HAVING told of Selfhood, ere now I tell of breedthe younger of the two Arch-Instincts of man's nature,'twer well here to remember how these pictured steedsare 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 densof swarming Industry, to invite the sons of toil,10all altitude expanse or grandeur of buildingsubsisteth 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 firsther main intentions, and subsumeth under eachthe old animal passions ancillary thereto,tho' in Nature's economy the same impulsemay work to divers ends, as demonstrably is seen20in the appetite of hunger, which prime in selfhoodpromoteth no less all living activities,so universal that some thinkers would make ita corner-stone, and mixing other like fabricbuild thereon confidently, albeit for such deep trustunfit, being in itself a thing of no substance.And truly pleasur in food, common to all animalsthat can feel pleasure, comforting the incessant toilof sustenance to enable their blind energies,when once it findeth conscience in the Reason of man30is posited by folly as an end-in-itself;till by sensuous refinement it usurpeth rankbeside 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 menand chooseth daintily among them; like those cannibalswho yet, for all their courtesy (so travellers tell)and Spartan stoicism, gaily devour their kind.
40From the terrifying jungle of his haunted childhoodwhere prehistoric horror still lurketh untamed,man by slow steps withdrew, and from supply of needfell to pursuit of pleasur, untill his luxurysupplanting 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'din such cultured tradition that the grammar of itwould stock a library; nor are their banquets spredd50to please the palate only; the eye is invitedby dainty disguises and the nostril with scents,nay even the ear is fed, and on the gather'd guestsa trifling music playeth, dispelling all thought,that while they fill the belly, the empty mind may floatlightly 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 cleansed60at fashionable tables, where delicat guestssit and play with their food inattentively, as 'twerin their relaxation an accidental relishto the intellectual banter and familiar discourseof social entertainment—a thing overlook'damong the agreeable superfluities of life,trifles good in themselves, and no more censurablethan the fine linen of Ulysses and the broochthat Penelope gave him, nor the rangled shroudthat she wove for his sire, nor any work of price70that humbly doeth honor unto any temple of God—yet this amenity of Mammon is to the epicuremere disgust, a farrago of incongruous kickshaws,a hazardous pampering, as barbarously remotefrom pleasure's goal as pothouse cheese and ale.For Reason once engaged on the æsthetic of foodrefineth every means, as those painters in oilwho all their sunless days sat labouring to attaina chiaroscuro of full colour—so the epicure;nor planneth he his creation with a less regard80to grandiose composition, in a scheme of morselsgradated to provoke and stimulate alikedigestion and appetite; and each viand marriedwith a congenial wine, and each wine in itselfa sublimation of fancy, a radiant riotous juice,and of such priceless rarity as no man can comebut by luck and genius to possess such bottles.And here the Voluptuary may think his anchorhath bitten on truth; for surely nothing in naturefulfilleth more various expectancies of sense90than his wine doth; to the eye luminous as rich gemsengendering thru' long æons in the bowels of earth;to the nostrils reminiscent as subtle odoursof timorous wind-wavering flowers; to the tastebeyond 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 prepare100a voice of beauty for the joy of her children,wer fashion'd by Amati and Stradivari and still,treasured in their mellow shapelinesses, fulfilthe genius of her omnipotent destiny,—speaking with incantation of strange magic to charmthe dreams that yet undreamt lurk in the unfathom'd deepof 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 alluredthat the epicure thinketh he hath wherewithal to pave110thru' palate and gullet a right path for his soul,each feast as a symphonic poem, preludingto melodious Andante Scherzo and final Fugue,—a microcosm, as those musical pæans arethat perish not in the using, but persiststrengthening their immortality while millions feedon their unquenchable loveliness evermore.In such fine artistry of his putrefying pleasureshe indulgeth richly his time untill the sad day comewhen he retireth with stomach Emeritus120to 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'dhis sport to himself, and each good day of sport (and thattthe 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 step130to 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 handhe glorieth in the fortunes of his venturous day;'mid the high mountain silences, where Poesylieth in dream and with the secret strength of thingsthat governs thought inhabiteth, where man wanderethinto God's presence:—But what heav'nly or earthly Museattendeth the epicure? Nay, what man deigneth earto his grovelling tale? His gluttony rotteth and stinketh140in 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 loveprovoketh Selfhood to anger: indeed Herodotus,seeking the root-cause of the implacable enmitytwixt 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 breedis to the race as selfhood to the individual;and these two prime Instincts as they differ in purposeare independent each from other, and separatas are the organic tracts in the animal bodywhereby they function; and tho' Breed is needful aliketo plants as to animals, yet its apparatusis found in animals of a more special kind;and since race-propagation might have been assured160without differentiation of sex, we are left to guessnature'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 intentlyshaping his lenses, and how he in thatt irksome toilto earn his bread, the while he ponder'd his great book,was perfecting the tool that invited scienceto ever minuter anatomy, untill she took skill170to handle invisibles; and lately upon thatt pathhath divined, in the observed fertilization of plants,atomic mechanism with unlimited powerto vary the offspring in character, by mutualinexhaustible interchange of transmitted genes;a theory on such wide experiment upbuiltthat the enrichment of species may be assumed to bethe purpose of natur in the segregation of sex.Yet this new knowledge throweth no light on our wayto a purposeful and wise selfbreeding of mankind180which, coud it be, would then responsibly overruleall indiscriminat mating: tho' from such ordealour hybrid wisdom well might shrink: rather we seecomplexity irresoluble in obscurity:So may we still follow our instinctiv preferencesunrebuked, and in love of Beauty affirm our faiththat our happiest espousals are nature's free gift.And the origin of sex lieth yet in thatt darknesswhere all origins are—since definition of linkswithin our causal chain advanceth us no way190in sensible approachment to the first Cause of all:we are happy in our discoveries as a child thinkethhe is nearer to the Pole-star when he is put to bed:yet, tracing backwards in the story of sex, the stepsof our carpeted staircase are familiar and strong.First among lowest types of life we think to findno separation of sex: plants in the next degreeshow differentiation at puberty with some signsof mutual approachment: next in higher animalsan early differentiation, and at puberty200periodic appetite with mutual attractionsometimes engaging Beauty: then at last in manall these same characters promoted and strengthen'dto a constant conscient passion, by Reason transform'dto an altruistic emotion and spiritual love.
Breed then together with Selfhood steppeth in pair,for as Self grew thru' Reason from animal rageto vice of war and gluttony, but meanwhile uprosethru' motherly yearning to a profounder affection,so Breed, from like degrading brutality at heart,210distilleth in the altruism of spiritual loveto be the sublimest passion of humanity,with parallel corruption; in its supremacyconfess'd of all, since all in their degree hav feltits divine exaltation and bestial abasement.It hath sanctified fools and degraded heroes;and tho' the warrior wil lightly leave his ladyto join in battle (so the weight of the elder horseside-wrencheth at the yoke), he wil return to hermore gladly, and often rue his infidelity.
220In higher natures, poetic or mystical,sense is transfigur'd quite; as once with Dante it waswho saw the grace of a fair Florentine damselas wisdom uncreate: for it happen'd to himin 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 manin 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 beautyat the still hour of dawn which is holier than day:as when a rose-bud first untrammeleth the shellsof her swathing petals and looseneth their embrace,so the sunlight may enter to flush the casketof her virgin promise, fairer than her full bloomshall ever be, ere its glories lie squander'd in death:—'Twas of thatt silent meeting his high vision camerapturous as any vision ever to poet given;240since in thatt Sacrament he rebaptized his souland lived thereafter in Love, by the merit of Faithtoiling to endow the world: and on those feather'd wingshis mighty poem mounted panting, and lieth nowwith all its earthly tangle by the throne of God.So to Lucretius also seeking Order in Chancesome frenzy of Beauty came, neath which constraint he lefthis atoms in the lurch and fell to worshippingAphrodite, the naked Goddess of man's breed;and waving the oriflamme of her divinity250above the march of his slow-trooping argument,he attributeth to her the creation and beingof all Beauty soe'er: nec sine te quiquamdias in lumnis oras exoritur,neque fit laetum neque: amabile quiquam.So well did he in his rapture: such is Beauty's powerphysical or spiritual; and if it be the causeof spiritual emotion (as hath been said), 'tis plainthat Beauty wil be engaged in man's love, in so faras '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 additionbut marketh more specially its human character.Thus Shakespeare, in the sessions of sweet silent thoughtgathering from memory the idealization of love,when he launch'd from their dream-sheds those golden sonnetsthat swim like gondolas i' the wake of his drama,fashion'd for their ensignry a pregnant axiom,and wrote: From fairest creatures we desire increaseThat thereby Beauty's Rose might never die; wherein270he 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 itselffor propagation of man, yet the attraction of beautybettereth the species, nor without it coud ther hav beeneffect in spirit; and that the poet guarded thisshoweth in his lyric, where of Sylvia 'tis enquiredwhy all the swains commend her, and he replyeth theretoHoly fair and wise is she, thus giving to Soulfirst place, thereafter to Body and last of the trine280Intelligence; 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 beautywhereof 'twas born, when once 'tis waken'd in the mindneedeth no more support of the old animal lure,but absolute in its transmitted power and gracemaketh a new beauty of its own appearances.Thus oft the full majesty and happiness of loveis found in lovers whose corporeal presences290would seem disloyalty to the gay worshippersof the goddess of grace, nor fit to approach her shrine:yet lightly wil Love rate the ridicule of themwhose passion, subsisting in the flourish of flesh,outlasteth not its brief prime, but must fade and fadeas thatt fadeth, and when it perisheth perish;and who themselves—save in the rout of their revelthey hav perish'd immature—provide tales of despair,disease and madness; melancholy tragediesof ignobility unredeem'd, to scare mankind.
300But love's true passion is of immortal happiness,whereof the Greeks, maybe,—whose later poets toldof a heav'nly Aphroditè—had some dim presciencebefore man ever arrived at thatt wisdom thru' Christ,and now teacheth to his children as their birthright,—a giftwhose wealth is amplified by spending, and its charmrejuvenated by habit, that dulleth all else:nor needeth it for joy to look off from this earthand beyond, nor to sit on the schoolbench with themwho dispute in argument the existence of God;310being of eternity it overcometh evilas any nativ disposition is apt to do,but more surely and with its virtue more self-securethan the merry or sad heart is, that in laughter or tearswil keep unchanged its temper, whatsoe'er befall;so priketh hem Nature in hir corages.But think not Aphroditè therefor disesteem'dfor rout of her worshippers, nor sensuous Beautytorn from her royal throne, who is herself motherof heavenly Love (so far as in human aspect320eternal essence can hav mortal parentage),our true compass in art as our comfort in faith,our daily bread of pleasur;—enough that thus I deemof Beauty among Goddes best gifts, and even abovethe pleasur of Virtue accord it honour of men.
The allure of bodily beauty is mutual in mankindas is the instinct of breed, which tho' it seem i' the malemore activ, is i' the female more predominant,more deeply engaging life, grave and responsible.Thus while in either sex celibat lives are led330without impoverishment of intellect or will,this thing is rare in women, whereas in the manvirginity may seem a virile energyin its angelic liberty, prerequisitto the perfection of some high personality.And here we are driv'n to enquire of Reason how it camethat bodily beauty is deem'd a feminin attribute,since not by science nor æsthetick coud we arriveat such a judgment. But not triflingly to trenchon prehistoric problems, 'twil be enough to say340that 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 lefttheir 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 landswhose cockcrow is our curfew, where Chineses swarmteasing their narrow plots with hand and hoe, carryingtheir own dung on their heads obsequiously as ants;350or on our western farms where now machines usurpsuch manual labor, and hav with their strange forms dethronedthe heraldry of the seasons, fair emblems of eldthat seem'd the inalienable imagery of mankinde.How was November's melancholy endear'd to mein the effigy of plowteams following and recrossingpatiently the desolat landscape from dawn to dusk,as the slow-creeping ripple of their single furrowsubmerged the sodden litter of summer's festival!They are fled, those gracious teams; high on the headland now360squatted, a roaring engin toweth to itselfa beam of bolted shares, that glideth to and frocombing 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 dayclicketeth 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 smokethe engin hath huddled up its clumsy threshing-coachagainst the ricks, wherefrom laborers standing alofttoss the sheaves on its tongue; while the grain runneth out,and in the whirr of its multitudinous hurry380it hummeth like the bee, a warm industrious boomthat comforteth the farm, and spreadeth far afieldwith throbbing power; as when in a cathedral awhilethe great diapason speaketh, and the painted saintsfeel 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 timesEve delved and Adam span, can show matriarchy of sortshad precedent in natur, ostensibly among birds,whose males more gaudily feather'd wil disport their charms391and dance in coquetry to win the admiring hens:Verily it well may be that sense of beauty cameto 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 Troubadoursto Shelley's broken amours, and that the fair Musesshould hav masculin wooers was Apollo's willwho favour'd his own sex. But had the god inspired400poetesses 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 savedof 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 beautyand 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 life420are hidden, and with the sexes they are unlike in love.For tho' true loves are mutual and of equal strengthand their bodily communion is a sacrament—like those irrevocable initiations of yorewhose occult ritual it was profane to disclose—and in its uttermost surrender of secrecieshallowing brute instinct, symbolizeth approachto satisfaction of unattainable desire;yet in fullest devotion and frankest abandonof 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 herin the reality of her Motherhood; wherefor,that her son may be noble, she will seek his sirewhere her ideal, howe'er vaguely imagin'd, liethoutside her sphere, beyond her—and so thinketh she lessof 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 upwardto heav'nly things, and how the mere sensible formswhich first arrest him take on ever more and morespiritual aspect,—yet discard not nor disowntheir 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 woman450is 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 woncame 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 makingand never coud hav fruited but for the devoutfostering environment of her lovingkindness:nor can man's futur attainment forgo thatt shelter,wherewith her precocious girlhood accompanieth460the eve;growing incumbency of his pupillage,as it grew in the brutes: . . and here 'tis seen againhow 'tis a backsliding and treason against naturewhen 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 femininborrow'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 namewhisper'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 soulsand troubleth daily life with problems of conduct.
Now to the most who are like to read my English poemchristian marriage wil seem a stablish'd ordinance480as universal, wholesome and needful to manas wheat is, which, ubiquitous, and sib to a weedthat yet wil hamper its cultur, overruleth all else,weigheth our gold by single grains, and harvestedmeasureth 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 lawgiverscoded with rights and duties and property, and thusby Jewish use or Roman held place in the Church,the instinct of sex was ever anathema to the Esseneswhose thought handsel'd the faith; 'twas to thatt sect the accurst491contamination of all spiritual purity:and only after tough battle against two mighty outburstsof Pagan Poetry coud marriage come in the endto its own, from being a tolerated discordancyto be an accepted harmony and hallow'd as suchwithin the Church, a sacrament. Of those two warsthe story is long, and now 'tis here briefly to tell.
The first War of the Essenes was with the poetryof selfhood, those sagas and epic rhapsodies500which had burst forth to flood all Europe in the timeof the northern invasions, when the hideous Huns,extending the right wing of their havoc, swept downon the old land of the Goths. Soon as their arrows prick'dour Teuton forefathers, a clash of arms and yellof battle arose, that in the unsearchable storageof earth's high firmament vibrateth to this day.The warriors, who in vain defence of home escapedthe first mauling and massacre, wer driven forthand, pressing Westward desperatly, became in turn510themselves ruthless invaders, live firebrands that spreddthe blast of their contagion to Allemand and Frank,Burgundian, Vandal and Lombard, from Angle and Daneto 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 quakethand faltering along the edges of its wrinkling shellthe mountains roar and crack, and vent their ruddy bowelsin spume of molten lava; as oft hath been where nowsome gracious valley embosom'd in soft azurous hills520smileth, an Eden as fair as Goddes love was feign'dto 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 themwhose spirits dwell in the Eden that the Muse hath madeher 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 moraineto bank his blossom'd Paradise and feed his vines,530ther-after to the poet all his joy will seema strange mysterious dream, a thread of beauty eterneenwoven in mortal change, and he himself a flowerfertilized awhile on the quench'd torrent of Hell.
Now when Rome's mitred prelates ambled o'er the Alpsto hold the Gallic provinces, whose overlordstheir missioners had won to the confession of Christ,the pagan folk submissiv to constraint wer driv'nin flocks to th' font, but got little washing therein.Whatever of kindliness Tacitus once had found540sequester'd in the rude homesteads of Germanywas burnt up in thatt fiery ordeal, which taught themthe joy of frenzy and prowess, and the songs wherebythey 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 foretoldto the outcast bondwoman in the famishing desert,and she to her son,—that his horoscope was to rangelike the wild ass untameable, and his hand should be550'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 menwho 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 regardthey turn'd to assure their flock by amity, and to combthe fleece they might not shear: upon which way they wroughtsome 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 bardsto 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 transcribethe old pagan tales, redacted to the amended formin which we know them, with what other numberlesswonder-lives of the Saints they wrote, symbolic masquesof Christian orthodoxy, and later mystery-plays.570So all these diverse stuffs thru' the dark centurieslay quietly a-soak together in the dye-vats, whereinour British Arthur was clandestinely christen'dand crown'd, and all his knights cleansed and respirited,reclothed as might be: for the dispossess'd devilshad kindly accepted their rebate, content to findtheir old home swept and gamish'd; and tho' verilyin their domestication, as 'tis with brutes, they had lostkeenness 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, whereastime was when good St. Andrew strode forth in plate-mail.
While thus the Catechists made compromising peacewith the poetry of selfhood, ere the fight was wonin 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 therewithis 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 emblems500of Hellenic humanity, that long had drown'dwhere they had sunk o'erwhelm'd in the wreckage of Rome,undersuck'd in the wallow, when Caesar's great shipfounder'd with all its toys decadent in the deep,now again of their buoyancy up-struggling here and thereto ride in sparkling dance on the desolate sea:Or what grave lore had refuged with the Ishmaelitewas stealing back from exile to its western home,its mansion of birthright, and had now already inspiredpassionat Abelard, who with his ethnic books600was heralding in Paris that full Renaissancewhich should illumin Europe, and plant her citieswith Universities of learning, sanctuariesof 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 Valentinque chacun doit choisir son per, or a later dayof February, when in the shelter'd woodlandthe Sun with broadening smile thinketh to intercalatea glad red-letter'd feast in Winter's almanac,which the thrush boldly announceth—tho' the migrant birds611hav 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'dthe rear of the dark ages prematurely; and yetthe singers wer so many that man marveleth stillwhence they came, or by what spontaneous impulse sang.As well might be with one who wendeth lone his waybeside the watchful dykes of the flat Frisian shore,what hour the wading tribes, that make their home and breed620numberless on the marshy polders, creep unseenwidely dispersed at feed, and silent neath the sunthe low unfeatured landscape seemeth void of life—when without warning suddenly all the legion'd fowlrise from their beauties' ambush in the reedy beds,and on spredd wings with clamorous ecstasycarillioning in the air manœuvre, and where they wheeltransport the broken sunlight, shoaling in the sky—with like sudden animation the fair fields of Francegave birth to myriad poets and singers unknown,630who in a main flight gathering their playful flocksettled in Languedoc, on either side the Rhonewithin the court and county of Raymond of Toulouse.Nor wer these Troubadours hucksters of song who tunedtheir pipes for fee: some far glimpse of the heav'nly Musehad reach'd and drawn the soul by the irresistiblemagnet of love: as when in the blockish marblethe sculptor's thought of beauty loometh into shapeneath his rude hammerstrokes, ere the true form is seen;so had the monks' rough-hewing of the old pagan tales640discover'd virtue:—an Ideal of womanhoodhad striven into outline; which, tho' passion heeded notyet art had grasp'd, divining fresh motiv for skill,whereby knights, churchmen, monks, courtiers and scholars allchildishly wer enthrall'd: ev'n kings found honor in rhymewhose royalty is today its only honor, and to uswould seem frivolity, knew we not that we watchbeside the rocking-cradle of babes, whose prattling tonguesshould 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 musicof the tentativ language, whose mincing metresimposed 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 Lebanonand flowery Carmel; or wil vaunt the unstoried namesof African Nairobi, where by Nyanza's lakesNile hid his flooding fountain, or in the New Worldfar Pasadena's roseland, whence who saileth homewestward wil in his kalendar find a twin day.But I in England starving neath the unbroken gloomsof thatt dreariest November which wrapping the sun,670damping all life, had robb'd my poem of the rayswhose wealth so far had sped it, I long'd but to bei' the sunshine with my history; and the names that heldplace in my heart and now shall hav place in my linewer Avignon, Belcaire, Montelimar, Narbonne,Béziers, Castelnaudary, Béarn and Carcasonne,and truly I coud hayv shared their fancy coud I hav liv'damong those glad Jongleurs, living again for me,and had joy'd with them in thatt liberty and good-willwhich men call toleration, a thing so stiff to learn680that to sceptics 'tis left and cynics. In ProvenceJew 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 sectsabominable, persecuted and defamed,who with their Eastern chaffering and insidious talkhad ferreted thru' Europe to find peace on earthwith Raymond of Toulouse,—those ancient Manichees.
Restless and impatient man's mind is ever in quest690of some system or mappemond or safeguard of soul,and coming not at Truth—ev'n as a dry-athirst horsethat 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 clothescrampt, and atrophied with their infantile suctions.So in the inmost sanctum of the Hindu minda milch-cow is enshrined: but those dour Manicheeswer trifling with no symbols; their wild creed had grown700deep-rooted on the prime obsession of savagery,thatt first terrifying nightmare of dawning consciencewhich, seeing in natur a power maleficent to man,estopp'd his growth in love: for these zealots ascribedthis 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 defiancethey had lost the old fear, and finding internecine wardeclared twixt flesh and spirit in the authentic scriptof Paul of Tarsus, him they took for master, and styled710themselves Paulicians the depositaries of Christ.Their creed—better than other exonerating Godfrom blame of evil—and their austere asceticismshamed the half-hearted clerics, whose licence in sinconfirm'd the uncompromising logic, which inferr'da 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 Christand, 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 wrathlabel'd in history The Albigensian war,a sinking millstone heavy as ever pontiff tiedround the neck of the Church. For the champions of Christoutdid the heathen Huns in cruelty, and in the endwas Raymond's county ravaged to ruin and his folkmassacred all or burnt alive, man woman and child,and their language wiped out, so that a man today730reading Provengal song studieth in a dead tongue.Yet many Troubadours escaping from slaughterfled to the Italian cities where the New Learninggave kind asylum to their secret flame; and erewithin the Church's precincts they had raised a song,Chivalry had won acceptance in the ideal of sexand, blending with the worship of the Mother of God,assured the consecration of marriage, still unknownsave to the christian folk of Europe whence it sprang.Thus, as it came to pass, the second Essene War740brought 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 joybeyond thatt ground-pleasure, which all creatures may feelin the inconscient functionings of their organismsand satisfaction of instinct—had thatt been, ev'n sonothing had lack'd to inspire the selfassertion of man:But since ther is beauty in nature, mankind's love of lifeapart 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 powerthrew off the first night-terrors of his infant mind,the vision of beauty awaited him, and step by stepled 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'outby necessary attractions—as tis seen in plantor animal, and these as they suffice in brutessuffice in man so far as he also is animal;760but being specifically endow'd he must in coursehav 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 sheof color or sound? Nothing: tho' science measure trueevery 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 eye770all scent is lost: suddenly escaped the visiblesare changed to invisible; the fine-measured motionsto immeasurable emotion; the cypher'd fractionsto a living joy that man feeleth to shrive his soul.How should science find beauty? Leibnitz rightly is heldthe most irrefutable of all philosophers,because he boldly excised the intrinse knot from the ropeand, showing both ends free, proclaim'd no knot had been;imagining two independent worlds that movein 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 thoughtso inconceivable, to save appearances.That ther is beauty in natur and that man loveth itare one thing and the same; neither can be derivedapart as cause of the other: and here it is to tellhow female beauty came to be the common lurein human marriage.—First in animal matingthe 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 whereonslowly 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 manwil most be engaged with beauty; and thus in his "first love"physical beauty and spiritual are both present800mingled inseparably in his lure: then is he seenin the ecstasy of earthly passion and of heavenly visionto fall to idolatry of some specious appearanceas 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 commonlya fusion of both—when if distractedly he hav thoughtto mate mortally with an eternal essenceall the delinquencies of his high passion ensue.Verily if Hope wer not itself a happiness810sorrow would far outweigh our mortal joy, but Hopeincarnat in the blood kindleth its hue no lesswith every breath, to flood all the sluices of lifelong as the heart can beat. And yet in love-matinghope's ideal is so rich and fulfilment so rare,that common minds in trudge with common experiencemay 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 do820stealing 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 thingsshut out, ther is no way left nor choice for him, unlesshe would make shipwreck, and of mere brutalityfall to pieces—ther is no hope for him but to attunenature's diversity to a human harmony,and with faith in his hope and full courage of soulrealizing 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 thingsbecause ther are so few of them, and hold it follyto aim at excellence where so few can succeed;and where any success pincheth the happinessof the far greater number, who left to themselvesmight feel fuller content admiring common thingsor ugly, and be happier in whatever likingsthey can indulge. Altho' they know it not, this isthe humanitarianism of democracy;840and since ther is in the mass little good to look forbut what instruction, authority and example impose,Ethick and Politick alike hav trouble in store.
Now mere impulse of sex,—from animal matingto 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 composableof any summation of particular pleasures;the happiness in marriage dependeth for-surenot on the animal functions, but on qualitiesof spirit and mind that are correlated therewith.So 'twas not of false ethic or weak pruderywhen thatt old Hebrew poet, in his mighty mythof man's creation, imagin'd Eve's predestinyto be helpmate and comfort to God's perfect man;nor in thatt strange fashioning of her from Adam's rib860fudged he his symbol; perfect man being in thatt theftimperfected by loss of an original partnow personate in Eve, who should reveal to himwhat 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 deathreft of their earthly dreams, took courage, and resettheir disillusion'd hope bolder—to look no more870for Rome and Caesar's overthrow, but rather expectJahveh's wrathful dissolution of all creation;that Christ would rëappear in pitiless Godheadfull suddenly and full soon, to judge the world of sin,and with his angels gather up his living electto 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 illin 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 generationwho, like to children absorb'd in the scientific toysof their high-kilted gossips, care not to ransackthe nursery cupboard for their grand-dam's old playthings;tho' family relics are they, once loved, and may show890how that in man's eternal quest of happiness,contempt of fleshly pleasur is as near to his spiritas is the love of it to his animal nature.Vestiges of his stony asceticism imbueall 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 specimensto teach what manners went to the making of man;having such living witness of harmonized life900in the aristocracy of our English motherhood,whence the nobility of our sons came, and therewithprecedence of their courtesy title in the world;a tradition of good-faith, humanity and courage,that year by year flowereth on the grafted stockof Saxon temperament; the which slow or deadto beauty, is but a dullard in spiritual sense.And so the character of our common folk, up-builtin the commanding presence of this feminin grace,won therefrom (as I hold) its vulgar excellence;910for finding their own conduct unconformableto beauty of so high grade, they guarded it apartsubmissiv in its own status, a kindly thingwith 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 wisehobnob 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, because920the pieces are in place, 'tis pictured for him truein Shakespeare's drama, where ideal women walkin 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 wasthat 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 likethose many organic substances which, tho' to sensewholly 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 figurate940the twin persistent semitones of my Grand Chant.And 'twer but bookish, surely, in the fabric of mindto assume the disposition of vital elementsunder a few common names, alike in both sexes;'tis easier thought that ther is no human facultythat hath not been in long elaboration of sexadjusted finely, and often to such richer endsthat, tho' by correlation characters of sexthey are not held in subservience to the impulse of Breed,—as some deem, and impute precocious puberty950to new-born babes, and all their after trouble in lifeto shamefast thwarting of inveterat lust.
Now Woman took her jointure from the potencyof spirit stored in flesh, the which, affined to her sex,became a property of intuition and grew in her,thru' mutual adaptation with the environmentsthat wer its own effects, to a female characterin worth alike and weakness distinct from the male:for while man's Reason drew him whither science ledto walk with downcast eyes fix'd on the ground, and low960incline 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 erectin honest human posture, from light's fount to drinkcelestial influences; and this was seen in themthat worship'd Christ nor look'd, as then the apostles did,for some earthly prosperity or prospect, nor ask'd970what chief seats might be theirs reserved in the Kingdom;his heavenly call drew them, and the Mary who satat Christ's feet in devotion, heard from him her choicepronounced 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 moreout of slumber into vision, he loseth heart the moreat the inhumanity of nature's omnipotence.Thatt first savage suspicion is now the last despair980of earnest thinkers, who for love of truth refuseto 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 bringin further keen pursuit of knowledge, on the old paththat hath hereby led them where the everlasting wormeateth 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 sheweth990the strange perversity of creation's self-reproach;tho' nature the while is by beauty awakeningher heavenly response to her heavenliest desire,and in spiritual joy sanctioneth to the fullthe claim of faith. To such despairers Christ out-spakein his rich poetry 'Tis better with one eyeblinded to enter inlo the life of Goddes Realmthan 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 Spiritall actual gradations come of natur, and eachseverally in time and place is answerable in man.As with the embryo which in normal growth passeththru' evolutionary stages, at each stageconsisting with itself agreeably, so Mindmay be by observation in young changes waylaid,agreeable all, tho' no more congruous with themselves1010than what a baby thinketh of its naked feet,when first it is aware of them, is like the thoughtof piteous sympathy with which when an old manhe 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 manto him who findeth in it the only pleasur of life:then the four temperaments of blood possess of kindtheir different sensibilities, and every biasof education coloureth; while in abstract thought1020some 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 sensemust in all its perspectivs be studied, tho' nonebe true wholly in itself, and reality is foundby elimination of error, so 'twil be with Love,which, if it had no various aspects of feelingnor delusiv perspectivs to spiritual sight,neither coud it hav any essential propertyin the Wisdom of God: thus men, who mostly livin the light of one aspect and convinced thereby,wil deem of love differently, and in as many ways1040as there be planes of spirit and faculties of mind:and the philosopher expecteth little audienceof men school'd to the habit of their own liking,and wer he heaven-inspired he should not therefor lookto win the general ear; yet, one proviso allow'd,he may command agreement; so (saith he) if ther beany one scheme of Reason in the evolution of Mindpreferable and probable—and without so much faithhe would sit dumb—then thatt ideal wil be foundin few, not in many, but potential in them,1050and in the best imperfect, a desire of all,an everlasting hope not everlastinglyto be rebuff'd and baffled, rather prëordain'dby arch-creative Wisdom, as man groweth to findhis Will in Goddes pleasur, his pleasur in Goddes Will;drawn to thatt happiness by the irresistiblepredominant attraction, which worketh securein 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 truthhav great need to remember that no plastic Art,tho' it create ideals noble as are the formsthat Pheidias wrought, can ever elude or wholly escapeits earthly medium; nor in its adumbrationsreach thatt detach'd suprasensuous vision, wheretoPoetry and Music soar, nor dive down in the minewhere 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 prizeof the classic contest, when like truants from schoolthey made off to the fields with their satchels, and cameon nature's beauteous by-paths into a purer air:For the Art of painting, by triumph of colouringenticed to Realism, had confounded therebyits own higher intention, and in portrayal of spiritmade way for Symbolism which, tho' it stand aloof,1080is outfaced in the presence of direct feeling:Sithence in presentation of feminin beautythe 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 oncetwo diverse essences in their value and contrast;for while by the æsthetic idealisation of formhis 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 confidencein the truth of her wisdom, as there she sittethbeside the fountain, dazzlingly apparel'd, enthroned,with thoughtful face impassiv, averting her headas 'twer for fuller attention so to incline an earto the impartial hearing of the importunat pleaof the other, who over-against her on the cornice-plinthposturing her wonted nakedness in sensuous ease,leaneth her body to'ards her, and with imploring grace1100urgeth the vain deprecation of her mortal prayer.
Giorgione, his master, already had gone to deathplague-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 tongueL'Amor Sacro e Profano, and so rightly divined;for tho' ther is no record save the work of the brushto tell the intention, yet what the mind wrought is there;1110and who looketh thereon may see in the two left armsthe symbolism apportioning the main design;for while the naked figure with extended armand outspredd palm vauntingly balanceth alofta little lamp, whose flame lost in the bright daylightwasteth in the air, thatt other hath the arm bent downand oppositely nerved, and clencheth with gloved handclosely 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 uglinesswhich Art would outlaw; whence cometh that tinsel honourand mimicry of beauty which is the attire of vice.
Allegory is a cloudland inviting fancyto lend significance to chancey shapes; and hereI deem not that the child, who playeth between the Lovesat Titian's well, was pictured by him with purposeto 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'th1130only a reflection of the realities—as 'twaswith the mortals in Plato's cave—nor more of themthan Moses saw of God; he can see but their backs,save for a shifty glimpse of the pleading profilof earthly Love (which also is subtle truth); and mosthow in his play his plunged hand stirreth to and froboth images together in a confused dazzleof the dancing ripples as he gazeth intent.
