The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 09 (of 12)

by William Hazlitt

The ideal is the abstraction of any thing from all the circumstances that weaken its effect, or lessen our admiration of it. Or it is filling up the outline of truth or beauty existing in the mind, so as to leave nothing wanting or to desire farther. The principle of the ideal is the satisfaction we have in the contemplation of any quality or object, which makes us seek to heighten, to prolong, or extend that satisfaction to the utmost; and beyond this we cannot go, for we cannot get beyond the highest conceivable degree of any quality or excellence diffused over the whole of an object. Any notion of perfection beyond is is a word without meaning—a thing in the clouds. Another name for the ideal is the divine; for, what we imagine of the Gods is pleasure without pain—power without effort. The ideal is the impassive and immortal: it is that which exists in and for itself; or is begot by the intense idea and innate love of it. Hence it has been argued by some, as if it were brought from another sphere, as Raphael was said to have fetched his Galatea from the skies; but it was the Gods, ‘the children of Homer,’ who peopled ‘the cloud-capt Olympus.’ The statue of Venus was not beautiful because it represented a goddess; but it was supposed to represent a goddess, because it was in the highest degree (that the art or wit of man could make it so) and in every part beautiful. Goddesses also walk the earth in the shape of women; the height of nature surpasses the utmost stretch of the imagination; the human form is alone the image of the divinity. It has been usual to represent the ideal as an abstraction of general nature, or as a mean or average proportion between different qualities and faculties, which, instead of carrying any one to the highest point of perfection or satisfaction, would only neutralise and damp the impression. We take our notions on this subject chiefly from the antique; but what higher conception do we form of the Jupiter of Phidias than that of power frowning in awful majesty? or of the Minerva of the same hand, than that of wisdom, ‘severe in youthful beauty?’ We shall do well not to refine in our theories beyond these examples, that have been left us—

‘Inimitable on earth by model,

Or by shading pencil shown.’

What is the Venus, the Apollo, the Hercules, but the personification of beauty, grace, and strength, or the displaying these several properties in every part of the attitude, face, and figure, and in the utmost conceivable degree, but without confounding the particular kinds of form or expression in an intermediate something, pretended to be more perfect than either? A thing is not more perfect by becoming something else, but by being more itself. If the face of the Venus had been soft and feminine, but the figure had not corresponded, then this would have been a defect of the ideal, which subdues the discordances of Nature in the mould of passion, and so far from destroying character, imparts the same character to all, according to a certain established idea or preconception in the mind. The following up the contrary principle would lead to the inevitable result, that the most perfect, that is, the most abstract, representation of the human form could contain neither age nor sex, neither character nor expression, neither the attributes of motion nor rest, but a mere unmeaning negation or doubtful balance of all positive qualities—in fact, to propose to embody an abstraction is a contradiction in terms. The attempt to carry such a scheme into execution would not merely supersede all the varieties and accidents of nature, but would effectually put a stop to the productions of art, or reduce them to one vague and undefined abstraction, answering to the word man. That amalgamation, then, of a number of different impressions into one, which in some sense is felt to constitute the ideal, is not to be sought in the dry and desert spaces or the endless void of metaphysical abstraction, or by taking a number of things and muddling them all together, but by singling out some one thing or leading quality of an object, and making it the pervading and regulating principle of all the rest, so as to produce the greatest strength and harmony of effect. This is the natural progress of things, and accords with the ceaseless tendency of the human mind from the Finite to the Infinite. If I see beauty, I do not want to change it for power; if I am struck with power, I am no longer in love with beauty; but I wish to make beauty still more beautiful, power still more powerful, and to pamper and exalt the prevailing impression, whatever it be, till it ends in a dream and a vision of glory. This view of the subject has been often dwelt upon: I shall endeavour to supply some inferences from it. The ideal, it appears then by this account of it, is the enhancing and expanding an idea from the satisfaction we take in it; or it is taking away whatever divides, and adding whatever increases our sympathy with pleasure and power ‘till our content is absolute,’ or at the height. Hence that repose which has been remarked as one striking condition of the ideal; for as it is nothing but the continued approximation of the mind to the great and the good, so in the attainment of this object it rejects as much as possible not only the petty, the mean, and disagreeable, but also the agony and violence of passion, the force of contrast, and the extravagance of imagination. It is a law to itself. It relies on its own aspirations after pure enjoyment and lofty contemplation alone, self-moved and self-sustained, without the grosser stimulus of the irritation of the will, privation, or suffering—unless when it is inured and reconciled to the last (as an element of its being) by heroic fortitude, and when ‘strong patience conquers deep despair.’ In this sense, Milton’s Satan is ideal, though tragic: for it is permanent tragedy, or one fixed idea without vicissitude or frailty, and where all the pride of intellect and power is brought to bear in confronting and enduring pain. Mr. Wordsworth has expressed this feeling of stoical indifference (proof against outward impressions) admirably in the poem of Laodamia:—

‘Know, virtue were not virtue, if the joys

Of sense were able to return as fast

And surely as they vanish. Earth destroys

Those raptures duly: Erebus disdains—

Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains.’

These lines are a noble description and example of the ideal in poetry. But the ideal is not in general the stronghold of poetry. For description in words (to produce any vivid impression) requires a translation of the object into some other form, which is the language of metaphor and imagination; as narrative can only interest by a succession of events and a conflict of hopes and fears. Therefore, the sphere of the ideal is in a manner limited to Sculpture and Painting, where the object itself is given entire without any possible change of circumstances, and where, though the impression is momentary, it lasts for ever. Hence we may see the failure in Sir Charles Grandison, which is an attempt to embody this perfect or ideal character in a succession of actions without passion, and in a variety of situations where he is still the same everlasting coxcomb, and where we are tired to death of the monotony, affectation, and self-conceit. The story of ‘Patient Grizzle,’ however fine the sentiment, is far from dramatic: for the ideal character, which is the self-sufficient, the immovable, and the one, precludes change, or at least all motive for, or interest in, the alternation of events, to which it constantly rises superior. Shakspeare’s characters are interesting and dramatic, in proportion as they are not above passion and outward circumstances, that is, as they are men and not angels. The Greek tragedies may serve to explain how far the ideal and the dramatic are consistent; for the characters there are almost as ideal as their statues, and almost as impassive; and perhaps their extreme decorum and self-possession is only rendered palatable to us by the story which nearly always represents a conflict between Gods and men. The ideal part is, however, necessary at all times to the grandeur of tragedy, since it is the superiority of character to fortune and circumstances, or the larger scope of thought and feeling thrown into it, that redeems it from the charge of vulgar grossness or physical horrors. Mrs. Siddons’s acting had this character; that is to say, she kept her state in the midst of the tempest of passion, and her eye surveyed, not merely the present suffering, but the causes and consequences; there was inherent power and dignity of manner. In a word, as there is a sanguine temperament, and a health of body and mind which floats us over daily annoyances and hindrances (instead of fastening upon petty and disagreeable details), and turns every thing to advantage, so it is in art and works of the imagination, the principle of the ideal being neither more nor less than that fulness of satisfaction and enlargement of comprehension in the mind itself that assists and expands all that accords with it, and throws aside and triumphs over whatever is adverse. Grace in movement is either that which is continuous and consistent, from having no obstacles opposed to it, or that which perseveres in this continuous and equable movement from a delight in it, in spite of interruption or uneven ground; this last is the ideal, or a persisting in, and giving effect to, our choice of the good, notwithstanding the unfavourableness of the actual or outward circumstances. We may in like manner trace the origin of dancing, music, and poetry, which is the march of words. Self-possession is the ideal in ordinary behaviour. A low or vulgar character seizes on every trifling or painful circumstance that occurs, from irritability and want of imagination to look beyond the moment; while a person of more refinement and capacity, or with a stronger predisposition of the mind to good, and a greater fund of good sense and pleasurable feeling to second it, despises these idle provocations, and preserves an unruffled composure and serenity of temper. This internal character, being permanent, communicates itself to the outward expression in proportionable sweetness, delicacy, and unity of effect, which it requires all the same characteristics of the mind to feel and convey to others; and hence the superiority of Raphael’s Madonnas over Hogarth’s faces. Keeping is not the ideal, for there may be keeping in the little, the mean, and the disjointed, without strength, softness or expansion. The Fauns and Satyrs of antiquity belong (like other fabulous creations) rather to the grotesque than the ideal. They may be considered, however, as a bastard species of the ideal, for they stamp one prominent character of vice and deformity on the whole face, instead of going into the minute, uncertain, and shuffling details. As to the rest, the ideal abhors monsters and incongruity. If the horses in the Elgin marbles, or the boar of Meleager, are ranked with the human figures, it is from their being perfect representations of the forms and actions of the animals designed, not caricatures half-way between the human and the brute.