This outward Picturesque, embosoming the Human Pathetic and Sympathetic, is known to the great Father of Poetry.
Homer paints for eye and ear; but usually with brief touches.
The predominance given in Verse to the Music over the Sense—the conspicuous power of the Music, perhaps calls the Soul into the Senses.
But there is a more comprehensive view. The Mind in the treatment of its Knowledge ranges between two Extremes. It receives the original givings of Experience, at the utmost particularised and individualised, determined under conditions of time, Place, Individuals. It reduces individuals into Kinds, actions into Laws, finds Principles, unveils Essences. These are the ultimate findings of Reason. The Philosophical Mind tends to these—dwells in these—is at home in these—is impatient of its knowledge whilst unreduced. This is the completed victory of Intelligence over its data. It is by Comprehension and Resolution the Reduction of Multitude into Unity. At the same time, the Mind leaves the turbulent element of Sense, and passes into a serene air, a steadfast and bright and cold sky. Now, then, Poetry dwells or makes a show of dwelling at the other extreme—in the forms as they were given. What semblance, what deception, may be in this, is another question. But this is her ostentation. She imitates to a deception, if she does not copy these original givings. She represents Experience, and this she does for the sake of the Power of Affection which attends the forms of Experience. For the most part these original givings are involved in sensible perceptions, Eye, Ear, Hand, and beating heart. How will you escape from them? Eye, above all, the reigning faculty of communing with Earth and Sky. So as that he who is shut out from the world of sight, seems to us to be shut out from the world; but he who is shut out from the world of Sound: not equally so. Nevertheless, that which Poetry requires is not——
You were going a few minutes ago to say something more about Impersonations, sir.
Nothing new. We are warranted by universal human experience in assuming it as a psychological fact, that we are formed with a disposition irresistibly carrying us to see in things out of ourselves, ourselves reflected—in things that are without life, will, and intelligence, we conceive life, will, and intelligence; and, when the law of a stronger illusion swaying our faculties constrains us to bestow an animated form, we bestow our own. By these two intellectual processes, which in one way or another are familiar to our experience, but which seem strange when we reflect upon them, and try to understand them, we make human-shaped Impersonations of inanimate things, and of abstract notions! If we would know the magnitude of the dominion which this disposition constraining us thus to Impersonate has exercised over the human mind, we must go back into those ages of the world when this disposition exerted itself, uncontrolled by philosophy, and in obedience to religious impulses, when Impersonations of inanimate Objects and Powers, of Moral Powers, and of notions formed by the understanding, filled the Temples of the nations with visible Deities, and were worshipped with altars and incense, hymns and sacrifice.
If not new, how beautifully said, sir! These for the second time.
If we will see how hard this dominion is to eradicate, we must look to the most civilised and enlightened times, when severe Truth has to the utmost cleansed the understanding from illusion, and observe how tenaciously these imaginary beings, with imaginary life, hold their place in our Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, and Eloquence; nay, and in our quiet and common speech; and if we should venture to expatiate in the walks of the profounder emotions, we shall sometimes be startled with the sudden apparition of boldly-impersonated thoughts, upon occasions that did not seem to promise them, whereof one might have thought that interests of overwhelming moment would have effectively banished the play of imagination!
Impersonation is the highest poetical figure. It is in all degrees and lengths, from a single expression up to the Pilgrim’s Progress and Fairy Queen.
Good, Seward.
It is, as you say, strongly connected with this disposition in the human mind, to produce—and believe in Power in external nature—Nymphs, Genii, Fairies, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo, and every belief in mythology. This disposition is, the moment it sees effects which strongly affect it, to embody upon the spot the cause or power which produced them. In doing this in the old unenlightened world, it filled Nature with Deities, and not Nature only, but the human mind and life. Love was a Deity; Fear and Anger were; Remorse was in the Furies; Memory was Mnemosyne; Wisdom was in Pallas; Fortune was, and Ate; and Necessity and Death were Deities.
I seem to have heard all that a thousand times before.
So much the better. In some of Homer’s descriptions, names that look like Impersonations are mixed with acknowledged Deities—Remorse, for instance, with Fear and Flight, which Virgil copies. Now, I don’t know what he meant. I hope, for the sincerity and simplicity of his poetry, that they are not his own Impersonations for the occasion, walking with Deities of national belief.
Eh?
The moment you allegorise fabulous poetry—that is, admit it to have been allegorically written, you destroy from it the childlike verity of belief.
Eh?
Now in whatever way we are to understand these Impersonations, the result as to our question is much the same.
What question, sir?
What question? If they are meant as real, though not Impersonations of the Poet, they were Impersonations of the human mind from an earlier and more believing time. Whether they were simply and purely from human feeling, in the bosom of human society, or were framed for the belief of others by the skilful artificers of belief, is not of positive moment as to the evidence to the operations and dispositions of the human mind. Those who presided over the national life of every religion might deliberately contrive, and might deliver over to the credence of their nation, imaginary powers, conceived with inventive imagination, as a Poet conceives them. But the very inventions, and still more the simple faith that received the inventions, show the intellectual disposition to embody in living powers the causes of effects. The faith of the people shows further the disposition and ability of the human mind to attribute reality, and that by force of feeling, to the creations of its own intellect, and particularly its aptitude to cleave to those creations in which it embodies power of which it strongly feels the effects. But I would rather believe that such faith has often formed itself in the bosom of simple societies without devisers—that men have conceived and felt till they believed; that they felt delight and beauty in a gushing fountain till they believed in a presiding spirit as fair—that the sun, the giver of light and warmth, of the day and of the year, could not appear to them a mere star of day, a larger, brighter fire. They felt a gift in his rays, and in their influence, and deified the visible orb. They thought of—they saw the terrors of war, and believed that some Power delighting in blood stirred up the hearts of men to mutual destruction.
If those ancient poets in whom this mythology remains, are to be received sometimes as delivering known and accepted names as beings, sometimes as supplying from their momentary inventions unreceived names, then this view of the case also affords proof of the same disposition we have spoken of. It shows the disposition of men to believe in powers the immediate causes of impressive effects; and the Poet must be conceived as suggesting and delivering the shape and name of Powers which it is already believed must be, though themselves are not known—not as inventing them deliberately and ornamentally, nor as declaring them from an assured and assumed knowledge. This disposition to produce shapes of powers which in early ages is attended with positive belief, afterwards remains in imagination—art, though not extinct in the work of our mind for dealing in realities. Do we, sir, ever divest ourselves of a belief in Death, Chance, Fate, Time? But a strong belief overrules with us all such illusions of fancy, withdrawing all power to the great source of power. Therefore, such a disposition, though it continues, is in real thought much oppressed and stifled, and shows itself almost accidentally, as it were, rather than in any constant opinion, for in deliberate opinion it cannot hold. But in Poetry, even in Eloquence, it remains. There we allow ourselves in illusion; and the mind leaps up with a sort of rejoicing, to recover its old liberty of deceiving itself with splendid fictions.
Which is again an instance of the two different forms in which Imagination is seen in the earlier and later age—in the first, realised in belief—in the last, having its domain in the avowedly ideal world of Poetry.
I confess, my dear friends, it appears to me not easy to explain how the mind is enabled, desire it as much as it will, to pour its own capacities into insensate things. When Lear says, “Nature, hear! dear Goddess, hear!” his passion will not believe but that there is a hearer and executor of its curse; and it imagines nature capable of hearing. “If prayers can pierce the clouds and enter heaven, why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses.” Does not all Passion that addresses itself to inanimate objects throw into them a feeling? Would not the Invocation be idle to the unresponsive and unhearing? This, then, is the nature of human passion, that, when vehement, it cannot conceive that its will is not to be fulfilled. If there are no adequate ministers, inadequate ministers must take their place. Inanimate things must become agents. “Rise, rise, ye wild tempests, and cover his flight.”—“Strike her young bones, ye taking airs, with lameness.” This is one demand, then, of passion, the execution of its purposes. Another demand of passion is sympathy. This, we know, is one of its first and strongest demands. If, then, men will not, or are not present to sympathise, that which surrounds must. The boiling passion finds it easier to believe that winds and rocks feel with it, than that it is sole, and cut off from all participation. Hence the more exuberant passion animates things, our own gladness animates nature.
And how well has Adam Smith said how our sympathy includes the dead! Of all that feel not, it may with the readiest illusion embrace those who once felt; and what do we know that they do not yet feel? Now, if this can be granted as the nature and power of passion, that, without any better ground than its own uncontrollable efflux, it can blend itself into that which is around it—that it believes lightnings and floods will destroy, merely from the intensity of will with which it wills them to destroy—though here the fitness for destruction is a reason; but if it imagines that, undestroying, they will rise to destroy, that peace shall be converted into danger, and sleep into anguish, that food shall not nourish, and winds shall not waft, rather than it shall be left without vengeance, or baffled; then may we say that there is in Passion an absolute power of carrying itself out into other existence, and that no other condition, in such existence, is necessary, save that it shall become obviam to passion in its mood. If so, then, of course, any reason from analogy or causation becomes a very potent one to attract such passion and opinions formed by passion. Let this be established in passion at its fiercest, wildest height, and the principle is obtained. It is then the disposition of the mind under emotion to diffuse its emotion, bending the things around to suit its purposes, or at least filling them with sympathy with itself. In either case, upon this reason, that only so can the will which rises with its emotion ever be satisfied. This principle given, strongest in strongest passion, but accompanying all emotion, is the root of Impersonation. All intellectual analogies, all coincidences of reality with the demands of emotion, will quicken and facilitate this act of the mind; but neither analogies nor coincidences, nor any other inclining reasons, are requisite. The emotion will reconcile and assimilate any object to itself, if it is reduced to them. Here then is a principle sufficient to animate all nature, all being, and to any extent or height. This seems to be the foundation of Impersonation—that it is the nature of man to fill all things with himself. It is plainly a radix for all poetical Impersonation. He makes and reads everywhere reflection of mind; he does this without passion, that is, not without feeling—for in all ordinary thought there is feeling—but without transported passion. His strong passions in their transport show us in plainer evidence how he involves all things with himself, and subjects all things to himself; and his gentler feelings do the same. He is almost the cause of a world of mind revolving round and upon himself—he makes himself such a centre; this is the constant temper and the habitual mode of conceiving and hearing of all minds.
We seem, sir, to be talking of Imagination?
If the act of imagination is the perception of the sublime—of the beautiful, of the wonderful—then pleasure is an element of the product;—for without pleasure, the Sublime, the Beautiful, the poetically wild or solemn, does not exist. All other ingredients, if pleasure be absent, leave the compound imperfect—the thing undone. Therefore Addison says boldly, the pleasure of Imagination, whom Akenside follows. But further, Talboys—I believe that in Imagination poetical, there is always—or almost always—Illusion. I cannot get it out of my head as a main element. In its splendour, this is past doubt—in Impersonation—Apostrophe to the dead, or absent, or unborn—Belief is in the power of your curses—seeing the past or future as present; and in the whole fiction of Epos or Drama, the semi-belief in the life and reality of the feigned personages.
A certain degree of passion, sir, appears to be requisite for supporting Illusion. We well know that in all the history of Passion, to produce illusion is the common operation. Why not in Imagination?
In natural passion, gentlemen, the Illusion reigns unchecked. In the workings of poetical imagination the Illusion is tempered and ruled, subdued under a Law, conformed to conditions and requisitions of art. Men resist the doctrine of Illusion. They dislike to know to what an immense extent they are subject to Illusions. I have no conception of Beauty or Sublimity that does not require, for effecting it, some transfusion of life and spirit from our own soul into the material object—some transmutation of the object. If so, the whole face of the Universe is illuminated to us by Illusion.
If you are asked in what parts of the Iliad Imagination assumes its most powerful sceptre, you cannot help turning to the supernatural. Everything about Gods and Goddesses—Olympus—Jupiter’s nod—Vulcan making armour—all the interpositions. The terrestrial action is an Isle that floats in a sea of the marvellous; but this is for us at least Illusion—fictitious creation—the top of it. So in Shakspeare; for we are obliged to think of the Ghosts, Witches—Caliban—Ariel.
Existences, which we accept in the sheer despite of our knowledge—that is, of reason. The rational king of the Earth, proud of his reason, and ignorant of his Imagination, grows ashamed when the facts of his Imagination are obtruded upon him—denies them—revolts from them. To restore the belief and faith in Imagination, and to demonstrate its worth, is an enterprise obligatory on philosophy. The world seems returning to it, for a while having abhorred it. Our later poets have seen both Cause and Effect. Do you believe that thinking a child like a flower does not increase your tenderness for him or her, and that the innocence of the flower does not quicken and heighten by enshrining its beauty? Child and Flower give and take.
Excellent. We put down, then, as the first stone in all such argument—that the act of Imagination—or the poetical act—be they one or two, is accompanied with belief.
Fancy, Wit, have a touch of belief.
Even a play upon words has a motion towards belief.
No metaphysician has ever, that I have read, expounded belief. Has Hartley? This quasi-belief, or half-belief, against better knowledge, must be admitted as a sure fact or phenomenon. I don’t care how hard it may be to persuade anybody to believe as the foundation of a philosophy an absurdity, or self-contradictory proposition, “That you believe to be true, that which you know to be false.” There the fact is; and without it you build your house in the air—off the ground. Soften it—explain it. Say that you know for one moment, and in the next know the contrary. Say that you lean to belief—that it is an impression, half-formed—imperfect belief—a state of mind that has partaken of the nature of belief—that it is an impression resembling belief—operating partial effects of belief. But unquestionably, no man, woman, or child has read a romance of Scott or Bulwer or Dickens, without seeing their actions and sufferings with his soul, in a way that, if his soul be honest, and can simply tell its own suffering, must by it be described as a sort of momentary belief. What are the grief, the tears, the joy, the hope, the fear, the love, the admiration, and half-worship—the vexation, the hate, the indignation, the scorn, the gratitude, yea, and the thirst of revenge—if the pageant floats by, and stirs actually to belief? The supposition is an impossibility, and the theory lies on our side, and not on Johnson’s, who has nothing for him but a whim of rationalism. I take novels—because in them it is a common proof, though this species be the less noble. But take Epos from the beginning. Take Tragedy—take Comedy—and what is, was, or will it be, but a half-unsubstantial image of reality, waited upon by a half-substantial image of belief, the fainter echo of airy harps? My drift is, that our entire affection, passion—choose your word—attended with pleasure and pain of heart and imagination—the love, the hate in either, are the sustaining, actuating soul of the belief. Evidence, that as the passion thrills, the belief waxes, and that—
Clear as mud.
As amber.
I see in Imagination a power which I can express to my own satisfaction by two terms, of which you, Seward, sometimes look as if you refused me the use, disabling me from defining for you. For myself, I see “Passion moulding or influencing Intellectual Forms.” As the language stands hitherto, I do not see my way of getting out of the two terms. You want, on the lowest steps, a very elementary description—something far below the Poet—something as yet far short of the sublime, the beautiful, and the wonderful. Tell me some one who has felt fear, or anger, or love, or hate—how these have affected for him the objects of simple apprehension or of conception; of sight, for instance—of sound? Has anything through his fear seemed larger—through his hate wickeder, than it is? For that differencing of an object by a passion, I know no name but Imagination. It is the transformation of a reality; that seems to me to be the ground of what we more loftily apprehend under the name Imagination.
The great differences in the different psychological states and facts arising out of the different passions or passionate moments, are various, endless. Such influences from pleasure and pain, from loves of some sort, and from hates of some sort, take effect for us in all the objects with which we have intercourse. They make what it is to us. They make man what he is to us. They are the life of our souls. They are given to all human spirits.
We have, all of us, clean forgotten Milton.
May the bond of Unity lying at the heart of the Paradise Lost, be said to be the following Ethical Dogma?
“The Good of the created rational Intelligence subsists in the conscious consent of his Will, with the holy Will of the Creator.”
His Good:—i. e. his innocence and original happiness, whilst these last:—his virtue and regained happiness, if he attain virtue and regain happiness:—these and the full excellence of his intellectual and natural powers—
It is Ethical, and more than Ethical.
The Innocence and Fall of the Rebel Angels:—The Bliss and Loyalty of the Upright:—(Consider Abdiel:) The Innocence and Fall and Restoration of Man:—are various Illustrations of this great Dogma. The Restoration, as respects Man himself:—and far more eminently as respects the person of the Uncreated Restorer.
This central Thought, radiating in every direction to the circumference, cannot be regarded as a theological notion, coldly selected for learned poetical treatment. The various and wonderful shaping-out, the pervading, animating, actuating, soul-like influence and operation;—direct us to understand that in the Mind of Milton, through his day of life, a vital self-consciousness bound this Truth to his innermost being:—that he loved this Truth;—lived in and by this Truth. Wherefore the Poem springs from his Mind, by a moral necessity.
Four great aspects of Composition, or Four chief moods of Poetry appear in the Paradise Lost. 1. The Sublime of disturbed Powers in the infernal Agents:—fallen and, ere they fall, warring. 2. Heaven in humanity: while Adam and Eve are “yet sinless.”—A celestial Arcadia.—The purer Golden Age. 3. Man, Earthly: when they have eaten.
4. Heaven;—extended, wheresoever the good Angels go.
These Four greatly dissimilar aspects are each amply displayed:—and much as they differ, are wonderfully reconciled.
Milton sets before our eyes in utmost opposition, God and Satan—i. e. Good and Evil, namely—Good, as Holiness and Bliss inseparably united in God—Evil, as Wickedness and Misery united inseparably in Satan.
The Poem represents the necessary eternal War irreconcilable of the Two—throughout the Creation of God—namely, first in Heaven the abode of Angels—next upon Earth the abode of Men.
The Poem represents in Heaven and upon Earth, God as the willing infinite Communicator of Good:—as, in Heaven and upon Earth the perpetual Victor over Evil.
And Evil—in Heaven and upon Earth as necessarily Self-Destructive: videlicet, in this visible shape: that from God’s Heaven and from God’s Earth all reason-gifted Doers of Evil—that is, all doers of moral Evil—are cast out into perdition.
The Poet himself has declared in the outset the purpose of his Poem. It is to establish in the mind of his readers the belief in the Two great Truths:—That the Universe is under the government of Eternal and Omnipotent Wisdom:—and that this Government, as far as it regards Mankind, is holy, just, and merciful. This essential truth, infinitely the most important that can be entertained, since it comprehends all our good, all our evil—all happiness, all misery—temporal—eternal;—all the destinies and conditions of the human race;—was worthy the taking-in-hand of such a Teacher. This truth He might have illustrated, from any part of human history;—and with great power and evidence from a great many parts—both for obedience and for disobedience—in the case of individuals and of communities.
But He found one part of human history, where this truth shines out in its utmost strength—namely, where the Obedience and Disobedience are those of two individuals, and, at the same time, of all Mankind;—and where the illustration of the truth is beyond all comparison convincing, since the conjunction of the Happiness and the Obedience is here promulgated—since the Happiness and the Obedience are here formally bound together—the Disobedience and the Misery—by the promising and the menacing voice of the Almighty.—The Disobedience takes effect;—and first creates human misery.
Milton took then this instance, preferable to all others, because above all others it emblazons, as if in characters written by the finger of Heaven, the Truth which he would teach;—notwithstanding the stupendous difficulties of the attempt into which he plunged;—committing himself, as He thus did, to unfolding before mortal gaze the Courts of Heaven;—to divulging for mortal ears colloquies held upon the celestial everlasting Throne;—to delineating the War of Creatures (i. e. the Angels) against the Creator, &c. &c.
Observe, moreover, that, although Man’s Obedience and Fall from Obedience is the theme undertaken, yet the Truth undertaken has other illustration, in the Poem, and reaches into higher Orders of Being. For instance, in the Order of Angels, there occurs twofold illustration—namely,
1. By the Opposition presented of unfallen and fallen Angels.
2. And, amongst the rebellious Angels themselves, by the unspeakable contrast exhibited of their first happy and their second unhappy state;—their sinless glory and their horrible punishment.
Far higher yet,—immeasurably higher,—in the divine Messiah, the Obedience is the grace, the glory, and the happiness of his Being!
God is the Creator and Upholder—Satan, the Destroyer. God is the rightful Monarch of the Universe, unassailably seated on his everlasting Throne. Satan ever attempts Usurpation, and is ever baffled.
Pride is the inward Self-exaltation of a Creature. Observe that Exaltation is proper raising from a lower degree held to a higher degree, not before held. God is eternally the Highest;—a state which precludes the idea, strictly spoken, of Exaltation.
Therefore, to Satan, as proud, is opposed the Self-humiliation of the Son—whom God thereupon exalts.
Pride, in Satan, considered as undue Self-exaltation, stands (when we follow out the opposition in which he stands to God) opposed to due, legitimate, rightful height, or Supremacy, Sovereignty. Satanic Pride is undue self-exaltation, at the height, in the Creature.
But this, in the Creature, is a self-enthroning, a self-idolising, a self-deifying.
The Creature depends upon the Creator. The Creature is bound to the Creator by a million of distinct relations.
If you ask for One Relation, that shall contain all the others, it is this One, Dependency. That is to say, that, so long as you own your dependency, so long is there no true relation that you can deny. But, if you deny your dependency, therewith and therein you deny all your other true relations. The first motion towards (i. e. in the direction of—i. e. relating to) God, of pride in the proud Creature, is the denial of dependency. Satan denies his dependency. Both in the Past—for he denies his Creation, and avers that he had never heard such a thing mentioned. And in the Present, by renouncing his allegiance, opening war, &c. He denies the Creature’s continual derivation from the Creator, when he says, (as if in the Future,) “our own right hand shall teach us highest deeds.”
If it should appear necessary to vindicate expressly and at length the character which has been affirmed as one main character of the Paradise Lost, namely, that it is an Ethico-didactic Poem, the proofs offer themselves to the hand more thickly than that they can easily be all gathered.
They are Implicit and Explicit. The Implicit or inferential Proofs—Proofs involved in the tenor of the displayed History, and which are by reflection to be drawn out and unfolded—are of several kinds, and, in each, of the highest description.
Thus, the Main Action of the Poem, or the Fall of Man, teaches us that the Goodness and Happiness of the Creature subsists in the inviolable conformity of his Will to the holy Will of the Creator. Thus again:—The great Action is inductive to this Main Action—that is to say, The Fall of the Angels, which, by an easily-springing sequence of Moral Causes and Effects, brings on the Temptation, and, too easily, the Seduction of Man—as loudly inculcates the same sublime and all-comprehending Ethical Truth. And thus again:—That Third highest Action, which is incorporated into the Main action—The Redemption of Man—provided, in the Counsel of God, as remedial to the fatal Catastrophe of the Fall, and, according to the reverently-daring representation of the Poet, as undertaken in Heaven even ere the need that asks for it has befallen in Paradise upon Earth—this awful Mystery of the Divine interposing Grace irresistibly preaches the same solemn doctrine. Hell, and Earth, and Heaven proclaim with One Voice:—“Cleave, Oh Child of dust and Heir of Immortality, cleave and cling inwardly, by thy love—by thine obedience, outwardly—to the all-wise and all-righteous Will, which has called the Worlds and their Inhabitants into Being, and has imposed upon the worlds, and upon those which inhabit them, its bountiful and upholding Laws!—O cleave and immovably cling to that holy and gracious Will, which the Angels forsook and they fell!—which Man deserted, and—He fell!—which the Son of Man fulfilled, and He lifted up fallen and lost, but now restored Man to the peace of God upon this Earth, and to the bosom of God in Heaven.”
Such, explicitly worded, is the admonishment, grave and high, which continually peals amidst the majestic and profound harmonies of this consecrated Poem—the admonishment the most loudly, the most distinctly heard.
Milton represents inordinate Pride, or the temper, in excess, of inward self-exaltation, as the chief element in the personal character of Satan; yet the great Archangel has maintained his Obedience to the Almighty King. The opinion of wrong done to himself, of an imposed humiliation in another’s exaltation exasperating his haughty self-idolatry, first rouses him into active disloyalty and rebellion, and to the desire and endeavour of dispossessing the Monarch of Heaven, and reigning in his stead. The open outward war which Satan is represented as waging with sensible weapons and armoury, with innumerable spirits banded in confederacy upon his part—the setting up his own throne in the north—the march across heaven—the attempt, such as it is described, at invading the very throne of Omnipotence—amongst other lights in which they may be contemplated, may be contemplated in this light, namely, that the Outward expresses, depictures the Inward. The proud Apostate Spirit, in conceiving offence and displeasure at God’s rule and ordinance, has already within his own mind rebelled against God—he has made his own Mind the field of an impious war.—We must conceive within his mind a sovereign throne erected, whereupon,—so long as He remained obedient, loyal, good,—the rightful Monarch sate, in undisputed supremacy.—From that Throne within his mind, as soon as Satan rebels, in will, God is dispossessed:—and on that internal usurped Throne the rebel now sits;—in imagination, his own King, and his own God. That which outwardly he attempts, and in which outwardly he must fail:—that inwardly he has attempted—and in that—attempting it—inwardly He must succeed.
A Spirit created good and great has voluntarily foregone its native inborn goodness, and, in consequence, involuntarily foregoes its native inborn greatness. There is in the Universe but one fountain of all that is holy, divine, good, amiable or pure.—This left, we drink troubled waters. No one can tell the alliances of wrong with wrong. Truth, justice, good-will—alone are magnanimous. He who has been shown at the highest of self-power,—of intellectual strength—of empire over spirits—of their willing idolatry, which extols him equal to the Highest in Heaven,—He is gradually brought down low, lower, lowest—by voluntary and imposed humiliation:—self-incarnate in bestial slime—turned into a monstrous serpent on his belly prone, and hissing amongst hissing. Has Milton in painting the fallen Archangel changed his hand, and checked his pride? He has delineated for our admiration; he has delineated for our scorn—for our pity, also.
One meaning pervades the delineation. The pride which alienates Satan from God, alienates him at last from himself.—He is wicked, and the ways of wickedness are crooked and creeping. The haughtiest of spirits in seeking to revenge his just punishment stoops to the lowest abasement. A great lesson is written on the front of this great revolution. A mind has let go of its only stronghold, and it slips lower and lower. We have seen a Spirit exalted in the favour of the Creator;—high in rank, strong in power, rich in gifts, radiant with glory, seated in bliss;—and the same cast down into misery and into dishonour. The Cause is, that he has deserted Obedience and Love.
This is not a picture removed to a distance from us, to be looked at with wonder. It is a lesson for each of us.
Can we not imagine the Poet himself telling us this?
Can we not raise our thoughts, to fancy Milton drawing the moral of his astonishing picture?
“You are Spirits,” he might say to us—“the creation of the same hand. Heavenly gifts are yours, and heavenly favours; and notwithstanding the fall of man, gleams, vestiges are yours of heavenly glory. To you the same choice is offered of adhering, or of separating yourselves. In you is the same ground of temptation, the same difficulty of adhering, a misunderstood self-love. You too are tempted to enthrone self upon the usurped throne of the divine legislator. To obey the law of right—to follow out the law of love, is only difficult because we feel, in every instance of being called upon so to do, that we are called upon to make some sacrifice of ourselves. It is an error—a mistaken feeling. We are called upon to sacrifice not ourselves, but a present inclination, which self suggests. Make the sacrifice—obey, fulfil the law that makes the claim upon you, and you will find that you have relinquished a fallacious, for a real good. Follow the false inclination, and you will find that instead of enthroning yourselves in the despite of Heaven’s King, you have begun to descend steps of endless descent.—Be warned by terrible example.”
We see of mankind some that are lifted up in power and exalted by their native powers—mighty minds holding ascendancy over other minds—Kings—Conquerors—Philosophers—sitting upon the thrones of the Earth, or upon intellectual thrones. To them there is the same hazard. There is the same inward solicitation of pride—the same impulse to self-idolatry. They would usurp—would extend power. Adversaries of God and Man—and knowing themselves for such—the madness of Ambition seizes upon their hearts, and on they go. They seek Exaltation—they find abasement. The false aggrandisement which they have laboured to acquire may or may not be wrested from them. But assuredly the inward abasement will hold on its appointed way.
Their end is high, but their means will be low. Ambition disjoined from good is divorced from true greatness. The consciousness of right aims alone sustains the genuine self-respect of the mind, struggling its way through the obstacles which the strife of human affairs presents. One law—one principle—one rule of action—takes dominion of the spirit which has surrendered itself to the allurement of a selfish ambition:—It has One Motto—one war-cry—“To succeed!”—The character of the means can no longer be a reason for declining them—and the proudest of Men stoop the lowest.
If we read the History of humankind, we see this in the slaves to the lust of earthly empire:—in the slaves to the lust of renown. They suffer a double change from the higher and better nature given them. They have hardened themselves against shame. They harden themselves too against pity.—What does the misery which he strews in his path trouble the famous conqueror?—His chariot-wheels crush under them the gardens of humanity—He rides over human heads.—And what does it concern him who uses the high gifts of intelligence not for extending the useful domains of human knowledge,—but for aggrandising his own name—what does it concern him though, to plant his proud reputation, and multiply the train of his adherents, he must pull down heavenward hopes, in millions of human hearts?—that he must wither in them the flowers of the affections?—that he must crush the sacred virtues, which repose upon received belief?—The hero of Infidelity recoils as little from these consequences of his fame as the hero of a thousand battle-fields.
There is withal a Pride, which, whilst dwelling with the mind, is rebellion. There is a Pride of the Creature, which reluctantly acknowledges, which refuses to acknowledge, benefits derived from the Creator.
Yes; self-contradictory as the mood of mind seems, there is a temper in man, which may be certainly recognised, that throws off the obligation of gratitude and the belief of dependence. Thus, the feeling of Pride in intellectual talents implies that he who is in this way proud, views his talents, in a measure, as originally his own. He refers them to himself, and not beyond. If he looked at them as given, there would be an end of Pride, which would give way to the sense of heavy responsibility.