Bacon Delia Salter
The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded
And besides, this dogmatical mode of teaching does not appear to him to secure the ends of teaching. He wishes to rouse the human mind to activity, to compel it to think for itself, and put it on the inevitable road to his conclusions. He wishes the reader to strike out those conclusions for himself, and fancy himself the discoverer if he will. So far from being simple and straightforward, his style is in the profoundest degree artistic, for the soul of all our modern art inspired it. He thinks it does no good for scholars to call out to the active world from the platform of their last conclusions. The truths which men receive from those didactic heights remain foreign to them. 'We want medicines to arouse the sense,' says Lord Bacon, who proposed exactly the method of teaching which this philosopher had, as it would seem, already adopted. 'I bring a trumpet to awake his ear, to set his sense on the attentive bent, and then to speak,' says that poet who best put this art in practice.
But here it is the prose philosopher who would meet this dull, stupid, custom-bound public on its own ground. He would assume all its absurdities and contradictions in his own person, and permit men to despise, and marvel, and laugh at them in him without displeasure. For whoever will notice carefully, will perceive that the use of the personal pronoun here, is not the limited one of our ordinary speech. Such an one will find that this philosophical I is very broad; that it covers too much to be taken in its literal acceptation. Under this term, the term by which each man names himself, the common term of the individual humanity, he finds it convenient to say many things. 'They that will fight custom with grammar,' he says, 'are fools. When another tells me, or when I say to myself, This is a word of Gascon growth; this a dangerous phrase; this is an ignorant discourse; thou art too full of figures; this is a paradoxical saying; this is a foolish expression: thou makest thyself merry sometimes, and men will think thou sayest a thing in good earnest, which thou only speakest in jest. Yes, say I; but I correct the faults of inadvertence, not those of custom. I have done what I designed,' he says, in triumph, 'All the world knows ME in my book, and my book in ME.'
And thus, by describing human nature under that term, or by repeating and stating the common opinions as his own, he is enabled to create an opposition which could not exist, so long as they remain unconsciously operative, or infolded in the separate individuality, as a part of its own particular form.
'My errors are sometimes natural and incorrigible,' he says; 'but the good which virtuous men do to the public in making themselves imitated, I, perhaps, may do in making my manners avoided. While I publish and accuse my own imperfections, somebody will learn to be afraid of them. The parts that I most esteem in myself, are more honoured in decrying than in commending my own manners. Pausanias tells us of an ancient player upon the lyre, who used to make his scholars go to hear one that lived over against him, and played very ill, that they might learn to hate his discords and false measures. The present time is fitting to reform us backward, more by dissenting than agreeing; by differing than consenting.' That is his application of his previous confession. And it is this present time that he impersonates, holding the mirror up to nature, and provoking opposition and criticism for that which was before buried in the unconsciousness of a common absurdity, or a common wrong. 'Profiting little by good examples, I endeavour to render myself as agreeable as I see others offensive; as constant as I see others fickle; as good as I see others evil.'
'There is no fancy so frivolous and extravagant that does not seem to me a suitable product of the human mind. All such whimsies as are in use amongst us, deserve at least to be hearkened to; for my part, they only with me import inanity, but they import that. Moreover, vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in nature.
'If I converse with a man of mind, and no flincher, who presses hard upon me, right and left, his imagination raises up mine. The contradictions of judgments do neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise me. I could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friends. "Thou art a fool; thou knowest not what thou art talking about." When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger. I advance towards him that contradicts, as to one that instructs me. I embrace and caress truth, in what hand soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender myself, and extend to it my conquered arms; and take a pleasure in being reproved, and accommodate myself to my accusers [aside] (very often more by reason of civility than amendment); loving to gratify the liberty of admonition, by my facility of submitting to it, at my own expense. Nevertheless, it is hard to bring the men of my time to it. They have not the courage to correct, because they have not the courage to be corrected, and speak always with dissimulation in the presence of one another. I take so great pleasure in being judged and known, that it is almost indifferent to me in which of THE TWO FORMS I am so. My imagination does so often contradict and condemn itself, that it is all one to me if another do it. The study of books is a languishing, feeble motion, that heats not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises at once.' But what if a book could be constructed on a new principle, so as to produce the effect of conference– of the noblest kind of conference – so as to rouse the stupid, lethargic mind to a truly human activity – so as to bring out the common, human form, in all its latent actuality, from the eccentricities of the individual varieties? Something of that kind appears to be attempted here.
He cannot too often charge the attentive reader, however, that his arguments require examination. 'In conferences,' he says, 'it is a rule that every word that seems to be good, is not immediately to be accepted. One must try it on all points, to see how it is lodged in the author: [perhaps he is not in earnest] for one must not always presently yield what truth or beauty soever seem to be in the argument.' A little delay, and opposition, the necessity of hunting, or fighting, for it, will only make it the more esteemed in the end. In such a style, 'either the author must stoutly oppose it [that is, whatsoever beauty or truth is to be the end of the argument in order to challenge the reader] or draw back, under colour of not understanding it, [and so piquing the reader into a pursuit of it] or, sometimes, perhaps, he may aid the point, and carry it beyond its proper reach [and so forcing the reader to correct him. This whole work is constructed on this principle]. As when I contend with a vigorous man, I please myself with anticipating his conclusions; I ease him of the trouble of explaining himself; I strive to prevent his imagination, whilst it is yet springing and imperfect; the order and pertinency of his understanding warns and threatens me afar off. But as to these, – and the sequel explains this relative, for it has no antecedent in the text – as to these, I deal quite contrary with them. I must understand and presuppose nothing but by them… Now, if you come to explain anything to them and confirm them (these readers), they presently catch at it, and rob you of the advantage of your interpretation. "It was what I was about to say; it was just my thought, and if I did not express it so, it was only for want of language." Very pretty! Malice itself must be employed to correct this proud ignorance– 'tis injustice and inhumanity to relieve and set him right who stands in no need of it, and is the worse for it. I love to let him step deeper into the mire,' – [luring him on with his own confessions, and with my assumptions of his case] 'and so deep that if it be possible, they may at least discern their error. FOLLY AND ABSURDITY ARE NOT TO BE CURED BY BARE ADMONITION. What Cyrus answered him who importuned him to harangue his army upon the point of battle, "that men do not become valiant and warlike on a sudden, by a fine oration, no more than a man becomes a good musician by hearing a fine song," may properly be said of such an admonition as this;' or, as Lord Bacon has it, 'It were a strange speech, which spoken, or spoken oft, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is by nature subject; it is order, pursuit, sequence, and interchange of application, which is mighty in nature.' But the other continues: – 'These are apprenticeships that are to be served beforehand by a long continued education. We owe this care and this assiduity of correction and instruction to our own, [that is the school,] but to go to preach to the first passer-by, and to lord it over the ignorance and folly of the first we meet, is a thing that I abhor. I rarely do it, even in my own particular conferences, and rather surrender my cause, than proceed to these supercilious and magisterial instructions.' The clue to the reading of his inner book. This is what Lord Bacon also condemns, as the magisterial method, – 'My humour is unfit, either to speak or write for beginners;' he will not shock or bewilder them by forcing on them prematurely the last conclusions of science; 'but as to things that are said in common discourse or amongst other things, I never oppose them either by word or sign, how false or absurd soever.'
'Let none even doubt,' says the author of the Novum Organum, who thought it wisest to steer clear even of doubt on such a point, 'whether we are anxious to destroy and demolish the philosophical arts and sciences which are now in use. On the contrary, we readily cherish their practice, cultivation, and honour; for we by no means interfere to prevent the prevalent system from encouraging discussion, adorning discourses, or being employed serviceably in the chair of the Professor, or the practice of common life, and being taken in short, by general consent, as current coin. Nay, we plainly declare that the system we offer will not be very suitable for such purposes, not being easily adapted to vulgar apprehension, except by EFFECTS AND WORKS. To show our sincerity [hear] in professing our regard and friendly disposition towards the received sciences, we can refer to the evidence of our published writings, especially our books on – the Advancement – [the Advancement] of Learning.' And the reader who can afford time for 'a second cogitation,' the second cogitation which a superficial and interior meaning, of course, requires, with the aid of the key of times, will find much light on that point, here and there, in the works referred to, and especially in those parts of them in which the scientific use of popular terms is treated. 'We will not, therefore,' he continues, 'endeavour to evince it (our sincerity) any further by words, but content ourselves with steadily, etc., … professedly premising that no great progress can be made by the present methods in the theory and contemplation of science, and that they can not be made to produce any very abundant effects.' This is the proof of his sincerity in professing his regard and friendly disposition towards them, to be taken in connection with his works on the Advancement of Learning, and no doubt it was sincere, and just to that extent to which these statements, and the practice which was connected with them, would seem to indicate; but the careful reader will perceive that it was a regard, and friendliness of disposition, which was naturally qualified by that doubly significant fact last quoted.
But the question of style is still under discussion here, and no wonder that with such views of the value of the 'current coin,' and with a regard and reverence for the received sciences so deeply qualified; or, as the other has it, with a humour so unfit either to speak or write for beginners, a style which admitted of other efficacies than bare proofs, should appear to be demanded for popular purposes, or for beginners. And no wonder that with views so similar on this first and so radical point, these two men should have hit upon the same method in Rhetoric exactly, though it was then wholly new. But our Gascon, goes on to describe its freedoms and novelties, its imitations of the living conference, its new vitalities.
'May we not,' says the successful experimenter in this very style, 'mix with the subject of conversation and communication, the quick and sharp repartees which mirth and familiarity introduce amongst friends pleasantly and wittingly jesting with one another; an exercise for which my natural gaiety renders me fit enough, if it be not so extended and serious as the other I just spoke of, 'tis no less smart and ingenious, nor of less utility as Lycurgus thought.'
CHAPTER II
FURTHER ILLUSTRATION OF 'PARTICULAR METHODS OF TRADITION.' – EMBARRASSMENTS OF LITERARY STATESMEN
Here's neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing. I hear it sing in the wind. My, best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud, till the dregs of the storm be past.
– Tempest.
Here then, in the passages already quoted, we find the plan and theory – the premeditated form of a new kind of Socratic performance; and this whole work, as well as some others composed in this age, make the realization of it; an invention which proposes to substitute for the languishing feeble motion which is involved in the study of books– the kind of books which this author found invented when he came – for the passive, sluggish receptivity of another's thought, the living glow of pursuit and discovery, the flash of self-conviction.
It is a Socratic dialogue, indeed; but it waits for the reader's eye to open it; he is himself the principal interlocutor in it; there can be nothing done till he comes in. Whatsoever beauty or truth maybe in the argument; whatsoever jokes and repartees; whatsoever infinite audacities of mirth may be hidden under that grave cover, are not going to shine out for any lazy book-worm's pleasure. He that will not work, neither shall he eat of this food. 'Up to the mountains,' for this is hunter's language, 'and he that strikes the venison first shall be lord of this feast.' It is an invention whereby the author will remedy for himself the complaint, that life is short, and art is long; whereby he will 'outstretch his span,' and make over, not his learning only but his living to the future; – it is an instrumentality by which he will still maintain living relations with the minds of men, by which he will put himself into the most intimate relations of sympathy, and confidence, and friendship, with the mind of the few; by which he will reproduce his purposes and his faculties in them, and train them to take up in their turn that thread of knowledges which is to be spun on.
But if this design be buried so deeply, is it not lost then? If all the absurd and contradictory developments – if all the mad inconsistencies – all the many-sided contradictory views, which are possible to human nature on all the questions of human life, which this single personal pronoun was made to represent, in the profoundly philosophic design of the author, are still culled out by learned critics, and made to serve as the material of a grave, though it is lamented, somewhat egotistical biography, is not all this ingenuity, which has successfully evaded thus far not the careless reader only, but the scrutiny of the scholar, and the sharp eye of the reviewer himself, is it not an ingenuity which serves after all to little purpose, which indeed defeats its own design? No, by no means. That disguise which was at first a necessity, has become the instrument of his power. It is that broad I of his, that I myself, with which he still takes all the world; it is that single, many-sided, vivacious, historical impersonation, that ideal impersonation of the individual human nature as it is – not as it should be – with all its 'weaved-up follies ravelled out,' with all its before unconfessed actualities, its infinite absurdities and contradictions, so boldly pronounced and assumed by one laying claim to an historical existence, it is this historical assumption and pronunciation of all the before unspoken, unspeakable facts of this unexplored department of natural history, it is this apparent confession with which this magician entangles his victims, as he tells us in a passage already quoted, and leads them on through that objective representation of their follies in which they may learn to hate them, to that globe mirror – that mirror of the age which he boasts to have hung up here, when he says, 'I have done what I designed: all the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.'
Who shall say that it is yet time to strip him of the disguise which he wears so effectively? With all his faults, and all his egotisms, who would not be sorry to see him taken to pieces, after all? And who shall quite assure us, that it would not still be treachery, even now, for those who have unwound his clues, and traversed his labyrinths to the heart of his mystery, – for those who have penetrated to the chamber of his inner school, to come out and blab a secret with which he still works so potently; insensibly to those on whom he works, perhaps, yet so potently? But there is no harm done. It will still take the right reader to find his way through these new devices in letters; these new and vivacious proofs of learning; for him, and for none other, they lurk there still.
To evade political restrictions, and to meet the popular mind on its own ground, was the double purpose of the disguise; but it is a disguise which will only detect, and not baffle, the mind that is able to identify itself with his, and able to grasp his purposes; it is a disguise which will only detect the mind that knows him, and his purposes already. The enigmatical form of the inculcation is the device whereby that mind will be compelled to follow his track, to think for itself his thoughts again, to possess itself of the inmost secret of his intention; for it is a school in whose enigmatical devices the mind of the future was to be caught, in whose subtle exercises the child of the future was to be trained to an identity that should restore the master to his work again, and bring forth anew, in a better hour, his clogged and buried genius.
But, if the fact that a new and more vivid kind of writing, issuing from the heart of the new philosophy of things, designed to work new and extraordinary effects by means of literary instrumentalities, – effects hitherto reserved for other modes of impression, – if the fact, that a new and infinitely artistic mode of writing, burying the secrets of philosophy in the most careless forms of the vulgar and popular discourse, did, in this instance at least, exist; if this be proved, it will suffice for our present purpose. What else remains to be established concerning points incidentally started here, will be found more pertinent to another stage of this enquiry.
From beginning to end, the whole work might be quoted, page by page, in proof of this; but after the passages already produced here, there would seem to be no necessity for accumulating any further evidence on this point. A passage or two more, at least, will suffice to put that beyond question. The extracts which follow, in connection with those already given, will serve, at least, to remove any rational doubt on that point, and on some others, too, perhaps.
'But whatever I deliver myself to be, provided it be such as I really am, I have my end; neither will I make any excuse for committing to paper such mean and frivolous things as these; the meanness of the subject compels me to it.' – 'Human reason is a two-edged and a dangerous sword. Observe, in the hand of Socrates, her most intimate and familiar friend, how many points it has. Thus, I am good for nothing but to follow, and suffer myself to be easily carried away with the crowd.' – 'I have this opinion of these political controversies: Be on what side you will, you have as fair a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to jostle principles that are too manifest to be disputed; and yet, 'tis my notion, in public affairs [hear], there is no government so ill, provided it be ancient, and has been constant, that is not better than change and alteration. Our manners are infinitely corrupted, and wonderfully incline to grow worse: of our laws and customs, there are many that are barbarous and monstrous: nevertheless, by reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the danger of stirring things, if I could put something under to stay the wheel, and keep it where it is, I would do so with all my heart. It is very easy to beget in a people a contempt of its ancient observances; never any man undertook, but he succeeded; but to establish a better regimen in the stead of that a man has overthrown, many who have attempted this have foundered in the attempt. I very little consult my prudence [philosophic 'prudence'] in my conduct. I am willing to let it be guided by public rule.
'In fine, to return to myself, the only things by which I esteem myself to be something, is that wherein never any man thought himself to be defective. My recommendation is vulgar and common; for whoever thought he wanted sense. It would be a proposition that would imply a contradiction in itself; [in such subtleties thickly studding this popular work, the clues which link it with other works of this kind are found – the clues to a new practical human philosophy.] 'Tis a disease that never is where it is discerned; 'tis tenacious and strong; but the first ray of the patient's sight does nevertheless pierce it through and disperse it, as the beams of the sun do a thick mist: to accuse one's self, would be to excuse one's self in this case; and to condemn, to absolve. There never was porter, or silly girl, that did not think they had sense enough for their need. The reasons that proceed from the natural arguing of others, we think that if we had turned our thoughts that way, we should ourselves have found it out as well as they. Knowledge, style, and such parts as we see in other works, we are readily aware if they excel our own; but for the simple products of the understanding, every one thinks he could have found out the like, and is hardly sensible of the weight and difficulty, unless – and then with much ado – in an extreme and incomparable distance; and whoever should be able clearly to discern the height of another's judgment, would be also able to raise his own to the same pitch; so that this is a sort of exercise, from which a man is to expect very little praise, a kind of composition of small repute. And, besides, for whom do you write?' – for he is merely meeting this common sense. His object is merely to make his reader confess, 'That was just what I was about to say, it was just my thought; and if I did not express it so, it was only for want of language;' – 'for whom do you write? The learned, to whom the authority appertains of judging books, know no other value but that of learning, and allow of no other process of wit but that of erudition and art. If you have mistaken one of the Scipios for another, what is all the rest you have to say worth? Whoever is ignorant of Aristotle, according to their rule, is in some sort ignorant of himself. Heavy and vulgar souls cannot discern the grace of a high and unfettered style. Now these two sorts of men make the world. The third sort, into whose hands you fall, of souls that are regular, and strong of themselves, is so rare, that it justly has neither name nor place amongst us, and it is pretty well time lost to aspire to it, or to endeavour to please it.' He will not content himself with pleasing the few. He wishes to move the world, and its approbation is a secondary question with him.
'He that should record my idle talk, to the prejudice of the most paltry law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me too; for, in what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but 'tis what I had then in my thought, a thought tumultuous and wavering. ["I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet," says the offended king. "These words are not mine." Hamlet: "Nor mine now."] All I say is by way of discourse. I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed, and so I told a great man, who complained to me of the tartness and contention of my advice.' And, indeed, he would not, in this instance, that is very certain; – for he has been speaking on the subject of RELIGIOUS TOLERATION, and among other remarks, somewhat too far in advance of his time, he has let fall, by chance, such passages as these, which, of course, he stands ready to recall again in case any one is offended. ('These words are not mine, Hamlet.' 'Nor mine now.') 'To kill men, a clear and shining light is required, and our life is too real and essential, to warrant these supernatural and fantastic accidents.' 'After all 'tis setting a man's conjectures at a very high price to cause a man to be roasted alive upon them.' He does not look up at all, after making this accidental remark; for he is too much occupied with a very curious story, which happens to come into his head at that moment, of certain men, who being more profoundly asleep than men usually are, became, according to certain grave authorities, what in their dreams they fancied they were; and having mentioned one case sufficiently ludicrous to remove any unpleasant sensation or inquiry which his preceding allusion might have occasioned, he resumes, 'If dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with effects of life, I cannot believe that therefore our will should be accountable to justice. Which I say, as a man, who am neither judge nor privy counsellor, nor think myself, by many degrees, worthy so to be, but a man of the common sort, born and vowed to the obedience of the public realm, both in words and acts.
'Thought is free; —thought is free.' Ariel.
'Perceiving you to be ready and prepared on one part, I propose to you on the other, with all the care I can, to clear your judgment, not to enforce it. Truly, I have not only a great many humours, but also a great many opinions [which I bring forward here, and assume as mine] that I would endeavour to make my son dislike, if I had one. The truest, are not always the most commodious to man; he is of too wild a composition. "We speak of all things by precept and resolution," he continues, returning again to this covert question of toleration, and Lord Bacon complains also that that is the method in his meridian. They make me hate things that are likely, when they impose them on me for infallible. "Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy" – (or, as Lord Bacon expresses it, "wonder is the seed of knowledge") – enquiry the progress – ignorance the end. Ay, but there is a sort of ignorance, strong and generous, that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge, a knowledge, which to conceive, requires no less knowledge than knowledge itself.'
'I saw, in my younger days, a report of a process that Corras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print.' – [The vain, egotistical, incoherent, rambling old Frenchman, the old Roman Catholic French gentleman, who is understood to be the author of this new experiment in letters, was not far from being a middle-aged man, when the pamphlet which he here alludes to was first published; but his chronology, generally, does not bear a very close examination. Some very extraordinary anachronisms, which the critics are totally at a loss to account for, have somehow slipped into his story. There was a young philosopher in France in those days, of a most precocious, and subtle, and inventive genius – of a most singularly artistic genius, combining speculation and practice, as they had never been combined before, and already busying himself with all sorts of things, and among other things, with curious researches in regard to ciphers, and other questions not less interesting at that time; – there was a youth in France, whose family name was also English, living there with his eyes wide open, a youth who had found occasion to invent a cipher of his own even then, into whose hands that publication might well have fallen on its first appearance, and one on whose mind it might very naturally have made the impression here recorded. But let us return to the story.] – 'I saw in my younger days, a report of a process, that Corras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print, of a strange accident of two men, who presented themselves the one for the other. I remember, and I hardly remember anything else, that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful, and so far exceeding both our knowledge and his who was the judge, that I thought it a very bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged. [That is the point.] Let us take up SOME FORM of ARREST, that shall say, THE COURT understands nothing of the matter, more freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who ordered the parties to appear again in a hundred years.' We must not forget that these stories 'are not regarded by the author merely for the use he makes of them, – that they carry, besides what he applies them to, the seeds of a richer and bolder matter, and sometimes collaterally a more delicate sound, both to the author himself who declines saying anything more about it in that place, and to others who shall happen to be of his ear!' One already prepared by previous discovery of the method of communication here indicated, and by voluminous readings in it, to understand that appeal, begs leave to direct the attention of the critical reader to the delicate collateral sounds in the story last quoted.