69. And, without discussing the use of the word by different writers, I will tell you that the dearest and safest idea of the mental state itself is to be gained from the representations of it by the words of ancient Christian religion, and even from what you may think its superstitions. Without any discussion also as to the personal existence or traditional character of evil spirits, you will find it a practical fact, that external temptations and inevitable trials of temper, have power against you which your health and virtue depend on your resisting; that, if not resisted, the evil energy of them will pass into your own heart, φρήν, or μῆνις; and that the ordinary and vulgarized phrase “the Devil, or betraying Spirit, is in him” is the most scientifically accurate which you can apply to any person so influenced. You will find also that, in the compass of literature, the casting out of, or cleansing from, such a state is best symbolized for you by the image of one who had been wandering wild and naked among tombs, sitting still, clothed, and in his right mind, and that in whatever literal or figurative sense you receive the Biblical statement of what followed, this is absolutely certain, that the herd of swine hastening to their destruction, in perfect sympathy with each other’s fury, is the most accurate symbol ever given, in literature, of consummate human ἀφροσύνη.
(The conditions of insanity,[E] delighting in scenes of death, which affect at the present time the arts of revolutionary Europe, were illustrated in the sequel of this lecture: but I neither choose to take any permanent notice of the examples I referred to, nor to publish any part of what I said, until I can enter more perfectly into the analysis of the elements of evil passion which always distorted and polluted even the highest arts of Greek and Christian loyal religion; and now occupy in deadly entireness, the chambers of imagination, devastated, and left desolate of joy, by impiety, and disobedience.
In relation to the gloom of gray colour characteristic especially of the modern French revolutionary school, I entered into some examination of the conditions of real temperance and reserve in colour, showing that it consisted not in refusing colour, but in governing it; and that the most pure and bright colours might be thus perfectly governed, while the most dull were probably also the most violent and intemperate. But it would be useless to print this part of the lecture without the colour-illustrations used.
Passing to the consideration of intemperance and immodesty in the choice even of landscape subjects, I referred thus for contrast, to the quietude of Turner’s “Greta and Tees.”)
70. If you wish to feel the reserve of this drawing, look, first, into the shops at their display of common chromo-lithotints; see how they are made up of Matterhorns, Monte Rosas, blue glaciers, green lakes, white towers, magnificent banditti, romantic peasantry, or always-successful sportsmen or fishermen in Highland costume; and then see what Turner is content with. No Matterhorns are needful, or even particularly pleasing to him. A bank, some eight or ten feet high, of Yorkshire shale is enough. He would not thank you for giving him all the giant forests of California:—would not be so much interested in them nor half so happy among them, as he is here with a switch of oak sapling, which the Greta has pulled down among the stones, and teased awhile, and which, now that the water is lower, tries to get up again, out of its way.
He does not want any towers or towns. Here you are to be contented with three square windows of a country gentleman’s house. He does not want resplendent banditti. Behold! here is a brown cow and a white one: what would you have more? And this scarcely-falling rapid of the Tees—here pausing to circle round a pool, and there laughing as it trips over a ledge of rock, six or seven inches high, is more to him—infinitely more—than would be the whole colossal drainage of Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, which Carlyle has justly taken for a type of the Niagara of our national precipitous ἀφροσύνη.
71. I need not point out to you the true temperance of colour in this drawing—how slightly green the trees are, how softly blue the sky.
Now I put a chromo-lithotint beside it.
Well, why is that good, this bad? Simply because if you think, and work, and discipline yourselves nobly, you will come to like the Greta and Tees; if not, you will come to like this. The one is what a strong man likes; the other what a weak one likes: that is modest, full of true αἰδὼς, noble restraint, noble reverence;—this has no αἰδὼς, no fear, no measure;—not even purpose, except, by accumulation of whatever it can see or snatch, to move the vile apathy of the public ἀφροσύνη into sensation.