less worth, perhaps, than the ambitious advertiser of branded blacking. As with the rest of us, the day of his burial is probably fixed and foreknown in some part of the Universe. Even that " prosperous robber, Alexander," I doubt if he can draw forth much real veneration. "We would observe," says Channing, writing of Napoleon, "that military talent, even of the highest order, is far from holding the first place among intellectual endowments. It is one of the lower forms of genius, for it is not conversant with the highest and richest objects of thought. .. nothing is more common than to find men eminent in this department, who are almost wholly awanting in the noblest energies of the soul-in imagination and taste, in the capacity of enjoying works of genius, in large views of human nature, in the moral sciences, in the application of analysis and generalisation to the human mind and to society, and in original conceptions on the great subjects which have absorbed the most glorious understandings. "1 Holbein's striking work and William Dunbar's great poem, the Lament for the Makaris," are perennially true. Corporeally and secularly, all men may be viewed as taking per 66 1 Quoted by Poe, 'Works,' Vol. iii. p. 423-4. Sir Robert Wilson accuses Napoleon of having poisoned his prisoners at Jaffa wholesale.-' Nineteenth Century,' November 1904, p. 801. Lord Morley denies him even the credit of a law reformer. Speaking of the credit due to the "critical philosophy" of Voltaire, of which we are unjustly bidden to think only in connection with shallow and reckless destruction, he refers to the Italian publicists, whose speculations bore such admirable fruit in the humane legislation of Leopold of Tuscany," as having had a large share "in that code with which the name of the ever-hateful Bonaparte has become fraudulently associated."- Compromise,' p. 189. But Lord Morley probably underestimates this remarkable man as much as others overestimate him. That he was a great administrator seems to be as indubitable as that he was a great general. See, for instance, Arthur Hassall, 'Life of Napoleon,' p. 88. sonal part in the grim Dance of Death. Pope, Emperor, King, Cardinal, Duke, Bishop, Ploughman, Shipman, Beggar-it does not matter very much what the status may be, the close of every human life, the merriest as well as the saddest, ends, from the secular point of view, in a funeral. As Henryson graphically expresses it "With them that trowis oft to fill the sek, Death comes behind and nippes them be the nek." 1 True, all this is obvious, but it ought not to be neglected because it is obvious. Many obvious things are of the highest importance, and go to make the staple of great Literature. We have no footing but on the obvious. 31. Yet the secular facts are largely regarded in practice as the chief facts. And yet, though such doctrine should be patent even to the careless, mankind, on the whole, are so fearfully improvident that, in practice at least, they regard the secular and merely animal facts of their existence and their lives as lives as the chief facts-transient and treacherous though they be. To most, perhaps, the whole Universe appears to be little more than secular and mechanical. They almost wholly forget the resplendent facts and truths of their spiritual nature, although these spiritual facts and truths, if sought after, are no less obvious, whilst they are immeasurably more important, than the secular facts and truths. They seem to think-if, indeed they can be said to think—with degenerate and profane Creon ""Tis labour lost to worship Powers unseen 1 The Wolf, the Foxe, and the Cadgear,' Poems, p. 191. 2 Sophocles, 'Antigone,' 779 (Campbell). On the comic side we have, in our own day, Mr Shaw's Colonel Craven. The Colonel, under medical sentence of death, is very sad and very seriously disposed, but finding that the medical sentence is founded on a N labour lost to regard the Unseen with any seriousness whatever. At all events, many act as if it were utterly unpractical, altogether visionary, to pay any attention to the unseen-as if, in truth, it were scarcely matter of fact at all. As Emerson says: "Miracles, prophecy, poetry, the ideal life, the holy life, exist as ancient history merely; they are not in the belief nor in the aspiration of society, but when suggested, seem ridiculous; and this notwithstanding the fact that life is comical or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend to what addresses the senses. Some distinguished writers even actually spend their lives in preaching Creon's doctrine. They seem to be without any intuition as to the kernel of the nut; they only exercise themselves round the husk and the shell of it, and frequently seem, in fact, to take the husk and the shell for the whole Nut. They make a great mistake. Let them open their eyes wide and investigate the matter, and they will probably find that the spiritual facts, quite unseen by the corporeal eye, are the chief facts-the hopeful, the immense, the illustrious; and that the corporeal and seen, despite their domineering character, are the hopeless, the paltry, the evanescent. 32. The only rational hope of the Human Race is to be found in the Spiritual. If men thought broadly and deeply enough, and made full use of their intelligence, there would, for example, be no room for Materialism, which theoretically excludes the possibility of free personality and rational life, and reduces us to the rank of wretched false diagnosis of his case, he irately exclaims: "I've done a lot of serious thinking and reading and extra church-going; and now it turns out simple waste of time. On my soul, it's too disgusting! ”—' The Philanderer.' automata. Regarded as material merely, the "Heaven calls, Our only hope the only rational hope of the Human Race-is to be found in the Spiritual. We have need to get this great truth firmly fixed in our minds and in our hearts; and it is for Literature to help in promoting this great task. 33. The secular should be mainly regarded as means to spiritual ends.-Materialism, in the mechanical and bad sense of the word, and its sequel secularism, arise from the fact that the materialists and secularists of all kinds either ignore the great spiritual facts and truths of 66 1 Emerson, 'Works,' Vol. i. p. 85 (Riverside Edition). 2 'Purgatory,' canto xiv. In the Morte d'Arthur we read that Arthur, after overcoming Lucius the Emperor of Rome, made dukes and earls, and made every man rich,” v. 12. Even then- ! Nothing in it. Much better when it was told Sir Percivale how our Lord Jesus Christ beat him out of Heaven for his sin, the which was the most brightest angel of Heaven, and therefore he lost his heritage."-xiv. 10. Indeed Life, or remain as blind as puppies to those great facts and truths. Secular or materialistic man is no better than a rabbit in a warren. one might rather be that little quadruped than a soulless secularist. Painful and agonising though the pressure of the material upon us may be (and it is frequently almost unendurable), the animal life cannot rationally be our chief concern. The thing is incredible. The material and the secular should be mainly regarded as means to spiritual and eternal ends. Men's lives are extensively contemptible because their ambitions are extensively contemptible. He who would attain excellence, must seek the excellent. Yet, in practice, our lives are mainly made up of secularity; and the very Press is continually sending forth torrents of vapid poems and of novels and memoirs and biographies recording proceedings of no more intrinsic importance than the doings of rabbits in a warren Know then to me much annoyance it gives When so many people will sing and will spout, though he might have added, "other people as well." I declare that it is Man, the Spirit, with whom we should all be chiefly concerned, not Man the anthropoid; and this should ever be one of the great themes of Literature. 34. It is only as spiritual that we can hope for immortality. Within the region of the secular there is no adequate scope for the soul of a man. If we are immortal, our immortality clearly lies in that part of us which is called spiritual. For the present I assume that we are immortal-only adding, by way of justifying the assumption, that 1 Goethe, 'West-Eastern Divan.' |