VI.
We are now to enter upon the second of our four lines of study byconcentrating our attention upon three historic _details_ in thegrowth of this personality whose _general_ advance has been socarefully illustrated in our first line. These details are found inthe sudden rise of Physical Science, of Modern Music, and of theModern Novel, at periods of time so little separated from each other,that we may consider these great fields of human activity as fairlyopened simultaneously to the entrance of man about the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries.
Addressing ourselves first, then, to the idea of Science, let us placeourselves at a point of view from which we can measure with precisionthe actual height and nature of the step which man took in ascendingfrom the plane of, say, Aristotle's "science" to that of Sir IsaacNewton's "science." And the only possible method of placing ourselvesat this point of view is to pass far back and fix ourselves in theattitude which antiquity maintained towards physical nature, and inwhich succeeding ages comfortably dozed, scarcely disturbed even byRoger Bacon's feeble protest in the thirteenth century, until it wasshocked out of all future possibility by Copernicus, Galileo and SirIsaac Newton.
Accordingly, in pursuance of our custom of abandoning abstractpropositions at the earliest moment, when we can embody them in termsof the concrete, let us spend a quiet hour in contemplating some ofthe specific absurdities of our ancestors in scientific thought andin generalizing them into the lack of personality. Let us go and sitwith Socrates on his prison-bed, in the _Phaedo_, and endeavor to seethis matter of man's scientific relation to physical nature, with hissight. Hear Socrates talking to Simmias: he is discussing the methodof acquiring true knowledge: it is well we are invisible as we sit byhim, for we can not keep back a quiet smile,--we who come out of abeautiful and vast scientific acquirement all based upon looking atthings with our eyes; we whose very intellectual atmosphere isdistilled from the proverb, "seeing is believing"--when we hear thesegrave propositions of the wisest antique man. "But what of theacquisition of wisdom," says Socrates: ... "do the sight and hearingconvey any certainty to mankind, or are they such as the poetsincessantly report them, who say that we neither hear nor see anythingas it is?... Do they not seem so to you?"
"They do, indeed," replied Simmias. "When, then," continued Socrates,"does the soul attain to the truth? For when it attempts toinvestigate anything along with the body, it is plain that the soul isled astray by the body.... Is it not by reasoning, if by anything,that reality is made manifest to the soul?"
"Certainly."
But now Socrates advances a step to show that not only are we misledwhen we attempt to get knowledge by seeing things, but that nothingworth attention is capable of being physically seen. I shall haveoccasion to recur in another connection to the curious fallacyinvolved in this part of Socrates' argument. He goes on to inquire ofSimmias: "Do we assert that Justice is anything, or not?"
"We say that it is."
"And beauty and goodness, also?"
"Surely."
"Did you ever see anything of the kind with your eyes?"
"Never," replied Simmias.
... "Then," continues Socrates, "whoever amongst us prepares, with thegreatest caution and accuracy, to reflect upon that particular thingby itself upon which he is inquiring" and ... "using reflection alone,endeavors to investigate every reality by itself, ... abstaining asmuch as possible from the use of the eyes ... is not such an one, ifany, likely to arrive at what really exists?"
"You speak, Socrates," answered Simmias, "with amazing truth."
It is curious to note in how many particulars this process ofacquiring knowledge is opposed to that of the modern scientific man.Observe specially that Socrates wishes to investigate every reality byitself, while we, on the contrary, fly from nothing with so muchvehemence as from an isolated fact; it maddens us until we can put itinto relation with other facts, and delights us in proportion to thenumber of facts with which we can relate it. In that book ofmultitudinous suggestions which Novalis (Friedrich Von Hardenberg)calls _The Pupil at Sais_, one of the most modern sentences is thatwhere, after describing many studies of his wondrous pupil, Novalisadds that "erelong he saw nothing alone."
Surely, one of the earliest and most delightful sensations one has inspiritual growth, after one has acquired the true synthetic habitwhich converts knowledge into wisdom, is that delicious, universalimpulse which accompanies every new acquisition as it runs along likea warp across the woof of our existing acquisition, making a pleasanttang of contact, as it were, with each related fibre.
But Plato speaks even more directly upon our present point, inadvocating a similar attitude towards physical science. In Book VII.of the _Republic_, he puts these words into the mouth of Socrates:"And whether a man gapes at the heavens, or blinks on the ground,seeking to learn some particular of sense, I would deny that he canlearn, for nothing of that sort is matter of science."
Of course these, as the opinions of professed idealists, would not berepresentative of the Greek attitude towards physical science.
Yet when we turn to those who are pre-eminently physical philosophers,we find that the mental disposition, though the reverse of hostile, isnearly always such as to render the work of these philosophersunfruitful. When we find, for example, that Thales in the verybeginning of Greek philosophy holds the principle, or beginning,[Greek: he arche] of all things to be moisture, or water; thatAnaximenes a little while after holds the beginning of things to beair; that Heraclitus holds the _arche_ to be fire: this _sounds_physical, and we look for a great extension of men's knowledge inregard to water, air and fire, upon the idea that if these are reallythe organic principles of things, thousands of keen inquiring eyeswould be at once leveled upon them, thousands of experiments would beat once set on foot, all going to reveal properties of water, air andfire.
But perhaps no more expressive summary of the real relation betweenman and nature, not only during the Greek period but for manycenturies after it, could be given than the fact that these threeso-called elements which begin the Greek physical philosophy remainedthemselves unknown for more than two thousand years after Thales andAnaximenes and Heraclitus, until the very last century when, with thediscovery of oxygen, men are able to prove that they are not elementsat all; but that what we call fire is merely an effect of the rapidunion of oxygen with bodies, while water and air are compounds of itwith other gases. It is perfectly true that in the years betweenThales and the death of Aristotle, a considerable body of physicalfacts had been accumulated; that Pythagoras had observed a number ofacoustic phenomena and mathematically formulated their relations; itis true that--without detaining you to specify intermediateinquirers--we have that wonderful summary of Aristotle--wonderful forone man--which is contained in his _Physics_, from which the name"meta-physics" originated, though the circumstance that he placed theother books _after_ those on physics, calling them [Greek: Ta meta taphysicha biblia], the meta-physical, or over and above physical,books.
When we read the titles of these productions--here are "Eight Books ofPhysical Lectures," "Four Books of the Heavens," "Two Books ofProduction and Destruction," Treatises "On Animals," "On Plants," "OnColors," "On Sound"--we feel that we must be in a veritable realm ofphysical science. But if we examine these lectures and treatises,which probably contain the entire body of Greek physical learning, wefind them hampered by a certain disability which seems to mecharacteristic not only of Greek thought, but of all man's earlyspeculation, and which excludes the possibility of a fruitful andprogressive physical science. I do not know how to characterize thisdisability otherwise than by calling it a lack of that sense ofpersonal relation to fact which makes the thinker passionately andsupremely solicitous about the truth, that is, the existence of hisfacts and the soundness of his logic; solicitous of these, not so muchwith reference to the value of his conclusions as because of an inwardtender inexorable yearning for the truth and nothing but the truth.
In short, I find that early thought everyw
here, whether dealing withphysical facts or meta-physical problems, is lacking in what I maycall the intellectual conscience--the conscience, for example, whichmakes Mr. Darwin spend long and patient years in investigating smallfacts before daring to reason upon them; and which makes him state thefacts adverse to his theory with as much care as the facts which makefor it.
Part of the philosophy of this personal relation between a man and afact is very simple. For instance what do you know at present of theinner life of the Patagonians? Probably no more than your Mitchell'sor Cornell's Geography told you at school. But if a governmentexpedition is soon to carry you to the interior of that country, apersonal relation arises which will probably set you to searching allthe libraries at your command for such travels or treatises as mayenlarge your knowledge of Patagonia.
It is easy to give a thousand illustrations of this lack ofintellectual conscience in Greek thought, which continued indeed up tothe time of the Renaissance. For example: it would seem that nothingless than a sort of amateur mental attitude towards nature, anattitude which does not bind the thinker to his facts with such ironconscientiousness that if one fact were out of due order, it wouldrack him, could account for Aristotle's grave exposition of the fourelements. "We seek," he says "the principles of sensible things, thatis of tangible bodies. We must take therefore not all thecontrarieties of quality but those only which have reference to thetouch.... Now the contrarieties of quality which refer to the touchare these: hot, cold; dry, wet; heavy, light; hard, soft; unctuous,meagre; rough, smooth; dense, rare." Aristotle then rejects the lastthree couplets on several grounds and proceeds: "Now in four thingsthere are six combinations of two; but the combinations of twoopposites, as hot and cold, must be rejected; we have therefore fourelementary combinations which agree with the four apparentlyelementary bodies. Fire is hot and dry; air is hot and wet; water iscold and wet: earth is cold and dry." And thus we comfortably fareforward with fire, air, earth and water for the four elements of allthings.
But Aristotle argues that there must be a fifth element: and ourmodern word quintessence is, by the way, a relic of this argument,this fifth element having been called by later writers _quintaessentia_ or quintessence. The argument is as follows: "the simpleelements must have simple motions, and thus fire and air have theirnatural motions upwards and water and earth have their natural motionsdownwards; but besides these motions there is motion in a circle whichis unnatural to these elements, but which is a more perfect motionthan the other, because a circle is a perfect line and a straight lineis not; and there must be something to which this motion is natural.From this it is evident that there is some essence or body differentfrom those of the four elements, ... and superior to them. If thingswhich move in a circle move contrary to nature it is marvelous, orrather absurd that this, the unnatural motion should alone becontinuous and eternal; for unnatural motions decay speedily. And sofrom all this we must collect that besides the four elements which wehave here and about us, there is another removed far off and the moreexcellent in proportion as it is more distant from us."
Or take Aristotle's dealing with the heaviness and lightness ofbodies.
After censuring former writers for considering these as merelyrelative, he declares that lightness is a positive or absoluteproperty of bodies just as weight is; that earth is absolutely heavy,and therefore tends to take its place below the other three elements;that fire has the positive property of lightness, and hence tends totake its place above the other three elements; (the modern word_empyrean_ is a relic of this idea from the _pyr_ or fire, thuscollected in the upper regions), and so on; and concludes that bodieswhich have the heavy property tend to the centre, while those with thelight property tend to the exterior, of the earth, because "Exterioris opposite to Centre, as heavy is to light."
This conception, or rather misconception, of opposites appears mostcuriously in two of the proofs which Socrates offers for theimmortality of the soul, and I do not know how I can better illustratethe infirmity of antique thought which I have just been describingthan by citing the arguments of Socrates in that connection accordingto the _Phaedo_. Socrates introduced it with special solemnity. "I donot imagine," he says, "that any one, not even if he were a comicpoet, would now say that I am trifling.... Let us examine it in thispoint of view, whether the souls of the dead survive or not.
"Let us consider this, whether it is absolutely necessary in the case of as many things as have a contrary, that this contrary should arise from no other source than from a contrary to itself. For instance, where anything becomes greater, must it not follow that from being previously less it subsequently became greater?
"Yes."
"So, too, if anything becomes less, shall it become so subsequently to its being previously greater?"
"Such is the case," said Cebes.
"And weaker from stronger, swifter from slower, ... worse from better, juster from more unjust?"
"Surely."
"We are then sufficiently assured of this, that all things are so produced, contraries from contraries?"
"Sufficiently so."
... "Do you now tell me likewise in regard to life and death. Do you not say that death is the contrary of life?"
"I say so."
"And that they are produced from each other?"
"Yes."
"What then is that which is produced from life?"
"Death," said Cebes.
"And that which is produced from death?"
"I must allow," said Cebes, "to be life."
"Therefore, our souls exist after death."
This is one formal argument of Socrates.
He now goes on speaking to his friends during that fatal day at greatlength, setting forth other arguments in favor of the immortality ofthe soul. Finally he comes to the argument which he applies to thesoul, that magnitude cannot admit its contrary, but that one retireswhen the other approaches. At this point he is interrupted by one whoremembers his former position. Plato relates:
Then some one of those present (but who he was I do not clearly recollect) when he heard this, said, "In the name of the gods, was not the very contrary of what is now asserted laid down in the previous part of the discussion, that the greater is produced from the less and the less from the greater, and this positively was the mode of generating contraries from contraries?" Upon which Socrates said ... "... 'Then it was argued that a contrary thing was produced from a contrary; but now, that contrary itself can never become its own contrary'.... But observe further if you will agree with me in this. Is there anything you call heat and cold?"
"Certainly."
"The same as snow and fire?"
"Assuredly not."
"Is heat, then, something different from fire, and cold something different from snow?"
"Yes."
"But this I think is evident to you, that snow while it is snow can never, having admitted heat, continue to be what it was, snow and hot; but on the approach of heat will either give way to it or be destroyed."
"Certainly so."
"And fire, on the other hand, on the approach of cold, must either give way to it or be destroyed; nor can it ever endure, having admitted cold, to continue to be what it was, fire and cold.... Such I assert to be the case with the number 3 and many other numbers. Shall we not insist that the number 3 shall perish first ... before it would endure while it was yet 3 to become even?... What then? what do we now call that which does not admit the idea of the even?"
"Odd," replied he.
"And that which does not admit the just, nor the graceful?"
"The one, ungraceful, and the other, unjust."
"Be it so. But by what name do we call that which does not admit death?"
"Immortal."
/> "Does the soul, then, not admit death?" (Socrates has already suggested that whatever the soul occupies it brings life to.)
"No."
"Is the soul, therefore, immortal?"
"Immortal."
Socrates' argument drawn from the number 3 brings before us a greathost of these older absurdities of scientific thought, embracing manygrave conclusions drawn from fanciful considerations of number,everywhere occurring. For briefest example: Aristotle in his book "Onthe Heavens" proves that the world is perfect by the followingcomplete argument: "The bodies of which the world is composed ... havethree dimensions; now 3 is the most perfect number ... for of 1 we donot speak as a number; of 2 we say _both_; but 3 is the first numberof which we say _all_; moreover, it has a beginning, a middle and anend." You may instructively compare with this the marvelous matterswhich the school of Pythagoras educed out of _their_ perfect numberwhich was 4, or the _tetractys_; and Plato's number of the _Republic_which commentators to this day have not settled.
These illustrations seem sufficient to show a mental attitude towardsfacts which is certainly like that one has towards a far-off countrywhich one does not expect to visit. The illustration I have used iscuriously borne out by a passage in Lactantius, writing so far down asthe fourth century, in which we have a picture of mediaeval relationstowards nature and of customary discussions.
"To search," says he, "for the causes of natural things; to inquirewhether the sun be as large as he seems, whether the moon is convex orconcave, whether the stars are fixed in the sky or float freely in theair; of what size and what material are the heavens; whether they beat rest or in motion; what is the magnitude of the earth; on whatfoundations it is suspended and balanced;--to dispute and conjectureon such matters is just as if we chose to discuss what we think of acity in a remote country of which we never heard but the name."
Perhaps this defect of thought, this lack of personality towardsfacts, is most strikingly perceived in the slowness with which mostprimary ideas of the form and motion of the earth made their way amongmen. Although astronomy is the oldest of sciences, and the only oneprogressive science of antiquity; and although the idea that theearth was a sphere, was one of the earliest in Greek philosophy; yetthis same Lactantius in the 4th century is vehemently arguing asfollows: "Is it possible that men can be so absurd as to believe thatthe crops and trees on the other side of the earth hang downwards, andthat men there have their feet higher than their heads? If you ask ofthem how they defend these monstrosities--how things do not fall awayfrom the earth on that side? they reply that the nature of things issuch that heavy bodies tend towards the centre, like the spokes of awheel, while light bodies, as clouds, smoke, fire, tend from the earthtowards the heavens on all sides. Now I am really at a loss what tosay of those who, when they have once gone wrong, steadily perseverein their folly and defend one absurd opinion by another."
And coming on down to the eighth century, the anecdote is well knownof honest Bishop Virgil of Salisbury, who shocked some of hiscontemporaries by his belief in the real existence of the antipodes,to such an extent that many thought he should be censured by the Popefor an opinion which involved the existence of a whole "world of humanbeings out of reach of the conditions of salvation."
And finally we all know the tribulations of Columbus on this point fardown in the fifteenth century, at the very beginning of theRenaissance.
Now this infirmity of mind is as I said, not distinctive of the Greek.To me it seems simply a natural incident of the youth of reason, ofthe childhood of personality. At any rate, for a dozen centuries andmore after Aristotle's death, to study science, means to studyAristotle; in vain do we hear Roger Bacon in the thirteenthcentury--that prophet philosopher who first announces the tworallying cries of modern science, mathematics and experiment--in vaindo we hear Roger Bacon crying: "If I had power over the works ofAristotle I would have them all burnt; for it is only a loss of time,a course of error, and a multiplication of ignorance beyondexpression, to study them."
Various attempts have been made to account for the complete failure ofGreek physical science by assigning this and that specific tendency tothe Greek mind: but it seems a perfect confirmation of the view I havehere presented--to wit that the organic error was not Greek but simplya part of the general human lack of personality--to reflect that 1,500years after Aristotle, things are little better, and that when we docome to a time when physical science begins to be pursued uponprogressive principles, we find it to be also a time when all otherdepartments of activity begin to be similarly pursued, so that we areobliged to recognize not the correction of any specific error in Greekratiocination, but a general advance of the spirit of man along thewhole line.
And perhaps we have now sufficiently prepared ourselves, as wasproposed at the outset of this sketch of Greek science, to measureprecisely the height of the new plane which begins with Copernicus,Kepler and Galileo in the 16th century, over the old plane which endedwith Aristotle and his commentators. Perhaps the true point up towhich we should lay our line in making this measurement is not to befound until we pass nearly through the 17th century and arrive fairlyat Sir Isaac Newton. For while each one of the great men who precededhim had made his contribution weighty enough, as such, yet each bringswith him some old darkness out of the antique period.
When we come to examine Copernicus, we find that though the root ofthe matter is there, a palpable environment of the old cycle andepicycle still hampers it; Galileo disappoints us at variousemergencies. Kepler puts forth his sublime laws amid a cluster ofstartling absurdities; Francis Bacon is on the whole unfaithful;Descartes will have his vortices or eddies as the true principles ofmotion of the heavenly bodies; and so it is not until we reach SirIsaac Newton at the end of the 17th century that we find a large,quiet, wholesome thinker, de-Aristotleized, de-Ptolemized,de-Cartesianized, pacing forth upon the domain of reason as if it werehis own orchard, and seating himself in the centre of the universe asif it were his own easy chair, observing the fact and inferring thelaw as if with a personal passion for truth and a personal religiontowards order. In short, and in terms of our present theory, with SirIsaac Newton the growth of man's personality has reached a point whenit has developed a true personal relation between man and nature.
I should have been glad if the scope of this part of my inquiry hadallowed me to give some sketch at least of the special workers inscience who immediately preceded Newton, and some of whose lives weremost pathetic and beautiful illustrations of this personal love fornature which I have tried to show as now coming into being for thefirst time in the history of man. Besides such spectacles as thelonesome researches of Jeremiah Horrox, for example, I scarcely knowanything in history which yields such odd and instructive contrasts asthose glimpses of the scientific work which went on about the court ofCharles II, and of what seems to have been the genuine interest of themonarch himself. In _Pepys' Diary_, for instance, under date of May11th, 1663, I find the entry: "Went home after a little discoursewith Mr. Pierce the surgeon who tells me that ... the other day Dr.Clarke and he did dissect two bodies, a man and a woman, before theking, with which the king was highly pleased." Again, February 1st, ofthe next year: "Thence to Whitehall, where in the Duke's chamber theKing came and stayed an hour or two, laughing at Sir W. Petty ... andat Gresham College in general: Gresham College he mightily laughed atfor spending time only in weighing of air and doing nothing else sincethey sat." On the 4th, he was at St. Paul's school and "Dr. Wilkins"is one of the "posers," Dr. Wilkins being John Wilkins, Bishop ofChester, whose name was well-known in mathematics and in physics.Under date of March 1st, same year, the entry is: "To Gresham Collegewhere Mr. Hooke read a second very curious lecture about the latecomet; among other things proving very probably that this is the verysame comet that appeared before in the year 1618, and that in such atime probably it will appear again, which is a very new opinion; butall will be in print." And again on the 8th of August, 1666, I find anentry which is
of considerable interest: "Discoursed with Mr. Hookeabout the nature of sounds, and he did make me understand the natureof musical sounds made by strings mighty prettily; and told me thathaving come to a certain number of vibrations proper to make any tone,he is able to tell how many strokes a fly makes with her wings (thoseflies that hum in their flying) by the note that it answers to inmusic during their flying. That I suppose is a little too muchrefined; but his discourse in general of sound was mighty fine."
On the other hand, I scarcely know how I could show the newness ofthis science thus entering the world, more vividly than by recordingtwo other entries which I find in the midst of these scientificnotes. One of these records a charm for a burn, which Pepys thought souseful as to preserve. This is, in case one should be burned, to sayimmediately the following verse:
"There came three angels out of the East; One brought fire, the other brought frost-- Out fire, in frost, In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost."
And the other is, under Sept. 29th, 1662, "To the King's Theatre,where we saw 'Midsummer's Night's Dream,' which I had never seenbefore, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculousplay that ever I saw in my life."
Indeed, if you should wish to see how recently we are out of the rangeof Aristotle, you have only to read the chapter on Human Anatomy,which occurs in the early part of dear old Robert Burton's _Anatomy ofMelancholy_. Here is an account of the body which makes curiousreading for the modern biologist. I give a line here and there. Thebody is divided into parts containing or contained, and the partscontained are either humors or spirits. Of these humors there arefour: to wit, first, blood; next, phlegm; third, choler; and fourth,melancholy; and this is part of the description of each.
"Blood is a hot, sweet, temperate, red humor, ... made of the mosttemperate parts of the chylus in the liver.... And from it spirits arefirst begotten in the heart. Phlegm is a cold and moist humor,begotten of the colder part of the chylus in the liver. Choler is hotand dry, begotten of the hotter parts of the chylus. Melancholy, coldand dry, ... is a bridle to the other two hot humors, blood andcholer. These four humors have some analogy with the four elements andto the four ages in man." Having disposed thus of humors, we havethis account of spirit or the other contained part of the body."Spirit is a most subtle vapor, which is expressed from the blood, andthe instrument of the soul to perform all his actions; a common tie ormedium between the body and the soul, as some will have it; or asParacelsus--a fourth soul of itself." Proceeding to other parts of thebody, here are the lungs. "The lungs is a thin spongy part like anox-hoof.... The instrument of voice; ... and next to the heart toexpress their thoughts by voice. That it is the instrument of voice ismanifest in that no creature can speak ... which wanteth these lights.It is besides the instrument of breathing; and its office is to coolthe heart by sending air into it by the venosal artery," &c., &c.
This anatomy of Burton's includes the soul, and here are someparticulars of it. "According to Aristotle, the soul is defined to beemtelecheia, ... the perfection or first act of an organical bodyhaving power of life.... But many doubts arise about the essence,subject, seat, distinction and subordinate faculties of it.... Somemake one soul; ... others, three.... The common division of the soulis into three principal faculties--vegetal, sensible and rational."The soul of man includes all three; for the "sensible includes vegetaland rational both; which are contained in it (saith Aristotle) _uttrigonus in tetragono_, as a triangle in a quadrangle.... Paracelsuswill have four souls, adding to the three grand faculties a spiritualsoul: which opinion of his Campanella in his book _De Sensu Rerum_much labors to demonstrate and prove, because carcases bleed at thesight of the murderer; with many such arguments." These are not thewanderings of ignorance; they represent the whole of human knowledge,and are an epitome made up from Aristotle, Galen, Vesalius,Fallopius, Wecker, Melancthon, Feruclius, Cicero, Pico Mirandola,Paracelsus, Campanella, Taurellus, Philip, Flavius, Macrobius, Alhazenthe Arabian, Vittellio, Roger Bacon, Baptista Porta, Cardan, Sambucus,Pliny, Avicenna, Lucretius, and such another list as makes one wearywith the very names of authorities.
These details of antique science brought face to face with theweighing of air at Gresham College, and with Sir Isaac Newton,represent with sufficient sharpness the change from the old reign ofenmity between Nature and man, from the stern ideal of justice to thelater reign of love which embraces in one direction, God, in another,fellow-man, in another, physical nature.
Now, in these same sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, inwhich we have seen science recovering itself after having been so longtongue-tied by authority, a remarkably similar process goes on in theart of music. If, as we did in considering the progress of science, wenow place ourselves at a standpoint from which we can preciselyestimate that extension of man's personal relation towards the unknownduring these centuries, which resulted in modern music, we are metwith a chain of strikingly similar facts and causes. The Greek musicquite parallels Greek physical science. We have seen how, in thelatter, a Greek philosopher would start off with a well-soundingproposition that all things originated in moisture, or in fire, or inair, and we have seen how, instead of attacking moisture, fire andair, and of observing and classifying all the physical facts connectedwith them, the philosopher after awhile presents us with an amazingsuperstructure of pure speculation wholly disconnected from facts ofany kind, physical or otherwise. Greek music offers us precisely thesame net outcome. It was enthusiastically studied, there weremultitudes of performers upon the lyre, the flute, and so on, it was apart of common education, and the loftiest souls exerted theirloftiest powers in theorizing upon it. For example, in Plato's_Republic_, Socrates earnestly condemns every innovation upon music.His words are: "For any musical innovation is full of danger to theState.... Damon tells me, and I can quite believe him ... that whenmodes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always changewith them;" ... (therefore) "our guardians must lay the foundations oftheir fortress in music." Again, in Book III., during a discussion asto the kind of music to be permitted in our Republic, we have thiskind of talk. Socrates asks: "Which are the harmonies expressive ofsorrow?" It is replied, they are "the mixed Lydian and the full-tonedor bass Lydian."
"These must be banished.... Which are the soft or drinking harmonies?"
"The Ionian and the Lydian."
These, it appears, must also be banished.
"Then the Dorian and the Phrygian appear to be the only ones whichremain."
Socrates "answered; of the harmonies I know nothing; but I want tohave one warlike which will sound the word or note which a brave manutters in the hour of danger or stern resolve, or when his cause isfailing ... (and he) meets fortune with calmness and endurance; andanother to be used by him in times of peace and freedom of action....These two harmonies I ask you to leave: the strain of necessity andthe strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain ofthe fortunate, the strain of courage and the strain of temperance;these, I say, leave."
Simmias draws a charming analogy in the _Phaedo_ between the relationof a beautiful and divine harmony to the lyre and that of the soul tothe body; Pythagoras dreams upon the music of the spheres; everywherethe Greek is occupied with music, practical and theoretical. I find alively picture of the times where in Book VII. of the _Republic_,Socrates describes the activity of the musical searchers: "By heaven,"he says, "'tis as good as a play to hear them talking about theircondensed notes, as they call them; they put their ears alongside oftheir neighbors.... one set of them declaring that they catch anintermediate note and have found the least interval which should bethe unit of measurement; the others maintaining the opposite theory,that the two sounds have passed into the same, each party settingtheir ears before their understanding."
And in this last clause we have a perfectly explicit statement of thatlack of personal relation to facts which makes Greek music as meagreas Greek science. We found it the common fault of Greek scientificthought that it too
k more satisfaction in an ingenious argument upon apseudo-fact than in a solid conclusion based upon plain observationand reasoning. So here, Socrates is satirizing even the poor attemptat observation made by these people, and sardonically accuses them ofwhat is the very pride of modern science--namely, of setting theirears before their understanding,--that is, of rigorously observing thefacts before reasoning upon them.
At any rate, in spite of all this beautiful and comprehensive talk ofharmony and the like, the fact is clear, that the Greek had no harmonyworth the name; he knew nothing but the crude concords of the octave,the fourth and the fifth; moreover, his melody was equally meagre;and altogether his ultimate flight in music was where voices of menand women sang, accompanied in unison or octave by the lyre, the fluteand the like.
And if we consider the state of music after the passing away of theGreek cultus up to the fifteenth century, we have much the same storyto tell as was just now told of mediaeval science. For a time theworld's stock of tunes is practically comprised in the melodiescollected by Gregory, known as the Gregorian Chant. Presently thesystem of polyphonic music arises, in which several voices singdifferent melodies so arranged as not to jar with each other. But whenwe now come down to the sixteenth century, we find a wonderful newactivity in music accompanying that in science. Luther in Germany,Gondimel in France, push forward the song: in Spain, Salinas ofSalamanca, studies ancient music for thirty years, and finally arrivesat the conclusion that the Greek had no instrumental music, and thatall their melody was originally derived from the order of syllables inverse. In Italy, Montaverde announces what were called his "newdiscords," and the beautiful maestro, Palestrina, writes compositionsin several parts, which are at once noble, simple and devout. Englandat this time is filled with music; and by the end of the sixteenthcentury the whole land is a-warble with the madrigals andpart-compositions of Weelkes, Wilbye, John Milton, Sr., and the famousDr. John Bull, together with those of Tye, Tallis, Morley, OrlandoGibbons, and hundreds more. But as yet modern music is not. There isno orchestra; Queen Elizabeth's dinner-music is mainly drums andtrumpets. It is not until the middle of the seventeenth century thatJenkins and Purcell begin to write sonatas for a small number ofviolins with organ accompaniment.
A curious note of the tendency towards instrumental music at thistime, however, is found in the fact that people begin to care solittle for the words of songs as to prefer them in a foreign language.Henry Lawes, one of the most famous musicians of the middle of theseventeenth century, he who suggested Milton's _Comus_ and set it tomusic, endeavored to rebuke this affectation, as he supposed it, by acruel joke: he wrote a song, of which the words were nothing more thanthe index of an old volume of musical compositions, and had it sungamidst great applause. It must have been in the same course of feelingthat Waller--several of whose poems had been set to music byLawes--addressed to him the following stanza:
"Let those who only warble long, And gargle in their throat a song, Content themselves with do, re, mi; Let words of sense be set by thee."
And so through Allegri, Stradella, the Scarlattis and a thousandsingers, players and composers we come to the year 1685 in which bothBach and Handel were born. Here we are fairly in the face of modernmusic. What then is modern music? Music at this time bounds forward inthe joy of an infinitely developable principle. What is thisprinciple? In its last analysis it is what has now come to be calledHarmony, or more specially Tonality. According to the modern musicalfeeling when any tone is heard it is heard in its relation to someother tone which from one circumstance or another may have been takenas a basis of such relations. By a long course of putting our earsbefore our understanding,--a course carried on by all those earlymusicians whose names I have mentioned, each contributing some newrelation between tones which his ear had discovered, we have finallybeen able to generalize these relations in such a way as to make acomplete system of tonality in which every possible tone brings to ourear an impression dependent on the tone or tones in connection withwhich it is heard. As the Pupil at Sais ere long began to see nothingalone, so we hear nothing alone. You have only to remember that thesinger now-a-days must always have the piano accompaniment in order tosatisfy our demand for harmony, that we never hear any unmixed melodyin set music, in order to see how completely harmony reigns in ourmusic, instead of bare melody. We may then broadly differentiate themodern music which begins at the same time with modern science, fromall precedent music, as Harmony contrasted with Melody. To this wemust add the idea of instrumental harmony, of that vast extension ofharmonies rendered possible by the great development of orchestralinstruments whose compass greatly exceeds that of the human voice,which formerly limited all musical energy.
It is tempting, here, to push the theory of personality into fancifulextremes. You have seen how the long development of melody--melodybeing here the individual--receives a great extension in thepolyphonic music, when individual melodies move along side by sidewithout jostling: and how at length the whole suddenly bursts into thehighest type of social development, where the melody is at once unitedwith the harmony in the most intimate way, yet never loses itsindividuality; where the melody would seem to maintain towards theharmony almost the ideal relation of our finite personality, to theInfinite personality; at once autonomous as finite, and yet containedin, and rapturously united with the infinite.
But without pressing the matter, it now seems clear from our sketchthat just as in the 17th century the spirit of man has opened up forthe first time a perfectly clear and personal relation with physicalnature and has thus achieved modern science with Sir Isaac Newton, soin this 17th century, the spirit of man opens up a new relation to theinfinite, to the unknown, and achieves modern music in John SebastianBach.
Nor need I waste time in defending this category in which I placedmusic, as a relation to the Unknown. If you collect all theexpressions of poets and philosophers upon music, you will find themconverging upon this idea. No one will think Thomas Carlylesentimental; yet it is he who says "music which leads us to the vergeof the infinite, and lets us gaze on that."
And so finally, with the first English novel of Richardson in 1739-40,we have completed our glance at the simultaneous birth of modernscience, modern music, and the modern novel.
And we are now prepared to carry forward our third and fourth lines ofthought together: which were to show the development of the novel fromthe Greek Drama, and to illustrate the whole of the principles nowadvanced, with some special studies of the modern novel. These twolines will mutually support each other, and will emerge concurrently,as we now go on to study the life and works of that George Eliot, whohas so recently solved the scientific problem which made her life oneof the most pathetic and instructive in human history.
The English Novel and the Principle of its Development Page 6
