Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863
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Take first the instance of forgetfulness. In the United Kingdom some
millions of letters are annually mailed; and of these, one in a certain
number of thousands, "making allowance," as our author innocently says,
"for variation of circumstances," is found to be mailed without a
superscription. Now provision for a forgetting is made in every man's
individual constitution. Partly for permanent and final forgetting; in
this way we get rid of vast quantities of trash, which would suffocate
us, if we could not obtain riddance. Partly also for temporary
forgetting; by means of which we become oblivious to everything but the
matter in hand, and, by a sole concentration upon that, act intensely
and efficaciously. Then, as all particular constitutions have their
debilities, this provision for temporary obliviousness may become an
infirmity, and in some is an habitual and chronic infirmity.
Let us now assume an individual man, and suppose ourselves able
to analyze perfectly his mental condition. From his temperament,
constitution, and habit, we shall then be able also to infer with
precision the measure of his _liability_ to lapse of memory. Place
him, now, in a world by himself; give him a life of several centuries'
duration; and secure him through life from essential change of
constitution. Divide, then, his life into centuries; count the instances
of forgetfulness in each century; and in each century they will be found
nearly the same. The Law of Probability determines this, and enables us
to speak with entire confidence of a case so supposed. Here, then, is
the continuous average; but it surely indicates no subjection of the
individual soul to a law of society; for there is no society to impose
such law,--there is only the constitution of the individual.
Now, instead of one individual, let us suppose a hundred; and let each
of these be placed on a separate planet. Obtain in respect to each one
the measure of his liability to infirm lapse of memory, and add these
together. And now it will appear that the average outward result which
one man gave in one hundred years one hundred men will give in one year.
The law of probability again comes in, and, matching the irregularities
of one by those of another, gives in this case, as in the former,
an average result. Here, then, is Mr. Buckle's average without the
existence of a society, and therefore without any action of social law.
Does another syllable need to be said?
Perhaps, however, it will be objected that I redeem the individual from
a fate working in the general whole of society, only to subject him to
an equal fate working in his own constitution. There is undoubtedly
a certain _degree_ of fate expressed in each man's temperament and
particular organization. But mark the difference. Mr. Buckle's social
fate subjects each man totally, and in effect robs him of personality;
the fate which works in his own constitution subjects him _only in that
proportion which his abnormal liability bears to the total force of his
mind_. One letter in ten thousand, say, is mailed without direction. Our
historian of civilization infers hence that each individual is _totally_
subject to a social fate. My inference is, that, on the average, each
individual is _one ten-thousandth part_ subject to a fate in his private
constitution. There is the difference, and it does not seem to me
insignificant. Our way to the cases of crime is now somewhat more clear;
for it is already established beyond cavil that the mere fact of an
average, to which, without any discriminations, our philosopher appeals
with such confidence, proves nothing for his purpose.
The case of murders, however, differs from the foregoing in one
important particular. The persons who are detected in the commission of
this crime are commonly, by their punishment, withdrawn from the number
of active criminals; and consequently the average is kept up, not by the
same persons, but in part by different ones. Here is, therefore, more
appearance of the mediation of compulsory social law; and indeed the
action of social forces in the case I am far more disposed to assert
than to question. What we are to inquire, however, is not whether social
forces contribute to this result, but whether they are _such_ forces as
supersede and annihilate individual will. Let us see.
All men are liable to collisions of passion and interest with their
neighbors and contemporaries. All desire to remove the obstructions thus
opposed. All would labor for this end with brute directness, that is,
by lawless violence and cunning, were it not for the rational and moral
elements in their nature, which suggest noble pieces of abstinence and
self-restraint, thus securing a certain freedom, a certain superiority
to the brute pressure of interest and impulse. These rational and moral
elements are in variable counterpoise with the ruder desires,--sometimes
commanding them with imperial ease, sometimes overcoming them by
struggle, sometimes striving with them feebly and vainly, or even
ceasing to strive.
Suppose, now, a nation of thirty millions. Of these, twenty-nine
millions, let us say, are never consciously tempted to commit a felony.
Why? For want of opportunity? Not at all; good men, whom the police do
not watch, have more opportunities for crime than those whose character
causes them to be suspected. Is it because wrathful passion, the love of
money, and other incentives to aggression are unknown to them? To none
are they wholly unknown. Why, then, this immunity from temptation?
Simply because their choices, or characters,--for character is but
structural choice,--run in favor of just and prudent courses with a tide
so steady and strong as to fill all the river-beds of action, and leave
no room for worse currents. In other words, the elements that make men
free hold, in this respect, easy sovereignty In their souls. Below
these millions, suppose nine hundred thousand who might be open to
such temptation, but for the influence of good customs, which are the
legacies left by good men dead, and kept in force by the influence of
just men who are living. In these, the freedom-making elements still
keep the throne, and preserve regal sway; but they are like sovereigns
who might be dethroned, but for the countenance of more powerful
neighbors. Below these, the liability to actual commission of violence
begins to open; but there are, we will suppose, ninety thousand in
whom it is practically suppressed by the dangers which, in civilized
communities, attend upon crime. These men have that in them which
_might_ make them felons, but for penal laws, prisons, and the
executioner. But below these are ten thousand who have a liability _in
excess_ of all restraining influences whatsoever; and the result of this
liability, in accordance with the law of probability already mentioned,
is two hundred murders in a year.[B] Now here the action of fate does
not _begin_ until you reach the lowest ten thousand. Even here, freedom
is not extinguished; the rational and moral elements that confer it
are weak, but they are not necessarily dead or inoperative; for, in
conjunction with lower restraints, they actually make the number of
crimes not ten thousand, but two hundred. True it is, that these are
partially enslaved, partially subject to fate; but they are enslaved not
by any inscrutable law of society, comparable with "that which preserves
the balance of the sexes"; they are "taken captive by their own lusts,"
as one of our philosopher's "ignorant men" said many years ago. But
above these the enslaving liability begins to disappear, and freedom
soon becomes, so far as this test applies, supreme.
[Footnote B: It may be said that this is a mere arguing by supposition.
But the supposition here has respect only to the _numbers_.]
Thus for one year we apply a measure of the liability to crime, and
obtain a result which is inexpressibly far from sustaining Mr. Buckle's
inference; since it shows that the fatal force is to all freeing forces
as two hundred to thirty millions,--and shows, moreover, that this fate,
instead of inclosing in its toils every man in the nation, and utterly
depriving all of freedom, actually touches at all but a small number,
and only diminishes, not destroys, the freedom of these. Next year we
apply the same measure to nearly the same persons, in the presence of
nearly the same restraints; and find, of course, the result to be nearly
the same. But this result no more proves universal enslavement in the
second year than it did in the first. And so of the third, fourth, or
fortieth application of the measure.
But a portion of these murderers are yearly withdrawn: ought not the
number of crimes to diminish? It would do so, but for that law of social
propagation which is ever and everywhere active. But this law, which
connects men and generations, and tends to make history a unit, is not a
part of fate alone; it carries just so much fate and so much freedom as
there are to be carried. It changes nothing; it is simply a vehicle, and
transports freight,--precious stones or ballast stones, as the case may
be. Therefore, in unveiling a single year, and seeing precisely what
this fact of two hundred murders means, we find its meaning for any
possible succession of years. It shows certain measures of fate working
in the bosoms of certain numbers of men; but that there is a fate
inhabiting society as such, and holding every man and woman in its
unfeeling hand, must be proven, if at all, by other facts than these.
Mr. Buckle generalizes with marvellous facility, but often with an
infatuation, or even fatuity, equally marvellous. Specious and audacious
generalization is, however, a vice of thinking more attractive to most
than any virtue,--above all, if it flatter their wishes and opinions.
There are few to appreciate an exquisite temperance, an exquisite virgin
modesty, continence, and reserve, whether in thought or art. The great
masters disappoint, the great showmen dazzle, at first sight; the
multitudes crave sensations and sudden effects. Even among thoughtful
men, there are, in this galloping age, too many who prefer to frequent a
philosophical slop-shop, where they can be fitted to a full suit in five
minutes; and they willingly forgive some bagging and wrinkling, some
ripping of seams and dropping-off of buttons, in consideration of
promptitude in the supply. Nor is this unnatural. Ordinary travel goes
by steam; does it not seem a little hard that thought should have to
journey still in the ancient fashion? And so far as the mass of
readers is concerned, this appetite for fast thinking and reckless
generalization is a cheerful token: it is a gainful substitute for that
hiding away from the blaze of intellect, that terror of large results in
thought, which has harbored in the Vatican since the days of Galileo,
and even in Protestant lands may sometimes be found, like the graveyard,
in the neighborhood of churches. A relish for premature and extravagant
generalization may be pardoned in the mass of readers; but in the
writer? "It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by
whom the offence cometh!"
Mr. Buckle finds some general book-facts, and, never trying to think
down to their roots, he seizes upon their specious aspect, and thence
rushes out into a generalization, which, rightly understood, sweeps
Personality off the earth. Not such is the spirit of science; not such
the manner of its masters. Look at Newton investigating colors. What
effort for nearness, nearness, nearness to his facts! What solicitation
for entrance to their households and sanctuaries! See Agassiz or Tyndale
investigating the flow of glaciers. Here is no catching at book-aspects
of the matter, and launching instantly into generalization. No, these
men must get within eyeshot, within hand-reach, of the facts, and know
first precisely and intimately what these are. Yet the generalizations
for which they were seeking a basis were trivial in comparison with
those which our author hurtles out after a glance at M. Quetelet. "A
continuous average of so many murders a year; then so many _must_
happen; then somebody _must_ commit them; then free-will is a figment,
and society is the source of all action which we call individual."
Intemperate and infatuated generalization, if supported by a certain
ability, is an attractive vice. Yet he who indulges in this will be
sure to leave upon his brilliant and exciting pages statements that are
simply ludicrous. Our philosopher furnishes an instance of this in his
treatment of the matter of marriage. If wages be low and food high,
marriages are less frequent; if the converse be the case, they are more
frequent. What conclusion would common sense base upon this fact? Why,
of course, that the number of marriages is definitely _influenced_ by
the ease with which sustenance is obtained. But this is a commonplace
result; there is nothing in it bold, brilliant, striking; besides, it
does not make man the slave of outward influences. Accordingly, Mr.
Buckle generalizes from it as follows:--"Marriages, instead of having
_any connection_ with personal feelings, are completely controlled
by the price of food and the rate of wages." He does not distinguish
between a definite modifying influence and a controlling cause. His
facts prove the former; he asserts the latter. Let us see how this
procedure would work elsewhere. There is "a definite relation," in our
author's words, between the force and direction of the winds and the
rise or fall of the sea upon our coast: therefore tidal rise and fall,
"instead of having any connection" with the influence of the moon, are
"completely controlled" by the direction and force of the wind! There is
"a definite relation" between the straightness or want of straightness in
a railroad and the speed of the train: _ergo_, the speed of the train,
"instead of having any connection" with the locomotive and the force of
steam, is "completely controlled" by the line of the road! It is by no
means difficult to philosophize after this fashion; but if we are
to have many professors of such philosophy, let the mediaeval
cap-and-bells, by all means, be reproduced.
Again, having stated the fact of an approximation to a continuous
average of suicides, and having assumed for this a cause operating in
the indivisible whole of society, he goes on to say, "And the power of
this larger law is so irresistible, that neither the love of life nor
the fear of another world can avail anything toward even checking its
operation." How, pray, does Mr. Buckle know? What shadow of a fact has
he to justify this vaunting of his "larger law"? Has he ever known
the love of life and the awe of another world to be suspended? Has he
afterwards seen their action restored, and ascertained that in their
presence and in their absence the ratio of suicides remained the
same? These questions answer themselves. But when a writer who loudly
professes and fully believes himself to proceed purely upon facts
adventures statement so groundless, so gratuitous and reckless as
this, who can pass to the next paragraph in full confidence of his
intellectual rectitude? If you retain, as in this case I do retain,
assurance of his moral rectitude,--of his intention to be fair,--to what
conclusion can you come more charitable than this, that his partiality
to his own notions is so vigorous as not only to overslaugh his sense
of logical truth, but to supersede the necessity of other grounds for
believing these notions and for urging them?
Only our author's first chapter has been dealt with; firstly, because in
this are enunciated those radical conceptions which he afterwards argues
not _to_, but _from_; and secondly, because it has been the writer's
desire, avoiding all vagrant and indecisive criticism, to have a fair
grapple, and come to some clear result,--like that of a wrestler, who
frankly proffers himself to throw or be thrown. It only remains to
indicate, so far as may be, a comprehensive estimate of Mr. Buckle as a
thinker.
And at last it must be said in plain words that he is to be regarded as
an adventurer in the kingdoms of thought,--though the word must be freed
from all customary flavors of charlatanry and wickedness. One of the
boldest and cleverest of his class; a man, too, of probity, of dignity
and character, amiable, estimable; but _intellectually_ an adventurer
nevertheless. The grand masters in thought are those to whom the
subtilest and most purely universal principles are nearest and most
habitual, coming to the elucidation of all minutest matters no less than
to that of the greatest,--as those forces which hold the solar system
together apply themselves, as on the same level, to a mote wandering
in the air; and because to these masters first principles, through all
their changes of seeming, through all their ranging by analogy up and
down, are never disguised, but are always near and clear and sure, they
can admit the action of all modifying principles without imperilling the
great stabilities of truth; so that in their thought, as in Nature, the
dust-particle shall float and fly with the wind, and yet gravitation
shall hold particle and world in firm, soft, imperial possession.
And next to these are the inventors, guided by a fine felicity of
intelligence to special discoveries and admirable combinations, often
surpassing in this way the masters themselves. And then come the wise
and great scholars, who learn quickly what has been discovered, and
follow the masters not by sight only, as a greyhound, but by long
inferences; and these also do noble work. And after these follow the
broader company of useful, able, eloquent men, applying, explaining,
illustrating, and preparing the way for schools and commerce and the
newspaper. Finally comes a man with a genius for boldness more than for
anything else, so that he has a pleasant feeling of himself only when
he gives himself the sense of being startling, novel, venturesome,
and therefore goes off in his thought as in a balloon: and of such
man,--being daring, ingenious, agile, and not being profound,--this
will be the unfailing characteristic, that he substitutes and asserts
secondary principles, which are obvious, outward, and within his reach,
for primary principles, which are deep, subtile, inward, and beyond his
reach; he will swing loose from the principles which are indeed prime
and imperial in Nature, and will boldly assert secondary principles as
fundamental: this man is the intellectual adventurer.
And this is Mr. Buckle. The first fact with regard to man is his
possession of a rational soul, and consequently of that liberation of
will without which, despite the existence of reason, he could not be in
act a reasonable being. But the secondary fact in this connection
is that man's freedom is modified by pedigree, by temperament, by
influences almost numberless, and that he is included in laws, so that,
if he falls away from reason, he falls into the hands of fate. And
this secondary or modifying congeries of facts our author announces as
primary.
The first fact with regard to the soul is that it is intelligent and
vocal,--that it is not merely a subject, but also an organ, of THAT
WHICH KNOWS in the universe. The modifying fact is that its voice is
commonly obscure, and the language it shall use and the logic of
its utterance prescribed by the accident of time, place, and other
circumstances; so that it has the semblance of voices many and
contradictory. And this modifying fact Mr. Buckle announces, with much
assurance and complacency, as primary.
The first fact in the world of man is Personality. The secondary fact is
Society,--secondary, but reciprocal, and full of import. And Mr. Buckle
begins with making Personality acephalous, and ends-with appending its
corpse to Society, to be galvanized into seemings of life. And if
you follow him through his book, you find this inversion constantly
maintained,--and find, moreover, that it is chiefly this revolutionary
audacity which makes his propositions so startling and his pages to many
so fascinating.
Therefore an adventurer. This is concerning _him_ the primary fact. But
the modifying fact is that he has the manners of a gentleman, the heart
of a humanitarian, the learning of a scholar, the pen of a ready writer,
the outside or _shell_ of a philosophical genius, excellent admixtures
of sense, and an attractive hatred of ecclesiastical and political
barbarisms.
He has great surface-reach, but no inward breadth. He invariably takes
the liberal side with regard to practical and popular questions;
he invariably takes the illiberal side in respect to questions of
philosophy. In politics and in social feeling he is cosmopolitan; in
questions of pure thought he is cockney. Here he is a tyrant; he puts
out the soul's eyes, and casts fetters about its feet; here he is hard,
narrow, materialistic, mechanical,--or, in a word, English. For--we may
turn aside to say--in philosophy no nation is so straitened, illiberal,
and hard of hearing as England, except, perhaps, China. Its tympanum
is sadly thickened at once with materialism and conceit; and the
consequence is that a thinker there is either ignored into silence, like
Wilkinson, or driven to bellow, like Carlyle, or to put rapiers and
poignards into his speech, like Ruskin. Carlyle began speaking sweetly
and humanly, and was heard only on this side the ocean; then he came to
his bull-of-Bashan tones, and was attended to on his own side the water.
It is observable, too, that, if a thinker in America goes beyond the
respectable dinner-table depth, your true Englishman takes it for a
personal affront, and hastens to make an ass of himself in the "Saturday
Review."
Apply to Mr. Buckle any test that determines the question of pure
intellectual power, and he fails to sustain it. Let us proceed to apply
one.
No man is an able thinker who is without power to comprehend that law
of reciprocal opposites, on which the world is built. For an example of
this: the universe is indeed a _uni_-verse, a pure unit, emanating, as
we think, from a spirit that is, in the words of old Hooker, "not only
one, but very oneness," simple, indivisible, and therefore total in all
action; and yet this universe is various, multifarious, full of special
character, full even of fierce antagonisms and blazing contradictions.
Infinite and Finite, Same and Diverse, Eternal and Temporary, Universal
and Special,--here they are, purest opposites, yet mutual, reciprocal,
necessary to each other; and he is a narrow man who cannot stand in open
relations with both terms, reconciling in the depths of his life, though
he can never explain, the mystery of their friendship. He who will
adhere only to the universal, and makes a blur of the special, is a
rhapsodist; he who can apprehend only the special, being blind and
callous to the universal, is a chatterer and magpie. From these
opposites we never escape; Destiny and Freedom, Rest and Motion,
Individual and Society, Origination and Memory, Intuition and
Observation, Soul and Body,--you meet them everywhere; and everywhere
they are, without losing their character of opposites, nay, in very
virtue of their opposition, playing into and supporting each other.
But, from the fact that they _are_ opposites, it is always easy to catch
up one, and become its partisan as against the other. It is easy in
such advocacy to be plausible, forcible, affluent in words and apparent
reasons; also to be bold, striking, astonishing. And yet such an
advocate will never speak a word of pure truth. "He who knows half,"
says Goethe, "speaks much, and says nothing to the purpose; he who knows
all inclines to act, and speaks seldom or late." With such partisanship
and advocacy the world has been liberally, and more than liberally,
supplied. Such a number of Eurekas have been shouted! So often it has
been discovered that the world is no such riddle, after all,--that half
of it is really the whole! No doubt all this was good boy's-play once;
afterwards it did to laugh at for a while; then it ceased to be even
a joke, and grew a weariness and an affliction; and at length we all
rejoiced when the mighty world-pedagogue of Chelsea seized his ferule,
and roared, over land and sea, "Silence, babblers!"
If only Mr. Buckle had profited by the command! For, follow this writer
where you will, you find him the partisan of a particular term as
against its fraternal opposite. It is Fate _against_ Free-Will; Society
_against_ the prerogatives of Personality; Man _against_ Outward Nature
(for he considers them only as antagonistic, one "triumphing" over
the other); Intellect _against_ the Moral Sense; Induction _against_
Deduction and Intuition; Knowledge _against_ Reverence; and so on and
on to the utter weariness of one reader, if of no more. For what can be
more wearying and saddening than to follow the pages of a writer who
is fertile, ingenious, eloquent, rich in right feeling, in reading and
courage, and yet who, in chapter after chapter of effective paragraphs,
and tome after tome of powerful chapters, is merely persuading you that
half is the whole? And if your duty as a scholar require you to peruse
the book fully, instead of casting it aside, your mind at length fairly
_aches_ for the sense of poise and soundness, were it only for a single
page. But no; it is always the same succession of perspicuous and
vigorous sentences, all carrying flavors of important truth, and none
utterly true. For the half _is_ really half; but it simply is _not_ the
whole, be as eloquent about it as one may.
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