Natural History of Enthusiasm

by Isaac Taylor

The propensity of a disordered imagination to find, or to create, some region of fictitious happiness, leads not a few to betake themselves to the fields of intellectual enjoyment, where they may be exempt from the annoyances that infest the lower world. Hence it is that the walks of natural philosophy or abstract science, and of literature, and especially of poetry and the fine arts, are frequented by many who addict themselves to pursuits of this kind, not so much from a genuine impulse of native genius or taste, as from a yearning desire to discover some paradise of delights, where no croaking voice of disappointment is heard, and where adversity has no range or leave of entrance. These intruders upon the realms of philosophy—these refugees from the vexations of common life, as they are in quest merely of solace and diversion, do not often become effective laborers in the departments upon which they enter: their motive possesses not the vigor necessary for continued and productive toil. Or if a degree of ambition happens to be conjoined with the feeble ardor of the mind, it renders them empirics in science, or schemers in mechanics; or they essay their ineptitude upon some gaudy extravagance of verse or picture; or perhaps spend their days in loading folios, shelves, and glass cases with curious lumber of whatever kind most completely unites the qualities of rarity and worthlessness.

Nature has furnished each of the active faculties with a sensibility to pleasure in its own exercise: this sensibility is the spring of spontaneous exertion; and if the intellectual constitution be robust, it serves to stimulate labor, and yet itself observes a modest sobriety, leaving the forces of the mind to do their part without embarrassment. The pleasurable emotion is always subordinate and subservient, never predominant or importunate. But in minds of a less healthy temperament, the emotion of pleasure, and the consequent excitement, is disproportionate to the strength of the faculties. The efficient power of the understanding is therefore overborne, and left in the rear; there is more of commotion than of action; more of movement than of progress; more of enterprise than of achievement.

Such, then, are those who, in due regard both to the essential differences of character, and to the proprieties of language, should be termed Enthusiasts. To apply an epithet which carries with it an idea of folly, of weakness, and of extravagance, to a vigorous mind, efficiently as well as ardently engaged in the pursuit of any substantial and important object, is not merely to misuse a word, but to introduce confusion among our notions, and to put contempt upon what is deserving of respect. Where there is no error of imagination, no misjudging of realities, no calculation which reason condemns, there is no enthusiasm, even though the soul may be on fire with the velocity of its movement in pursuit of its chosen object. If once we abandon this distinction, language will want a term for a well-known and very common vice of the mind; and, from a wasteful perversion of phrases, we must be reduced to speak of qualities most noble and most infirm by the very same designation. If the objects which excite the ardor of the mind are substantial, and if the mode of pursuit be truly conducive to their attainment; if, in a word, all be real and genuine, then it is not one degree more, or even many degrees more, of intensity of feeling that can alter the character of the emotion. Enthusiasm is not a term of measurement, but of quality.

When it is said that enthusiasm is the fault of infirm constitutions, a seeming exception must be made in behalf of a few high-tempered spirits, distinguished by their indefatigable energy, and destined to achieve arduous and hazardous enterprises. That such spirits often exhibit the characters of enthusiasm cannot be denied; for the imagination spurns restraint, and rejects all the sober measurements and calculations of reason, whenever its chosen object is in view; and a tinge, often more than a tinge, of extravagance belongs to every word and action. And yet the exception is only apparent; for although these giants of human nature greatly surpass other men in force of mind, courage, and activity, still the heroic extravagance, and the irregular and ungovernable power which enables them to dare and to do so much, is, in fact, nothing more than a partial accumulation of strength, necessary because the utmost energies of human nature are so small, that, if equally distributed through the system, they would be inadequate to arduous labors. The very same task, which the human hero achieves in the fury and fever of a half-mad enthusiasm, would be performed by a seraph in the perfect serenity of reason. Although, therefore, these vigorous minds are strong when placed in comparison with others, their enthusiasm is in itself a weakness;—a weakness of the species, if not of the individual.

Unless a perpetual miracle were to intercept the natural operation of common causes, religion, not less than philosophy or poetry, will draw enthusiasts within its precincts. Nor, if we recollect on the one hand the fitness of the vast objects revealed in the Scriptures to affect the imagination, and on the other, the wide diffusion of religious ideas, can it seem strange if it be found, in fact, that religious enthusiasts outnumber any other class. It is also quite natural that enthusiastic and genuine religious emotions should be intermingled with peculiar intricacy; since the revelations which give them scope combine, in a peculiar manner, elements of grandeur, of power, and of sublimity (fitted to kindle the imagination), with those ideas that furnish excitement to the moral sentiments.

The religion of the heart, it is manifest, may be supplanted by a religion of the imagination, just in the same way that the social affections are often dislodged or corrupted by factitious sensibilities. Every one knows that an artificial excitement of the kind and tender emotions of our nature may take place through the medium of the imagination. Hence the power of poetry and the drama. But every one must also know that these feelings, how vivid soever and seemingly pure and salutary they may be, and however nearly they may resemble the genuine workings of the soul, are so far from producing the same softening effect upon the character, that they tend rather to indurate the heart. Whenever excitements of any kind are regarded distinctly as a source of luxurious pleasure, then, instead of expanding the bosom with beneficent energy, instead of dispelling the sinister purposes of selfishness, instead of shedding the softness and warmth of generous love through the moral system, they become a freezing centre of solitary and unsocial indulgence; and at length displace every emotion that deserves to be called virtuous. No cloak of selfishness is, in fact, more impenetrable than that which usually envelops a pampered imagination. The reality of woe is the very circumstance that paralyses sympathy; and the eye that can pour forth its flood of commiseration for the sorrows of the romance or the drama, grudges a tear to the substantial wretchedness of the unhappy. Much more often than not, this kind of luxurious sensitiveness to fiction is conjoined with a callousness that enables the subject of it to pass through the affecting occasions of domestic life in immovable apathy:—the heart has become, like that of leviathan, "firm as a stone, yea, hard as a piece of the nether millstone."

This process of perversion and of induration may as readily have place among the religious emotions as among those of any other class; for the laws of human nature are uniform, whatever may be the immediate cause which puts them in action; and a fictitious piety corrupts or petrifies the heart not less certainly than does a romantic sentimentality. The danger attending enthusiasm in religion is not, then, of a trivial sort; and whoever disaffects the substantial matters of Christianity, and seeks to derive from it merely, or chiefly, the gratifications of excited feeling; whoever combines from its materials a paradise of abstract contemplation, or of poetic imagery, where he may take refuge from the annoyances and the importunate claims of common life; whoever thus delights himself with dreams, and is insensible to realities, lives in peril of awaking from his illusions when truth comes too late. The religious idealist sincerely believes himself, perhaps, to be eminently devout; and those who witness his abstraction, his elevation, his enjoyments, may reverence his piety; meanwhile, this fictitious happiness creeps as a lethargy through the moral system, and is rendering him, continually, less and less susceptible of those emotions in which true religion consists.

Nor is this always the limit of the evil; for though religious enthusiasm may sometimes seem a harmless delusion, compatible with amiable feelings and virtuous conduct, it more often allies itself with the malign passions, and then produces the virulent mischiefs of fanaticism. Opportunity may be wanting, and habit may be wanting, but intrinsic qualification for the perpetration of the worst crimes is not wanting to the man whose bosom heaves with religious enthusiasm, inflamed by malignancy. If checks are removed, if incitements are presented, if the momentum of action and custom is acquired, he will soon learn to contemn every emotion of kindness or of pity, as if it were a treason against heaven, and will make it his ambition to rival the achievements, not of heroes, but of fiends. The amenities that have been diffused through society in modern times forbid the overt acts and excesses of fanatical feeling; but the venom still lurks in the vicinity of enthusiasm, and may be quickened in a moment meantime, while smothered and repressed, it gives edge and spirit to those hundred religious differences which are still the opprobrium of Christianity. Whoever, then, admits into his bosom the artificial fire of an imaginative piety, ought first to assure himself that his heart harbors no particle of the poison of ill-will.

The reproach so eagerly propagated by those who make no religious pretensions, against those who do—that their godliness serves them as a cloak of immorality, is, to a great extent, calumnious: it is also, in some measure, founded upon facts, which, though misunderstood and exaggerated, give color to the charge. When professors of religion are suddenly found to be wanting in common integrity, or in personal virtue, no other supposition is admitted by the world than that the delinquent was always a hypocrite; and this supposition is, no doubt, sometimes not erroneous. But much more often his fall has surprised himself not less than others; and is, in fact, nothing more than the natural issue of a fictitious piety, which, though it might hold itself entire under ordinary circumstances, gave way necessarily in the hour of unusual trial. An artificial religion not only fails to impart to the mind the vigor and consistency of true virtue, but withdraws attention from those common principles of honor and integrity which carry worldly men with credit through difficult occasions. The enthusiast is, therefore, of all men, the one who is the worst prepared to withstand peculiar seductions. He possesses neither the heavenly armor of virtue, nor the earthly.

It were an affront to reason, as well as to theology, to suppose that true and universal virtue can rest on any other foundation than the fear and love of God. The enthusiast, therefore, whose piety is fictitious, has only a choice of immoralities, to be determined by his temperament and circumstances. He may become, perhaps, nothing worse than a recluse—an indolent contemplatist, and intellectual voluptuary, shut up from his fellows in the circle of profitless spiritual delights and conflicts. The times are, indeed, gone by when persons of this class might, in contempt of their species, and in idolatry of themselves, withdraw to dens, and hold society only with bats, and make the supreme wisdom to consist in the possession of a long beard, a filthy blanket, and a taste for raw herbs: but the same tastes, animated by the same principles, fail not still to find place of indulgence, even amid the crowds of a city: and the recluse who lives in the world will probably be more sour in temper than the anchoret of the wilderness. An ardent temperament converts the enthusiast into a zealot, who, while he is laborious in winning proselytes, discharges common duties very remissly, and is found to be a more punctilious observer of his creed than of his word. Or, if his imagination be fertile, he becomes a visionary, who lives on better terms with angels and with seraphs than with his children, servants, and neighbors: or he is one who, while he reverences the "thrones, dominions, and powers" of the invisible world, vents his spleen in railing at all "dignities and powers" of earth.