"Genius, a Secret to Itself"
February 04, 2020![]() |
Thomas Carlyle |
Thomas
Carlyle (1795–1881). Characteristics.
Thus wrote Carlyle,
who affirms that great minds are unconscious of their stupendous
strength. And each of us has his own peculiar mental attributes.
(Thomas Carlyle died
Feb. 4, 1881.)
Vol. 25, pp. 319-327 of
The Harvard Classics
THE HEALTHY 1 know
not of their health, but only the sick: this is the Physician’s
Aphorism; and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. We
may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual, political,
poetical, than in merely corporeal therapeutics; that wherever, or in
what shape soever, powers of the sort which can be named vital are
at work, herein lies the test of their working right or working
wrong.
In the
Body, for example, as all doctors are agreed, the first condition of
complete health is, that each organ perform its function,
unconsciously, unheeded; let but any organ announce its separate
existence, were it even boastfully, and for pleasure, not for pain,
then already has one of those unfortunate ‘false centres of
sensibility’ established itself, already is derangement there. The
perfection of bodily well-being is that the collective bodily
activities seem one; and be manifested, moreover, not in themselves,
but in the action they accomplish. If a Dr. Kitchiner boast that his
system is in high order, Dietetic Philosophy may indeed take credit;
but the true Peptician was that Countryman who answered that, ‘for
his part, he had no system.’ In fact, unity, agreement is always
silent, or soft-voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims
itself. So long as the several elements of Life, all fitly adjusted,
can pour forth their movement like harmonious tuned strings, it is a
melody and unison; Life, from its mysterious fountains, flows out as
in celestial music and diapason,—which also, like that other music
of the spheres, even because it is perennial and complete, without
interruption and without imperfection, might be fabled to escape the
ear. Thus too, in some languages, is the state of health well denoted
by a term expressing unity; when we feel ourselves as we wish to be,
we say that we are whole.
Few
mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently blessed with that
felicity of ‘having no system’; nevertheless, most of us, looking
back on young years, may remember seasons of a light, aerial
translucency and elasticity and perfect freedom; the body had not yet
become the prison-house of the soul, but was its vehicle and
implement, like a creature of the thought, and altogether pliant to
its bidding. We knew not that we had limbs, we only lifted, hurled
and leapt; through eye and ear, and all avenues of sense, came clear
unimpeded tidings from without, and from within issued clear
victorious force; we stood as in the centre of Nature, giving and
receiving, in harmony with it all; unlike Virgil’s Husbandmen, ‘too
happy because we did not know our blessedness.’ In those
days, health and sickness were foreign traditions that did not
concern us; our whole being was as yet One, the whole man like an
incorporated Will. Such, were Rest or ever-successful Labour the
human lot, might our life continue to be: a pure, perpetual,
unregarded music; a beam of perfect white light, rendering all things
visible, but itself unseen, even because it was of that perfect
whiteness, and no irregular obstruction had yet broken it into
colours. The beginning of Inquiry is Disease: all Science, if we
consider well, as it must have originated in the feeling of something
being wrong, so it is and continues to be but Division,
Dismemberment, and partial healing of the wrong. Thus, as was of old
written, the Tree of Knowledge springs from a root of evil, and bears
fruits of good and evil. Had Adam remained in Paradise, there had
been no Anatomy and no Metaphysics.
But, alas,
as the Philosopher declares, ‘Life itself is a disease; a working
incited by suffering’; action from passion! The memory of that
first state of Freedom and paradisaic Unconsciousness has faded away
into an ideal poetic dream. We stand here too conscious of many
things: with Knowledge, the symptom of Derangement, we must even do
our best to restore a little Order. Life is, in few instances, and at
rare intervals, the diapason of a heavenly melody; oftenest the
fierce jar of disruptions and convulsions, which, do what we will,
there is no disregarding. Nevertheless, such is still the wish of
Nature on our behalf; in all vital action, her manifest purpose and
effort is, that we should be unconscious of it, and like the peptic
Countryman, never know that we ‘have a system.’ For, indeed vital
action everywhere is emphatically a means, not an end; Life is not
given us for the mere sake of Living, but always with an ulterior
external Aim: neither is it on the process, on the means, but rather
on the result, that Nature, is any of her doings, is wont to intrust
us with insight and volition. Boundless as is the domain of man, it
is but a small fractional proportion of it that he rules with
Consciousness and by Forethought: what he can contrive, nay, what he
can altogether know and comprehend, is essentially the mechanical,
small; the great is ever, in one sense or other, the vital; it is
essentially the mysterious, and only the surface of it can be
understood. But Nature, it might seem, strives, like a kind mother,
to hide from us even this, that she is a mystery: she will have us
rest on her beautiful and awful bosom as if it were our secure home;
on the bottomless boundless Deep, whereon all human things fearfully
and wonderfully swim, she will have us walk and build, as if the film
which supported us there (which any scratch of a bare bodkin will
rend asunder, any sputter of a pistol-shot instantaneously burn up)
were no film, but a solid rock-foundation. Forever in the
neighbourhood of an inevitable Death, man can forget that he is born
to die; of his Life, which, strictly meditated, contains in it an
Immensity and an Eternity, he can conceive lightly, as of a simple
implement wherewith to do day-labour and earn wages. So cunningly
does Nature, the mother of all highest Art, which only apes her from
afar, ‘body forth the Finite from the Infinite’; and guide man
safe on his wondrous path, not more by endowing him with vision,
than, at the right place, with blindness! Under all her works,
chiefly under her noblest work, Life, lies a basis of Darkness, which
she benignantly conceals; in Life too, the roots and inward
circulations which stretch down fearfully to the regions of Death and
Night, shall not hint of their existence, and only the fair stem with
its leaves and flowers, shone on by the fair sun, shall disclose
itself, and joyfully grow.
However,
without venturing into the abstruse, or too eagerly asking Why and
How, in things where our answer must needs prove, in great part, an
echo of the question, let us be content to remark farther, in the
merely historical way, how that Aphorism of the bodily Physician
holds good in quite other departments. Of the Soul, with her
activities, we shall find it no less true than of the Body: nay, cry
the Spiritualists, is not that very division of the unity, Man, into
a dualism of Soul and Body, itself the symptom of disease; as,
perhaps, your frightful theory of Materialism, of his being but a
Body, and therefore, at least, once more a unity, may be the paroxysm
which was critical, and the beginning of cure! But omitting this, we
observe, with confidence enough, that the truly strong mind, view it
as Intellect, as Morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the
mind acquainted with its strength; that here as before the sign of
health is Unconsciousness. In our inward, as in our outward world,
what is mechanical lies open to us: not what is dynamical and has
vitality. Of our Thinking, we might say, it is but the mere upper
surface that we shape into articulate Thoughts;—underneath the
region of argument and conscious discourse, lies the region of
meditation; here, in its quiet mysterious depths, dwells what vital
force is in us; here, if aught is to be created, and not merely
manufactured and communicated, must the work go on. Manufacture is
intelligible, but trivial: Creation is great, and cannot be
understood. Thus if the Debater and Demonstrator, whom we may rank as
the lowest of true thinkers, knows what he has done, and how he did
it, the Artist, whom we rank as the highest, knows not; must speak of
Inspiration, and in one or the other dialect, call his work the gift
of a divinity.
But on the
whole, ‘genius is ever a secret to itself’; of this old truth we
have, on all sides, daily evidence. The Shakspeare takes no airs for
writing Hamlet and the Tempest,understands not that it
is anything surprising: Milton, again, is more conscious of his
faculty, which accordingly is an inferior one. On the other hand,
what cackling and strutting must we not often hear and see, when, in
some shape of academical prolusion, maiden speech, review article,
this or the other well-fledged goose has produced its goose-egg, of
quite measurable value, were it the pink of its whole kind; and
wonders why all mortals do not wonder!
Foolish
enough, too, was the College Tutor’s surprise at Walter Shandy:
how, though unread in Aristotle, he could nevertheless argue; and not
knowing the name of any dialectic tool, handled them all to
perfection. Is it the skilfulest anatomist that cuts the best figure
at Sadler’s Wells? or does the boxer hit better for knowing that he
has a flexor longus and a flexor brevis? But
indeed, as in the higher case of the Poet, so here in that of the
Speaker and Inquirer, the true force is an unconscious one. The
healthy Understanding, we should say, is not the Logical,
argumentative, but the Intuitive; for the end of Understanding is not
to prove and find reasons, but to know and believe. Of logic, and its
limits, and uses and abuses, there were much to be said and examined;
one fact, however, which chiefly concerns us here, has long been
familiar: that the man of logic and the man of insight; the Reasoner
and the Discoverer, or even Knower, are quite separable,—indeed,
for most part, quite separate characters. In practical matters, for
example, has it not become almost proverbial that the man of logic
cannot prosper? This is he whom business-people call Systematic and
Theoriser and Word-monger; his vital intellectual force lies dormant
or extinct, his whole force is mechanical, conscious: of such a one
it is foreseen that, when once confronted with the infinite
complexities of the real world, his little compact theorem of the
world will be found wanting; that unless he can throw it overboard
and become a new creature, he will necessarily founder. Nay, in mere
Speculation itself, the most ineffectual of all characters, generally
speaking, is your dialectic man-at-arms; were he armed cap-a-pie in
syllogistic mail of proof, and perfect master of logic-fence, how
little does it avail him! Consider the old Schoolmen, and their
pilgrimage towards Truth: the faithfulest endeavour, incessant
unwearied motion, often great natural vigour: only no progress:
nothing but antic feats of one limb poised against the other; there
they balanced, somersetted, and made postures; at best gyrated
swiftly with some pleasure, like Spinning Dervishes, and ended where
they began. So is it, so will it always be, with all System-makers
and builders of logical card-castles; of which class a certain
remnant must, in every age, as they do in our own, survive and build.
Logic is good, but it is not the best. The Irrefragable Doctor, with
his chains of induction, his corollaries, dilemmas and other cunning
logical diagrams and apparatus, will cast you a beautiful horoscope,
and speak reasonable things; nevertheless your stolen jewel, which
you wanted him to find you, is not forthcoming. Often by some winged
word, winged as the thunderbolt is, of a Luther, a Napoleon, a
Goethe, shall we see the difficulty split asunder, and its secret
laid bare; while the Irrefragable, with all his logical tools, hews
at it, and hovers round it, and finds it on all hands too hard for
him.
Again, in
the difference between Oratory and Rhetoric, as indeed everywhere in
that superiority of what is called the Natural over the Artificial,
we find a similar illustration. The Orator persuades and carries all
with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought
to have persuaded and carried all with him: the one is in a state of
healthy unconsciousness, as if he ‘had no system’; the other, in
virtue of regimen and dietetic punctuality, feels at best that ‘his
system is in high order.’ So stands it, in short, with all the
forms of Intellect, whether as directed to the finding of truth, or
to the fit imparting thereof; to Poetry, to Eloquence, to depth of
Insight, which is the basis of both these; always the characteristic
of right performance is a certain spontaneity, an unconsciousness;
‘the healthy know not of their health, but only the sick.’ So
that the old precept of the critic, as crabbed as it looked to his
ambitious disciple, might contain in it a most fundamental truth,
applicable to us all, and in much else than Literature: “Whenever
you have written any sentence that looks particularly excellent, be
sure to blot it out.” In like manner, under milder phraseology, and
with a meaning purposely much wider, a living Thinker has taught us:
‘Of the Wrong we are always conscious, of the Right never.’
But if such
is the law with regard to Speculation and the Intellectual power of
man, much more is it with regard to Conduct, and the power,
manifested chiefly therein, which we name Moral. ‘Let not thy left
hand know what thy right hand doeth’; whisper not to thy own heart,
How worthy is this action!—for then it is already becoming
worthless. The good man is he who works continually in
welldoing; to whom welldoing is as his natural existence, awakening
no astonishment, requiring no commentary; but there, like a thing of
course, and as if it could not but be so. Self-contemplation, on the
other hand, is infallibly the symptom of disease, be it or be it not
the sign of cure. An unhealthy Virtue is one that consumes itself to
leanness in repenting and anxiety; or, still worse, that inflates
itself into dropsical boastfulness and vain-glory: either way, there
is a self-seeking; an unprofitable looking behind us to measure the
way we have made: whereas the sole concern is to walk continually
forward, and make more way. If in any sphere of man’s life, then in
the Moral sphere, as the inmost and most vital of all, it is good
that there be wholeness; that there be unconsciousness, which is the
evidence of this. Let the free, reasonable Will, which dwells in us,
as in our Holy of Holies, be indeed free, and obeyed like a Divinity,
as is its right and its effort: the perfect obedience will be the
silent one. Such perhaps were the sense of that maxim, enunciating,
as is usual, but the half of a truth: To say that we have a clear
conscience, is to utter a solecism; had we never sinned, we should
have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, neither would victory be
celebrated by songs of triumph.
This, true
enough, is an ideal, impossible state of being; yet ever the goal
towards which our actual state of being strives; which it is the more
perfect the nearer it can approach. Nor, in our actual world, where
Labour must often prove ineffectual, and thus in all senses Light
alternate with Darkness, and the nature of an ideal Morality be much
modified, is the case, thus far, materially different. It is a fact
which escapes no one, that, generally speaking, whoso is acquainted
with his worth has but a little stock to cultivate acquaintance with.
Above all, the public acknowledgment of such acquaintance, indicating
that it has reached quite an intimate footing, bodes ill. Already, to
the popular judgment, he who talks much about Virtue in the abstract,
begins to be suspect; it is shrewdly guessed that where there is
great preaching, there will be little alms-giving. Or again, on a
wider scale, we can remark that ages of Heroism are not ages of Moral
Philosophy; Virtue, when it can be philosophised of, has become aware
of itself, is sickly and beginning to decline. A spontaneous habitual
all-pervading spirit of Chivalrous Valour shrinks together, and perks
itself up into shrivelled Points of Honour; humane Courtesy and
Nobleness of mind dwindle into punctilious Politeness, ‘avoiding
meats’; ‘paying tithe of mint and anise, neglecting the weightier
matters of the law.’ Goodness, which was a rule to itself, must now
appeal to Precept, and seek strength from Sanctions; the Freewill no
longer reigns unquestioned and by divine right, but like a mere
earthly sovereign, by expediency, by Rewards and Punishments: or
rather, let us say, the Freewill, so far as may be, has abdicated and
withdrawn into the dark, and a spectral nightmare of a Necessity
usurps its throne; for now that mysterious Self-impulse of the whole
man, heaven-inspired, and in all senses partaking of the Infinite,
being captiously questioned in a finite dialect, and answering, as it
needs must, by silence,—is conceived as non-extant, and only the
outward Mechanism of it remains acknowledged: of Volition, except as
the synonym of Desire, we hear nothing; of ‘Motives,’ without any
Mover, more than enough.
So too,
when the generous Affections have become well-nigh paralytic, we have
the reign of Sentimentality. The greatness, the profitableness, at
any rate the extremely ornamental nature of high feeling, and the
luxury of doing good; charity, love, self-forgetfulness, devotedness
and all manner of godlike magnanimity,—are everywhere insisted on,
and pressingly inculcated in speech and writing, in prose and verse;
Socinian Preachers proclaim ‘Benevolence’ to all the four winds,
and have TRUTH engraved on their watch-seals: unhappily with
little or no effect. Were the limbs in right walking order, why so
much demonstrating of motion? The barrenest of all mortals is the
Sentimentalist. Granting even that he were sincere, and did not
wilfully deceive us, or without first deceiving himself, what good is
in him? Does he not lie there as a perpetual lesson of despair, and
type of bedrid valetudinarian impotence? His is emphatically a Virtue
that has become, through every fibre, conscious of itself; it is all
sick, and feels as if it were made of glass, and durst not touch or
be touched; in the shape of work, it can do nothing; at the utmost,
by incessant nursing and caudling, keep itself alive. As the last
stage of all, when Virtue, properly so called, has ceased to be
practised, and become extinct, and a mere remembrance, we have the
era of Sophists, descanting of its existence, proving it, denying it,
mechanically ‘accounting’ for it;—as dissectors and
demonstrators cannot operate till once the body be dead.
Thus is
true Moral genius, like true Intellectual, which indeed is but a
lower phasis thereof, ‘ever a secret to itself.’ The healthy
moral nature loves Goodness, and without wonder wholly lives in it:
the unhealthy makes love to it, and would fain get to live in it; or,
finding such courtship fruitless, turns round, and not without
contempt abandons it. These curious relations of the Voluntary and
Conscious to the Involuntary and Unconscious, and the small
proportion which, in all departments of our life, the former bears of
the latter,—might lead us into deep questions of Psychology and
Physiology: such, however, belong not to our present object. Enough,
if the fact itself become apparent, that Nature so meant it with us;
that in this wise we are made. We may now say, that view man’s
individual Existence under what aspect we will, under the highest
spiritual, as under the merely animal aspect, everywhere the grand
vital energy, while in its sound state, is an unseen unconscious one;
or, in the words of our old Aphorism, ‘the healthy know not of
their health, but only the sick.’
Note
1. EDINBURGH REVIEW, No. 108.—1. As Essay on the Origin and
Prospects of Man. By Thomas Hope. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1831.
2.
Philosophische Vorlesungen, insbesondere über Philosophie der
Sprache und des Wortes. Geschrieben und vorgetragen zu Dresden im
December, 1828 und in den ersten Tagen des Januars, 1829
(Philosophical Lectures, especially on the Philosophy of Language and
the Gift of Speech. Written and delivered at Dresden in December,
1828, and the early days of January, 1829). By Friedrich von
Schlegel. 8vo. Vienna, 1830.
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