Yet,when the iron hoof of Napoleon trampled upon vineyard and cornfield,his lips were silent.'How can one write songs of hatred without hating?'he said to Eckermann,'and how could I,to whom culture and barbarism are alone of importance,hate a nation which is among the most cultivated of the earth and to which I owe so great a part of my own cultivation?'This note,sounded in the modern world by Goethe first,will become,I think,the starting point for the cosmopolitanism of the future.Criticism will annihilate race-prejudices,by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms.If we are tempted to make war upon another nation,we shall remember that we are seeking to destroy an element of our own culture,and possibly its most important element.As long as war is regarded as wicked,it will always have its fascination.When it is looked upon as vulgar,it will cease to be popular.The change will of course be slow,and people will not be conscious of it.They will not say 'We will not war against France because her prose is perfect,'but because the prose of France is perfect,they will not hate the land.
Intellectual criticism will bind Europe together in bonds far closer than those that can be forged by shopman or sentimentalist.
It will give us the peace that springs from understanding.
Nor is this all.It is Criticism that,recognising no position as final,and refusing to bind itself by the shallow shibboleths of any sect or school,creates that serene philosophic temper which loves truth for its own sake,and loves it not the less because it knows it to be unattainable.How little we have of this temper in England,and how much we need it!The English mind is always in a rage.The intellect of the race is wasted in the sordid and stupid quarrels of second-rate politicians or third-rate theologians.It was reserved for a man of science to show us the supreme example of that 'sweet reasonableness'of which Arnold spoke so wisely,and,alas!to so little effect.The author of the ORIGIN OF SPECIEShad,at any rate,the philosophic temper.If one contemplates the ordinary pulpits and platforms of England,one can but feel the contempt of Julian,or the indifference of Montaigne.We are dominated by the fanatic,whose worst vice is his sincerity.
Anything approaching to the free play of the mind is practically unknown amongst us.People cry out against the sinner,yet it is not the sinful,but the stupid,who are our shame.There is no sin except stupidity.
ERNEST.Ah!what an antinomian you are!
GILBERT.The artistic critic,like the mystic,is an antinomian always.To be good,according to the vulgar standard of goodness,is obviously quite easy.It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror,a certain lack of imaginative thought,and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.Aesthetics are higher than ethics.They belong to a more spiritual sphere.To discern the beauty of a thing is the finest point to which we can arrive.
Even a colour-sense is more important,in the development of the individual,than a sense of right and wrong.Aesthetics,in fact,are to Ethics in the sphere of conscious civilisation,what,in the sphere of the external world,sexual is to natural selection.
Ethics,like natural selection,make existence possible.
Aesthetics,like sexual selection,make life lovely and wonderful,fill it with new forms,and give it progress,and variety and change.And when we reach the true culture that is our aim,we attain to that perfection of which the saints have dreamed,the perfection of those to whom sin is impossible,not because they make the renunciations of the ascetic,but because they can do everything they wish without hurt to the soul,and can wish for nothing that can do the soul harm,the soul being an entity so divine that it is able to transform into elements of a richer experience,or a finer susceptibility,or a newer mode of thought,acts or passions that with the common would be commonplace,or with the uneducated ignoble,or with the shameful vile.Is this dangerous?Yes;it is dangerous -all ideas,as I told you,are so.But the night wearies,and the light flickers in the lamp.
One more thing I cannot help saying to you.You have spoken against Criticism as being a sterile thing.The nineteenth century is a turning point in history,simply on account of the work of two men,Darwin and Renan,the one the critic of the Book of Nature,the other the critic of the books of God.Not to recognise this is to miss the meaning of one of the most important eras in the progress of the world.Creation is always behind the age.It is Criticism that leads us.The Critical Spirit and the World-Spirit are one.
ERNEST.And he who is in possession of this spirit,or whom this spirit possesses,will,I suppose,do nothing?
GILBERT.Like the Persephone of whom Landor tells us,the sweet pensive Persephone around whose white feet the asphodel and amaranth are blooming,he will sit contented 'in that deep,motionless quiet which mortals pity,and which the gods enjoy.'He will look out upon the world and know its secret.By contact with divine things he will become divine.His will be the perfect life,and his only.
ERNEST.You have told me many strange things to-night,Gilbert.
You have told me that it is more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it,and that to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world;you have told me that all Art is immoral,and all thought dangerous;that criticism is more creative than creation,and that the highest criticism is that which reveals in the work of Art what the artist had not put there;that it is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is the proper judge of it;and that the true critic is unfair,insincere,and not rational.My friend,you are a dreamer.
GILBERT.Yes:I am a dreamer.For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
ERNEST.His punishment?
GILBERT.And his reward.But,see,it is dawn already.Draw back the curtains and open the windows wide.How cool the morning air is!Piccadilly lies at our feet like a long riband of silver.Afaint purple mist hangs over the Park,and the shadows of the white houses are purple.It is too late to sleep.Let us go down to Covent Garden and look at the roses.Come!I am tired of thought.
