Lessons in Life; A Series of Familiar Essays

by J. G. Holland

Let us suppose that in a country journey we arrive at the summit of a hill, at whose foot lies a charming village imbosomed in trees from the midst of which, rises the white spire of the village church. If we are in a poetical mood, we say: "How beautiful is this retirement! This quiet retreat, away from the world's distractions and great temptations, must be the abode of domestic and social virtue—the home of contentment, of peace, and of an unquestioning Christian faith. Fortunate are they whose lot it is to be born and to pass their days here, and to be buried at last in the little graveyard behind the church." As we see the children playing upon the grass, and the tidy matrons sitting in their doorways, and the farmers at work in the fields, and the quiet inn, with its brooding piazzas like wings waiting for the shelter of its guests, the scene fills us with a rare poetic delight. In the midst of our little rapture, however, a communicative villager comes along, and we question him. We are shocked to learn that the inn is a very bad place, with a drunken landlord, that there is a quarrel in the church which is about to drive the old pastor away, that there is not a man in the village who would not leave it if he could sell his property, that the women give a free rein to their propensity for scandal, and that half of the children of the place are down with the measles.

The true poet sees things not always as they are, but as they ought to be. He insists upon congruity and consistency. Such a life should be in such a spot, under such circumstances; and no unwarped and unpolluted mind can fail to see that the poet's ideal is the embodiment of God's will. The poet's Indian is very different from the real native American who has been exposed to the corrupting influences-of the white man's civilization. The poet insists on seeing in the American Indian a noble manhood, simple tastes, freedom from all conventionality, heroic fortitude, and all those romantic qualities which a free forest life seems so well calculated to engender. He looks upon the deep, mysterious woods, traversed by nameless streams; the majestic mountains, haunted by shadows; the broad lakes, swept only by the wind and the wild man's oar, and he says: "it is fitting, and only fitting, that out of such a realm should come such a life." Which is the better and the more truthful Indian—that of the poet, or he who drank the rum of our fathers and then scalped them? The poet's village is the model village, and the poet's Indian is the model Indian. Both are built of the best and truest materials that God furnishes, and we see that when the actual village and the real Indian are tried by the poetic standard, they are tried by the severest standard that can be applied to them. The poet's ideal embodies God's ideal of a village and an Indian.

The grand, basilar idea of American institutions is human equality—the idea embodied in the American Declaration of Independence, that men are created free and equal, each with an independent, and all with a co-ordinate, right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There is in this idea the highest poetry, because it is the transcendent truth; and there is no true poetry this side of the highest truth. Poetry follows the universal law, and is dependent for its quality upon its materials. In the degree in which its materials are fictitious and artificial, is it poor and false. The Pilgrim's Progress is essentially better poetry than the Paradise Lost, because it contains more of the truth as it is in the divine life of man.

The poetic test, then, is practically a very valuable one, in all the important matters that relate to our life. Much of that which is miscalled poetry has been based upon arbitrary and artificial distinctions in human society and human lot. The poet has often sung of thrones and palaces, of kings and queens, of men and women of gentle blood, of barons and knights and squires, of retainers and dependents, of patricians and plebeians, and thus drawn his grand interest from distinctions in which God and Nature have had no hand. There may be romance, fancy, imagination, sentiment, and even instruction in such compositions as these, but there is no poetry. They have not in them the immortal life and the motive power of truth. We have only to carry distinctions thus attempted to be glorified to their logical results to land in the slavery of the masses to the over-mastering few. Now there never was, and there never can be, any poetry in slavery. Since time began no true poet has undertaken to write a line in praise of slavery. Poets have always been, and they must necessarily forever be, the prophets and priests of freedom. Multitudes of men have undertaken to justify slavery by the Bible, by expediency, by history, by necessity, by philosophy, by the constitution of the country; but no man ever undertook to justify it by poetry. The most brilliant prize offered by a national committee for the best poem in praise of human slavery, would not be able to draw forth a single stanza from any man capable of writing a line of true poetry. Philosophical defences of slavery can be purchased, political justifications can be had at the small price of a small office, and Christian apologies to order, but, thank God! not one line in praise of slavery could be written by a true poet, if the wealth of the world were to be his reward.

We have in the present age a sickly, sentimental humanity which is busily endeavoring to pervert the sense and love of justice in mankind. It regards the disposition to do wrong as a disease, to be treated with appropriate emollients applied over the heart, or some gentle opiate or alterative taken through the ears. It pities the murderer, and aims to give the impression to him and to the world that he is a victim to the barbarous instincts of society in the degree by which his punishment is made severe. It aims to transform prisons into comfortable asylums, where those who have been so unfortunate as to burn somebody's house, or steal somebody's horse, or insert a dirk under somebody's waistcoat, may retire and repent of their little follies, and in the mean time get better food and lodging than they were ever able to steal. Punishment—retribution—these are words which make them shudder. Nothing in their view is proper but such treatment of the criminal, be it soft or severe, as will contribute to his reformation. The criminal has forfeited no rights, and society has no claims upon him, if he only repents; and all punishment inflicted beyond the measure necessary to secure repentance is cruel. We have a great deal of this; and more or less it is modifying theological systems and vitiating public policy. It is carried to such an extent, often, as to make of the greatest criminals notable martyrs. Society and the victim of wrong-doing are both forgotten in sympathy for the wrong-doer.

Now these sentimental sympathizers with criminals, call themselves Christians, and are not willing to believe that any man can, in a truly Christian spirit, oppose their theories and their influence. They have been able to blind almost every sense in a man except the poetic sense; but to this they appeal in vain. "Poetic justice" maintains its purity. The reader of a novel, no matter how good or how bad he may be, demands that the villain of the book shall be punished as a matter of justice alike to him. and to those who have been his victims. Nothing but justice— nothing but a fitting retribution—will satisfy. The poetic instinct demands a perfect system of rewards and punishments, and is as little satisfied when a hero succeeds indifferently, as when a scoundrel fails to be punished according to his deserts. There is no poetic fitness without justice—retribution, pound for pound, and measure for measure. Set any audience that can be gathered to watching a play in which criminal and crafty art is made to meet and master a guileless spirit and pollute a spotless womanhood, and the sympathies of the vilest will follow the victim, and, in the end, demand the punishment of the victor. Nothing will seem to any audience so entirely out of place as kind and gentle treatment toward the artful brute, and nothing more outrageously unjust than the idea that repentance is the principal end of his punishment. The poetic instinct of fitness once thoroughly roused, as it is in a story, a poem, or a play, will be satisfied with nothing but full suffering for every sin. Now I would trust this poetic instinct of fitness further than I would all the sympathies of the humanitarians, all the sophistries of the philosophers, all the subtleties of the theologians, and all the milder virtues of Christianity itself. To me, it is as authoritative as a direct revelation from God, and is equivalent to it.

Again, nothing is more apparent in American character and American life than a growing lack of reverence. It begins in the family, and runs out through all the relations of society. The parent may be loved, but he is much less revered than in the olden time. Parental authority is cast off early, and age and gray hairs do not command that tender regard and that careful respect that they did in the times of the fathers. In politics, it is the habit to speak in light and disrespectful terms of those whose experience gives them the right to counsel and command. Young men talk flippantly of "fossils," and "old fogies," and wonder why men who have been buried once will not remain quietly in their graves. Of course, when such a spirit as this prevails, there can be no reverence for authority, no respect for place and position, and no genuine and hearty loyalty. We nickname our Presidents; and "old Buck" and "old Abe" are spoken of as familiarly as if they were a pair of old oxen we were in the habit of driving. Every man considers himself good enough for any place, and great enough to judge every other man. If a pastor does not happen to suit a parishioner, the parishioner has no feeling of reverence for him that would hinder him from telling him so to his face. Every man considers himself not only as good and as great as any other man, but a little better and a little greater. No being but God is revered, and He, I fear, not overmuch. What we call "Young America" is made up of about equal parts of irreverence, conceit, and that popular moral quality familiarly known as "brass."

It is the habit to applaud Young America—to magnify the superior wisdom and efficiency of young men, to treat old age familiarly, and to compel those of superior years to ignore the honors with which God has crowned them. "Every dog has his day," we say, and we are impatient of a man who declines to step into retirement the moment that his hair turns gray, to make room for some specimen of Young America with a snub nose and a smart shirt-collar. Now, however this irreverence may be justified—and it is not only justified but shamelessly gloried in—it is not poetical. Poetry cannot be woven of improprieties. A people bowing with reverence to those in authority, and regarding with profound respect high official station; a family of children clinging, even through a long manhood and womanhood, around the form of an aged parent with assiduous attentions and tender reverence; a community or a nation of young men looking to age for wisdom and for counsel; universal respect for years on the part of the young—these are, and must forever remain, poetical. Out of reverence can be woven the most beautiful pictures which the poet's brain can conceive; but Young America can no more excite poetic sentiment, or inspire poetic imaginations, than the sham Havana it smokes, or the mongrel horse it drives. There is no poetry in an irreverent character, or in an irreverent community. Irreverence in any form will not stand the poetic test.

Americans boast habitually of their country, and their boastings always assume the poetic form. The ballot-box that they talk about is the ballot-box that ought to be and not the ballot-box that is. One would think, to hear what is said of the ballot-box, that it literally shines with glory, so that every American freeman who marches up to it to deposit the paper embodiment of his will, glows like a God in its light, and grows godlike by his act. If we are to believe Mr. Whittier, the poor voter sings on election day:

"The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.