LIBER HUMANITATIS.* Is touching any book of essays, we always
assume that the writer has something special to say upon the subjects of which he treats, and if, as is often the case, the volume be a reprint, we may con- clude he imagines he has said that something well. Also, under tolerably good conditions, there is a sense of companionship in a book of essays which is by no means without its charm. It is true the reader is in the position of a silent listener, but he is brought into direct contact with some other mind which has been grappling with the subjects that occupy his own. It may be that the old problems remain unsolved, the old diffi- culties merely propounded anew, but it is something that they have baffled other intelligent spirits beside his own,—he is the stronger for the sense of comradeship. We do not know if any of the essays in the little volume before us have appeared under any other form, but we would advise any one who thinks to take up the book for the passing amusement of an idle half-hour to lay it down again, for in such a mood we could not do these pages justice. They demand and deserve close and deliberate reading. There is a curious element of weakness here and there, but it is only made apparent by its contrast with the very decided power which also characterises the volume.
The papers before us are devoted to a thoughtful, suggestive, but by no means exhaustive consideration of various aspects of social and spiritual life, dealing specially with the intimate union and interdependence of the spiritual and the material. And we agree with the writer that "few habits are more mischievous than that of framing false and fanciful verbal antitheses which tend to establish a vendetta or death-feud between things in no. way really discordant,—such as form and spirit, common-sense and genius, wit and wisdom." There is truth, though not the whole truth, in her remark that "genius is, after all, only common- sense at a very high level,"—a level, be it observed, from which its possessor is able to see, and "see at once, relations which less gifted minds can only appreciate with infinite labour." But when, in the first four essays especially, she pro- ceeds to analyse the relation of body, soul, and spirit, we think it is on the subject of the spiritual and supernatural that, she breaks down, and we see the weak link in her chain of argu- ment. When writing of the dignity of the human body, Miss Greenwell observes, in common with the best thinkers of the day, that the soul, the great "life-and-action principle," as dis- tinct from spirit, is common alike to animals and men, and "though distinguished from the material organisation," is, like it, "bound, fated, and immutable," which she illustrates by the much-ignored fact "that the great unseen world of desire, emotion, feeling, memory is linked at every turn with the bodily powers they work through." "When these are weakened, 'desire fails.' When they are irretrievably injured, it sinks with them into ruin." And she calls attention to the pro- found truth touched by the Psalmist when he exclaims, "My soul cleaveth to the dust." Again, she says, "Can a woman forget her child? Yes, if some muscle be overstrained, some nerve dead- ened." Or take the case of music, " able (in some natures) to- open a door even into heaven—one which no man can shut," yet dependent absolutely upon mere physical organisation. The- argument is one not difficult to prop with evidence ; Miss Green- well follows it out till she comes to the "regulative principle" outside all this, to the spiritual element in man, of which there is no trace in the brute. We cannot at this moment enter into the statement of Dr. Maudsley, whom Miss Greenwell often quotes, that a human being, however low he may fall or be brought, never reverts to the type of an animal,—the idiot, for instance, never having the instinct which guides an animal unerringly in its choice of food ; or, as Miss Greenwell elsewhere says, "The animal world makes to itself no god, neither does it need idols.' But we think, if it were possible for that point to be reached by degraded man at all, it would be in some case where struggle has ended or been non-existent. Into the nature of that struggle, into the conflicts of that dual nature in man, the pages before us largely enter. We can but indicate the line the author takes :—" The principle of spiritual life in man constitutes the principle of his freedom." Such is the proposition with which she commences her chapter on the connection between the animal and the * Meer Humanitatis. By Dora Greenwell. London: Daldy, labloo, and 00. 1871. spiritual nature ; and the idea is this,—that however closely spirit may be dependent upon matter for basis, for sustenance and growth, man's bodily nature in relation to his spiritual, will always in a greater or less degree be found to be the house of bondage, the land of Egypt, where the animal is worshipped. And there are not a few wise thoughts on the result to the spirit when the slave is king, and the animal nature in the ascendant, specially on the gloom attendant on all merely sensuous enjoyment ; and perhaps wiser still (though here, we think, she has missed a possibly higher footing yet) is her analysis of the result produced when high spiritual pretension flatters the lower nature, and allows it, in virtue of that so-called spirituality, to assert an emancipation from all previous acknow- ledged restraint, "and Christ is set forth as a sort of 'antidote' to conscience." She touches a deep truth where, after observing that "when the divine unites in unblest marriage with the animal, we get the crafty fanatic, the weak enthusiast, the credulous votary," she continues, "so it is with our humanity when, unmindful of the admonition of its great Teacher, upon its thick, muddy lees is poured the strong wine of the Spirit, and a high degree of spiritual illumination meets and coalesces with unsanctified affections and an unregenerate will." But she believes in a possibility of man's powers, spiritual and animal, being restored to perfect harmony with each other, and that the result will be a life of blessed instinct, "like that of the animal creation now, only lived upon a higher leveL" There are minds doubtless, wearied with incessant struggle, to whom the "only joy is calm," but we are inclined to think, on the whole, it is and will hereafter still be well that" man's reach should be beyond his grasp," and this though we can thoroughly endorse the belief that when the two apparently opposing poles in our nature are touched, and touched together to their finest issues, we get a result in joy of which "the merely rational, intelligent man, though he were to stand and gaze for a millennium, would know nothing." Yet even in seeking such an end we had need beware (as Miss Greenwell finely puts it) "of throwing the whole weight of our life upon the spiritual side. We shall find, if we do so, that we have called in, as weak nations sometimes do, an auxiliary too powerful for our own peace." But pursuing thoughts such as these, questionings as to whether it be spirit which attracts and draws substance round it, or whether substance draws the spirit to it, as to its needed home, we are led on to the consideration of the relation between natural and supernatural life.
But we must devote the remainder of our space to other subjects which Miss Greenwell has touched. Her paper on the freedom of the will, will be read with interest by many, not so much for any fresh light she throws on the whole question, as for a certain quick and delicate insight into some of the causes of more than half the sum of human misery, and for results obtained in the only school in which it is worth while to take a high degree. We can imagine human beings the happier, if not the wiser, for studying these few pages. They are simply an essay on that "every-day tragedy, he conflict between will and circumstance," by one who has watched keenly and taken part in the battle, and is "tolerant, because wise." The effort of, as it were, the single-handed Will against the blind, gigantic slaves, chance, mischance, nature, circumstances which sometimes crush where they cannot conquer, is very finely described ; as is also the weakness which entrenches itself behind a persistence for which it will not try to render a reason, and the strong will which is strong through narrowness ; and then we have the men "of a whole piece," who are able to bring their united faculties to tell upon a desired aim. Such men, says our author, truly enough, are predestined to victory; and she quotes for them the beautiful scene in the Merle d'Arthur, where the damsel who brings her mighty bow exhorts the knights to spend not their strength in vain, "for it is so ordained that he for whose use this bow is designed shall be able to bend it with ease ;" and there are many, happily for themselves and the world, who bend the bow placed in their hands with ease ; and as Miss Green- well says, "daily life is glad of them,—they supply its daily bread ;" but none the less true is it that there are those, "and among them some of earth's noblest children," who are aware of some in- herent, self-confessed deficiency, mental or physical, which is one withtheir life itself, and which fixes a great gulf between them and the attainment of all that they most desire." The touching illustrations she gives of this in the lives of Beethoven, Handel, and especially of our King Alfred, will come home with greater or less power to the mind, in proportion as it can sympathise with the phase of suffering here indicated, and with the line of thought expressed in the following verse :— "To One is the secret shown,
Of the hidden—the double life ;
To One is its conflict known'
Of the better and baser at strife.
If I am not what others may deem,
Yet judge me not counterfeit, sham : I am far less good than I seem, Yet I seem not so good as .1 am !"
But we are not sure, after all, that the strongest point in Miss Greenwell's work is not her essay on "Utilitarianism." She does not hesitate at the very outset to state that "its point of failure lies in a general want of motive-power." It is true that much of what she says has already been said as well or better by Mazzini ; still, some thoughts bear much resetting. And a few words which we will quote on Mr. Mill's idea of "poverty as extinguishable" strike us as at least necessary to the consideration of the whole subject :—
" It will greatly tend, I think, to clear our views upon a subject very full of interest to all who are not contented to frame their theories of human life upon the simple plan of 'averting their ken' from half of what goes to make up its sum, if we change the ordinary classification of rich and poor into 'prosperous and unprosperous.' By 'the poor' we are usually understood to mean the working-classes, or those who earn their daily bread by the daily labour of their hands, yet it is happily evident that among those who do so, there are numbers of thoroughly prosperous, well-to-do families and persons, who are able to surround themselves with such comforts as their way of life requires; able, too, to lay up a little for their old age ; people in short— 'Of cheerful yesterdays, And confident to-morrows.'
The really poor, the paupers of the world, are the unfortunate, and
these are to be met with on every one of our social strata, and only most abound on its lowest one, because they naturally sink to it."
These are the people, our author says further on, who, from some inherent deficiency, whether physical, mental, or moral, are wholly incompetent to maintain the fierce struggle for existence in the great battle of social life which is for ever going on around them,—men in whom some disease has so struck home that, when the utmost has been done for them, we can only say, with the triumphant French physician whom Miss Greenwell quotes, contemplating the body of his dead patient, " Neanmoins, il eat wort gueri." Mr. Mill has set a high object of attainment before his disciples, even that education and opinion "shall tend to make the promotion of the general good an habitual mode of action," but that end is too high for the given leverage. "The Almighty," says our author, quoting the splendid words of De Tocqueville, "the Almighty does not generalise." Or, as a lesser man, but one much missed from among us, wrote, "The great law of life, after all, is the law of exceptivity." For the "exceptions" —which, if we only knew, perhaps include each individual life,— Utilitarianism has no room. But we are not going to attempt to deal in a few brief sentences with one of the most d.fficult ques- tions of all our complex life ; we would only point out that any one whom the whole subject may interest may find it very fairly presented, in at least one of its aspects, in Miss Greenwell's little volume.
Previous page
