HAVING told of Selfhood, ere now I tell of breed the younger of the two Arch-Instincts of man's nature, 'twer well here to remember how these pictured steeds are Ideas construed by the abstract Intellect. Whatever abode Philosophy thinketh to build, to erect a lofty temple that may shrine her faith, crowning the unvisited holiness of the hills, or thrust her fair facade amid the noisy dens of swarming Industry, to invite the sons of toil, 10all altitude expanse or grandeur of building subsisteth on foundations buried out of sight, which yet the good architect carrieth ever in mind, and keepeth the draft by him stored in his folios. So herein 'twas laid down what footing Reason plann'd;— divining Purpose in Natur, it abstracted first her main intentions, and subsumeth under each the old animal passions ancillary thereto, tho' in Nature's economy the same impulse may work to divers ends, as demonstrably is seen 20in the appetite of hunger, which prime in selfhood promoteth no less all living activities, so universal that some thinkers would make it a corner-stone, and mixing other like fabric build thereon confidently, albeit for such deep trust unfit, being in itself a thing of no substance. And truly pleasur in food, common to all animals that can feel pleasure, comforting the incessant toil of sustenance to enable their blind energies, when once it findeth conscience in the Reason of man 30is posited by folly as an end-in-itself; till by sensuous refinement it usurpeth rank beside his intellectual and spiritual joys,— a road whereon the brutes already had broken ground (trespassing somewhat haply on nature's allotments), for a Tyger, when once he hath tasted human flesh, in pursuit of his prey is more dangerous to men and chooseth daintily among them; like those cannibals who yet, for all their courtesy (so travellers tell) and Spartan stoicism, gaily devour their kind.
40From the terrifying jungle of his haunted childhood where prehistoric horror still lurketh untamed, man by slow steps withdrew, and from supply of need fell to pursuit of pleasur, untill his luxury supplanting brutality invented a new shame; for with civilization a caste of cooks was bred, not specialized in structure—as with bees or ants— but serviceable of either sex and disciplin'd in such cultured tradition that the grammar of it would stock a library; nor are their banquets spredd 50to please the palate only; the eye is invited by dainty disguises and the nostril with scents, nay even the ear is fed, and on the gather'd guests a trifling music playeth, dispelling all thought, that while they fill the belly, the empty mind may float lightly in the full moonshine of o'erblown affluence. Thus, when in London city a Guild of merchants dine, one dinner's cost would ease a whole bye-street of want, its broken meats outface Christ's thrifty miracle. But tho' of its mere sensual smirch the scene be cleansed 60at fashionable tables, where delicat guests sit and play with their food inattentively, as 'twer in their relaxation an accidental relish to the intellectual banter and familiar discourse of social entertainment—a thing overlook'd among the agreeable superfluities of life, trifles good in themselves, and no more censurable than the fine linen of Ulysses and the brooch that Penelope gave him, nor the rangled shroud that she wove for his sire, nor any work of price 70that humbly doeth honor unto any temple of God— yet this amenity of Mammon is to the epicure mere disgust, a farrago of incongruous kickshaws, a hazardous pampering, as barbarously remote from pleasure's goal as pothouse cheese and ale. For Reason once engaged on the æsthetic of food refineth every means, as those painters in oil who all their sunless days sat labouring to attain a chiaroscuro of full colour—so the epicure; nor planneth he his creation with a less regard 80to grandiose composition, in a scheme of morsels gradated to provoke and stimulate alike digestion and appetite; and each viand married with a congenial wine, and each wine in itself a sublimation of fancy, a radiant riotous juice, and of such priceless rarity as no man can come but by luck and genius to possess such bottles. And here the Voluptuary may think his anchor hath bitten on truth; for surely nothing in nature fulfilleth more various expectancies of sense 90than his wine doth; to the eye luminous as rich gems engendering thru' long æons in the bowels of earth; to the nostrils reminiscent as subtle odours of timorous wind-wavering flowers; to the taste beyond all savours ravishing, insatiable, yet wholesome as is the incense of forested pines, when neath their scorching screens they fume the slumberous air; and to the mind exhilarating, expelling care, even as those well-toned viols, matured by time, which once, when the Muse visited Italy to prepare 100a voice of beauty for the joy of her children, wer fashion'd by Amati and Stradivari and still, treasured in their mellow shapelinesses, fulfil the genius of her omnipotent destiny,— speaking with incantation of strange magic to charm the dreams that yet undreamt lurk in the unfathom'd deep of mind, unfeatured hopes and loves and dim desires, uttermost forms of all things that shall be. 'Tis thus by the live firework of his wine allured that the epicure thinketh he hath wherewithal to pave 110thru' palate and gullet a right path for his soul, each feast as a symphonic poem, preluding to melodious Andante Scherzo and final Fugue,— a microcosm, as those musical pæans are that perish not in the using, but persist strengthening their immortality while millions feed on their unquenchable loveliness evermore. In such fine artistry of his putrefying pleasures he indulgeth richly his time untill the sad day come when he retireth with stomach Emeritus 120to ruminate the best devour'd moments of life; like any old fox-hunter his good days with the hounds, any angler or cricketer, for he too hath follow'd his sport to himself, and each good day of sport (and thatt the dog knoweth and enjoyeth with his Master as well) is a thing in itself, whole even as life is one. This is the supreme ecstasy of the mountaineer, to whom the morn is bright, when with his goal in sight, some icepeak high i' the heav'ns, he is soul-bounden for it, prospecting the uncertain clue of his perilous step 130to scale precipices where no foot clomb afore, for good or ill success to his last limit of strength; his joy in the doing and his life in his hand he glorieth in the fortunes of his venturous day; 'mid the high mountain silences, where Poesy lieth in dream and with the secret strength of things that governs thought inhabiteth, where man wandereth into God's presence:—But what heav'nly or earthly Muse attendeth the epicure? Nay, what man deigneth ear to his grovelling tale? His gluttony rotteth and stinketh 140in the dust-bin of Ethic—Howso that may be, the thing cometh of Self, as War doth; and hereby 'twer well to note how some would derive War from Breed, tho' sex is but the occasion, when jealousy of love provoketh Selfhood to anger: indeed Herodotus, seeking the root-cause of the implacable enmity twixt Hellenes and Asiatics to convey his book, dresseth up a frontispiece of four royal rapes, of To and Medea, Europa and Helen of Troy, playing no doubt upon the flair of his hearers, 150who love him still for his good faith in his fables.
Yet our distinction is proper and holdeth fast. Now breed is to the race as selfhood to the individual; and these two prime Instincts as they differ in purpose are independent each from other, and separat as are the organic tracts in the animal body whereby they function; and tho' Breed is needful alike to plants as to animals, yet its apparatus is found in animals of a more special kind; and since race-propagation might have been assured 160without differentiation of sex, we are left to guess nature's intention from its full effects in man: and such matter is the first that will follow hereon.
Remembering my dissension from Spinoza here, I think of him, Bruno's pupil, ὑψίπολις, ἄπολις, in his pride at his bench intently shaping his lenses, and how he in thatt irksome toil to earn his bread, the while he ponder'd his great book, was perfecting the tool that invited science to ever minuter anatomy, untill she took skill 170to handle invisibles; and lately upon thatt path hath divined, in the observed fertilization of plants, atomic mechanism with unlimited power to vary the offspring in character, by mutual inexhaustible interchange of transmitted genes; a theory on such wide experiment upbuilt that the enrichment of species may be assumed to be the purpose of natur in the segregation of sex. Yet this new knowledge throweth no light on our way to a purposeful and wise selfbreeding of mankind 180which, coud it be, would then responsibly overrule all indiscriminat mating: tho' from such ordeal our hybrid wisdom well might shrink: rather we see complexity irresoluble in obscurity: So may we still follow our instinctiv preferences unrebuked, and in love of Beauty affirm our faith that our happiest espousals are nature's free gift. And the origin of sex lieth yet in thatt darkness where all origins are—since definition of links within our causal chain advanceth us no way 190in sensible approachment to the first Cause of all: we are happy in our discoveries as a child thinketh he is nearer to the Pole-star when he is put to bed: yet, tracing backwards in the story of sex, the steps of our carpeted staircase are familiar and strong. First among lowest types of life we think to find no separation of sex: plants in the next degree show differentiation at puberty with some signs of mutual approachment: next in higher animals an early differentiation, and at puberty 200periodic appetite with mutual attraction sometimes engaging Beauty: then at last in man all these same characters promoted and strengthen'd to a constant conscient passion, by Reason transform'd to an altruistic emotion and spiritual love.
Breed then together with Selfhood steppeth in pair, for as Self grew thru' Reason from animal rage to vice of war and gluttony, but meanwhile uprose thru' motherly yearning to a profounder affection, so Breed, from like degrading brutality at heart, 210distilleth in the altruism of spiritual love to be the sublimest passion of humanity, with parallel corruption; in its supremacy confess'd of all, since all in their degree hav felt its divine exaltation and bestial abasement. It hath sanctified fools and degraded heroes; and tho' the warrior wil lightly leave his lady to join in battle (so the weight of the elder horse side-wrencheth at the yoke), he wil return to her more gladly, and often rue his infidelity.
220In higher natures, poetic or mystical, sense is transfigur'd quite; as once with Dante it was who saw the grace of a fair Florentine damsel as wisdom uncreate: for it happen'd to him in thatt awakening miracle of Love at first sight, which is to many a man his only miracle, his one divine Vision, his one remember'd dream— it happ'd to Dante, I say, as with no other man in the height of his vision and for his faith therein: the starry plenitude of his radiant soul, 230searching for tenement in the bounties of life, encounter'd an aspect of spiritual beauty at the still hour of dawn which is holier than day: as when a rose-bud first untrammeleth the shells of her swathing petals and looseneth their embrace, so the sunlight may enter to flush the casket of her virgin promise, fairer than her full bloom shall ever be, ere its glories lie squander'd in death:— 'Twas of thatt silent meeting his high vision came rapturous as any vision ever to poet given; 240since in thatt Sacrament he rebaptized his soul and lived thereafter in Love, by the merit of Faith toiling to endow the world: and on those feather'd wings his mighty poem mounted panting, and lieth now with all its earthly tangle by the throne of God. So to Lucretius also seeking Order in Chance some frenzy of Beauty came, neath which constraint he left his atoms in the lurch and fell to worshipping Aphrodite, the naked Goddess of man's breed; and waving the oriflamme of her divinity 250above the march of his slow-trooping argument, he attributeth to her the creation and being of all Beauty soe'er: nec sine te quiquam dias in lumnis oras exoritur, neque fit laetum neque: amabile quiquam. So well did he in his rapture: such is Beauty's power physical or spiritual; and if it be the cause of spiritual emotion (as hath been said), 'tis plain that Beauty wil be engaged in man's love, in so far as 'tis a proper and actual attribute of man: 260first, as in animals, of his physical form, to which, when beauty of soul is added, the addition but marketh more specially its human character. Thus Shakespeare, in the sessions of sweet silent thought gathering from memory the idealization of love, when he launch'd from their dream-sheds those golden sonnets that swim like gondolas i' the wake of his drama, fashion'd for their ensignry a pregnant axiom, and wrote: From fairest creatures we desire increase That thereby Beauty's Rose might never die; wherein 270he asserteth beauty to be of love the one motiv, and thatt in double meaning of object and cause. And tho' blind instinct wer full puissant of itself for propagation of man, yet the attraction of beauty bettereth the species, nor without it coud ther hav been effect in spirit; and that the poet guarded this showeth in his lyric, where of Sylvia 'tis enquired why all the swains commend her, and he replyeth thereto Holy fair and wise is she, thus giving to Soul first place, thereafter to Body and last of the trine 280Intelligence; and thatt is their right order in Love. And this high beauty of spirit—in the conscience of it, in the love of it, and the appearances of it— tho' it hav no quarrel with thatt physical beauty whereof 'twas born, when once 'tis waken'd in the mind needeth no more support of the old animal lure, but absolute in its transmitted power and grace maketh a new beauty of its own appearances. Thus oft the full majesty and happiness of love is found in lovers whose corporeal presences 290would seem disloyalty to the gay worshippers of the goddess of grace, nor fit to approach her shrine: yet lightly wil Love rate the ridicule of them whose passion, subsisting in the flourish of flesh, outlasteth not its brief prime, but must fade and fade as thatt fadeth, and when it perisheth perish; and who themselves—save in the rout of their revel they hav perish'd immature—provide tales of despair, disease and madness; melancholy tragedies of ignobility unredeem'd, to scare mankind.
300But love's true passion is of immortal happiness, whereof the Greeks, maybe,—whose later poets told of a heav'nly Aphroditè—had some dim prescience before man ever arrived at thatt wisdom thru' Christ, and now teacheth to his children as their birthright,—a gift whose wealth is amplified by spending, and its charm rejuvenated by habit, that dulleth all else: nor needeth it for joy to look off from this earth and beyond, nor to sit on the schoolbench with them who dispute in argument the existence of God; 310being of eternity it overcometh evil as any nativ disposition is apt to do, but more surely and with its virtue more self-secure than the merry or sad heart is, that in laughter or tears wil keep unchanged its temper, whatsoe'er befall; so priketh hem Nature in hir corages. But think not Aphroditè therefor disesteem'd for rout of her worshippers, nor sensuous Beauty torn from her royal throne, who is herself mother of heavenly Love (so far as in human aspect 320eternal essence can hav mortal parentage), our true compass in art as our comfort in faith, our daily bread of pleasur;—enough that thus I deem of Beauty among Goddes best gifts, and even above the pleasur of Virtue accord it honour of men.
The allure of bodily beauty is mutual in mankind as is the instinct of breed, which tho' it seem i' the male more activ, is i' the female more predominant, more deeply engaging life, grave and responsible. Thus while in either sex celibat lives are led 330without impoverishment of intellect or will, this thing is rare in women, whereas in the man virginity may seem a virile energy in its angelic liberty, prerequisit to the perfection of some high personality. And here we are driv'n to enquire of Reason how it came that bodily beauty is deem'd a feminin attribute, since not by science nor æsthetick coud we arrive at such a judgment. But not triflingly to trench on prehistoric problems, 'twil be enough to say 340that from the first it may not always hav been so, and primacy of beauty may hav once lain with the male, in days of pagan savagery, afore men left their hunting and took tillage of the fields in hand, superseding the women and all their moon-magic, to invent a reason'd labor of intensiv culture, as now 'tis seen;—whether in remotest orient lands whose cockcrow is our curfew, where Chineses swarm teasing their narrow plots with hand and hoe, carrying their own dung on their heads obsequiously as ants; 350or on our western farms where now machines usurp such manual labor, and hav with their strange forms dethroned the heraldry of the seasons, fair emblems of eld that seem'd the inalienable imagery of mankinde. How was November's melancholy endear'd to me in the effigy of plowteams following and recrossing patiently the desolat landscape from dawn to dusk, as the slow-creeping ripple of their single furrow submerged the sodden litter of summer's festival! They are fled, those gracious teams; high on the headland now 360squatted, a roaring engin toweth to itself a beam of bolted shares, that glideth to and fro combing the stubbled glebe: and agriculture here, blotting out with such daub so rich a pictur of grace, hath lost as much of beauty as it hath saved in toil. Again where reapers, bending to the ripen'd corn, were wont to scythe in rank and step with measured stroke, a shark-tooth'd chariot rampeth biting a broad way, and jerking its high swindging arms around in the air, swoopeth the swath. Yet this queer Pterodactyl is well, 370that in the sinister torpor of the blazing day clicketeth in heartless mockery of swoon and sweat, as 'twer the salamandrine voice of all parch'd things: and the dry grasshopper wondering knoweth his God. Or what man feeleth not a new poetry of toil, whenas on frosty evenings neath its clouding smoke the engin hath huddled up its clumsy threshing-coach against the ricks, wherefrom laborers standing aloft toss the sheaves on its tongue; while the grain runneth out, and in the whirr of its multitudinous hurry 380it hummeth like the bee, a warm industrious boom that comforteth the farm, and spreadeth far afield with throbbing power; as when in a cathedral awhile the great diapason speaketh, and the painted saints feel their glass canopies flutter in the heav'nward prayer.
Thus hath man's Reason dealt since he took spade in hand, either by wit of the insect or of the engineer: and they who hav come to think that in remotest times Eve delved and Adam span, can show matriarchy of sorts had precedent in natur, ostensibly among birds, whose males more gaudily feather'd wil disport their charms 391and dance in coquetry to win the admiring hens: Verily it well may be that sense of beauty came to those primitiv bipeds earlier than to man. But howso in patriarchal times our code upgrew, it hath decretals honour'd in the courts of Love: 'tis the faith of all poets from the Troubadours to Shelley's broken amours, and that the fair Muses should hav masculin wooers was Apollo's will who favour'd his own sex. But had the god inspired 400poetesses many as poets—coud thatt hav been— follies had cancel'd out truly in the equation of love, and steadier fire of passion would hav warm'd the world. Today if any lady in her boudoir rthymeth, she is drown'd in man's tradition and disguiseth her tone, transposing her high music to the lower clef; or deemeth thatt the orthodoxy of the sapphic mode, because of the two love songs which pedantry hath saved of Sappho's complisht artistry, one by mischance, in thatt muliebrous dump which gave Catullus pause, 410hath this falsification of her true soprano. But 'twas the deeper voice that robed passion in song, with the masculin emotion that glorify'd it: and man, finding elation in physical beauty and in the passion of sex his chief transport of soul, ascribed supremacy of beauty to woman's grace, and she to'ardly accepted his idolatry. Yet if the passion had been identic in the twain, the woman surely had found her like ideal in man; but the motivs of Nature that determin life 420are hidden, and with the sexes they are unlike in love. For tho' true loves are mutual and of equal strength and their bodily communion is a sacrament— like those irrevocable initiations of yore whose occult ritual it was profane to disclose— and in its uttermost surrender of secrecies hallowing brute instinct, symbolizeth approach to satisfaction of unattainable desire; yet in fullest devotion and frankest abandon of eager and mutual mating, whether or no she ken, 430the woman's choice hath been by a deeper purpose led, whereof the mastering revelation awaiteth her in the reality of her Motherhood; wherefor, that her son may be noble, she will seek his sire where her ideal, howe'er vaguely imagin'd, lieth outside her sphere, beyond her—and so thinketh she less of thatt for which her mate praiseth and seeketh her, and longing evermore for what she most lacketh, in her thought of wisdom looketh for higher things, and for immortal Roses desireth increase.
440How Natur (as Plato saith) teacheth man by beauty, and by the lure of sense leadeth him ever upward to heav'nly things, and how the mere sensible forms which first arrest him take on ever more and more spiritual aspect,—yet discard not nor disown their sensuous beauty, since thatt is eternal and sure, the essence thereof being the reverent joy of life— this everywhere is seen and most overtly in Breed (too many in truth ther be who find it never elsewhere); yet man is slow to see that love's call to woman 450is graver and more solemn than it can be to him, by reason of her higher function and duty therein, and that all past attainment which his spirit hath won came to him thru' motherhood of the nursling boy;— yea, ev'n the dignity of his masculin intellect, that outreacheth her range, was first of her making and never coud hav fruited but for the devout fostering environment of her lovingkindness: nor can man's futur attainment forgo thatt shelter, wherewith her precocious girlhood accompanieth 460the eve;growing incumbency of his pupillage, as it grew in the brutes: . . and here 'tis seen again how 'tis a backsliding and treason against nature when women wil unsex their own ideal of Love, and ignorantly aiming to be in all things as men, would make love as men make it—tho' Sappho did thatt, who rare among women for manly mastery of art, a Nonsuch of her kind, exceeded by default, nondescript, and for lack of the true feminin borrow'd effeminacy of men, the incontinents, 470who, ranking with gluttons in Aristotle's book, made a lascivious pleasure of their Lesbian loves; till in the event the euphony of her isle's fair name whisper'd an unspoken and else unspeakable shame. Nor can the ethic that here intrudeth be deny'd, since if men speak of morals 'tis of sex they think; forwhy the passion of it both transporteth their souls and troubleth daily life with problems of conduct.
Now to the most who are like to read my English poem christian marriage wil seem a stablish'd ordinance 480as universal, wholesome and needful to man as wheat is, which, ubiquitous, and sib to a weed that yet wil hamper its cultur, overruleth all else, weigheth our gold by single grains, and harvested measureth in sacks the peace and welfare of the world, our bread of life, and symbol of the food of the soul. But tho' monogamy had been by wise lawgivers coded with rights and duties and property, and thus by Jewish use or Roman held place in the Church, the instinct of sex was ever anathema to the Essenes whose thought handsel'd the faith; 'twas to thatt sect the accurst 491contamination of all spiritual purity: and only after tough battle against two mighty outbursts of Pagan Poetry coud marriage come in the end to its own, from being a tolerated discordancy to be an accepted harmony and hallow'd as such within the Church, a sacrament. Of those two wars the story is long, and now 'tis here briefly to tell.
The first War of the Essenes was with the poetry of selfhood, those sagas and epic rhapsodies 500which had burst forth to flood all Europe in the time of the northern invasions, when the hideous Huns, extending the right wing of their havoc, swept down on the old land of the Goths. Soon as their arrows prick'd our Teuton forefathers, a clash of arms and yell of battle arose, that in the unsearchable storage of earth's high firmament vibrateth to this day. The warriors, who in vain defence of home escaped the first mauling and massacre, wer driven forth and, pressing Westward desperatly, became in turn 510themselves ruthless invaders, live firebrands that spredd the blast of their contagion to Allemand and Frank, Burgundian, Vandal and Lombard, from Angle and Dane to furthest Kelt; and with the sword follow'd the song, an inextinguishable pæan of battle and blood. A sudden eruption of nature, as when earth quaketh and faltering along the edges of its wrinkling shell the mountains roar and crack, and vent their ruddy bowels in spume of molten lava; as oft hath been where now some gracious valley embosom'd in soft azurous hills 520smileth, an Eden as fair as Goddes love was feign'd to have planted for man's use—thatt lost garden regain'd, lost once thru' pride and now by long stooping regain'd,— a pictur and outward symbol of the comfort of them whose spirits dwell in the Eden that the Muse hath made her garden of soul in the golden lapses of Time; and if, tracing to its source some Heliconian rill, its mossgrown cave is found in the black splinter'd rock, where thatt once cool'd and stay'd, a volcanic moraine to bank his blossom'd Paradise and feed his vines, 530ther-after to the poet all his joy will seem a strange mysterious dream, a thread of beauty eterne enwoven in mortal change, and he himself a flower fertilized awhile on the quench'd torrent of Hell.
Now when Rome's mitred prelates ambled o'er the Alps to hold the Gallic provinces, whose overlords their missioners had won to the confession of Christ, the pagan folk submissiv to constraint wer driv'n in flocks to th' font, but got little washing therein. Whatever of kindliness Tacitus once had found 540sequester'd in the rude homesteads of Germany was burnt up in thatt fiery ordeal, which taught them the joy of frenzy and prowess, and the songs whereby they glorify'd the memory of successful lust, and stirr'd anew the fierce delight of battle and blood. A wilder strain maybe than the lost Bedouin songs, that seal'd the weird which the Angel in Araby foretold to the outcast bondwoman in the famishing desert, and she to her son,—that his horoscope was to range like the wild ass untameable, and his hand should be 550'gainst ev'ry man, and ev'ry man's hand against him. Wherefor hitting for remedy on Plato's old plan, when he proscribed Homer from his Utopian schools— saying that morals wer unteachable to men who imputed mortal passions to the immortal gods—, the priests denounced the bards,and would hav stopp'd their mouths; but finding that forbiddance met with no regard they turn'd to assure their flock by amity, and to comb the fleece they might not shear: upon which way they wrought some mitigation, and growing reconciled to the art, 560and grudging to the heathen what might serve the Church, they took thought to divert it, and engaged the bards to make like stirring balladry of the Bible tales: wherein, joining themselves with good heart to the work, their first grains of allowance multiply'd to pounds; while with their clerkly skill they sat fast to transcribe the old pagan tales, redacted to the amended form in which we know them, with what other numberless wonder-lives of the Saints they wrote, symbolic masques of Christian orthodoxy, and later mystery-plays. 570So all these diverse stuffs thru' the dark centuries lay quietly a-soak together in the dye-vats, wherein our British Arthur was clandestinely christen'd and crown'd, and all his knights cleansed and respirited, reclothed as might be: for the dispossess'd devils had kindly accepted their rebate, content to find their old home swept and gamish'd; and tho' verily in their domestication, as 'tis with brutes, they had lost keenness of sense and true compact of character, they flourish to this day the darlings of our poets, 580who drape their model Arthur to their taste, whereas time was when good St. Andrew strode forth in plate-mail.
While thus the Catechists made compromising peace with the poetry of selfhood, ere the fight was won in rescue of womanhood from the ravish of war, a new era had dawn'd and a new strain of song, the young poetry of breed; and the conflict therewith is in my story styled the second Essene War. 'Twas no Huns now that stirr'd the Frankish heart to sing, nay rather Athena's call, and the gracious emblems 500of Hellenic humanity, that long had drown'd where they had sunk o'erwhelm'd in the wreckage of Rome, undersuck'd in the wallow, when Caesar's great ship founder'd with all its toys decadent in the deep, now again of their buoyancy up-struggling here and there to ride in sparkling dance on the desolate sea: Or what grave lore had refuged with the Ishmaelite was stealing back from exile to its western home, its mansion of birthright, and had now already inspired passionat Abelard, who with his ethnic books 600was heralding in Paris that full Renaissance which should illumin Europe, and plant her cities with Universities of learning, sanctuaries of spirit, our schools of thought and science to this day. Full Springtime was not yet surely, nor soon to be: 'twas as mayhap à ce jour de Saint Valentin que chacun doit choisir son per, or a later day of February, when in the shelter'd woodland the Sun with broadening smile thinketh to intercalate a glad red-letter'd feast in Winter's almanac, which the thrush boldly announceth—tho' the migrant birds 611hav yet made no return upon the balmy sprays, but the small homekeepers muster what choir they can: Not elsewise was thatt first impetuous raid that storm'd the rear of the dark ages prematurely; and yet the singers wer so many that man marveleth still whence they came, or by what spontaneous impulse sang. As well might be with one who wendeth lone his way beside the watchful dykes of the flat Frisian shore, what hour the wading tribes, that make their home and breed 620numberless on the marshy polders, creep unseen widely dispersed at feed, and silent neath the sun the low unfeatured landscape seemeth void of life— when without warning suddenly all the legion'd fowl rise from their beauties' ambush in the reedy beds, and on spredd wings with clamorous ecstasy carillioning in the air manœuvre, and where they wheel transport the broken sunlight, shoaling in the sky— with like sudden animation the fair fields of France gave birth to myriad poets and singers unknown, 630who in a main flight gathering their playful flock settled in Languedoc, on either side the Rhone within the court and county of Raymond of Toulouse. Nor wer these Troubadours hucksters of song who tuned their pipes for fee: some far glimpse of the heav'nly Muse had reach'd and drawn the soul by the irresistible magnet of love: as when in the blockish marble the sculptor's thought of beauty loometh into shape neath his rude hammerstrokes, ere the true form is seen; so had the monks' rough-hewing of the old pagan tales 640discover'd virtue:—an Ideal of womanhood had striven into outline; which, tho' passion heeded not yet art had grasp'd, divining fresh motiv for skill, whereby knights, churchmen, monks, courtiers and scholars all childishly wer enthrall'd: ev'n kings found honor in rhyme whose royalty is today its only honor, and to us would seem frivolity, knew we not that we watch beside the rocking-cradle of babes, whose prattling tongues should oust monarchic Latin from his iron throne— which not the slaughter of this one innocent coud save: 650Skysoarers should be hatch'd of such young flutterers; for whom two freaks of fortune happily conspired, a fine phantasy of spirit with light fabric of art; so the faint dream of chivalry, as it took-on form, tripp'd delicatly with the delicat music of the tentativ language, whose mincing metres imposed good manners on the articulation of speech. While in such play Count Raymond's folk lived joyfully, Provence seem'd to mankind the one land of delight,— a country where a man might fairly choose to dwell; 660tho' some would rather praise the green languorous isles, Hawaii or Samoa, and some the bright Azores, Kashmire the garden of Ind, or Syrian Lebanon and flowery Carmel; or wil vaunt the unstoried names of African Nairobi, where by Nyanza's lakes Nile hid his flooding fountain, or in the New World far Pasadena's roseland, whence who saileth home westward wil in his kalendar find a twin day. But I in England starving neath the unbroken glooms of thatt dreariest November which wrapping the sun, 670damping all life, had robb'd my poem of the rays whose wealth so far had sped it, I long'd but to be i' the sunshine with my history; and the names that held place in my heart and now shall hav place in my line wer Avignon, Belcaire, Montelimar, Narbonne, Béziers, Castelnaudary, Béarn and Carcasonne, and truly I coud hayv shared their fancy coud I hav liv'd among those glad Jongleurs, living again for me, and had joy'd with them in thatt liberty and good-will which men call toleration, a thing so stiff to learn 680that to sceptics 'tis left and cynics. In Provence Jew quarrell'd not with Gentile; ther was peace and love 'twixt Saracen and Christian, Catalan and Frank; and (wonder beyond wonder) here was harbour'd safe, flourishing and multiplying, thatt sect of all sects abominable, persecuted and defamed, who with their Eastern chaffering and insidious talk had ferreted thru' Europe to find peace on earth with Raymond of Toulouse,—those ancient Manichees.
Restless and impatient man's mind is ever in quest 690of some system or mappemond or safeguard of soul, and coming not at Truth—ev'n as a dry-athirst horse that drinketh eagerly of the first gilded puddle,— he espouseth delusion and sweareth fealty thereto: and since common conditions breed common opinion, nations lie fascinated in their swaddling clothes crampt, and atrophied with their infantile suctions. So in the inmost sanctum of the Hindu mind a milch-cow is enshrined: but those dour Manichees wer trifling with no symbols; their wild creed had grown 700deep-rooted on the prime obsession of savagery, thatt first terrifying nightmare of dawning conscience which, seeing in natur a power maleficent to man, estopp'd his growth in love: for these zealots ascribed this visible world to the work of a devil, from all time Goddes foe and enemy to all good: In hate of which hellpower so worthy of man's defiance they had lost the old fear, and finding internecine war declared twixt flesh and spirit in the authentic script of Paul of Tarsus, him they took for master, and styled 710themselves Paulicians the depositaries of Christ. Their creed—better than other exonerating God from blame of evil—and their austere asceticism shamed the half-hearted clerics, whose licence in sin confirm'd the uncompromising logic, which inferr'd a visible earthly Church to be Satan's device, the Pope his minister,—him, the third Innocent, who held his wide ambition for the will of God, his fulminating censure for the voice of Christ and, troubled now that he coud neither cleanse nor cure, 720persuade not nor command, fell; and betray'd by zeal (as angry Peter once to serve Christ with the sword), preach'd a Crusade within the fold,—thatt bloody wrath label'd in history The Albigensian war, a sinking millstone heavy as ever pontiff tied round the neck of the Church. For the champions of Christ outdid the heathen Huns in cruelty, and in the end was Raymond's county ravaged to ruin and his folk massacred all or burnt alive, man woman and child, and their language wiped out, so that a man today 730reading Provengal song studieth in a dead tongue. Yet many Troubadours escaping from slaughter fled to the Italian cities where the New Learning gave kind asylum to their secret flame; and ere within the Church's precincts they had raised a song, Chivalry had won acceptance in the ideal of sex and, blending with the worship of the Mother of God, assured the consecration of marriage, still unknown save to the christian folk of Europe whence it sprang. Thus, as it came to pass, the second Essene War 740brought the New Life in which full soon Dante was born.
The motive of Selfhood is common to all Being, the universal Mind informing existence, and had there been no beauty in life nor any joy beyond thatt ground-pleasure, which all creatures may feel in the inconscient functionings of their organisms and satisfaction of instinct—had thatt been, ev'n so nothing had lack'd to inspire the selfassertion of man: But since ther is beauty in nature, mankind's love of life apart from love of beauty is a tale of no count; 750and tho' he linger'd long in his forest of fear, or e'er his apprehensiv wonder at unknown power threw off the first night-terrors of his infant mind, the vision of beauty awaited him, and step by step led him in joy of spirit to full fruition.
Now as with Selfhood so was it again with Breed; for the fashioning of sex was attended thru'out by necessary attractions—as tis seen in plant or animal, and these as they suffice in brutes suffice in man so far as he also is animal; 760but being specifically endow'd he must in course hav with the growth of reason outgrown the animal wont; and in perfection of kind he surely had lost his lure, had he not learn'd in beauty to transfigure love. Many shy at such doctrin: Science, they will say, knoweth nought of this beauty. But what kenneth she of color or sound? Nothing: tho' science measure true every wave-length of ether or air that reacheth sense, there the hunt checketh, and her keen hounds are at fault; for when the waves hav pass'd the gates of ear and eye 770all scent is lost: suddenly escaped the visibles are changed to invisible; the fine-measured motions to immeasurable emotion; the cypher'd fractions to a living joy that man feeleth to shrive his soul. How should science find beauty? Leibnitz rightly is held the most irrefutable of all philosophers, because he boldly excised the intrinse knot from the rope and, showing both ends free, proclaim'd no knot had been; imagining two independent worlds that move in pre-establish'd harmony twixt matter and mind; 780—a pleasant freak of man's godlike intelligence, vex'd by so vain a need; and thinking, with a thought so inconceivable, to save appearances. That ther is beauty in natur and that man loveth it are one thing and the same; neither can be derived apart as cause of the other: and here it is to tell how female beauty came to be the common lure in human marriage.—First in animal mating the physical attractions, as they evolved with sense, took-on beautiful forms, til beauty (as in bird-song) 790was recognized consciently and exploited by art, and after in man became that ladder of joy whereon slowly climbing at heaven he shall find peace with God, and beauty be wholly spiritualised in him, as in its primal essence it must be conceived. This ken we truly, that as wonder to intellect, so for the soul desire of beauty is mover and spring; whence, in whatever his spirit is most moved, a man wil most be engaged with beauty; and thus in his "first love" physical beauty and spiritual are both present 800mingled inseparably in his lure: then is he seen in the ecstasy of earthly passion and of heavenly vision to fall to idolatry of some specious appearance as if 'twer very incarnation of his heart's desire, whether eternal and spiritual, as with Dante it was, or mere sensuous perfection, or as most commonly a fusion of both—when if distractedly he hav thought to mate mortally with an eternal essence all the delinquencies of his high passion ensue. Verily if Hope wer not itself a happiness 810sorrow would far outweigh our mortal joy, but Hope incarnat in the blood kindleth its hue no less with every breath, to flood all the sluices of life long as the heart can beat. And yet in love-mating hope's ideal is so rich and fulfilment so rare, that common minds in trudge with common experience may think to amend their lot by renouncing life-vows, as a vain bondage perversiv of happiness. And coud man separate brutal from spiritual, and in things of the flesh live as animals do 820stealing their food and seizing the delight of the hour, thatt were reasonable enough and might be wise in man; but such divorcement being in the provision of things shut out, ther is no way left nor choice for him, unless he would make shipwreck, and of mere brutality fall to pieces—ther is no hope for him but to attune nature's diversity to a human harmony, and with faith in his hope and full courage of soul realizing his will at one with all nature, devise a spiritual ethic for conduct in life. 830Refusal of christian marriage is, as 'twer in art, to impugn the credit of the most beautiful things because ther are so few of them, and hold it folly to aim at excellence where so few can succeed; and where any success pincheth the happiness of the far greater number, who left to themselves might feel fuller content admiring common things or ugly, and be happier in whatever likings they can indulge. Altho' they know it not, this is the humanitarianism of democracy; 840and since ther is in the mass little good to look for but what instruction, authority and example impose, Ethick and Politick alike hav trouble in store.
Now mere impulse of sex,—from animal mating to the vision of Dante—tho' strong in all degrees, is not the bond of marriage. Nay, if breeding ceased,— all motiv to it, liking for it and thought of it,— women and men would mate; and, whatever might lack, married life might be found a more congenial state, and marriage of true minds hav less impediment. 850Happiness which all seek is not composable of any summation of particular pleasures; the happiness in marriage dependeth for-sure not on the animal functions, but on qualities of spirit and mind that are correlated therewith. So 'twas not of false ethic or weak prudery when thatt old Hebrew poet, in his mighty myth of man's creation, imagin'd Eve's predestiny to be helpmate and comfort to God's perfect man; nor in thatt strange fashioning of her from Adam's rib 860fudged he his symbol; perfect man being in thatt theft imperfected by loss of an original part now personate in Eve, who should reveal to him what was in first design confused in his nature, and from thatt fleshly cleavage find true tally of flesh. This myth was law to th' Jew, and 'twas men of that ilk (those same Essenes whose creed prevail'd so long), who when Christ's mournful company wer by his death reft of their earthly dreams, took courage, and reset their disillusion'd hope bolder—to look no more 870for Rome and Caesar's overthrow, but rather expect Jahveh's wrathful dissolution of all creation; that Christ would rëappear in pitiless Godhead full suddenly and full soon, to judge the world of sin, and with his angels gather up his living elect to his new Jerusalem, those few Saints undefiled, who had wash'd their robes to whileness in the blood o' the Lamb. Now those stern Puritans who liv'd but in thatt faith, in whom motiv and lure of breed wer wholly extinct, execrating the body as other men flee death, 880had no fear of contamination or thought of ill in taking women in marriage, each man one to himself, as comrades indispensable, of spiritual aid.
Truly myths so ancient and examples of life, fish'd up out of the old jumble-box of history, can find but little credit with this generation who, like to children absorb'd in the scientific toys of their high-kilted gossips, care not to ransack the nursery cupboard for their grand-dam's old playthings; tho' family relics are they, once loved, and may show 890how that in man's eternal quest of happiness, contempt of fleshly pleasur is as near to his spirit as is the love of it to his animal nature. Vestiges of his stony asceticism imbue all time, thick as the strewage of his flinty tools, disseminate wheresoe'er he hath dwelt; nor need we now, from where they sleep bedded on archæologic shelves, fetch down upon the lecture-table our specimens to teach what manners went to the making of man; having such living witness of harmonized life 900in the aristocracy of our English motherhood, whence the nobility of our sons came, and therewith precedence of their courtesy title in the world; a tradition of good-faith, humanity and courage, that year by year flowereth on the grafted stock of Saxon temperament; the which slow or dead to beauty, is but a dullard in spiritual sense. And so the character of our common folk, up-built in the commanding presence of this feminin grace, won therefrom (as I hold) its vulgar excellence; 910for finding their own conduct unconformable to beauty of so high grade, they guarded it apart submissiv in its own status, a kindly thing with nativ honesty and good commonsense convinced; and, easing embarrassment with the humour of life, paid due respect and honour where they felt 'twas due, so they might goodtemper'dly and in laughable wise hobnob with ugliness, and jest at frightfulness, and keep the farce up mirthfully in the face of death. If any see not this fractur in our midst, because 920the pieces are in place, 'tis pictured for him true in Shakespeare's drama, where ideal women walk in worship, and the baser sort find sympathy, and both are bravely stirr'd together as water and oil. But if 'tis ask'd to name what special function it was that fell sequester'd out of Adam in his lost rib, and which, when launch'd by Reason on his sea of troubles, should be his paregoric and comforting cure,— 'twas no unique, ultimately separable thing, as is a chemic element; far rather our moods, 930influences and spiritual affections are like those many organic substances which, tho' to sense wholly dissimilar and incomparable in kind, are yet all combinations of the same simples, and even in like proportions differently disposed; so that whether it be starch, oil, sugar, or alcohol 'tis ever our old customers, carbon and hydrogen, pirouetting with oxygen in their morris antics; the chemist booketh all of them as C H O, and his art is as mine, when I but figurate 940the twin persistent semitones of my Grand Chant. And 'twer but bookish, surely, in the fabric of mind to assume the disposition of vital elements under a few common names, alike in both sexes; 'tis easier thought that ther is no human faculty that hath not been in long elaboration of sex adjusted finely, and often to such richer ends that, tho' by correlation characters of sex they are not held in subservience to the impulse of Breed,— as some deem, and impute precocious puberty 950to new-born babes, and all their after trouble in life to shamefast thwarting of inveterat lust.
Now Woman took her jointure from the potency of spirit stored in flesh, the which, affined to her sex, became a property of intuition and grew in her, thru' mutual adaptation with the environments that wer its own effects, to a female character in worth alike and weakness distinct from the male: for while man's Reason drew him whither science led to walk with downcast eyes fix'd on the ground, and low 960incline his ear to catch the sermon-whisper of stones— whence now whole nations, by their treasure-trove enrich'd, crawl greedily on their knees nosing the soil like swine, and any, if they can twist their stiffen'd necks about, see the stars but as stones,—while men thus search'd the earth, stooping to pick up wisdom, women stood erect in honest human posture, from light's fount to drink celestial influences; and this was seen in them that worship'd Christ nor look'd, as then the apostles did, for some earthly prosperity or prospect, nor ask'd 970what chief seats might be theirs reserved in the Kingdom; his heavenly call drew them, and the Mary who sat at Christ's feet in devotion, heard from him her choice pronounced the one thing needful; and as 'twas for her, so is it nowaday for us to our happiness. For 'tis by such faith only a man can save his soul; since as his unique spirit cometh more and more out of slumber into vision, he loseth heart the more at the inhumanity of nature's omnipotence. Thatt first savage suspicion is now the last despair 980of earnest thinkers, who for love of truth refuse to blink dishonestly the tribulation of man, but deem it final truth, and see no cure thereof, nor solace save what brave distraction of thought may bring in further keen pursuit of knowledge, on the old path that hath hereby led them where the everlasting worm eateth their hearts . . . and yet man's Reason (as is confess'd) since 'tis of nature's fabric must share in her fault; and man's spiritual sense, which inspireth his grief, is equally of her giving: whence his complaint sheweth 990the strange perversity of creation's self-reproach; tho' nature the while is by beauty awakening her heavenly response to her heavenliest desire, and in spiritual joy sanctioneth to the full the claim of faith. To such despairers Christ out-spake in his rich poetry 'Tis better with one eye blinded to enter inlo the life of Goddes Realm than with both eyes to grieve in Hell. Be that not Truth, then there is something found for man better than Truth; which thought were the supreme vanity of vanities, 1000at once a superhuman ambition and a poor pride, truly the last infirmity of his noble mind.
From blind animal passion to the vision of Spirit all actual gradations come of natur, and each severally in time and place is answerable in man. As with the embryo which in normal growth passeth thru' evolutionary stages, at each stage consisting with itself agreeably, so Mind may be by observation in young changes waylaid, agreeable all, tho' no more congruous with themselves 1010than what a baby thinketh of its naked feet, when first it is aware of them, is like the thought of piteous sympathy with which when an old man he wil come to regard them. So likewise of breed, youth and age hold their irreconcilable extremes, from him who deemeth sex to be the curse of man to him who findeth in it the only pleasur of life: then the four temperaments of blood possess of kind their different sensibilities, and every bias of education coloureth; while in abstract thought 1020some would submit its energy to rule of state, to ethic duty some, others to personal health, to social propriety or the grace of good manners; climate can subjugate and religion constrain; national taste prescribe practice and fix ideals; yet howso no two men wil be found wholly alike, nor any one man always consonant in himself; the saint wil hav his days of humiliation and trial, the clown his rare moments of revelation and peace, while commonsense wil waver in its faith with fortune. 1030Now as a physical object apparent to sense must in all its perspectivs be studied, tho' none be true wholly in itself, and reality is found by elimination of error, so 'twil be with Love, which, if it had no various aspects of feeling nor delusiv perspectivs to spiritual sight, neither coud it hav any essential property in the Wisdom of God: thus men, who mostly liv in the light of one aspect and convinced thereby, wil deem of love differently, and in as many ways 1040as there be planes of spirit and faculties of mind: and the philosopher expecteth little audience of men school'd to the habit of their own liking, and wer he heaven-inspired he should not therefor look to win the general ear; yet, one proviso allow'd, he may command agreement; so (saith he) if ther be any one scheme of Reason in the evolution of Mind preferable and probable—and without so much faith he would sit dumb—then thatt ideal wil be found in few, not in many, but potential in them, 1050and in the best imperfect, a desire of all, an everlasting hope not everlastingly to be rebuff'd and baffled, rather prëordain'd by arch-creative Wisdom, as man groweth to find his Will in Goddes pleasur, his pleasur in Goddes Will; drawn to thatt happiness by the irresistible predominant attraction, which worketh secure in mankind's Love of Beauty and in the Beauty of Truth.
Art is the true and happy science of the soul, exploring nature for spiritual influences, 1060as doth physical science for comforting powers, advancing so to a sure knowledge with like progress: but lovers who thereto look for expression of truth hav great need to remember that no plastic Art, tho' it create ideals noble as are the forms that Pheidias wrought, can ever elude or wholly escape its earthly medium; nor in its adumbrations reach thatt detach'd suprasensuous vision, whereto Poetry and Music soar, nor dive down in the mine where cold philosophy diggeth her fiery jewels— 1070or only by rare magic may it sometimes escape. And this was the intuition of our landscape-painters, whose venture seem'd humbled in renouncing the prize of the classic contest, when like truants from school they made off to the fields with their satchels, and came on nature's beauteous by-paths into a purer air: For the Art of painting, by triumph of colouring enticed to Realism, had confounded thereby its own higher intention, and in portrayal of spirit made way for Symbolism which, tho' it stand aloof, 1080is outfaced in the presence of direct feeling: Sithence in presentation of feminin beauty the highest Art lost mastery of its old ideal; as in the great pictur of the two Women at a Well, where Titian's young genius, devising a new thing, employ'd the plastic power to exhibit at once two diverse essences in their value and contrast; for while by the æsthetic idealisation of form his earthly love approacheth to celestial grace, his draped Uranian figure is by symbols veil'd, 1090and in pictorial Beauty suffereth defeat: Yea, despite all her impregnable confidence in the truth of her wisdom, as there she sitteth beside the fountain, dazzlingly apparel'd, enthroned, with thoughtful face impassiv, averting her head as 'twer for fuller attention so to incline an ear to the impartial hearing of the importunat plea of the other, who over-against her on the cornice-plinth posturing her wonted nakedness in sensuous ease, leaneth her body to'ards her, and with imploring grace 1100urgeth the vain deprecation of her mortal prayer.
Giorgione, his master, already had gone to death plague-stricken at prime, when Titian painted that picture, donning his rival's mantle, and strode to higher fame— yet not by this canvas; he who had it, hid it; nor won it public favour when it came to light, untill some mystic named it in the Italian tongue L'Amor Sacro e Profano, and so rightly divined; for tho' ther is no record save the work of the brush to tell the intention, yet what the mind wrought is there; 1110and who looketh thereon may see in the two left arms the symbolism apportioning the main design; for while the naked figure with extended arm and outspredd palm vauntingly balanceth aloft a little lamp, whose flame lost in the bright daylight wasteth in the air, thatt other hath the arm bent down and oppositely nerved, and clencheth with gloved hand closely the cover'd vessel of her secret fire. Thus Titian hath pictured the main sense of my text, and this truth: that as Beauty is all with Spirit twined, 1120so all obscenity is akin to the ugliness which Art would outlaw; whence cometh that tinsel honour and mimicry of beauty which is the attire of vice.
Allegory is a cloudland inviting fancy to lend significance to chancey shapes; and here I deem not that the child, who playeth between the Loves at Titian's well, was pictured by him with purpose to show the first contact of love with boyhood's mind; and yet never was symbol more deftly devised: Mark how the child looking down on the water see'th 1130only a reflection of the realities—as 'twas with the mortals in Plato's cave—nor more of them than Moses saw of God; he can see but their backs, save for a shifty glimpse of the pleading profil of earthly Love (which also is subtle truth); and most how in his play his plunged hand stirreth to and fro both images together in a confused dazzle of the dancing ripples as he gazeth intent.
