual gratification to the purer satisfactions of the higher nature; but there is, at the same time, a deep-founded conviction, that misery in the long run must follow sin; that the everlasting law of God has so ordained it to be; and that only the pure, the noble, the heroic, the good and godlike affections can ever make such a nature as ours, content and happy.
Here then is another stupendous principle settled. And now, I say, this being is a lover of happiness. He is not wise; he is not clear-seeing; he is not good either—i.e., he is not fixedly and determinately good; he is weak too; he is easily misled; he is often rebellious to the higher laws of his nature; but—I hold to that—he is a lover of happiness; and happiness, he knows, can never be found, but in obedience to those higher laws. He is a lover of happiness, I say; he cannot be worse off, without wishing to be better off; if he is sick, he wants to be well; if his roof lets in the rain, he will have it repaired; if the meanest implement he uses, is broken, he will have it mended. Is it not natural—is it not inevitable, that this tendency should yet develop itself in the higher concerns of his being? Is it not in the natural order of things, that the higher should at length gain the ascendency over the lower, the stronger over the weaker, the nobler over the meaner? How can it be thought—how can it be, in the realm of Infinite Beneficence and Wisdom, that meanness and vileness, sin and ruin should be strong and prevail, and gain victory upon victory, and spread curse beyond curse, and draw their dark trail over the bright eternity of ages!