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Luigi Speranza – GRICE ITALO!; ossia, Grice e Cuoco:
l’implicatura conversazionale di Platone in Italia – scuola di
Civitacampomarano – filosofia campobassese – filosofia molisana -- filosofia
italiana – Luigi Speranza (Civitacampomarano).
Filosofo campobassano. Filosofo molisano. Filosofo italiano. Civitacampomarano,
Campobasso, Molise. C.. Litografia di C. Direttore del Tesoro del Regno di
Napoli Monarca Gioacchino Murat Dati generali Partito politico Murattiani
Professione Giurista, economista. Targa posta sulla casa natìa di C. a
Civitacampomarano. C. nacque a Civitacampomarano, un piccolo borgo del contado
di Molise, nel regno di Napoli (attualmente in provincia di Campobasso), figlio
di Michelangelo, un avvocato e studioso di economia, appartenente ad una
famiglia della locale borghesia di provincia, e di Colomba de Marinis.
Ricevuta una prima istruzione nel vivace ambiente illuministico del paese
natìo, animato dalla famiglia Pepe, a cui era imparentato (tra i parenti ebbe
come cugino Gabriele Pepe), si recò a Napoli per studiarvi diritto e fu allievo
privato di Ignazio Falconieri. Non terminò gli studi di legge, ma a partire da
questo periodo si interessò di questioni economiche, sociali, culturali,
filosofiche e politiche, materie che resteranno sempre al centro della sua
attività e dei suoi interessi. Nell'ambiente culturale napoletano conobbe
ed entrò in contatto con intellettuali illuminati del Sud, tra i quali anche il
conterraneo Galanti, che in una lettera del 4 settembre del 1790 al padre
Michelangelo, descrive Vincenzo: «capace, di molta abilità e di molto talento»,
ma «trascurato» e «indolente», forse non soddisfatto appieno della
collaborazione di Vincenzo alla stesura della sua Descrizione geografica e
politica delle Sicilie. Partecipò attivamente alla costituzione della
Repubblica Napoletana nel 1799 ed alle sue vicissitudini, ricoprendovi le
cariche di segretario del suo ex docente Ignazio Falconieri (che ricopriva la
carica di comandante militare del Dipartimento del Volturno) e di organizzatore
del Dipartimento del Volturno. In seguito alla capitolazione della
Repubblica per mano delle truppe sanfediste del cardinale Fabrizio Ruffo ed al
susseguente ritorno al potere dei Borboni, conobbe il carcere per alcuni mesi,
venendo inoltre condannato alla confisca dei beni e quindi costretto
all'esilio, dapprima a Parigi e poi a Milano, dove già nel 1801 pubblicò il suo
capolavoro, il Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana, poi ampliato nella
successiva edizione del 1806. Sempre a Milano, tra il 1802 ed il 1804
diresse il Giornale Italiano, dando un'impronta economica di rilievo al periodico
e svolgendo una vivace attività pubblicistica, che proseguirà anche a Napoli
con la sua collaborazione al Monitore delle Sicilie. Nel 1806 pubblicò il
suo Platone in Italia, originale romanzo utopistico proposto in forma
epistolare, e quindi rientrò nel Regno di Napoli governato da Giuseppe
Bonaparte, ricoprendovi importanti incarichi pubblici, prima come Consigliere
di Cassazione e poi Direttore del Tesoro, dove si distinse inoltre come uno dei
più importanti consiglieri del governo di Gioacchino Murat. In questo
ambito preparò nel 1809 un Progetto per l'ordinamento della pubblica istruzione
nel Regno di Napoli, nel quale l'istruzione pubblica è vista come
indispensabile strumento per la formazione di una coscienza nazional popolare.
Seguace del Pestalozzi, Cuoco prospetta «un'istruzione generale, pubblica ed
uniforme». Dal 1810 ebbe l'incarico di Capo del Consiglio Provinciale del
Molise e, durante la durata di tale impiego, scrisse nel 1812 Viaggio in
Molise, opera storico-descrittiva sulla sua regione natale a cui restò legato
grazie anche alla stretta parentela con la famiglia Pepe (Gabriele Pepe),
presso la quale si conservano ancora suoi scritti e ritratti. Gli ultimi
suoi anni furono funestati dalla follia, che lo colpì a partire dal 1816 (forse
anche a causa del travaglio interiore scatenato dalla Restaurazione),
spingendolo alla distruzione di molti suoi manoscritti, rimasti dunque inediti,
e costringendolo a ridurre progressivamente le sue attività sino alla morte,
avvenuta a Napoli nel 1823, per le conseguenze di una frattura del femore,
riportata in seguito a una caduta. Opere Studioso di letteratura,
giurisprudenza e filosofia, Vincenzo Cuoco si segnala, oltre che per la sua
attività pubblicistica, per il Platone in Italia, originale romanzo utopistico
in forma epistolare e, soprattutto, per il Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione
napoletana del 1799, opera di fondamentale importanza nella nostra
storiografia, forse non studiata e conosciuta quanto meriterebbe. Lavorò ad
altri saggi e opere letterarie, rimaste in gran parte incompiute (salvo il
saggio Viaggio nel Molise, scritto nel 1812) e da lui stesso distrutte nel
corso delle crisi nervose causate dalla malattia che lo accompagnò nei suoi
ultimi anni. Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana del 1799 «Tutte
le volte che in quest'opera si parla di "nome", di
"opinione", di "grado", s'intende sempre di quel grado, di
quella opinione, di quel nome che influiscono sul popolo, che è il grande, il
solo agente delle rivoluzioni e delle controrivoluzioni.» (V. Cuoco -
Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, Prefazione alla seconda
edizione) Il Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana del 1799 fu
scritto durante l'esilio a Parigi e pubblicato a Milano in forma anonima nel
1801. L'opera narra gli eventi occorsi a Napoli tra il dicembre del 1798
(fuga di re Ferdinando IV di Borbone in Sicilia) e la caduta della Repubblica
Napoletana, comprese le rappresaglie che ne seguirono la fine. Il saggio
conobbe un vasto successo (fu presto tradotto anche in tedesco) e andò
abbastanza rapidamente esaurito, tanto da spingere l'autore - anche per
scoraggiare i tentativi di ristampa abusiva - a porre mano ad una nuova
edizione ampliata, che vide la luce nel 1806. Nel 1807 il saggio fu tradotto
anche in francese (quasi contemporaneamente ad analoga traduzione del Platone
in Italia). Accanto alla dimensione puramente storiografica, attraverso
la quale vengono ripercorsi gli eventi che condussero alla nascita e alla
rapida fine dell'effimero esperimento repubblicano (inquadrati dall'autore nel
burrascoso contesto delle invasioni napoleoniche in Italia), l'opera si propone
come un commento storico e mira a delineare una lettura critica della vicenda
rivoluzionaria. Il racconto degli accadimenti viene proposto sotto forma
di indagine rigorosa dei fatti e investe l'esposizione dei principi teorici che
mossero gli artefici della rivoluzione napoletana. Senza indulgere in
enfasi e retorica, viene in tal modo offerto al lettore uno spaccato della
vivace e avanzata cultura filosofica e politica d'inizio secolo nella capitale
del Sud d'Italia (all'epoca in Europa seconda solo a Parigi per estensione),
ove gli insegnamenti di Mario Pagano (1748-1799), di Antonio Genovesi, di
Gaetano Filangieri (1752-1788), e di Giambattista Vico confluiscono a filtrare
e aggiornare la lettura sempre valida de Il Principe di Niccolò
Machiavelli. «I Francesi furono costretti a dedurre i princìpi loro dalla
più astrusa metafisica, e caddero nell'errore nel qual cadono per l'ordinario
gli uomini che seguono idee soverchiamente astratte, che è quello di confonder
le proprie idee con le leggi della natura.» (V. Cuoco - Saggio storico
sulla rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, cap. VII) Poste a confronto la
Rivoluzione francese e quella partenopea, Vincenzo Cuoco indaga le ragioni del
fallimento di quest'ultima e ne individua con lucidità e senza pregiudizi le
cause: ispirata e poi di fatto imposta dagli stranieri, la rivoluzione
coinvolge a Napoli solo un’élite molto limitata numericamente (e largamente
impreparata alla difficile arte del governo), senza penetrare nella coscienza
popolare e senza tenere in alcun conto le peculiarità, tradizioni, necessità
reali e aspirazioni più autentiche che caratterizzavano le genti
napoletane: «Se mai la repubblica si fosse fondata da noi medesimi; se la
costituzione, diretta dalle idee eterne della giustizia, si fosse fondata sui
bisogni e sugli usi del popolo; se un'autorità, che il popolo credeva legittima
e nazionale, invece di parlargli un astruso linguaggio che esso non intendeva,
gli avesse procurato de' beni reali, e liberato lo avesse da que' mali che
soffriva; forse… noi non piangeremmo ora sui miseri avanzi di una patria
desolata e degna di una sorte migliore.» (V. Cuoco - Saggio storico sulla
rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, cap.XV) Se da un lato, secondo C., il
governo rivoluzionario cadde vittima - prima di tutto - della sua stessa
imperizia tecnico-politica, dall'altro l'esperimento era votato in partenza al
fallimento in quanto mirava ad applicare ciecamente il modello della
Rivoluzione francese, tal quale, senza minimamente preoccuparsi di adattarlo
alla realtà napoletana e alle sue peculiarità. D'altra parte, osserva C.
con spirito squisitamente moderno e rara acutezza, si pretendeva che il popolo
aderisse ciecamente a una rivoluzione della quale non poteva capire né i
valori, né le ragioni: "«Il vostro Claudio è fuggito, Messalina trema»…
Era obbligato il popolo a saper la storia romana per conoscere la sua
felicità?" (Saggio) La Rivoluzione fu dunque imposta al popolo,
piuttosto che proposta o sorta dalle sue istanze più autentiche e profonde,
determinando pertanto una profonda e insanabile frattura tra gli intellettuali
che la guidarono e la popolazione che se ne sentì sostanzialmente estranea e
che spontaneamente seppe riconoscerla per quel che certo essa era a livello
geopolitico: un regime imposto dall'interesse di una potenza straniera.
L'acuta e onesta critica di C. - sempre sostenuto nella sua opera da un raro
attaccamento al realismo e da una logica incalzante - nel condannare la cieca
fiducia delle élite in teorie generali che non tengono nel giusto conto la
storia e la cultura più profonde e vere dei popoli, individua dunque nella
frattura tra classi dirigenti e istanze popolari quello che sarà forse il più
grave dramma dell'intera avventura risorgimentale italiana e che tanto dovrà
pesare sulla storia dell'Italia unita, sino ai giorni nostri. Critiche al
saggio storico L'opera di Vincenzo Cuoco ricevette aspre critiche per la sua
documentazione storiografica. Al di là delle convinzioni politiche, gli è stata
rimproverata una certa parzialità nella ricerca storiografica. L'abate Domenico
Sacchinelli, segretario del cardinale Fabrizio Ruffo, fondatore e comandante
dell'Esercito della Santa Fede in Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo, principale
responsabile della sanguinaria caduta della Repubblica e della restaurazione
dei Borboni al trono, criticò aspramente la sua opera. Al fine di far
conoscere la sua versione dei fatti, Domenico Sacchinelli pubblicò un'opera
intitolata Memorie storiche sulla vita di Ruffo, scritta nove anni dopo la
morte di Fabrizio Ruffo nella quale, essendo stato segretario del cardinale e
possedendo dei documenti del periodo, contestava molte delle notizie su Ruffo e
sui sanfedisti. Sacchinelli, nella prefazione, asserisce che Cuoco, a sua
differenza, non poteva sapere quello che l'esercito della Santa Fede aveva
fatto per filo e per segno, in quali paesi era stato e quali paesi aveva
saccheggiato o incendiato. Per contro, CROCE (si veda) la segnalò quale prima
vigorosa manifestazione del pensiero vichiano, antiastrattista e storico, e
l'inizio della nuova storiografìa, fondata sul concetto dello svolgimento
organico dei popoli, e della nuova politica, la politica del liberalismo
nazionale, rivoluzionario e moderato insieme." (B. Croce, Storia della
storiografia italiana, Laterza) Platone in Italia Platone in Italia.
«Se l'arte dell'eloquenza è l'arte di persuadere, non vi è altra eloquenza che
quella di dire sempre il vero, il solo vero, il nudo vero. Le parole, onde è
necessità di nostra inferma natura di rivestire il pensiero, saranno tanto più
potenti, quanto più atte al fine, cioè quanto più nudo lasceranno il vero, che
è nel pensiero. C. - Platone in Italia) Il Platone in Italia, diviso in
due volumi, è un originale esempio di romanzo storico scritto in forma
epistolare che l'autore finge di aver tradotto dal greco. L'opera,
scritta prima del suo rientro a Napoli (e pubblicata nello stesso anno), è dedicata
alla celebrazione del mito di un'immaginata "Italia pitagorica",
intesa come antico e mitico luogo della saggezza. Nel racconto
immaginario di Cuoco si descrive il viaggio intrapreso dal giovane Cleobolo,
discepolo di Platone, in visita nella Magna Grecia in compagnia del suo
maestro: il viaggio fornisce lo spunto per esaltare l'originalità e la natura
primigenia della civiltà italiana, vista da Cuoco come più antica di quella
ellenica: è nell'Italia meridionale che quelle popolazioni raggiungono per prime
l'apice sia nel campo delle istituzioni civili, sia nelle scienze e nelle
arti. Anche in quest'opera è chiaramente rintracciabile l'influsso di
Vico e del suo De antiquissima Italorum sapientia, laddove Cuoco ne coglie non
solo la dimensione storica, ma anche quella filosofica. Importante dal
punto di vista ideologico, l'opera intende affermare la supremazia culturale
italiana rispetto alla Francia e al resto d'Europa e può essere considerata un
preannuncio della corrente d'orgoglio nazionale che si svilupperà in tutto il
primo Ottocento e che culminerà nel celebre Del primato morale e civile degli
Italiani di GIOBERTI (si veda). A tratti disorganica e monotona, l'opera
non rende giustizia al suo autore da un punto di vista squisitamente
letterario, specie se confrontata con lo stile straordinariamente persuasivo,
agile ed efficace del Saggio sulla rivoluzione napoletana. Opere Saggio
storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana, in Scrittori d'Italia 43, Bari, Laterza. L’ACCADEMIA
in Italia, in Scrittori d'Italia Bari, Laterza. L’ACCADEMIA in Italia, in
Scrittori d'Italia, Bari, Laterza, Scritti vari, in Scrittori d'Italia, Bari,
Laterza, Scritti vari, in Scrittori d'Italia, Bari, Laterza. Rapporto al re
Gioacchino Marat e Progetto di decreto per l'ordinamento della Pubblica
Istruzione nel Regno di Napoli, vedi Carlo Salinari Carlo Ricci, Storia della
letteratura italiana, Volume terzo, Parte prima, Edizioni Laterza, Bari, sacchinelli-memorie,
prefazione. Tessitore, Lo storicismo di C., Morano editore, Napoli, Tessitore,
C. tra illuminismo e storicismo, Scientifica, Napoli, Tessitore, Vincenzo
Cuoco, in Il Contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero – Filosofia, Istituto
dell'Enciclopedia italiana Treccani, Salvo, la Pedagogia del reale di C., Pensa
Multimedia, Lecce-rovato, Boroli e Universo - la grande enciclopedia per tutti,
Istituto Geografico De Agostini S.p.A., Novara, L’Enciclopedia, UTET Torino -
Istituto Geografico De Agostini S.p.A., Novara - Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso
S.p.A., Roma; Themelly, C., Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 31,
Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia italiana Treccani, Battaglia, C., la voce
nella Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana,
Moriani, Esoterismi e storie: Platone nell'interpretazione di C., in Le vie
della ricerca. Studi in onore di ADORNO (si veda), Olschki, Firenze,
Sacchinelli, Sulla vita di Ruffo, Calanco. C. su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on
line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata Felice
Battaglia, C., ENCICLOPEDIA ITALIANA, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, C., Dizionario di storia, Istituto
dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 2010. Modifica su Wikidata Cuòco, Vincènzo, su
sapere.it, De Agostini. Cuoco, su
Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Themelly, C., Dizionario
biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Opere di C., su
Liber Liber. Opere di C., su MLOL, Horizons Unlimited. Opere di Vincenzo Cuoco,
su Open Library, Internet Archive. Portale Biografie Portale Due
Sicilie Portale Economia Portale Letteratura
Portale Risorgimento Categorie: Scrittori italiani Giuristi italiani
Politici italiani del XVIII secoloPolitici italiani Nati a Civitacampomarano Morti
a Napoli Economisti italiani Personalità del Risorgimento Personalità della
Repubblica Napoletana [altre] L'opera filosofica di Cuoco nella Repubblica e nel
Regno italico non si esaurisce nei molte plici articoli del “Giornale
italiano”. La filosofia italica di Cuoco si continua nel “Platone in Italia”,
nuova ed alta testimonianza di quello spirito che vediamo in opera
ininterrottamente dai frammenti agli scritti del foglio milanese. Questo
sentimento nazionalistico, che ha il suo centro sol nello spirito e non fuori
di esso, è la gran trovata, il punto fermo del molisano, e compenetra il suo
Platone. Quello stesso uomo, nota giustamente Hazard, che scrive che “ama di
morir per la sua patria,” con la sua Napoli, “poichè essa più non esiste”, mentre Cuoco vive ancora, ed aggiungeva che
ad essa ha consacrati tutti i suoi pensieri. Ora consapevole sempre di più di
quanto nel saggio storico ha pur detto, cioè che l'amore di patria nasce dalla
pubblica educazione. Ora scrive un saggio il cui solo fine è sempre lo stesso:
creare lo spirito nazionale, e crearlo, presentando quanto più spesso si possa
le memorie dei tempi gloriosi. Che questo e lo scopo del suo “Platone in
Italia” nessun dubbio. E Cuoco stesso che ce lo dice. Il Platone dice C., in
una lettera al vicerè Eugenio è “diretto a formar la morale pubblica
degl'italiani, ed ispirar loro quello spirito d’unione, quell’amor di patria,
quell’amor della milizia che finora non hanno avuto.” Il “Platone in Italia” di
C. perciò è un romanzo a tesi, o, se volete, un romanzo didattico, se con ciò
noi vogliamo riferirci al suo fine, lasciando impregiudicata assolutamente
l'ulteriore valutazione filosofica. E chi lo legge con cura non può non
accorgersi di questo scopo, estrinseco sì all'arte, ma non allo scrittore, di
questo scopo che C. persegue, e per il quale solo sembra vivere. La trama del
“Platone in Italia” in sè è tenuissima, tanto tenue che C. quasi non se ne
accorge, onde appena l'abbozza per tosto sorvolarla. Un greco, Cleobolo, fa un
viaggio culturale nella Magna Grecia con il suo tutore, Platone. Platone e il
suo scolaro visitano le più importanti città d'Italia: Crotone, Taranto,
Metaponto, Eraclea, Turio, Sibari, Locri, Reggio, ecc., e conosce direttamente
o indirettamente i più fieri popoli della pe [ROBERTI, Lettere inedite di G.
Botta, U. Foscolo e C., in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana. La
lettera del Cuoco è ora ri prodotta in Scritti vari. C., Saggio storico. BUTTI,
Una lettera di V. Cuoco al Vicerè Eugenio nella miscellanea Da Dante al
Leopardi, per Nozze Scherillo -Negri, Milano, Hoepli. La lettera è ora ripro.
dotta in Scritti vari] pennisola, i sanniti e i romani, ammira le opere d'arte,
disputa di filosofia, si innamora di Mnesilla. Cleobolo stringe con Mnesilla un
bel nodo d'amore. La trama è questa. Ma vien meno dinanzi all'urgere d'un
contenuto didascalico svariatissimo, che la spezza, la frantuma, e in fine ce
la fa dimenticare. Nè il “Platone in Italia” è sotto questo riguardo un romanzo
originale. Anzi ha i suoi bravi antecedenti, tra cui sopra tutti importante
quel “Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce,” che ha una grande diffusione in
Francia e fuori, che ovunque ebbe ammira tori ed imitatori. Ma nella maggior
parte de' casi, come nota il Sanctis, il viaggio di Platone e Cleobolo è “un
semplice mezzo, con un altro scopo ed un altro contenuto,” che non sia quello
vero e proprio di descrivere paesaggi e monumenti. Lo scopo non è più il
viaggio. Lo scopo e l'espressione di certe idee e sentimenti, fatta più
agevole, con questo mezzo. I secoli XVIII e XIX amarono il romanzo viaggio,
come del resto anche il romanzo-epistolario, perchè col suo meccanismo si piega
ad ogni finalità. Il “Platone in Italia” di C. anzi è nello stesso tempo
viaggio ed epistolario, è un insieme di lettere spedite visitando l'una dopo
l'altra le varie città d' Italia. Il viaggio, come forma letteraria, può
servire a qua lunque scopo ed avere qualunque contenuto. E cera, che può
ricevere ogni specie d'impressione; marmo, che può configurarsi secondo il
capriccio dello scultore. È difficile trovare una forma più libera, più
pieghevole al vostro volere. Passate da una città in un'altra: nessun limite
trovate al vostro pensiero. Potete incontrarvi con gli uomini che vi piace;
immaginare ogni specie d'accidenti; saltare dalla natura ai costumi, da'
costumi al l'anima; visitare, qua e colà, come vi torna meglio; rin chiudervi,
tutto solo, nella vostra stanza, e fantasticare, filosofare, poetare, mescere,
a vostro grado, sogni, ghiri bizzi e ragionamenti, dialoghi e soliloqui,
visioni e rac conti. Se voi vi proponete uno scopo particolare, questo v '
impone il tal contenuto, il tale ordine, la tal proporzione: insomma v’impone
un limite, che non procede dal mezzo liberissimo di cui vi valete, ma dal fine
che avete in mente. Ma se voi leggete l'opera del Barthélemy e la raffron tate
con l'opera cuochiana, una differenza vi balzerà su bito agl’occhi, nell'alto
fine che il nostro scrittore s'è proposto e che nel francese, naturalmente,
manca del tutto. È il fine, quello che interessa C., e che da lungo tempo egli
persegue ne' più vari modi. Il Giornale italiano, a questo proposito, ci mostra
come l'idea d'un viaggio educativo nei vari reami della storia si sia al
molisano altre volte presentata. Tra tante opere che ci si dànno ogni giorno,
buone, mediocri, cattive quella descrivente un viaggio, per esempio, nel secolo
di Leone X, non sa rebbe certamente la meno utile per la nostra istruzione e
per la nostra gloria ». Così scrive, e di questo viaggio ideale, di cui
immagina che un suo amico conservi l'an tico manoscritto d'un suo maggiore, dà
un saggio in quel colloquio col Machiavelli che abbiamo a più riprese ve duto .
Il fine dunque è quello che occupa l'animo del nostro, e questo domina tutto,
soffoca, purtroppo, ogni intendimento che pedagogico non sia [Il romanziere cerca
di scusare questa deficienza di trama, che si risolve in una deficienza
fantastica e quindi in una deficienza artistica, e nella prefazione scrive che
la sua storia e rinvenuta in un antico manoscritto, autentico, perchè ritrovato
da suo nonno proprio fra le fondamenta d'una sua casa, ergentesi sovra quel
suolo ove un dì superba e Eraclea, manoscritto che è lacerato in varî punti e
perciò lacunoso, onde varje situazioni, prima accennate, non sono poi svolte e
tanto meno condotte a fine: ma questa è una scusa che non scusa nulla, poichè
tutti sanno che il manoscritto non è se non nell'immaginazione del Cuoco, nè
più nè meno come l'anonimo ma [SANCTIS (si veda), Saggi critici, Giorn. ital.:
Varietà. (SETTEMBRINI] -noscritto dei Promessi Sposi è nell'immaginazione di
Don Alessandro. Perciò l'esiguità della trama si deve unicamente al sopravvento
di fini estrinseci all'arte, pedagogici e didascalici. E gli stessi personaggi,
che la piccola trama lega, sono e non sono. Noi li vediamo e non li vediamo.
Soprattutto, noi non li vediamo mai in azione, in atto, con i loro caratteri e
con le loro passioni. A rigore possiamo dire che non sono protagonisti di
nessun dramma, poichè ci – Platone e il suo scolaro italiano -- appaiono, se
mai, nella stessa funzione del prologo in certi antichi componimenti teatrali,
che si limita ad annunciare ciò che fu o sarà e fa alcune sue considerazioni.
Essi hanno perciò un nome, come ne potrebbero avere un altro. Non sono essi
quelli che contano, conta quel che dicono, o che per essi dice C. Da questa
condizion di cose, è evidente, scaturisce un dissidio insanabile tra quello che
è arte, e che perciò non ha nè può avere un fine estrinseco a sè stessa, e lo
scopo stesso dichiarato dall'autore: il rammentare agl’italiani che essi furono
una volta virtuosi, potenti, felici, he furono un giorno gl'inventori di quasi
tutte le cognizioni che adornano lo spirito umano. Come VICO (si veda) nel “De
antiquissima italorum sapiential” si pone dinanzi il fine di dimostrare qual
filosofia si debba trarre dalle origini della lingua latina, quella filosofia
che in antico dovè certo essere professata dai sapienti italiani. Così il Cuoco
si propone di dimostrare che, nel pas sato più remoto, tra i popoli, che
abitarono la nostra penisola, ve ne furono di civilissimi, popoli, la cui
civiltà fu persino anteriore alla civiltà ellenica, che dalla prima riceve
luce, e non viceversa. E come chi voglia intendere il ”De antiquissima” non
deve tenere nessun conto del suo titolo e del proemio, e di tutte le vane investigazioni
che qua e là, vi ricorrono dei riposti con cetti, che, secondo Vico
supporrebbero talune voci latine, per considerare unicamente in sè stessa
questa dottrina che Cuoco pretende rimettere in luce dal più vetusto tesoro
della mente e dell’anima italica, e che non è altro che una dottrina
modernissima, quale puo essere costruita da esso Vico. Così chi voglia
comprendere il vero spirito del “Platone in Italia” di C. deve prescindere
dall'esil nucleo romantico, come dalla faticosa ricostruzione archeologica, e
considerarlo nella sua attualità. Esso non esprime i pensieri nè di Archita di
TARANTO (si veda) nè di Cleobolo, ma i pensieri di C., scrittore del regno
italico, meditante sulle proprie personali esperienze, e non sulle esperienze
di venticinque secoli avanti. All'anno di grazia vanno, per esempio, riferite
tutte le abbondanti considerazioni sulle leggi, sulla religione, sulle
istituzioni, sulle rivoluzioni, Ma l'opera di Vico è un'opera dottrinale,
filosofica, per cui lo sforzo di superamento temporale è facile. L’opera del
Cuoco è un romanzo che vuol pure essere consi derato dal punto di vista
dell'arte. Da ciò un insormontabile dualismo, onde noi veniamo risospinti
dall'Italia del VI secolo di Roma all'Italia del secolo XIX di Cristo, da Platone
a Vico, da Archita a Napoleone, dai filoneisti di Taranto ai giacobini di
Francia, da Alcistenide e Nicorio a Monti. E in questo urto di due visioni
opposte e con trastanti l'arte fugge via, e noi non sappiamo ove finisca la
finzione e cominci la realtà. La funzione è troppo evidente, perchè noi
possiamo ingannarci. V'è troppa erudizione, troppi richiami di testi classici,
e non solo greci, ma anche latini, medievali, moderni, perchè la fantasia possa
godere d’una pura contemplazione. E chi è quella Mnesilla, che disputa così
bene d'arte e di musica, se non un'estetica moderna, che conosce Vico? E chi è
quel Cleobolo, che cita opinioni del Filangieri e del Pagano, e parafrasa
persino versi del Petrarca? GENTILE, Studi vichiani SETTEMBRINI, In una lettera
che Cleobolo scrive all'amata è detto. Così, passando di pensiero in pensiero e
dimonte in monte, spesso sopraggiunge la sera; e, mentre par che tutta la
natura dorma, solo il mio cuore veglia, innalzandosi col pensiero fino a quegli
astri eternamente lucenti che [ E chi è quel Platone, che non ignora i princípi
della nazionalità e con Archita disputa di filosofia moderna! La contaminazione
è troppo evidente, e la filosofia pitagorica e platonica si mesce in uno strano
viluppo con quella vichiana. Da ciò, notiamo, scaturisce non solo, come abbiam
detto una deficienza grande nell'opera d'arte, ma anche nell'importanza
filosofica del Platone in Italia. È questo un'opera d'arte? Un lavoro
filosofico? Uno scritto politico? Nulla di tutto ciò, e pure tutto ciò misto in
una unità singolare. Non scritto storico, perchè, a parte il valore molto
discutibile del suo metodo, che egli si propone di ragionare e giustificare più
tardi, con una di quelle dilazioni, che svelano appunto l'incertezza del
pensiero e l'oscurità da vincere, Cuoco è troppo preoccupato da fini estrinseci
alla storia, artistici ed educativi] non filosofia, perchè Cuoco non segue un
indirizzo unico, ma si trova costretto dal l'imbastitura della narrazione a
mescere quel che è patrimonio dell'antichità con quella vigile coscienza tutta
moderna e vichiana della spiritualità del reale. Non opera d'arte per ragioni
sovradette, poichè Cuoco non riesce mai a trovare in sè quell'assoluta
pacatezza della fantasia, che sola può generare creature vive. L'arte «non c'è
principalmente nota » il Gentile « perchè Cuoco non si dimentica abbastanza in
questa visione confortante, che a un tratto gli sorge nell'animo, di un'Italia
grande per virtù private e pubbliche, perchè retta da una saggia filosofia. E
corre a ogni po' col pensiero all'Italia per cui scrive, all'Italia presente,
piccola, inferma, senza spirito pubblico, senza amor di grandezza, senza
orgoglio di nazione, senza forze vive: e ondeggia tra la statua brillano sul
mio capo; e, dopoaverli riguardati ad uno ad uno, il mio occhio si ferma in
quella fascia immensa, la quale pare che tutto circondi l'universo. Di là si
dice che le nostre anime sien discese, ed ivi ritorneranno e rimarranno unite
per sempre! GENTILE, Studi vichiani che avrebbe da animare, e sè stesso che
egli quasi non crede da tanto; e gli trema la mano ». Non c'è l'opera d'arte,
ma il lavoro non è cosa del tutto morta e caduca. Ci sono parti molto belle, in
cui realmente l'animo si placa in una commossa visione d'amore, o in un
paesaggio italico, ricco di tinte forti calde sfumanti; poi c'è una sempre
vigile volontà, tesa in un fine, che, se è estrinseco all'arte, non è mai fuori
dall'autore, ma pur sempre in lui, e l'accende di sano amore di patria e d'alto
nazionalismo. C'è in somma una matura attività dello spirito, che, sia che [Per
dare un esempio dell'arte del “Platone in Italia” di Cuoco, trascrivo un brano,
che già al RUGGIERI apparve degno d'attenzione: è una lettera di Cleobolo. Ieri
sera sedevamo in quel poggio il quale tu sai che domina il mare e Taranto. È il
sito più delizioso della villa ch'ella tiene nell'Aulone. E noi non sedevamo
propriamente sulla sommità, ma in mezzo della falda, come in una valletta, la
quale, ren dendo più ristretto l'orizzonte, par che renda più ristretti e più
forti i sensi del cuore. Il sole tramontava; spirava dal l'occidente il fresco
venticello della sera, che scendeva a noi turbinosetto per l'opposta falda del
colle. Eravamo soli, io ed ella, e nessuno di noi due parlava, assorti ambedue
in quella languida estasi che ispira il soave profumo de' fiori di primavera,
forse più grave la sera che la mattina ne' luoghi frequenti di alberi. Di tempo
in tempo io rivolgevo i miei occhi a lei, ma un istante dipoi li abbassava;
ella li abbassava come per non incontrarsi coi miei, ma un istante dipoi li
rial zava, quasi dolendole di non averli incontrati. Vedi quel l'arboscello di
cotogno? — mi dice (e di fatti ve ne era uno a dieci passi da me) — vedi come
il vento, che si rompe in faccia agli annosi ulivi ed ai duri peri, pare che
sfoghi tutta la sua prepotenza contro quel debole ed elegante arboscello?
Quanta verità è in quei versi di Ibico: Il mio cuore è simile al cotogno
fiorito, che il vento della primavera afferra per la chioma e ne con torce
tutti i teneri rami!... Tu non hai detti tutti i versi di Ibico; no escləmai io
tu non li hai detti tutti.... Esso è stato nudrito colla fresca onda del
ruscello che gli scorre vicino; ma nel mio cuore un vento secco, simile al
soffio del vento di Tra cia, divora.... Io voleva continuare; ma ella mi guardò
e le vossi. Qual potere era mai in quel guardo, in quell'atto?... Io non lo so;
so che tacqui, mi levai e ritornai in casa, se guendola sempre un passo
indietro, senza poter mai più alzar gli occhi dal suolo.”] eccesso e analizzi
le antiche istituzioni del Sannio; sia che valuti i germi della futura
grandezza di Roma, sia che da questi discenda ai fatti moderni, e
indirettamente dica della rivoluzione francese e de' popoli, che tra un l'altro
amano posarsi nelle opinioni medie o magari tro vare la pace in un Napoleone,
tiranno restauratore del l'ordine, rivela pur sempre un uomo d'alta coscienza,
con sapevole di sè e del suo posto nel suo popolo. Noi dimentichiamo l'artista
mal riuscito, il metafisico contaminato, lo storico poco sicuro, ma ammiriamo
il pedagogo, che dai dati concreti della storia umana trae un non perituro
insegnamento. C. parla non a sè stesso, poi che non si pone dal rigido punto di
vista subiettivo proprio dell'arti sta, ma a noi, a noi italiani; e per noi
vibra, per noi di sputa, per noi parla. Platone non parla al suo discepolo
Cleobolo. Archita non parla ai suoi tarantini. Ponzio non parla ai suoi
sanniti. Ma tutti e tre, attraverso il Cuoco, si rivolgono a noi, e il loro
insegnamento mira a formare una più sicura anima italica. Certo questa
posizione è un po' monotona, e riporta l'autore ad insistere su punti già
precedentemente esposti nel Saggio, nei Frammenti, nel Giornale italiano, ma,
se guardiamo l'arduità dello scopo, la difficoltà d'attingerlo, le ripetizioni
non appariranno mai soverchie. Da noi non si tratta, dice C., di conservare lo
spirito pubblico, ma di crearlo, e la creazione è opera lunga, spesso do
lorosa. La tesi principale del ”Platone in Italia”, che del resto non è una
novità cuochiana, ma una trovata del Vico, è che nella nostra penisola vi sia
stata una civiltà, come ho detto, anteriore alla greca, quella etrusca, che per
il mondo ha diffuso luce di sapere filosofico e splendore d'arte, della quale
civiltà quella ellenica e pitagorea è un posteriore riverbero. L'opinione, sia
essa tramontata, come pretendono alcuni, per cui le origini greche del
pitagorismo sono indubbie, sia essa vera, come sostengono altri, per cui
l'autonomia della civiltà etrusca e delle susseguenti civiltà italiche è
parimenti comprovata, è profondamente radicata nel Cuoco, la di cui serietà
scientifica non può essere posta in dubbio. Il Cuoco è fortemente compenetrato
di essa, e, laddove crede di vederla comprovata dai fatti, l'animo suo trema
d'intima com mozione e di passionata esaltazione. Al tempo del viaggio di
Platone, la Magna Grecia è in decadenza. Molte città, che già furono grandi,
vennero nelle civili dissensioni rase al suolo. Altre, che un dì dominarono
molte terre, sono ridotte a piccoli borghi. Stirpi, che hanno un passato
glorioso, fiere delle loro milizie e dei loro trionfi, ora languono nell'ozio e
nella effemina tezza. Ma, ovunque, a chi mira intimamente le cose s'appalesano
i segni dell'antica grandezza e dell'antica forza, diffusi ne' monumenti
architettonici, vivi negli ordini civili, parlanti nelle costruzioni
filosofiche del pensiero e dell'arte. “Io credo, dunque,” dice Ponzio a
Cleobolo, “ciò che dicono i nostri sapienti, i quali dan per certo che ne'
tempi antichissimi l'Italia tutta fioriva per leggi, per agricoltura, per armi
e per commercio. Quando questo sia stato, io non saprei dirtelo. Troverai però
facilmente altri che te lo saprà dire meglio di me. Questo solamente posso
dirti io: che allora tutti gl'italiani formavano un popolo solo, ed il loro
imperio chiamavasi etrusco. Mentre la Grecia è ancor giovane, l'Italia è assai
antica e sul suo vecchio suolo già due epoche s'avvicendano: l'una è scomparsa,
l'altra è in isviluppo, e solo esteriormente potrà dirsi ellenica, nelle innegabili
im migrazioni dei greci. Nel suo spirito è italica, erede della prim. Pitagora,
che la impersona, null'altro è che un mito, ma un mito italico, una sintesi
concettosa della sapienza, ma una sintesi tutta italica. Come nella natura vi
sono terribili sconvolgimenti fisici, per cui la faccia della terra è alterata,
i monti si fendono ed aprono larghe valli, in cui scorrono nuovi fiumi che
prima non erano, mentre i vecchi veggono alterato il loro corso, così nella
storia antiche catastrofi hanno distrutto una fiorttura senza pari e modificato
organismi civili possenti. Sappi dunque, dice Cleobolo all’ACCADEMIA, riferendo
un colloquio che egli ha avuto con un sacerdote di Pesto, che un tempo tutta
l'Italia è stata abitata da un popolo solo, che chiamavasi etrusco. Grandi e
per terra e per mare eran le di lui forze; e, de' due mari che, a modo d'isola,
cingon l'Italia, uno chiamossi, dal nome co mune del popolo, Etrusco; l'altro,
dal nome di una di lui colonia, Adriatico. Antichissima è l'origine di questi
etruschi.. Le memorie della sua gloria si confondono con quella de' vostri
iddii e de ' vostri eroi. Ma chi potrebbe dirti tutto ciò che gli etrusci opra
rono nell’età de' vostri eroi e de'vostri iddii? Oscurità e favole coprono le
memorie di que' tempi. Posso dirti però che gl’etrusci estendevano il loro
commercio fino all'Asia. Gl’etruschi signoreggiavano tutte le isole che sono
nel Mediterraneo, ed anche quelle che sono vicinissime alla Grecia.
Dall'ampiezza dell'impero giudica dell'antichità. Quest'impero però era troppo
grande e poco omogeneo, più federazione di città che stato unitario, onde esso
avea in sè stesso il germe della dissoluzione. Non mai si era pensato a render
forte il vincolo che ne univa le varie parti. Ciascun popolo ha ritenuto il proprio
nome: era il nome della regione che abitava, era quello della città principale.
Che importa saper qual mai fosse? Non era il nome “etrusco”. Ciascun popolo ha
governo, leggi e magistrati diversi. Non vi e nè consiglio, nè magistrato
comune se non per far la guerra. Da ciò trassero origine grandi mali che
distrussero ogni organizzazione: La corruzione de' costumi produce la
corruzione delle arti, le quali sono de' costumi ed istrumenti ed effetti, e
poi generò la corruzione della religione, la quale, corrotta, accelera la morte
delle città. Perciò l'Etruria, o ItTALIA, si sfasciò per legge naturale di
cose. Così cade, o Cleobolo, commenta il pellegrino Platone, qualunque altro
impero ove non è unità. Così cade la Grecia,, se non cessa la disunione tra le
varie città che la compongono, tra gl’uomini che abitano ciascuna città.
Imperciocchè, ovunque è sapienza, ivi si tende al l'unità. All'unità si tende
ovunque è virtù, il fine della quale è di render i cittadini concordi e simili.
Nè possono. esserlo se non son buoni. La vita istessa di tutti gl’esseri non è
se non lo sforzo degl’elementi, che li compongono, verso l'unità. Ovunque non
vi è unità, ivi non è più nè sapienza, nè virtù, nè vita, e si corre a gran
giornate alla morte. Ma la morte non è mai interamente morte, bensì tra
sformazione, cioè riduzione in nuove forme di vita, forme nuove, che della
prima vita mantengono alcuni elementi originari ed altri novelli acquistano.
Così l'Italia, divenuta deserto nella ruina, tosto si ripopola di genti, di città,
si organizza, si riabbellisce, e si ri presenta composta all'ammirazione
universa. Ma la civiltà italica, che possiamo dire pitagorea, nella sua essenza
è pur essa autoctona, se pure apparentemente ellenistica. Quando le colonie si
sono stabilite in Italia, le stirpi indigene dalle montagne eran discese al
piano, e due civiltà s'erano espresse. Noi disputiamo, osserva un italico a
Cleobolo, per sapere se i ellenici abbian popolata l'Italia o gl'italiani
abbian popolata la Grecia. Ed intanto è l'una e l'altra regione sono state
forse popolate da un popolo – l’ario --, il padre comune degl’elleni e
degl'italiani. Comune è perciò l'origine dei due popoli, ma, stanziatisi in
diverse sedi, gl’italiani hanno avuta una fioritura più precoce che non
gl’ellenici, che pure ai tempi di cui trattiamo, sembrano i più civili, i
maestri degl’italiani in ogni campo dell'umana attività. L'antico primato
italico però ancor si conserva, trasformato sì, ma sempre attivo, e si
manifesta. Su questo primato italico il Cuoco insiste, insiste, insiste
calorosamente. E la sua tesi nucleare. La pittura e in Italia già vecchia ed
evoluta, allorquando Panco, fratello di Fidia, «ipinse ne' portici di Atene la
battaglia di Maratona, riempiendo di stupore i suoi concittadini per la rassomiglianza
che seppe mettere nelle immagini dei duci greci e dei capitani nemici [Furono
gl'italiani che primi danno opera alle matematiche, e ne fecero un istrumento
principale della loro filosofia. Prima che Teodoro reca agl’elleni la scienza
degli italiani, in Grecia, le idee geometriche sono puerili, frivole, con
traddittorie. Invece, gl'italiani, potenti per un istrumento di filosofia tanto
efficace, fanno delle scoperte ammirabili in tutte quelle parti delle nostre
cognizioni che versano sulla quantità: nella geometria, nella astronomia, nella
meccanica, nella musica; ed hanno spinte al punto più sublime e più lontano dai
sensi tutte quelle altre che versan sulla qualità. La stessa arte della guerra
e delle milizie in Italia si perde nella remotezza de' secoli, onde ancora ai
tempi di Platone gl’italici mantengono indiscussa la loro superiorità. La
guerra presso gl’elleni ancora è duello, scienza rudimentale. Presso
gl’italiani l’arte della guerra è savio urto di masse e organica distribuzione
di manipoli. La stessa legge, che regola la convivenza nella penisola, e
originaria e nazionale, frutto di una intima esperienza sociale, e perciò nel
loro complesso immuni da contaminazioni eterogenee. Le romane XII tavole quindi
non sono mai derivate, come alcune storie vogliono, da Atene, poiché Atene
nulla poteva dare a un popolo, come il romano, discendente da popoli
dell’ateniese più antichi. Vedete dunque, dice Cleobolo ad alcuni legati di
Roma, che una parte delle vostre leggi è più antica della città vostra.
Un'altra è sicuramente più antica di quei dieci che voi dite aver imitate le
leggi d’Atene. Voi mi avete recitate le leggi de’ dieci e quelle dei re, le
quali dite esser state raccolte da Sesto Papirio sotto il regno del buon Servio
Tullio. Alcune, che voi recitate tra quelle, le ripetete anche tra queste. Tali
sono tutte quelle che regolano gl’auspici, l’assemblee del popolo, il diritto
di giudicar della vita di un cittadino, e che so io! Queste dunque già esisteno
in ROMA; ed e superfluo correr tanti stadi e valicare un mare tempestosissimo
per prenderle da un popolo che non le ha. Tre quarti dunque del vostro diritto
non ha potuto esser imitato da noi. Vi rimane una quarta parte, ed è quella
appunto nella quale può aver luogo l’imitazione, perchè può stare, senza
sconcio alcuno, ed in un modo ed in un altro. Tali sono le leggi sulla patria
potestà, sulle nozze, sulle eredità, sulle tutele. Ma queste cose sono dalle
vostre leggi ordinate in un modo tanto diverso dal nostro, che, se mai è vero
che i vostri maggiori abbiano inviati de' legati in Atene, è forza dire che ve
li abbian spediti per imparare, non ciò che volevano, ma ciò che non volevano
fare. Passando nel campo delle arti belle, tra gl’elleni la poesia drammatica è
meno antica che tra gl'italiani. Ben poche olimpiadi, dice un comico italiano,
Alesside, a Platone e Cleobolo, contate dalla morte di Tespi e di Frinico,
padri della vostra tragedia. Quando il siciliano Epicarmo si ha già meritato
quel titolo di principe della commedia, che, più di un secolo dopo, gli ha dato
il principe de’ vostri filosofi, Magnete d'Icaria appena balbutiva tra voi un
dialogo goffo e villano, che tutta ancor oliva la rusticità del villaggio ove
era nato. Quando la commedia tra voi nasceva, tra noi era già adulta. I poemi omerici
stessi nel loro nucleo fondamentale sono stati elaborati in Italia, poichè di
favole omeriche gl’italiani ne hanno più degl’elleni, e quelle elleniche
cominciano ove le italiche finiscono. In tutto ciò noi non possiamo non notare
il partito preso, la volontà di dimostrare ad ogni costo quel che C. a priori
afferma, l'originario primato italico. Ma lo scopo nobilissimo, che ha dinanzi,
vale a fare perdonarelo varie inesattezze. Nel tempo in cui Platone e Cleobolo
iniziano il loro viaggio per l'Italia, la Magna Grecia è in dissoluzione. I
vari popoli hanno fra loro relazioni saltuarie ed estrinseche. Non si sentono
fratelli animati da un'unica missione. Guerre, dissensioni, lotte sono
frequenti, donde scaturisce una condizione di perpetua incertezza. Vedi, da una
parte, l'Italia simile a vasto edificio rovinato dal tempo, dalla forza delle
acque, dall'impeto del terremoto. Là un immenso pilastro ancora torreggia
intero, qua un portico si conserva ancora per metà. In tutto il rimanente
dell'area, mucchi di calcinacci, di colonne, di pietre, avanzi preziosi,
antichi, ma che oggi non sono altro che rovine. Ben si conosce che tali
materiali han formato un tempo un nobile edificio, e che lo potrebbero formare
un'altra volta. Ma l'antico non è più, ed il nuovo dev'essere ancora. È l'unità
che si è infranta, per cui alla primigenia unitaria forza statale è sottentrata
la debolezza della molteplicità, mal celata dall' invadente forza belligera di
alcune stirpi, come i sanniti, o dal fasto di altre, come i tarentini. Ma
questa molteplicità tende quasi per fatale legge di natura all'unità, e
dall'indistinto pullulare delle genti dove pur sorgere chi di esse fa una sola
gente, un nome unico: Italia. Pure, se tu osservi attentamente e con costanza,
ti avvedrai che le pietre, le quali formano quei mucchi di rovine, cangiano
ogni giorno di sito; non le ritrovi oggi ove le avevi lasciate ieri. E mi par
di riconoscere un certo quasi fermento intestino e la mano d'un architetto
ignoto che lavora ad innalzare un edificio no vello. È la gran fede di C. Da questa unità o da
questa frammentarietà dipende l'avvenire della penisola. Tutta l'Italia, dice
Cleobolo, riunisce tanta varietà di siti e di cielo e di caratteri, e nel tempo
istesso sono questi caratteri tanto marcati e forti, che per essi mi par che
non siavi via di mezzo. Da ranno gl'italiani nella storia, come han dato
finora, gl’esempi di tutti gl’estremi, di vizi e di virtù, di forza e di
debolezza. Se saranno divisi, si faranno la guerra fino alla distruzione. Tu
conti più città distrutte in Italia in pochi anni, che in Grecia in molti
secoli. Se saranno uniti, daranno leggi all'universo. C. però ha fede che
questo suo ideale non resterà mero ideale. Questo ideale si concreta in una
entità statale, in un impero, che all'itala gente dalle molte vite darà
organizzazione e potenza. Cuoco dice che questo ideale non è nuovo, ma quasi
conformandosi ad un antico vero, il dominio etrusco, è risorto e di continuo
risorge nelle più elette menti. Lo stesso Pitagora concepì l'ardito disegno di
ristabilir la pace e la virtù, senzadi cui la pace non può durare. Pitagora
volea far dell'Italia una sola città; onde l’energia di ciascun cittadino ha un
campo più vasto per esercitarsi, senza essere costretta a cozzare continuamente
con coloro, che la vicinanza, la lingua, il costume facean nascer suoi fratelli
e la divisione degl’ordini politici ne costringeva ad odiar come nemici. E
l'energia di tutti non logorata da domestiche gare, potesse più vigorosamente
difender la patria comune dalle offese de’ barbari. Egli dava il nome di
barbari a tutti coloro che s’intromettono armati in un paese che non è loro
patria, e chiama poi barbari e pazzi quegl’altri, i quali, parlando una stessa
lingua, non sanno vivere in pace tra loro ed invocano nelle loro contese
l'aiuto degli stranieri. Egli sole dire agl'italiani quello stesso che Socrate
ripete agl’elleni. Tra voi non vi può nè vi deve essere guerra: ciò, che voi
chiamate guerra, è sedizione, di cui, se amassivo veracemente la patria,
dovreste arrossire. Sia stato Pitagora un essere umano di fatto vissuto, sia
egli invece un'idea, un mito elaborato dalla fantasia delle stirpi indigene,
nel quale esse han fatto confluire i risultati ultimi di tutte le loro secolari
esperienze, ciò dimostra l'antica radice, le remote propaggini nella co scienza
collettiva del problema unitario. Ma come attingere l'unità? Ritorniamo a
posizioni che noi già sappiamo. Il problema è un problema etico e pedagogico
insieme. A questa meta non si può pervenire senza virtù e senza ottimi ordini
civili. Onde non vi sia chi voglia e chi possa comprar la patria, chi voglia e
chi possa venderla. Ma l'ambizione di ciascuno, vedendosi tutte chiuse le vie
della viltà e del vizio, sia quasi co stretta a prender quella della virtù. È necessario
istruir il popolo. Un popolo ignorante è simile all'atabulo, che diserta le
campagne: spirando con minor forza il vento delle montagne lucane, porta sulle
ali i vapori che le rinfrescano e le fecondano. È necessario istruir coloro che
devono reggerlo. Un popolo con centomila piedi ha sempre bisogno di una mente
per camminare, e, con centomila braccia, non ha una mente per agire. Ma
quest'educazione pubblica, che occorre diffondere, non deve essere per sua
natura uniforme, uguale per tutti, bensì multiforme, varia, secondante le
infinite varietà che la natura umana ci offre: deve essere educazione vera,
cioè deve parlare agl’spiriti, e perciò deve essere in essi, e non fuori di
essi. Diversa perciò l'educazione della classe dirigente da quella delle classi
povere, diversa però non nell'intima qualità. L'una e l'altra si volgono alla
stessa natura umana e alle stesse potenze dello spirito. Un popolo, dicono
alcuni, il quale conoscesse le vere cagioni delle cose, sarebbe il più saggio
ed il più virtuoso de'popoli. Non è invero così. Riunite i saggi di tutta la
terra, e formatene tante famiglie. Riunite queste famiglie, e formatene una
città: qual città potrà dirsi eguale a questa! Nessuna, risponde C. o Archita da
TARANTO (si veda) per lui. Essa non meriterebbe neanche il nome di città,
perchè le mancherebbe quello che solo cangia un'unione di uo mini in unione di
cittadini. La vicendevole dipendenza tra di loro per tutto ciò che rende agiata
e sicura la vita e la perfetta indipendenza dagli stranieri. È necessario
perciò ai fini dello stato che gl'indotti coesistano accanto ai dotti, come i
poveri accanto ai ricchi, perché si realizzi quell’armonica convergenza di
forze distinte che è la vita. Ciò, che veramente è neces sario in una città, è
che ciascuno stia al suo luogo, cioè che sappia lavorare e che ami l'ordine. Ad
ottener l'uno e l'altro, sono necessarie egualmente la scienza e la
subordinazione. Diversa sarà l'educazione dei poveri da quella dei dirigenti.
Ma una educazione per i primi deve pur esservi. E per istruirli bisogna avere
la loro stima. Non perdete la stima del popolo, se volete istruirlo. Il popolo
non ode coloro che disprezza. Di rado egli può conoscer le dottrine, ma giudica
severissimamente i maestri, e li giudica da quelle cose che sembrano spesso
frivole, ma che son quelle sole che il popolo vede. Che vale il dire che il
popolo è ingiusto? Quando si tratta d'istruirlo, tutt'i diritti sono suoi.
Tutt’i doveri son nostri, e nostre tutte le colpe. Al popolo occorre insegnare
tutto ciò che è necessario per agire, tutto ciò che può rendergli o più facile
o più utile il lavoro, più costante e più dolce la virtù. Al savio, invece, è
necessaria la conoscenza delle cagioni vere, perchè sol col mezzo della
medesima può render più chiara, più ampia e più sicura la conoscenza delle
stesse cose. Al volgo conoscer le vere cagioni è inutile, perchè non potrebbe
farne quell'uso che ne fanno i savi. È necessario però che ne conosca una, in
cui la sua mente si acqueti. E questa necessità è tanto imperiosa, che, se voi
non gli direte una cagione, se la farneticherà egli stesso. Errano perciò i
filosofi che credono opportuno divulgare la filosofia è mettere il popolo a
contatto con i sublimi princípi della vita. Del resto ben diversa è la natura
del dotto filosofo e del popolano. Laddove il savio è ragione, il popolano è
tutto senso e fantasia. Il popolo è un eterno fanciullo che ha sempre più cuore
che mente, più sensi che ragione. E quindi ad esso bisogna parlare con quello
stesso linguaggio che s'usa con il fanciullo, dan dogli in un certo qual modo
cose e massime già fatte. Bisogna parlare al popolo dei suoi cari interessi, e
parlarne con il linguaggio che a lui più si conviene, con parabole e proverbi.
Se è vero che gl’esempi muovon più dei precetti, le parabole, le quali non sono
altro che esempi, debbon muovere più degli argomenti. I proverbi, che a noi
possono sembrare inintelligibili, perchè ignoriamo i veri costumi dei popoli
per i quali furono immaginati, sono nella rude concettosità adattissimi per lo
scopo prefissoci. La stessa virtù non la si può inculcare al popolo se non con
mezzi diversi di quelli che ci si offrono nella filosofia. La virtù è saviezza:
la saviezza ha bisogno di ragione, e la ragione ha bisogno di tempo. I
pregiudizi, gl’errori, i vizi che nella fantasia de' popoli vanno e vengono
come le onde del nostro Jonio, riempi rebbero sempre di nuova arena quel
bacino, che tu vuoi scavare a poco a poco per formarne un porto. È necessità
piantare con mano potente una diga, che freni la violenza delle onde sempre
mobili. Prima di avvezzare il popolo a ragionare, convien comandargli di
credere. E, per convincerlo che il vero sia quello che tu gli dici, convien per
suadergli, prima, che non possa essere vero quello che tu non dici. Non cerchiamo
l'uomo che abbia detto più verità, ma quello che ha persuase verità più utili.
E, se talora la necessità ha mossi i grandi uomini ad illudere il popolo,
cerchiamo solo se l'hanno utilmente illuso. Sono queste conclusioni che già
sono implicite nel saggio storico, ma riescono sempre interessanti, sia per il
loro intrinseco valore, sia per la forma con la quale l'autore ce le prospetta.
Questa educazione che mira a far sentire l'interesse comune alla virtù, e
quindi a radicarla in eterno, deve precedere la stessa attività legislativa, se
non si vuole che essa cada nel vuoto. Quando tu avrai incise le leggi della tua
città sulle tavole di bronzo, nulla potrai dir di aver fatto, se non avrai
anche scolpita la virtù ne' cuori de' suoi cittadini. La legge e la costume
sono i principali oggetti di tutta la scienza politica. La prima risponde
all'ordine eterno che è nelle cose, sempre perciò buono e vero; i se condi
invece presentano estreme varietà, e, nella maggior parte dei casi, ci si
presentano anzi che come correttivo delle prime, come deviazione da esse; onde
coloro, che traggono da una corrotta natura de' popoli le norme obiettive del
vivere, invece di evitare il male, spesso lo sancisce, e la sua opera
pedagogica manca. La legge è sempre una, perchè la natura dell'intelligenza è
immutabile. Mutabile è la natura della materia, di cui gli uomini sono in gran
parte composti; e quindi è che il costume inclina sempre ad allontanarsi dalla
legge. È necessità, dunque, conoscere del pari la natura sempre mobile di questo
fango di cui siamo formati, onde sapere per quali cagioni i nostri costumi si
allontanano dalle leggi, per quali modi, per quali arti possano riavvicinarsi
alle medesime; il che forma l'oggetto di tutta la scienza dell’educazione. Nn
di quella educazione che le balie soglion dare ai nostri fanciulli, ma di
quell'altra che Licurgo e Minosse seppero dare una volta agli spartani ed ai
cretesi. La ignoranza di una di queste due scienze ha moltiplicati sulla terra
i funesti esempi di quei legisla tori, i quali, volendo tentare riforme di
popoli, hanno o cagionata o accellerata la loro ruina. Imperciocchè, pieni la
mente delle sole idee intellettuali delle leggi ed ignoranti de' costumi de '
popoli, li hanno spinti ad una meta a cui non potevan pervenire, perdendo in
tal modo il buono che poteano ottenere, per avere un ottimo che era follia
sperare; o, conoscendo solo i costumi ed igno rando il vero bene ed il vero
male, hanno sancito i me desimi, ed han fatto come quel nocchiero, il quale,
non conoscendo il porto in cui dovea entrare, e servendo ai venti ed all'onde,
ha rotto miseramente il suo legno tra gli scogli. La legge però resterà sempre un astratto, se
gl’uomini non ne intenderanno la sua necessarietà e, quel che più conta, la sua
utilità. È d'uopo a ciò che essa sia accom pagnata non solo da pene, onde possa
con efficacia di storre gli animi dai vizî, ma eziandio da premi, onde possa
allettare alla virtù. Occorre parlare agli uomini un lin guaggio utilitario ed
edonistico, se si vuole essere seguiti da essi. E questa scienza, che si occupa
dei premî e delle pene, è difficilissima, perchè inutili sono senza premî e
pene le leggi, e arduo è calcolare l'adeguato rapporto so pra tutto delle pene
con i costumi dei popoli. Il crimi nalista perciò deve studiare non tanto i
rapporti giuri dici, di per sé astratti, ma i soggetti di essi rapporti, entità
concrete e viventi, e rispetto a questi porsi piut tosto in veste d’educatore,
anzi che di carceriere, e peg gio di boia. « La scienza delle pene e de' premî
» dice C. con perfetta sicurezza « appartiene alla pubblica educazione. La
legge, date alla città, hanno necessità di uomini atti ad eseguirle, che
veglino alla loro esecuzione. Le leggi, ho detto, sono nell'ordine eterno delle
cose, onde la filosofia a lungo le ha ritenute provenienti dalla divi nità.
Perciò il primo dovere degli esecutori è di comandare ne' limiti di esse, sovra
la loro base, poichè solo così si adempie l'universa volontà di Dio, o meglio,
s'attua l'ar monia immanente nelle cose. Ora, ordinate le leggi di una città,
per qual modo ritroveremo noi gli uomini degni di eseguirle? Questa èla parte
più difficile della scienza della legislazione: perchè, da una parte, le buone
leggi senza il buon governo sono inutili; e, dall'altra, sulla natura del
migliore de’governi gli uomini son più discordi che su quella delle buone
leggi. Anche questo secondo problema è di natura spirituale e pedagogica: la
preparazione della classe dirigente, la sua natura, ecc. non possono non
rientrare in quella scienza, di cui abbiamo visto i caratteri e le forme. In
quanto al problema subordinato se sia da accogliere il governo di un solo, di
pochi, o di molti; il governo ereditario o l'elettivo; e tra quest'ultimo
quello regolato dalla nascita, dagli averi, dalla sorte, questo è un pro blema
essenzialmente relativo e che del resto abbiamo già storicamente esaminato in
altra parte di questo la voro. La risoluzione è offerta da C. in poche parole
che giova riportare. « Noi diremo il miglior de' governi esser quello che non è
affidato ad uno solo, perchè un solo può aver delle debolezze; non a tutti,
perchè tra tutti il maggior numero è di stolti; ma a pochi, perchè pochi sempre
sono gli ottimi. E questi pochi avranno obbligo di render ragione delle opere
loro, onde la spe ranza dell'impunità non li spinga o ad obbliare per
negligenza le leggi o a conculcarle per ambizione; e perciò divideremo il
pubblico potere in modo che le diverse parti del medesimo si temperino e
bilancino a vicenda, e, dando a ciascuna classe di cittadini quella parte a cui
pare per natura più atta, riuniremo i beni del governo di uno solo, di pochi e
di tutti. Ma piuttosto altre considerazioni occorre fare, che ci riportano ad
un punto troppo caro al Cuoco perchè noi possiamo dimenticarcelo: le considerazioni
intorno alla religione. Abbiamo già visto i rapporti tra autorità reli giosa ed
autorità statale, il posto che la religione deve occupare nello Stato, e lo
abbiamo visto da un punto essenzialmente storico, cioè in rapporto ai tempi del
mo lisano: ora dobbiamo esaminare lo stesso problema da un diverso punto,
osservando quale posto può occupare la religione nella formazione spirituale
dei popoli. La religione è un fatto spirituale dal quale non si può
prescindere. « Quindi è che erran egualmente e coloro i quali credon poter
tutto ottenere colle sole leggi civili, e coloro che credono poter colla
religione e coi costumi supplire alle medesime. Questi renderanno le vite dei
cittadini e le loro sostanze dubbie, incerte; quelli rende ranno vacillante lo
stato dell'intera città. È necessità che vi sieno egualmente costumi, religione
e leggi: uno che manchi, la città, o presto o tardi, ruina. Il bisogno della
religione per C. non si basa tanto su ragioni ideali quanto su ragioni
pratiche. Lo Stato, che assorbe in sè la religione, s'eleva agli occhi
de'singoli e acquista maggiore rispetto. Nè è a dire che esso con ciò menomi la
religione, in quanto vita dello spirito, poi che esso assorbe quel che può
assorbire, infine il lato estrinseco e mondano della religione, lasciando
intatto il dommatico. I paesi, in cui i patrizi conservano autorità, sono
quelli in cui essi esercitano il sacerdozio, e in questi paesi la religione può
moltissimo sui costumi. « E forse queste due cose [ religione e costumi, stato
e chiesa) sono naturalmente inseparabili tra loro; perchè nè mai religione emen
derà utilmente i costumi se non sarà dipendente dal go verno; nè mai religione,
che non emendi i costumi e non ispiri l'amor della patria, potrà esser utile
allo stato italiano. Ora concepite in questa maniera le due classi dei ricchi e
dei poveri, dei savi e degli stolti, C. riguarda la vita pubblica come una loro
armonizzazione continua, in una evoluzione ininterrotta. Ricco non vuol dire a
priori savio, ma è certo che il ricco, coeteris paribus, può pro curarsi
un'educazione superiore, che il povero non può procacciarsi che in casi
eccezionali, onde quasi sempre, nella sua indigenza, resterà ignorante e spesso
stolto. L'opposizione tra savi e stolti si può in linea generalis sima
presentare come opposizione tra patrizi e plebei, opposizione delucidata anche
dal fatto che i patrizi, cioè coloro che nelle epoche primitive s'affermano
negli Stati e perpetuano la loro posizione dirigente per eredità di sangue e di
censo, sono, per lunga consuetudine e pratica pubblica, i più atti al
reggimento civile, mentre i plebei, gente nova, spesso portata su da súbiti
guadagni, sono di solito inesperti e fiacchi, perchè ignari del nuovo go verno
della cosa statale. Il segreto della varia vita delle città è nella saggia ar
monia di queste due forze, l'esperienza matura dei patres e la giovinezza
audace delle classi nuove. Quelle nelle quali i primi furono troppo fieri difensori
dei loro diritti lan guirono: i patres non vollero essere giusti, preferirono
es sere i più forti, onde fu mestieri che divenissero tirannici ed oppressori:
conservarono i loro privilegi, ma il prezzo di questi privilegi fu la debolezza
dello Stato, che al primo urto divenne preda dell' inimico. Quelle altre, in
cui la plebe per atto rivoluzionario acquisì d'un tratto i suoi diritti, ebbero
sempre costituzioni ispirate più dalla vendetta che dalla sapienza, e poterono
durare, per lo più, breve tempo, per turbolenze e dissensioni interne. Ben
diversa è la vita degli Stati, ove si giunge ad una reciproca graduale
integrazione de' due opposti in una vitale sintesi. È nell'ordine eterno delle
cose che « le idee non possano mai retrocedere », ed hanno vita felice soltanto
« quelle città nelle quali e la plebe ed i grandi vengono tra loro ad eque
transazioni. Ma pur tuttavia C.. concepisce la lotta di classe non solo come un
utile spediente, purché mantenuta ne' limiti della legge per giungere ad un
buono e durevole reggimento politico, ma come necessità di vita: e qui è un
punto fermo della sua dottrina politica, che nel suo saggio storico non appare,
e che nel ‘romanzo’, “Platone in Italia,” si rivela nella sua luminosa
chiarezza. Or vedi tu questa lotta eterna tra gli ottimati e la plebe, tra i
ricchi ed i poveri? In essa sta la vita non solo di Roma, di Atene, di Sparta,
ma di tutte le città. Ove essa non è, ivi non è vita: ivi un giogo di ferro
impo sto al cittadino ha estinte tutte le passioni dell'uomo e, con esse, il
germe di tutte le virtù, lo stimolo a tutte le più grandi imprese. Al cospetto
del gran re, nessun uomo emula più l'altro: e che invidierebbe, se son tutti
nulla? Quanto dura la vera vita di una città? Tanto quanto dura la disputa.
Tutti popoli hanno un periodo di vita certo e quasi diresti fatale, il quale
incomincia dall'estrema barbarie, cioè dall'estrema ignoranza ed op pressione,
e finisce nell'estrema licenza di ordini, di co stumi, di idee. Nella prima età
i padri han tutto, sanno tutto, fanno tutto, posseggon tutto. Se le cose si
rima nessero sempre così, la città sarebbe sempre barbara, cioè sempre
fanciulla. È necessario che si ceda alla plebe, poco a poco, ed in modo che non
se le dia ne meno nè più di quello che le bisogna: l'uno e l'altro ec cesso
porta seco o pericolosa sedizione o languore più funesto della sedizione
istessa. È necessario che il popolo prosperi sempre e che abbia sempre nuovi
bisogni, per chè questo è il segno più certo della sua prosperità. Guai a
quella città in cui il popolo non ha nulla ! Ma due volte ma guai a
quell'altra, in cui, non avendo nulla, nulla chiede ! È segno che la miseria
gli abbia tolto non solo, come dice Omero, la metà dell'anima, ma anche
l'ultimo spirito di vita che ci rimane nelle afflizioni, e che consiste nel la
gnarsi. È necessario però che il popolo e pretenda con modestia, e riceva con
gratitudine, e non cessi mai di sperare. Da queste considerazioni il molisano
trae una impor tante conclusione. Se la vita è molteplicità, ma molte plicità
non inorganizzata, bensì tendente ad unità, la molteplicità è pur necessaria
per attingere quella diffe renziazione di funzioni, il cui convergere forma la
felicità dello stato italiano. La vita di questo perciò è varietà, e non può
essere diversamente: l'uguaglianza assoluta è un'u topia, anzi un'utopia
dannosa. « Vi saranno sempre pa trizi e plebei, perchè vi saranno sempre i
pochi ed i molti; pochi ricchi e molti poveri; pochi industriosi e molti
scioperati; pochissimi savi e moltissimi stolti. I partigiani de' primi si
diran sempre patrizi, quelli de'se condi sempre plebei. Allorquando la plebe
avrà tutto il potere pubblico, e i patrizi nulla più avranno a cedere, allora,
« dopo aver eguagliati a poco a poco gli ordini, si vorranno eguagliare anche
gli uomini; dopo aver eguagliati i diritti, si vorrà l'eguaglianza anco dei
beni: e sorgeranno da ciò dispute eterne e pericolose. Eterne, perchè la
ragione delle dispute sussisterà sempre: vi saranno sempre poveri, vi saranno
sempre uomini da poco, i quali pretenderanno e crede ranno di meritar molto.
Pericolose, perchè tali dispute moveranno sempre la parte più numerosa del
popolo: i poveri, gli scioperati, i viziosi, tutti coloro i quali, nulla avendo
che perdere, non ricusan qualunque modo si of fra a guadagnare.... Le assemblee
diventeranno più tu multuose, le decisioni meno prudenti. I cittadini dalle
sedizioni civili passeranno alla guerra. Fra tanti partiti nascerà la necessità
che ciascuno abbia un capo; tra tanti capi uno rimarrà vincitore di tutti. Ed
avrà fine così la lite e la vita della città. Da ciò scaturisce un'altra
conclusione, che è una ri prova di precedenti nostre osservazioni circa la
politica cuochiana: i più adatti al pubblico reggimento non sono nè i ricchi,
pochi e tirannici, nè i poveri, molti e ti rannici in senso inverso dei ricchi,
ma bensì quel ceto medio, che con forme diverse e diversi aspetti, secondo i
vari tempi e la mutevole realtà storica, è nello stato. I migliori ordini
pubblici sono inutili se non vengono affidati ai migliori cittadini. Quelli
sono, in parole ed in fatti, ottimi tra gli ordini, i quali fan sì che la somma
delle cose sia sempre in mano degli uomini ottimi. Ma dove sono gli uomini
ottimi? Essi non son mai per l'ordinario nè tra i massimi, corrotti sempre
dalle ric chezze, nè tra i minimi di una città, avviliti sempre dalla miseria.
Ecco qui ritornare il concetto da noi già esaminato di un governo temperato,
equilibrio di forze opposte, e perciò armonia e giustizia, la quale giustizia
null'altro è se non obiettiva elisione d'ogni antagonismo e d'ogni dissension.
Ove avvien che siavi un ordine scelto, ma nel tempo istesso la facoltà a tutti
d'entrarvi, tostochè per le loro azioni ne sien divenuti degni, ivi tu eviti
gli scogli del l'oligarchia e della democrazia. Il popolo non permetterà che i
grandi, per gelosia di ordine, trascurino il merito; i grandi non soffriranno
che altri si elevi per via di viltà e di corruzione: per opra de’secondi
eviterai quella dissi pazione che ne' tempi di pace dissolve le città popolari;
per opra de' primi eviterai quella viltà per cui le città oligarchiche temono i
pericoli, e quel livore col quale si oppongono ad ogni pensiero nobile ed
ardito, e che vien dal timore dei grandi di dover ricorrere al merito di un
uomo il quale non appartenga al loro numero. Queste città così temperate sono
quelle che fanno più grandi cose delle altre, perchè non vi manca mai nè chi le
pro ponga nè chi le esegua. Soltanto attraverso questa coscienza politica dei
diri genti, attraverso quest'educazione dei poveri, attraverso questa
organizzazione di classi, sarà possibile realizzare quell’unione che è nel
pensiero di C.: fare delle varie stirpi italiche un popolo unico. Come nelle
singole città è possibile un contemperamento di interessi e di volontà singole,
così nella più vasta Italia è possibile un armo nizzamento di stirpi, di genti,
d' ideali diversi. Ma, mentre nelle città il processo d’unità procede dal
l'interno all'esterno, poichè una tirannia imposta estrin secamente è sempre
nociva e deleteria; nell'Italia il processo unitario può essere affrettato
dalla conquista e poi cementato dall'opera pubblica e pedagogica, dalla
religione unica e dalla legge unica. Il primo effetto della filosofia, dice C.,
è quello di avvezzar gli uomini a considerar la conquista non come un mezzo di
distrug gersi, ma di difendersi. E e, aggiungiamo noi, si di fende spesso più
validamente colui, che, essendo forte impone la sua ragion civile, la sua legge
agli altri, e non si assopisce in una pace senza parentesi d'attività belli
gera, assopimento che può diventare anche sonno e poi ancora morte. La
conquista perciò non deve rimanere mera conquista, cioè estrinseca forza, ma
deve conver tirsi in attività pubblica, imporsi alle volontà, plasmarle di sè,
unificarle nel nome d'un superiore verbo, il diritto. Questa, ammonisce C., è
la missione d’un popolo tra i tanti popoli della penisola, che L’ACCADEMIA e
Cleobolo nel loro viaggio incontrano, missione divina, missione il cui
spiegamento d'altra parte è nell'attualità della storia. Certo L’ACCADEMIA e
Cleobolo, nel frammentarismo italico del V secolo, non avrebbero mai potuto
dire quel che C. pone in bocca loro; ma le loro osservazioni, per quanto il
nostro spirito critico le riferisca all'autore del romanzo, non possono non
commoverci, e la commozione è in noi com'è nel molisano. In una prima età,
scrive Platone all'amico Archita, le città vivono pacificamente, e perciò s '
ignorano; ma in un secondo tempo si conoscono, e quindi si fanno guerra, o con
le armi o con le sottigliezze del commercio; ma questa conoscenza e questa
guerra non sono mai distruzione, ma reciproca integrazione: « da questa
vicendevole guerra, sia d'armi, sia d'industria, io veggo un'irresistibile ten
denza di tutte le nazioni a riunirsi; e, siccome ciascuna di esse ama aver le
altre piuttosto serve che amiche..., così veggo che, ad impedire la servitù del
genere umano ed a conservar più lungamente la pace sulla terra, il miglior
consiglio è sempre quello di accrescer coll' unione di molte città il numero
de' cittadini, prima e principal parte di quella forza, contro la quale la
virtù può bene insegnare a morire, ma la sola cieca e non calcolabile fortuna
può dar talora la vittoria ». « Non pare a te » continua il filosofo antico
caldo ne' suoi accenti e attraverso lui il magnanimo C. « che la natura, colle
diramazioni de' monti e de' fiumi, col circolo de' mari, colla varietà delle
produzioni del suolo e della temperatura de'cieli, da cui dipende la diversità
de' nostri bisogni e de' costumi nostri, e colla varia mo dificazione degli
accenti di quel linguaggio primitivo ed unico che gli uomini hanno appreso
dalla veemenza de gli affetti interni e dall'imitazione de’vari suoni esterni;
non ti pare, amico, ch'essa abbia in tal modo detto agli abitanti di ciascuna
regione: — Voi siete tutti fratelli: voi dovete formare una nazione sola? Da ciò scaturisce la necessità della
conquista come mezzo per affrettare dall'esterno un processo naturale: chi si
assume questa missione, diviene arbitro e stru mento della Provvidenza,
Provvidenza che per C., come del resto per VICO (si veda), è nell'immanenza
della storia, piuttosto che nella celeste trascendenza del divino posto fuori
di noi: questo l'intimo concetto, se pur qualche volta tradito dall'esteriorità
delle parole e dei simboli, nonchè da una certa oscillanza di pensiero. In Italia,
intuisce L’ACCADEMIA, un solo popolo sarà di ciò capace, il ROMANO, che sovra
la fiera rudezza dei san niti, sovra la imbecillità effeminata dei greci del
mez zodì, sovra la volubilità dei galli del Nord imporrà la sua legge, il suo
diritto, strumento d’universale civiltà, e che, in un lontano avvenire, venuto
a contatto con i cartaginesi e poi con i greci, non solo li debellerà come
entità politiche, ma solo s'assiderà dominatore del Me diterraneo e del mondo.
Rimarrà un solo popolo dominatore di tutta la terra, innanzi al di cui cospetto
tutto il genere umano tacerà; ed i superbi vincitori, pieni di vizi e di
orgoglio, rivolge ranno nelle proprie viscere il pugnale ancor fumante del
sangue del genere umano; e quando tutte le idee liberali degli uomini saranno
schiacciate ed estinte sotto l'im menso potere che è necessario a dominar
l'universo, e le virtù di tutte le nazioni prive di vicendevole emula zione
rimarranno arrugginite, ed i vizi di un sol popolo e talora di un sol uomo
saran divenuti, per la comune schiavitù, vizi comuni, sarà consumata allora la
vendetta degli dèi, i quali si servono delle grandi crisi della natura per
distruggere, e dell'ignoranza istessa degli uomini per emendare la loro
indocile razza. Grande sogno questo, in cui vibra tutto l'animo nostro in uno
con quello del Cuoco, ma che noi critici non dob biamo lasciare nel passato
inerte e perciò morto, come quello che non ritornerà più, ma trasportare nel
presente del C., cioè nel presente, che noi vediamo e pensiamo tale, quando in
un' Italia scissa e menomata da straniere superfetazioni, sia pur benigne come
quelle napoleoniche, l'unità era davvero un sogno; nel nostro presente, nella
nostra vita, che non è stasi, ma divenire, e perciò slancio, espansione,
conquista prima di noi stessi, della nostra maggiore unità, e poi del vario
mondo dei commerci e delle genti, che noi non vogliamo lasciare fuori di noi,
inerte grandezza da contemplare taciti am miranti, ma rendere nostre, per la
nostra civiltà, che è civiltà latina. Considerato da questo punto di vista
altamente poli tico, prescindendo da ogni considerazione artistica o filo
sofica, il Platone in Italia riacquista una grandissima importanza, «
riacquista » come ben dice il Gentile « tutto il suo valore, ed è la più grande
battaglia, combattuta dal Cuoco, per il suo ideale della formazione dello
spirito pubblico italiano. È l'animato ricordo d'un tempo che fu e d'una
grandezza, che sta a noi rinnovel lare, in cui tutta l'Italia si pose maestra
di civiltà tra i popoli, che da essa appresero le cose belle della vita, la
poesia, il teatro, la musica, la scultura, la pittura, che da essa intesero i
primi precetti del vivere e le norme de ' savi reggimenti; in cui l'Italia ebbe
un'egemonia indi scussa, che nella storia non si ripresenterà più se non forse
nel Rinascimento: ma, oltre che ricordo, è nello stesso tempo vivo presente,
perchè molte considerazioni che si fanno riferendosi all'Impero etrusco, alla
Magna Grecia, a Roma calzano nella loro semplicità, s'adattano alla nostra
travagliata vita moderna: ciò fa del Platone un libro, la cui importanza
trascende la sua deficienza artistica, il suo ibridismo filosofico. Perciò un
solo raffronto legittimo, quello tra il Platone e un altro grande libro, il
Primato morale e civile degli italiani, come quelli il cui obietto è uno solo,
e la materia alfine è pur essa comune: un'alta nazionale pedagogia politica.
Questo parallelismo fu prima accennato dal Gentile, ma poi sbozzato da un
francese, acuto studioso del Cuoco, al quale nel nostro studio abbiamo
frequentemente cennato, Hazard. ac GENTILE, Studi vichiani, GENTILE, Studi
vichiani, HAZARD. Anche ROMANO, raffronta C. e Gioberti e dice che il “Platone
in Italia” è la preparazione del primato morale e civile degli Italiani. Il
principio genetico dei due libri è lo stesso: una na zione non può esplicare le
forze vere, che sono in essa in potenza, nè può di esse usare, se non ha la
coscienza d'avere queste forze, o almeno la coscienza di poterle sviluppare, e
quindi dispiegare nella storia: perciò bi sogna nutrire un orgoglio nazionale,
che, basato sulla concreta realtà, è legittimo, non arbitrario. Ma, d'altra
parte, laddove il primato giobertiano, pur riannodan dosi, attraverso le glorie
romane, alle remote genti italo pelasgiche, trova il suo asse, il suo fulcro
nel Papato, espressione di purità religiosa e d'originaria sapienza, e si
rinnoverà, se il presente sarà a sufficienza legato al passato, cioè alla
tradizione medievale- cattolica; C., pur mantenendo ferma la remotissima storia
italo -pela sgica ed estrusca e poi ancora romana, pur riconoscendo l'alta
missione civilizzatrice della Chiesa nel Medio Evo, questo primato vuol
rinnovellare solo nel gioco delle li bere forze, espresse da quella tragica
crisi che è la rivo luzione francese ed italiana, nel loro sviluppo, e nello
spiegamento della loro maggior coscienza; nello Stato laico, insomma, che
afferrni sì la religione, come luce alla plebi, ma affermi pure una sua intima
naturale ra gione, che con la religione non ha nulla a che fare. E in
quest'accettamento delle nuove forze popolaresche, alle quali bisogna parlare,
perchè la volontà di nazione sia realmente nazione, e la volontà di Stato
realmente Stato, C. si lega ad un altro grande, MAZZINI (si veda), tanto
diverso da GIOBERTI (si veda), ma pur con questi entusiasta caldo nella visione
del futuro popolo dell'Italia re denta. L'educazione nazionale nel pensiero
cuochiano. Il popolo e la scuola. Nome compiuto: Vincenzo Cuoco. Cuoco. Keywords:
ITALIA, ITALO. Refs.: L. Speranza, “Grice e Cuoco” – The Swimming-Pool Library.
Cuoco.
Luigi Speranza – GRICE ITALO!; ossia, Grice e Curcio:
all’isola -- la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei
corpi esistenti – lucrezio epicureo – scuola di Noto – filosofia notese –
filosofia siracusana – filosofia siciliana -- filosofia italiana – Luigi
Speranza (Noto). Filosofo notese. Filosofo siracusano. Filosofo
siciliano. Filosofo Italiano. Noto, Siracusa, Sicilia. Grice: “Curcio is what
we could call at Oxford a poet; he wrote a little book ‘Esistentee,’ an obvious
parody on Sartre, ‘L’essistentialismo e un umanesimo.’ – His background is
philososophical though, and it shows!” Ensegna
a Noto e Messina. Direttore Generale per l'Ordine Ginnasiale. Altre opere:
“Armonia e dissonanza” – consonanza e dissonanza (Noto) – etimologia di armonia
– cognata con ‘armento’ e ‘aritmetica’ – “La sfinge” – “La piramide”. “Il
prezzo della salute” (Noto). Commenti, libri I-XXIV – Roma” – “Il giro del
templo” (Bonacci, Roma); “Mottetto” (Bonacci, Roma); “Fugato” (Bonacci, Roma);
“II grano di follia” (Bonacci, Roma); “Senza più peso” (Bonacci, Roma);
“Assolo, (Bonacci, Roma); “A due voci” (Bonacci, Roma); “L'avita vocazione”
(Bonacci, Roma); “Esistente” (Bonacci, Roma); “Altri occhi” (Bonacci, Roma);
“Le due cene” (Bonacci, Roma); “Sitio” (Bonacci, Roma); “Consummatum” (Bonacci,
Roma); “Derelictus” (Bonacci, Roma); “In horto” (Bonacci, Roma); “Paradossale”
(Bonacci, Roma); “Felix” (Bonacci, Roma); “Deliramentum” (Bonacci, Roma). MARIUS THE EPICUREAN. THE
RENAISSANCE : Studies in Art and Poetry. Globe. IMAGINARY PORTRAITS: A Prince
of Court Painters— Denys I'Auxerrois — Sebastian van Storck — Diike Carl of
Rosen- mold. Globe, APPRECIATIONS, with an Essay on Style. Globe. PLATO AND
PLATONISM : A Series of Lectures. Globe. MARIUS THE EPICUREAN. HIS SENSATIONS
AND IDEAS PATER. FELLOW OF BRASENOSE. a Xfiiiepivis Svapos, Sre fi^Kiarai ai
viKTCs m LIBRARY MACMILLAN The Religion of Numa. White-nights. Change of Air.
The Tree of Knowledge 5. The Golden Book 6. Euphuism. A Pagan End. Animula
Vagula. New Cyrenaicism. On the Way. The Most Religious City in the World. The
Divinity that doth hedge a King. The "Mistress and Mother" of Palaces
.Manly Amusement. Stoicism at Court. Second Thoughts. Beata Urbs. The Ceremony
of the Dart. The Will as Vision Two Curious Houses. Guests. Two Curious Houses.
The Church in Cecilia's House. The Minor Peace of the Church. Divine Service. A
Conversation not Imaginary . . Sunt Lacrim^e Rerum. The Martyrs. The Triumph of
Marcus Aurelius. Anima naturaliter Christiana. MARIUS THE EPICUREAN BY WALTER
PATER. ESSAYS FROM THE GUARDIAN. Extra Crown 8vo. 6s. G ASTON DE LATOUR : An
Unfinished Romance. Prepared for the Press by CHARLES L. SHADWELL, Fellow of
Oriel College. Extra Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES : A Series of
Essays. Prepared for the Press by CHARLES L. SHADWELL, Fellow of Oriel College.
Extra Crown GREEK STUDIES : A Series of Essays. Prepared for the Press by
SHADWELL, Fellow of Oriel. MARIUS THE EPICUREAN. His Sensations and Ideas.
IMAGINARY PORTRAITS : A Prince of Court Painters ; Denys 1'Auxerrois :
Sebastian van Storck ; Duke Carl of Rosenmold. THE RENAISSANCE : Studies in Art
and Poetry. Extra. PLATO AND PLATONISM : A Series of Lectures. Extra Crown 8vo.
8s. APPRECIATIONS, with an Essay on Style. Extra Crown. LIFE OF WALTER PATER.
By ARTHUR C. BENSON. English Men of Letters Series. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.,
LONDON. MARIUS THE EPICUREAN HIS SENSATIONS AND IDEAS WALTER PATER. FELLOW OF
BRASENOSE, OXFORD. Xet/u/nvos oVetpos, ore pjjcurrat at MACMILLAN AND CO.,
LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON. STOICISM AT COURT. SECOND THOUGHTS. BEATA
URBS. THE CEREMONY OF THE DART. THE WILL AS VISION. TWO CURIOUS HOUSES i.
GUESTS .TWO CURIOUS HOUSES 2. THE CHURCH IN CECILIA'S HOUSE. THE MINOR PEACE OF
THE CHURCH. DIVINE SERVICE. A CONVERSATION NOT IMAGINARY. SUNT LACRIM^E RERUM.
THE MARTYRS. THE TRIUMPH OF MARCUS AURELIUS . . 197 28. ANIMA NATURALITER
CHRISTIANA. Marius the Epicurean HIS SENSATIONS AND IDEAS. PATER. London. (The
Library Edition.). The Religion of Numa. White-Nights 3. Change of Air 4. The
Tree of Knowledge 5. The Golden Book 6. Euphuism. A Pagan End. Animula Vagula.
New Cyrenaicism On the Way. The Most Religious City in the World. The Divinity
that Doth Hedge a King. The “Mistress and Mother” of Palaces 14. Manly
Amusement. I have placed an asterisk immediately after each of Pater’s
footnotes and a + sign after my own notes, and have listed each of my notes at
that chapter’s end. Greek typeface: For this full-text edition, I have
transliterated Pater’s Greek quotations. If there is a need for the original
Greek, it can be viewed at my site, http://www.ajdrake.com/etexts, a
Victorianist archive that contains the complete works of Walter Pater and many
other nineteenth-century texts, mostly in first editions. MARIUS THE EPICUREAN,
VOLUME ONE WALTER PATER Χειμερινὸς ὄνειρος, ὅτε μήκισται αἱ νύκτες+ +“A winter’s dream, when nights are longest.” Lucian, The Dream MARIUS
THE EPICUREAN. “THE RELIGION OF NUMA” As, in the triumph of Christianity, the
old religion lingered latest in the country, and died out at last as but
paganism the religion of the villagers, before the advance of the Christian
Church; so, in an earlier century, it was in places remote from town-life that
the older and purer forms of paganism itself had survived the longest. While,
in Rome, new religions had arisen with bewildering complexity around the dying
old one, the earlier and simpler patriarchal religion, “the religion of Numa,”
as people loved to fancy, lingered on with little change amid the pastoral
life, out of the habits and sentiment of which so much of it had grown.
Glimpses of such a survival we may catch below the merely artificial attitudes
of Latin pastoral poetry; in Tibullus especially, who has preserved for us many
poetic details of old Roman religious usage. At mihi contingat patrios
celebrare Penates, Reddereque antiquo menstrua thura Lari: he prays, with
unaffected seriousness. Something liturgical, with repetitions of a consecrated
form of words, is traceable in one of his elegies, as part of the order of a
birthday sacrifice. The hearth, from a spark of which, as one form of old legend
related, the child Romulus had been miraculously born, was still indeed an
altar; and the worthiest sacrifice to the gods the perfect physical sanity of
the young men and women, which the scrupulous ways of that religion of the
hearth had tended to maintain. A religion of usages and sentiment rather than
of facts and belief, and attached to very definite things and places the oak of
immemorial age, the rock on the heath fashioned by weather as if by some dim
human art, the shadowy grove of ilex, passing into which one exclaimed
involuntarily, in consecrated phrase, Deity is in this Place! Numen Inest! it
was in natural harmony with the temper of a quiet people amid the spectacle of
rural life, like that simpler faith between man and man, which Tibullus expressly
connects with the period when, with an inexpensive worship, the old wooden gods
had been still pressed for room in their homely little shrines. And about the
time when the dying Antoninus Pius ordered his golden image of Fortune to be
carried into the chamber of his successor (now about to test the truth of the
old Platonic contention, that the world would at last find itself happy, could
it detach some reluctant philosophic student from the more desirable life of
celestial contemplation, and compel him to rule it), there was a boy living in
an old country-house, half farm, half villa, who, for himself, recruited that
body of antique traditions by a spontaneous force of religious veneration such
as had originally called them into being. More than a century and a half had
past since Tibullus had written; but the restoration of religious usages, and
their retention where they still survived, was meantime come to be the fashion
through the influence of imperial example; and what had been in the main a matter
of family pride with his father, was sustained by a native instinct of devotion
in the young Marius. A sense of conscious powers external to ourselves, pleased
or displeased by the right or wrong conduct of every circumstance of daily life
that conscience, of which the old Roman religion was a formal, habitual
recognition, was become in him a powerful current of feeling and observance.
The old-fashioned, partly puritanic awe, the power of which Wordsworth noted
and valued so highly in a northern peasantry, had its counterpart in the
feeling of the Roman lad, as he passed the spot, “touched of heaven,” where the
lightning had struck dead an aged labourer in the field: an upright stone,
still with mouldering garlands about it, marked the place. He brought to that
system of symbolic usages, and they in turn developed in him further, a great
seriousness an impressibility to the sacredness of time, of lifeand its events,
and the circumstances of family fellowship; of such gifts to men as fire,
water, the earth, from labour on which they live, really understood by him as
gifts a sense of eligious responsibility in the reception of them. It was a
religion for the most part of fear, of multitudinous scruples, of a year-long
burden of forms; yet rarely (on clear summer mornings, for instanrce) the
thought of those heavenly powers afforded a welcome channel for the almost
stifling sense of health and delight in him, and relieved it as gratitude to
the gods. The day of the “little” or private Ambarvalia was come, to be
celebrated by a single family for the welfare of all belonging to it, as the
great college of the Arval Brothers offici ated at Rome in the interest of the
whole state. At the appointed time all work ceases; the instruments of labour
lie untouched, hung with wreaths of flowers, while masters and servants
together go in solemn procession along the dry paths of vineyard and cornfield,
conducting the victims whose blood is presently to be shed for the purification
from all natural or supernatural taint o f the lands they have “gone about.”
The old Latin words of the liturgy, to be said as the procession moved on its
way, though their precise meaning was long since become unintelligible, were
recited from an ancient illuminated roll, kept in the painted chest in the
hall, together with the family records. Early on that day the girls of the farm
had been busy in the great portico, filling large baskets with flowers plucked
short from branches of apple and cherry, then in spacious bloom, to strew
before the quaint images of the gods Ceres and BACCO and the yet more
mysterious Dea Dia as they passed through the fields, carried in their little
houses on the shoulders of white-clad youths, who were understood to proceed to
this office in perfect temperance, as pure in soul and body as the air they
breathed in the firm weather of that early summer-time. The clean lustral water
and the full incense-box were carried after them. The altars were gay with
garlands of wool and the more sumptuous sort of blossom and green herbs to be
thrown into the sacrificial fire, fresh-gathered this morning from a particular
plot in the old garden, set apart for the purpose. Just then the young leaves
were almost as fragrant as flowers, and the scent of the bean-fields mingled
pleasantly with the cloud of incense. But for the monotonous intonation of the
liturgy by the priests, clad in their strange, stiff, antique vestments, and
bearing ears of green corn upon their heads, secured by flowing bands of white,
the procession moved in absolute stillness, all persons, even the children,
abstaining from speech after the utterance of the pontifical formula, Favete
linguis! Silence! Propitious Silence! lest any words save those proper to the
occasion should hinder the religious efficacy of the rite. With the lad Marius,
who, as the head of his house, took a leading part in the ceremonies of the
day, there was a devout effort to complete this impressive outward silence by
that inward tacitness of mind, esteemed so important by religious Romans in the
performance of these sacred functions. To him the sustained stillness without
seemed really but to be waiting upon that interior, mental condition of
preparation or expectancy, for which he was just then intently striving. The
persons about him, certainly, had never been challenged by those prayers and
ceremonies to any ponderings on the divine nature: they conceived them rather
to be the appointed means of setting such troublesome movements at rest. By
them, “the religion of Numa,” so staid, ideal and comely, the object of so much
jealous conservatism, though of direct service as lending sanction to a sort of
high scrupulosity, especially in the chief points of domestic conduct, was
mainly prized as being, through its hereditary character, something like a personal
distinction as contributing, among the other accessories of an ancient house,
to the production of that aristocratic atmosphere which separated them from
newly-made people. But in the young Marius, the very absence from those
venerable usages of all definite history and dogmatic interpretation, had
already awakened much speculative activity; and to-day, starting from the
actual details of the divine service, some very lively surmises, though
scarcely distinct enough to be thoughts, were moving backwards and forwards in
his mind, as the stirring wind had done all day among the trees, and were like
the passing of some mysterious influence over all the elements of his nature
and experience. One thing only distracted him a certain pity at the bottom of his
heart, and almost on his lips, for the sacrificial victims and their looks of
terror, rising almost to disgust at the central act of the sacrifice itself, a
piece of everyday butcher’s work, such as we decorously hide out of sight;
though some then present certainly displayed a frank curiosity in the spectacle
thus permitted them on a religious pretext. The old sculptors of the great
procession on the frieze of the Parthenon at Athens, have delineated the placid
heads of the victims led in it to sacrifice, with a perfect feeling for animals
in forcible contrast with any indifference as to their sufferings. It was this
contrast that distracted Marius now in the blessing of his fields, and
qualified his devout absorption upon the scrupulous fulfilment of all the
details of the ceremonial, as the procession approached the altars. The names
of that great populace of “little gods,” dear to the Roman home, which the
pontiffs had placed on the sacred list of the Indigitamenta, to be invoked,
because they can help, on special occasions, were not forgotten in the long
litany Vatican who causes the infant to utter his first cry, Fabulinus who
prompts his first word, Cuba who keeps him quiet in his cot, Domiduca
especially, for whom Marius had through life a particular memory and devotion,
the goddess who watches over one’s safe coming home. The urns of the dead in
the family chapel received their due service. They also were now become
something divine, a goodly company of friendly and protecting spirits, encamped
about the place of their former abode above all others, the father, dead ten
years before, of whom, remembering but a tall, grave figure above him in early
childhood, Marius habitually thought as a genius a little cold and severe. Candidus insuetum miratur limen
Olympi, Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera. Perhaps! but certainly needs his altar here below, and
garlands to-day upon his urn. But the dead genii were satisfied with little a
few violets, a cake dipped in wine, or a morsel of honeycomb. Daily, from the
time when his childish footsteps were still uncertain, had Marius taken them
their portion of the family meal, at the second course, amidst the silence of
the company. They loved those who brought them their sustenance; but, deprived
of these services, would be heard wandering through the house, crying
sorrowfully in the stillness of the night. And those simple gifts, like other
objects as trivial bread, oil, wine, milk had regained for him, by their use in
such religious service, that poetic and as it were moral significance, which
surely belongs to all the means of daily life, could we but break through the
veil of our familiarity with things by no means vulgar in themselves. A hymn
followed, while the whole assembly stood with veiled faces. The fire rose up
readily from the altars, in clean, bright flame a favourable omen, making it a
duty to render the mirth of the evening complete. Old wine was poured out
freely for the servants at supper in the great kitchen, where they had worked
in the imperfect light through the long evenings of winter. The young Marius
himself took but a very sober part in the noisy feasting. A devout, regretful
after-taste of what had been really beautiful in the ritual he had accomplished
took him early away, that he might the better recall in reverie all the
circumstances of the celebration of the day. As he sank into a sleep, pleasant
with all the influences of long hours in the open air, he seemed still to be
moving in procession through the fields, with a kind of pleasurable awe. That
feeling was still upon him as he awoke amid the beating of violent rain on the
shutters, in the first storm of the season. The thunder which startled him from
sleep seemed to make the solitude of his chamber almost painfully complete, as
if the nearness of those angry clouds shut him up in a close place alone in the
world. Then he thought of the sort of protection which that day’s ceremonies
assured. To procure an agreement with the gods Pacem deorum exposcere: that was
the meaning of what they had all day been busy upon. In a faith, sincere but
half-suspicious, he would fain have those Powers at least not against him. His
own nearer household gods were all around his bed. The spell of his religion as
a part of the very essence of home, its intimacy, its dignity and security, was
forcible at that moment; only, it seemed to involve certain heavy demands upon
him. To an instinctive seriousness, the material abode in which the childhood
of Marius was passed had largely added. Nothing, you felt, as you first caught
sight of that coy, retired place, surely nothing could happen there, without
its full accompaniment of thought or reverie. White-nights! so you might
interpret its old Latin name.* “The red rose came first,” says a quaint German
mystic, speaking of “the mystery of so-called white things,” as being “ever an
after-thought the doubles, or seconds, of real things, and themselves but
half-real, half-material the white queen, the white witch, the white mass,
which, as the black mass is a travesty of the true mass turned to evil by
horrible old witches, is celebrated by young candidates for the priesthood with
an unconsecrated host, by way of rehearsal.” So, white-nights, I suppose, after
something like the same analogy, should be nights not of quite blank
forgetfulness, but passed in continuous dreaming, only half veiled by sleep.
Certainly the place was, in such case, true to its fanciful name in this, that
you might very well conceive, in face of it, that dreaming even in the daytime
might come to much there. Ad Vigilias Albas. The young Marius represented an
ancient family whose estate had come down to him much curtailed through the
extravagance of a certain Marcellus two generations before, a favourite in his
day of the fashionable world at Rome, where he had at least spent his substance
with a correctness of taste MARIO might seem to have inherited from him; as he
was believed also to resemble him in a singularly pleasant smile, consistent
however, in the younger face, with some degree of sombre expression when the
mind within was but slightly moved. As the means of life decreased, the farm
had crept nearer and nearer to the dwelling-house, about which there was
therefore a trace of workday negligence or homeliness, not without its
picturesque charm for some, for the young master himself among them. The more
observant passer-by would note, curious as to the inmates, a certain amount of
dainty care amid that neglect, as if it came in part, perhaps, from a
reluctance to disturb old associations. It was significant of the national
character, that a sort of elegant gentleman farming, as we say, had been much
affected by some of the most cultivated Romans. But it became something more
than an elegant diversion, something of a serious business, with the household
of Marius; and his actual interest in the cultivation of theearth and the care
of flocks had brought him, at least, intimately near to those elementary
conditions of life, a reverence for which, the great Roman poet, as he has
shown by his own half-mystic pre-occupation with them, held to be the ground of
primitive Roman religion, as of primitive morals. But then, farm-life in Italy,
including the culture of the olive and the vine, has a grace of its own, and
might well contribute to the production of an ideal dignity of character, like
that of nature itself in this gifted region. Vulgarity seemed impossible. The
place, though impoverished, was still deservedly dear, full of venerable
memories, and with a living sweetness of its own for to-day. To hold by such
ceremonial traditions had been a part of the struggling family pride of the
lad’s father, to which the example of the head of the state, old Antoninus Pius
an example to be still further enforced by his successor had given a fresh
though perhaps somewhat artificial popularity. It had been consistent with many
another homely and old-fashioned trait in him, not to undervalue the charm of
exclusiveness and immemorial authority, which membership in a local priestly
college, hereditary in his house, conferred upon him. To set a real value on
these things was but one element in that pious concern for his home and all
that belonged to it, which, as Marius afterwards discovered, had been a strong
motive with his father. The ancient hymn Fana Novella! was still sung by his
people, as the new moon grew bright in the west, and even their wild custom of
leaping through heaps of blazing straw on a certain night in summer was not
discouraged. The privilege of augury itself, according to tradition, had at one
time belonged to his race; and if you can imagine how, once in a way, an
impressible boy might have an inkling, an inward mystic intimation, of the
meaning and consequences of all that, what was implied in it becoming explicit
for him, you conceive aright the mind of Marius, in whose house the auspices were
still carefully consulted before every undertaking of moment. The devotion of
the father then had handed on loyally and that is all many not unimportant
persons ever find to do a certain tradition of life, which came to mean much
for the young Marius. The feeling with which he thought of his dead father was
almost exclusively that of awe; though crossed at times by a not unpleasant
sense of liberty, as he could but confess to himself, pondering, in the actual
absence of so weighty and continual a restraint, upon the arbitrary power which
Roman religion and Roman law gave to the parent over the son. On the part of
his mother, on the other hand, entertaining the husband’s memory, there was a
sustained freshness of regret, together with the recognition, as MARIO fancies,
of some costly self-sacrifice to be credited to the dead. The life of the
widow, languid and shadowy enough but for the poignancy of that regret, was
like one long service to the departed soul; its many annual observances
centering about the funeral urn a tiny, delicately carved marble house, still
white and fair, in the family-chapel, wreathed always with the richest flowers
from the garden. To the dead, in fact, was conceded in such places a somewhat
closer neighbourhood to the old homes they were thought still to protect, than
is usual with us, or was usual in Rome itself a closeness which the living
welcomed, so diverse are the ways of our human sentiment, and in which the more
wealthy, at least in the country, might indulge themselves. All this Marius
followed with a devout interest, sincerely touched and awed by his mother’s
sorrow. After the deification of the emperors, we are told, it was considered
impious so much as to use any coarse expression in the presence of their
images. To Marius the whole of life seemed full of sacred presences, demanding
of him a similar collectedness. The severe and archaic religion of the villa,
as he conceived it, begot in him a sort of devout circumspection lest he should
fall short at any point of the demand upon him of anything in which deity was
concerned. He must satisfy with a kind of sacred equity, he must be very
cautious lest he be found wanting to, the claims of others, in their joys and
calamities the happiness which deity sanctioned, or the blows in which it made
itself felt. And from habit, this feeling of a responsibility towards the world
of men and things, towards a claim for due sentiment concerning them on his
side, came to be a part of his nature not to be put off. It kept him serious
and dignified amid the Epicurean speculations which in after years much
engrossed him, and when he had learned to think of all religions as
indifferent, serious amid many fopperies and through many languid days, and
made him anticipate all his life long as a thing towards which he must
carefully train himself, some great occasion of self-devotion, such as really
came, that should consecrate his life, and, it might be, its memory with
others, as the early Christian looked forward to martyrdom at the end of his course,
as a seal of worth upon it. The traveller, descending from the slopes of LUNA,
even as he got his first view of the Port-of-Venus, would pause by the way, to
read the face, as it were, of so beautiful a dwelling-place, lying away from
the white road, at the point where it began to decline somewhat steeply to the
marsh-land below. The building of pale red and yellow marble, mellowed by age,
which he saw beyond the gates, was indeed but the exquisite fragment of a once
large and sumptuous villa. Two centuries of the play of the sea-wind were in
the velvet of the mosses which lay along its inaccessible ledges and angles.
Here and there the marble plates had slipped from their places, where the
delicate weeds had forced their way. The graceful wildness which prevailed in
garden and farm gave place to a singular nicety about the actual habitation,
and a still more scrupulous sweetness and order reigned within. The old Roman
architects seem to have well understood the decorative value of the floor the
real economy there was, in the production of rich interior effect, of a
somewhat lavish expenditure upon the surface they trod on. The pavement of the
hall had lost something of its evenness; but, though a little rough to the
foot, polished and cared for like a piece of silver, looked, as mosaic-work is
apt to do, its best in old age. Most noticeable among the ancestral masks, each
in its little cedarn chest below the cornice, was that of the wasteful but
elegant Marcellus, with the quaint resemblance in its yellow waxen features to
Marius, just then so full of animation and country colour. A chamber, curved
ingeniously into oval form, which he had added to the mansion, still contained
his collection of works of art; above all, that head of Medusa, for which the
villa was famous. The spoilers of one of the old Greek towns on the coast had
flung away or lost the thing, as it seemed, in some rapid flight across the
river below, from the sands of which it was drawn up in a fisherman’s net, with
the fine golden laminae still clinging here and there to the bronze. It was
Marcellus also who had contrived the prospect-tower of two storeys with the
white pigeon-house above, so characteristic of the place. The little glazed
windows in the uppermost chamber framed each its dainty landscape the pallid
crags of Carrara, like wildly twisted snow-drifts above the purple heath; the
distant harbour with its freight of white marble going to sea; the lighthouse
temple of Venus Speciosa on its dark headland, amid the long-drawn curves of white
breakers. Even on summer nights the air there had always a motion in it, and
drove the scent of the new-mown hay along all the passages of the house.
Something pensive, spell-bound, and but half real, something cloistral or
monastic, as we should say, united to this exquisite order, made the whole
place seem to Marius, as it were, sacellum, the peculiar sanctuary, of his
mother, who, still in real widowhood, provided the deceased Marius the elder
with that secondary sort of life which we can give to the dead, in our
intensely realised memory of them the “subjective immortality,” to use a modern
phrase, for which many a Roman epitaph cries out plaintively to widow or sister
or daughter, still in the land of the living. Certainly, if any such
considerations regarding them do reach the shadowy people, he enjoyed that
secondary existence, that warm place still left, in thought at least, beside
the living, the desire for which is actually, in various forms, so great a
motive with most of us. And Marius the younger, even thus early, came to think
of women’s tears, of women’s hands to lay one to rest, in death as in the sleep
of childhood, as a sort of natural want. The soft lines of the white hands and
face, set among the many folds of the veil and stole of the Roman widow, busy
upon her needlework, or with music sometimes, defined themselves for him as the
typical expression of maternity. Helping her with her white and purple wools,
and caring for her musical instruments, he won, as if from the handling of such
things, an urbane and feminine refinement, qualifying duly his country-grown
habits the sense of a certain delicate blandness, which he relished, above all,
on returning to the “chapel” of his mother, after long days of open-air
exercise, in winter or stormy summer. For poetic souls in old Italy felt,
hardly less strongly than the English, the pleasures of winter, of the hearth,
with the very dead warm in its generous heat, keeping the young myrtles in
flower, though the hail is beating hard without. One important principle, of
fruit afterwards in his Roman life, that relish for the country fixed deeply in
him; in the winters especially, when the sufferings of the animal world became
so palpable even to the least observant. It fixed in him a sympathy for all
creatures, for the almost human troubles and sicknesses of the flocks, for
instance. It was a feeling which had in it something of religious veneration
for life as such for that mysterious essence which man is powerless to create
in even the feeblest degree. One by one, at the desire of his mother, the lad
broke down his cherished traps and springes for the hungry wild birds on the
salt marsh. A white bird, she told him once, looking at him gravely, a bird
which he must carry in his bosom across a crowded public place his own soul was
like that! Would it reach the hands of his good genius on the opposite side,
unruffled and unsoiled? And as his mother became to him the very type of
maternity in things, its unfailing pity and protectiveness, and maternity itself
the central type of all love; so, that beautiful dwelling-place lent the
reality of concrete outline to a peculiar ideal of home, which throughout the
rest of his life he seemed, amid many distractions of spirit, to be ever
seeking to regain. And a certain vague fear of evil, constitutional in him,
enhanced still further this sentiment of home as a place of tried security. His
religion, that old Italian religion, in contrast with the really light-hearted
religion of Greece, had its deep undercurrent of gloom, its sad, haunting
imageries, not exclusively confined to the walls of Etruscan tombs. The
function of the conscience, not always as the prompter of gratitude for
benefits received, but oftenest as his accuser before those angry heavenly
masters, had a large part in it; and the sense of some unexplored evil, ever
dogging his footsteps, made him oddly suspicious of particular places and
persons. Though his liking for animals was so strong, yet one fierce day in
early summer, as he walked along a narrow road, he had seen the snakes
breeding, and ever afterwards avoided that place and its ugly associations, for
there was something in the incident which made food distasteful and his sleep
uneasy for many days afterwards. The memory of it however had almost passed
away, when at the corner of a street in Pisa, he came upon an African showman
exhibiting a great serpent: once more, as the reptile writhed, the former
painful impression revived: it was like a peep into the lower side of the real
world, and again for many days took all sweetness from food and sleep. He
wondered at himself indeed, trying to puzzle out the secret of that repugnance,
having no particular dread of a snake’s bite, like one of his companions, who
had put his hand into the mouth of an old garden-god and roused there a
sluggish viper. A kind of pity even mingled with his aversion, and he could
hardly have killed or injured the animals, which seemed already to suffer by
the very circumstance of their life, being what they were. It was something
like a fear of the supernatural, or perhaps rather a moral feeling, for the
face of a great serpent, with no grace of fur or feathers, so different from
quadruped or bird, has a sort of humanity of aspect in its spotted and clouded
nakedness. There was a humanity, dusty and sordid and as if far gone in
corruption, in the sluggish coil, as it awoke suddenly into one metallic spring
of pure enmity against him. Long afterwards, when it happened that at Rome he
saw, a second time, a showman with his serpents, he remembered the night which
had then followed, thinking, in Saint Augustine’s vein, on the real greatness
of those little troubles of children, of which older people make light; but
with a sudden gratitude also, as he reflected how richly possessed his life had
actually been by beautiful aspects and imageries, seeing how greatly what was
repugnant to the eye disturbed his peace. Thus the boyhood of Marius passed; on
the whole, more given to contemplation than to action. Less prosperous in
fortune than at an earlier day there had been reason to expect, and animating
his solitude, as he read eagerly and intelligently, with the traditions of the
past, already he lived much in the realm of the imagination, and became
betimes, as he was to continue all through life, something of an idealist,
constructing the world for himself in great measure from within, by the
exercise of meditative power. A vein of subjective philosophy, with the
individual for its standard of all things, there would be always in his intellectual
scheme of the world and of conduct, with a certain incapacity wholly to accept
other men’s valuations. And the generation of this peculiar element in his
temper he could trace up to the days when his life had been so like the reading
of a romance to him. Had the Romans a word for unworldly? The beautiful word
umbratilis perhaps comes nearest to it; and, with that precise sense, might
describe the spirit in which he prepared himself for the sacerdotal function
hereditary in his family the sort of mystic enjoyment he had in the abstinence,
the strenuous self-control and ascêsis, which such preparation involved. Like
the young Ion in the beautiful opening of the play of Euripides, who every
morning sweeps the temple floor with such a fund of cheerfulness in his
service, he was apt to be happy in sacred places, with a susceptibility to
their peculiar influences which he never outgrew; so that often in after-times,
quite unexpectedly, this feeling would revive in him with undiminished
freshness. That first, early, boyish ideal of priesthood, the sense of
dedication, survived through all the distractions of the world, and when all
thought of such vocation had finally passed from him, as a ministry, in spirit
at least, towards a sort of hieratic beauty and order in the conduct of life.
And now what relieved in part this over-tension of soul was the lad’s pleasure
in the country and the open air; above all, the ramble to the coast, over the
marsh with its dwarf roses and wild lavender, and delightful signs, one after
another the abandoned boat, the ruined flood-gates, the flock of wild birds
that one was approaching the sea; the long summer-day of idleness among its
vague scents and sounds. And it was characteristic of him that he relished
especially the grave, subdued, northern notes in all that the charm of the
French or English notes, as we might term them in the luxuriant Italian
landscape. Dilexi decorem domus tuae. That almost morbid religious idealism,
and his healthful love of the country, were both alike developed by the
circumstances of a journey, which happened about this time, when Marius was
taken to a certain temple of Aesculapius, among the hills of Etruria, as was
then usual in such cases, for the cure of some boyish sickness. The religion of
Aesculapius, though borrowed from Greece, had been naturalised in Rome in the
old republican times; but had reached under the Antonines the height of its
popularity throughout the Roman world. That was an age of valetudinarians, in
many instances of imaginary ones; but below its various crazes concerning
health and disease, largely multiplied a few years after the time of which I am
speaking by the miseries of a great pestilence, lay a valuable, because partly
practicable, belief that all the maladies of the soul might be reached through
the subtle gateways of the body. Salus, salvation, for the Romans, had come to
mean bodily sanity. The religion of the god of bodily health, Salvator, as they
called him absolutely, had a chance just then of becoming the one religion;
that mild and philanthropic son of Apollo surviving, or absorbing, all other
pagan godhead. The apparatus of the medical art, the salutary mineral or herb,
diet or abstinence, and all the varieties of the bath, came to have a kind of
sacramental character, so deep was the feeling, in more serious minds, of a
moral or spiritual profit in physical health, beyond the obvious bodily
advantages one had of it; the body becoming truly, in that case, but a quiet
handmaid of the soul. The priesthood or “family” of Aesculapius, a vast
college, believed to be in possession of certain precious medical secrets, came
nearest perhaps, of all the institutions of the pagan world, to the Christian
priesthood; the temples of the god, rich in some instances with the accumulated
thank-offerings of centuries of a tasteful devotion, being really also a kind
of hospitals for the sick, administered in a full conviction of the
religiousness, the refined and sacred happiness, of a life spent in the
relieving of pain. Elements of a really experimental and progressive knowledge
there were doubtless amid this devout enthusiasm, bent so faithfully on the
reception of health as a direct gift from God; but for the most part his care
was held to take effect through a machinery easily capable of misuse for
purposes of religious fraud.Through dreams, above all, inspired by Aesculapius
himself, information as to the cause and cure of a malady was supposed to come
to the sufferer, in a belief based on the truth that dreams do sometimes, for those
who watch them carefully, give many hints concerning the conditions of the body
those latent weak points at which disease or death may most easily break into
it. In the time of Marcus Aurelius these medical dreams had become more than
ever a fashionable caprice. Aristeides, the “Orator,” a man of undoubted
intellectual power, has devoted six discourses to their interpretation; the
really scientific Galen has recorded how beneficently they had intervened in
his own case, at certain turning-points of life; and a belief in them was one
of the frailties of the wise emperor himself. Partly for the sake of these
dreams, living ministers of the god, more likely to come to one in his actual
dwelling-place than elsewhere, it was almost a necessity that the patient
should sleep one or more nights within the precincts of a temple consecrated to
his service, during which time he must observe certain rules prescribed by the
priests. For this purpose, after devoutly saluting the Lares, as was customary
before starting on a journey, Marius set forth one summer morning on his way to
the famous temple which lay among the hills beyond the valley of the Arnus. It
was his greatest adventure hitherto; and he had much pleasure in all its
details, in spite of his feverishness. Starting early, under the guidance of an
old serving-man who drove the mules, with his wife who took all that was
needful for their refreshment on the way and for the offering at the shrine,
they went, under the genial heat, halting now and then to pluck certain flowers
seen for the first time on these high places, upwards, through a long day of
sunshine, while cliffs and woods sank gradually below their path. The evening
came as they passed along a steep white road with many windings among the
pines, and it was night when they reached the temple, the lights of which shone
out upon them pausing before the gates of the sacred enclosure, while MARIO
becomes alive to a singular purity in the air. A rippling of water about the
place was the only thing audible, as they waited till two priestly figures,
speaking Greek to one another, admitted them into a large, white-walled and
clearly lighted guest-chamber, in which, while he partook of a simple but
wholesomely prepared supper, MARIO still seems to feel pleasantly the height
they had attained to among the hills. The agreeable sense of all this was
spoiled by one thing only, his old fear of serpents; for it was under the form
of a serpent that Aesculapius had come to Rome, and the last definite thought
of his weary head before he fell asleep had been a dread either that the god
might appear, as he was said sometimes to do, under this hideous aspect, or
perhaps one of those great sallow-hued snakes themselves, kept in the sacred
place, as he had also heard was usual. And after an hour’s feverish dreaming he
awoke with a cry, it would seem, for some one had entered the room bearing a
light. The footsteps of the youthful figure which approached and sat by his
bedside were certainly real. Ever afterwards, when the thought arose in his
mind of some unhoped-for but entire relief from distress, like blue sky in a
storm at sea, would come back the memory of that gracious countenance which,
amid all the kindness of its gaze, had yet a certain air of predominance over
him, so that he seemed now for the first time to have found the master of his
spirit. It would have been sweet to be the servant of him who now sat beside
him speaking. He caught a lesson from what was then said, still somewhat beyond
his years, a lesson in the skilled cultivation of life, of experience, of
opportunity, which seemed to be the aim of the young priest’s recommendations.
The sum of them, through various forgotten intervals of argument, as might
really have happened in a dream, was the precept, repeated many times under
slightly varied aspects, of a diligent promotion of the capacity of the eye,
inasmuch as in the eye would lie for him the determining influence of life: he
was of the number of those who, in the words of a poet who came long after, must
be “made perfect by the love of visible beauty.” The discourse was conceived
from the point of view of a theory Marius found afterwards in Plato’s Phaedrus,
which supposes men’s spirits susceptible to certain influences, diffused, after
the manner of streams or currents, by fair things or persons visibly present
green fields, for instance, or children’s faces into the air around them,
acting, in the case of some peculiar natures, like potent material essences,
and conforming the seer to themselves as with some cunning physical necessity.
This theory,* in itself so fantastic, had however determined in a range of
methodical suggestions, altogether quaint here and there from their
circumstantial minuteness. And throughout, the possibility of some vision, as
of a new city coming down “like a bride out of heaven,” a vision still indeed,
it might seem, a long way off, but to be granted perhaps one day to the eyes
thus trained, was presented as the motive of this laboriously practical
direction. Ê aporroê tou kallous. “Emanation from a thing of beauty.If thou
wouldst have all about thee like the colours of some fresh picture, in a clear
light,” so the discourse recommenced after a pause, “be temperate in thy
religious notions, in love, in wine, in all things, and of a peaceful heart
with thy fellows.” To keep the eye clear by a sort of exquisite personal
alacrity and cleanliness, extending even to his dwelling-place; to
discriminate, ever more and more fastidiously, select form and colour in things
from what was less select; to meditate much on beautiful visible objects, on
objects, more especially, connected with the period of youth on children at
play in the morning, the trees in early spring, on young animals, on the
fashions and amusements of young men; to keep ever by him if it were but a
single choice flower, a graceful animal or sea-shell, as a token and
representative of the whole kingdom of such things; to avoid jealously, in his
way through the world, everything repugnant to sight; and, should any circumstance
tempt him to a general converse in the range of such objects, to disentangle
himself from that circumstance at any cost of place, money, or opportunity;
such were in brief outline the duties recognised, the rights demanded, in this
new formula of life. And it was delivered with conviction; as if the speaker
verily saw into the recesses of the mental and physical being of the listener,
while his own expression of perfect temperance had in it a fascinating power
the merely negative element of purity, the mere freedom from taint or flaw, in
exercise as a positive influence. Long afterwards, when Marius read the
Charmides that other dialogue of Plato, into which he seems to have expressed
the very genius of old Greek temperance the image of this speaker came back
vividly before him, to take the chief part in the conversation. It was as a
weighty sanction of such temperance, in almost visible symbolism (an outward
imagery identifying itself with unseen moralities) that the memory of that
night’s double experience, the dream of the great sallow snake and the
utterance of the young priest, always returned to him, and the contrast therein
involved made him revolt with unfaltering instinct from the bare thought of an
excess in sleep, or diet, or even in matters of taste, still more from any
excess of a coarser kind. When he awoke again, still in the exceeding freshness
he had felt on his arrival, and now in full sunlight, it was as if his sickness
had really departed with the terror of the night: a confusion had passed from
the brain, a painful dryness from his hands. Simply to be alive and there was a
delight; and as he bathed in the fresh water set ready for his use, the air of
the room about him seemed like pure gold, the very shadows rich with colour.
Summoned at length by one of the white-robed brethren, he went out to walk in
the temple garden. At a distance, on either side, his guide pointed out to him
the Houses of Birth and Death, erected for the reception respectively of women
about to become mothers, and of persons about to die; neither of those
incidents being allowed to defile, as was thought, the actual precincts of the
shrine. His visitor of the previous night he saw nowhere again. But among the
official ministers of the place there was one, already marked as of great
celebrity, whom Marius saw often in later days at Rome, the physician Galen,
now about thirty years old. He was standing, the hood partly drawn over his
face, beside the holy well, as Marius and his guide approached it. This famous
well or conduit, primary cause of the temple and its surrounding institutions,
was supplied by the water of a spring flowing directly out of the rocky
foundations of the shrine. From the rim of its basin rose a circle of trim
columns to support a cupola of singular lightness and grace, itself full of
reflected light from the rippling surface, through which might be traced the
wavy figure-work of the marble lining below as the stream of water rushed in.
Legend told of a visit of Aesculapius to this place, earlier and happier than
his first coming to Rome: an inscription around the cupola recorded it in
letters of gold. “Being come unto this place the son of God loved it
exceedingly:” Huc profectus filius Dei maxime amavit hunc locum; and it was
then that that most intimately human of the gods had given men the well, with
all its salutary properties. The element itself when received into the mouth,
in consequence of its entire freedom from adhering organic matter, was more
like a draught of wonderfully pure air than water; and after tasting, Marius
was told many mysterious circumstances concerning it, by one and another of the
bystanders: he who drank often thereof might well think he had tasted of the
Homeric lotus, so great became his desire to remain always on that spot:
carried to other places, it was almost indefinitely conservative of its fine
qualities: nay! a few drops of it would amend other water; and it flowed not
only with unvarying abundance but with a volume so oddly rhythmical that the
well stood always full to the brim, whatever quantity might be drawn from it,
seeming to answer with strange alacrity of service to human needs, like a true
creature and pupil of the philanthropic god. Certainly the little crowd around
seemed to find singular refreshment in gazin g on it. The whole place appeared
sensibly influenced by the amiable and healthful spirit of the thing. All the
objects of the country were there at their freshest. In the great park-like
enclosure for the maintenance of the sacred animals offered by the convalescent,
grass and trees were allowed to grow with a kind of graceful wildness;
otherwise, all was wonderfully nice. And thatfreshness seemed to have something
moral in its influence, as if it acted upon the body and the merely bodily
powers of apprehension, through the intelligence; and to the end of his visit
Marius saw no more serpents. A lad was just then drawing water for ritual uses,
and Marius followed him as he returned from the well, more and more impressed
by the religiousness of all he saw, on his way through a long cloister or
corridor, the walls well-nigh hidden under votive inscriptions recording
favours from the son of Apollo, and with a distant fragrance of incense in the
air, explained when he turned aside through an open doorway into the temple
itself. His heart bounded as the refined and dainty magnificence of the place
came upon him suddenly, in the flood of early sunshine, with the ceremonial
lights burning here and there, and withal a singular expression of sacred
order, a surprising cleanliness and simplicity. Certain priests, men whose
countenances bore a deep impression of cultivated mind, each with his little
group of assistants, were gliding round silently to perform their morning
salutation to the god, raising the closed thumb and finger of the right hand
with a kiss in the air, as the y came and went on their sacred business,
bearing their frankincense and lustral water. Around the walls, at such a level
that the worshippers might read, as in a book, the story of the god and his
sons, the brotherhood of the Asclepiadae, ran a series of imageries, in low
relief, their delicate light and shade being heightened, here and there, with
gold. Fullest of inspired and sacred expression, as if in this place the chisel
of the artist had indeed dealt not with marble but with the very breath of
feeling and thought, was the scene in which the earliest generation of the sons
of Aesculapius were transformed into healing dreams; for “grown now too
glorious to abide longer among men, by the aid of their sire they put away
their mortal bodies, and came into another country, yet not indeed into Elysium
nor into the Islands of the Blest. But being made like to the immortal gods,
they began to pass about through the world, changed thus far from their first
form that they appear eternally young, as many persons have seen them in many
places ministers and heralds of their father, passing to and fro over the
earth, like gliding stars. Which thing is, indeed, the most wonderful
concerning them!” And in this scene, as throughout the series, with all its
crowded personages, Marius noted on the carved faces the same peculiar union of
unction, almost of hilarity, with a certain self-possession and reserve, which
was conspicuous in the living ministrants around him. In the central space,
upon a pillar or pedestal, hung, ex voto, with the richest personal ornaments,
stood the image of Aesculapius himself, surrounded by choice flowering plants.
It presented the type, still with something of the severity of the earlier art
of Greece about it, not of an aged and crafty physician, but of a youth,
earnest and strong of aspect, carrying an ampulla or bottle in one hand, and in
the other a traveller’s staff, a pilgrim among his pilgrim worshippers; and one
of the ministers explained to Marius this pilgrim guise. One chief source of
the master’s knowledgeof healing had been observation of the remedies resorted
to by animals labouring under disease or pain what leaf or berry the lizard or
dormouse lay upon its wounded fellow; to which purpose for long years he had
led the life of a wanderer, in wild places. The boy took his place as the last
comer, a little way behind the group of worshippers who stood in front of the
image. There, with uplifted face, the palms of his two hands raised and open
before him, and taught by the priest, he said his collect of thanksgiving and
prayer (Aristeides has recorded it at the end of his Asclepiadae) to the
Inspired Dreams: “O ye children of Apollo! who in time past have stilledthe
waves of sorrow for many people, lighting up a lamp of safety before those who
travel by sea and land, be pleased, in your great condescension, though ye be
equal in glory with your elder brethren the Dioscuri, and your lot in immortal
youth be as theirs, to accept this prayer, which in sleep and vision ye have
inspired. Order it arig ht, I pray you, according to your loving-kindness to
men. Preserve me from sickness; and endue my body with such a measure of health
as may suffice it for the obeying of the spirit, that I maypass my days
unhindered and in quietness.” On the last morning of his visit Marius entered
the shrine again, and just before his departure the priest, who had been his
special director during his stay at the place, lifting a cunningly contrived
panel, which formed the back of one of the carved seats, bade him look through.
What he saw was like the vision of a new world, by the opening of some
unsuspected window in a familiar dwelling-place. He looked out upon a long-d
rawn valley of singularly cheerful aspect, hidden, by the peculiar conformation
of the locality, from all points of observation but this. In a green meadow at
the foot of the steep olive-clad rocks below, the novices were taking their
exercise. The softly sloping sides of the vale lay alike in full sunlight; and
its distant opening was closed by a beautifully formed mountain, from which the
last wreaths of morning mist were rising under the heat. It might have seemed
the very presentment of a land of hope, its hollows brimful of a shadow of blue
flowers; and lo! on the one level space of the horizon, in a long dark line,
were towers and a dome: and that was Pisa. Or Rome, was it? asked Marius, ready
to believe the utmost, in his excitement. All this served, as he understood
afterwards in retrospect, at once to strengthen and to purify a certain vein of
character in him. Developing the ideal, pre-existent there, of a religious
beauty, associated for the future with the exquisite splendour of the temple of
Aesculapius, as it dawned upon him on that morning of his first visit it
developed that ideal in connexion with a vivid sense of the value of mental and
bodily sanity. And this recognition of the beauty, even for the aesthetic
sense, of mere bodily health, now acquired, operated afterwards as an influence
morally salutary, counteracting the less desirable or hazardous tendencies of
some phases of thought, through which he was to pass. He came home brown with
health to find the health of his mother failing; and about her death, which
occurred not long afterwards, there was a circumstance which rested with him as
the cruellest touch of all, in an event which for a time seemed to have taken
the light out of the sunshine. She died away from home, but sent for him at the
last, with a painful effort on her part, but to his great gratitude, pondering,
as he always believed, that he might chance otherwise to look back all his life
long upon a single fault with something like remorse, and find the burden a
great one. For it happened that, through some sudden, incomprehensible
petulance there had been an angry childish gesture, and a slighting word, at
the very moment of her departure, actually for the last time. Remembering this
he would ever afterwards pray to be saved from offences against his own affections;
the thought of that marred parting having peculiar bitterness for one, who set
so much store, both by principle and habit, on the sentiment of home. O mare! O
littus! verum secretumque Mouseion,+ quam multa invenitis, quam multa dictatis!
PLINIO (si veda)’s Letters. It would hardly have been possible to feel more
seriously than did Marius in those grave years of his early life. But the death
of his mother turned seriousness of feeling into a matter of the intelligence:
it made him a questioner; and, by bringing into full evidence to him the force
of his affections and the probable importance of their place in his future,
developed in him generally the more human and earthly elements of character. A
singularly virile consciousness of the realities of life pronounced itself in
him; still however as in the main a poetic apprehension, though united already
with something of personal ambition and the instinct of self-assertion. There
were days when he could suspect, though it was a suspicion he was careful at
first to put from him, that that early, much cherished religion of the villa
might come to count with him as but one form of poetic beauty, or of the ideal,
in things; as but one voice, in a world where there were many voices it would
be a moral weakness not to listen to. And yet this voice, through its forcible
pre-occupation of his childish conscience, still seemed to make a claim of a
quite exclusive character, defining itself as essentially one of but two
possible leaders of his spirit, the other proposing to him unlimited
self-expansion in a world of various sunshine. The contrast was so pronounced
as to make the easy, light-hearted, unsuspecting exercise of himself, among the
temptations of the new phase of life which had now begun, seem nothing less
than a rival religion, a rival religious service. The temptations, the various
sunshine, were those of the old town of Pisa, where Marius was now a tall
schoolboy. Pisa was a place lying just far enough from home to make his rare
visits to it in childhood seem like adventures, such as had never failed to
supply new and refreshing impulses to the imagination. The partly decayed
pensive town, which still had its commerce by sea, and its fashion at the
bathing-season, had lent, at one time the vivid memory of its fair streets of
marble, at another the solemn outline of the dark hills of Luna on its
background, at another the living glances of its men and women, to the thickly
gathering crowd of impressions, out of which his notion of the world was then
forming. And while he learned that the object, the experience, as it will be
known to memory, is really from first to last the chief point for consideration
in the conduct of life, these things were feeding also the idealism
constitutional with him his innate and habitual longing for a world altogether
fairer than that he saw. The child could find his way in thought along those
streets of the old town, expecting duly the shrines at their corners, and their
recurrent intervals of garden-courts, or side-views of distant sea. The great
temple of the place, as he could remember it, on turning back once for a last
look from an angle of his homeward road, counting its tall gray columns between
the blue of the bay and the blue fields of blossoming flax beyond; the harbour
and its lights; the foreign ships lying there; the sailors’ chapel of VENERE,
and her gilded image, hung with votive gifts; the seamen themselves, their
women and children, who had a whole peculiar colour-world of their own the
boy’s superficial delight in the broad light and shadow of all that was mingled
with the sense of power, of unknown distance, of the danger of storm and
possible death. To this place, then, Marius came down now from White-nights, to
live in the house of his guardian or tutor, that he might attend the school of
a famous rhetorician, and learn, among other things, Greek. The school, one of
many imitations of L’ACCADEMIA in the old Athenian garden, lay in a quiet
suburb of Pisa, and had its grove of cypresses, its porticoes, a house for the
master, its chapel and images. For the memory of Marius in after-days, a clear
morning sunlight seemed to lie perpetually on that severe picture in old gray
and green. The lad went to this school daily betimes, in state at first, with a
young slave to carry the books, and certainly with no reluctance, for the sight
of his fellow-scholars, and their petulant activity, coming upon the sadder
sentimental moods of his childhood, awoke at once that instinct of emulation
which is but the other side of sympathy; and he was not aware, of course, how
completely the difference of his previous training had made him, even in his
most enthusiastic participation in the ways of that little world, still
essentially but a spectator. While all their heart was in their limited boyish
race, and its transitory prizes, he was already entertaining himself, very
pleasurably meditative, with the tiny drama in action before him, as but the
mimic, preliminary exercise for a larger contest, and already with an implicit
epicureanism. Watching all the gallant effects of their small rivalries a scene
in the main of fresh delightful sunshine he entered at once into the sensations
of a rivalry beyond them, into the passion of men, and had already recognised a
certain appetite for fame, for distinction among his fellows, as his dominant
motive to be. The fame he conceived for himself at this time was, as the reader
will have anticipated, of the intellectual order, that of a poet perhaps. And
as, in that gray monastic tranquillity of the villa, inward voices from the
reality of unseen things had come abundantly; so here, with the sounds and
aspects of the shore, and amid the urbanities, the graceful follies, of a
bathing-place, it was the reality, the tyrannous reality, of things visible that
was borne in upon him. The real world around a present humanity not less
comely, it might seem, than that of the old heroic days endowing everything it
touched upon, however remotely, down to its little passing tricks of fashion
even, with a kind of fleeting beauty, exercised over him just then a great
fascination. That sense had come upon him in all its power one exceptionally
fine summer, the summer when, at a somewhat earlier age than was usual, he had
formally assumed the dress of manhood, going into the Forum for that purpose,
accompanied by his friends in festal array. At night, after the full measure of
those cloudless days, he would feel well-nigh wearied out, as if with a long
succession of pictures and music. As he wandered through the gay streets or on
the sea-shore, the real world seemed indeed boundless, and himself almost
absolutely free in it, with a boundless appetite for experience, for adventure,
whether physical or of the spirit. His entire rearing hitherto had lent itself
to an imaginative exaltation of the past; but now the spectacle actually
afforded to his untired and freely open senses, suggested the reflection that
the present had, it might be, really advanced beyond the past, and he was ready
to boast in the very fact that it was modern. If, in a voluntary archaism, the
polite world of that day went back to a choicer generation, as it fancied, for
the purpose of a fastidious self-correction, in matters of art, of literature,
and even, as we have seen, of religion, at least it improved, by a shade or two
of more scrupulous finish, on the old pattern; and the new era, like the
Neu-zeit of the German enthusiasts at the beginning of our own century, might
perhaps be discerned, awaiting one just a single step onward the perfected new
manner, in the consummation of time, alike as regards the things of the
imagination and the actual conduct of life. Only, while the pursuit of an ideal
like this demanded entire liberty of heart and brain, that old, staid,
conservative religion of his childhood certainly had its being in a world of
somewhat narrow restrictions. But then, the one was absolutely real, with
nothing less than the reality of seeing and hearing the other, how vague,
shadowy, problematical! Could its so limited probabilities be worth taking into
account in any practical question as to the rejecting or receiving of what was
indeed so real, and, on the face of it, so desirable? And, dating from the time
of his first coming to school, a great friendship had grown up for him, in that
life of so few attachments the pure and disinterested friendship of
schoolmates. He had seen Flavian for the first time the day on which he had
come to Pisa, at the moment when his mind was full of wistful thoughts
regarding the new life to begin for him to-morrow, and he gazed curiously at
the crowd of bustling scholars as they came from their classes. There was
something in Flavian a shade disdainful, as he stood isolated from the others
for a moment, explained in part by his stature and the distinction of the low,
broad forehead; though there was pleasantness also for the newcomer in the
roving blue eyes which seemed somehow to take a fuller hold upon things around
than is usual with boys. Marius knew that those proud glances made kindly note
of him for a moment, and felt something like friendship at first sight. There
was a tone of reserve or gravity there, amid perfectly disciplined health,
which, to his fancy, seemed to carry forward the expression of the austere sky
and the clear song of the blackbird on that gray March evening. Flavian indeed
was a creature who changed much with the changes of the passing light and shade
about him, and was brilliant enough under the early sunshine in school next
morning. Of all that little world of more or less gifted youth, surely the
centre was this lad of servile birth. Prince of the school, he had gained an
easy dominion over the old Greek master by the fascination of his parts, and
over his fellow-scholars by the figure he bore. He wore already the manly
dress; and standing there in class, as he displayed his wonderful quickness in
reckoning, or his taste in declaiming Homer, he was like a carved figure in
motion, thought Marius, but with that indescribable gleam upon it which the
words of Homer actually suggested, as perceptible on the visible forms of the
gods hoia theous epenênothen aien eontas.+ A story hung by him, a story which
his comrades acutely connected with his habitual air of somewhat peevish pride.
Two points were held to be clear amid its general vagueness a rich stranger
paid his schooling, and he was himself very poor, though there was an
attractive piquancy in the poverty of Flavian which in a scholar of another
figure might have been despised. Over Marius too his dominion was entire. Three
years older than he, Flavian was appointed to help the younger boy in his
studies, and Marius thus became virtually his servant in many things, taking
his humours with a sort of grateful pride in being noticed at all, and,
thinking over all this afterwards, found that the fascination experienced by
him had been a sentimental one, dependent on the concession to himself of an
intimacy, a certain tolerance of his company, granted to none beside. That was
in the earliest days; and then, as their intimacy grew, the genius, the
intellectual power of Flavian began its sway over him. The brilliant youth who
loved dress, and dainty food, and flowers, and seemed to have a natural
alliance with, and claim upon, everything else which was physically select and
bright, cultivated also that foppery of words, of choice diction which was
common among the élite spirits of that day; and Marius, early an expert and
elegant penman, transcribed his verses (the euphuism of which, amid a genuine
original power, was then so delightful to him) in beautiful ink, receiving in
return the profit of Flavian’s really great intellectual capacities, developed
and accomplished under the ambitious desire to make his way effectively in
life. Among other things he introduced him to the writings of a sprightly wit,
then very busy with the pen, one Lucian writings seeming to overflow with that
intellectual light turned upon dim places, which, at least in seasons of mental
fair weather, can make people laugh where they have been wont, perhaps, to
pray. And, surely, the sunlight which filled those well-remembered early
mornings in school, had had more than the usual measure of gold in it! Marius,
at least, would lie awake before the time, thinking with delight of the long
coming hours of hard work in the presence of FLAVIANO, as others dream of a
holiday. It was almost by accident at last, so wayward and capricious was he,
that reserve gave way, and Flavian told the story of his father a freedman,
presented late in life, and almost against his will, with the liberty so fondly
desired in youth, but on condition of the sacrifice of part of his peculium the
slave’s diminutive hoard amassed by many a self-denial, in an existence
necessarily hard. The rich man, interested in the promise of the fair child
born on his estate, had sent him to school. The meanness and dejection,
nevertheless, of that unoccupied old age defined the leading memory of Flavian,
revived sometimes, after this first confidence, with a burst of angry tears
amid the sunshine. But nature had had her economy in nursing the strength of
that one natural affection; for, save his half-selfish care for Marius, it was
the single, really generous part, the one piety, in the lad’s character. In him
Marius saw the spirit of unbelief, achieved as if at one step. The much-admired
freedman’s son, as with the privilege of a natural aristocracy, believed only
in himself, in the brilliant, and mainly sensuous gifts, he had, or meant to
acquire. And then, he had certainly yielded himself, though still with
untouched health, in a world where manhood comes early, to the seductions of
that luxurious town, and Marius wondered sometimes, in the freer revelation of
himself by conversation, at the extent of his early corruption. How often,
afterwards, did evil things present themselves in malign association with the
memory of that beautiful head, and with a kind of borrowed sanction and charm
in its natural grace! To Marius, at a later time, he counted for as it were an
epitome of the whole pagan world, the depth of its corruption, and its
perfection of form. And still, in his mobility, his animation, in his eager
capacity for various life, he was so real an object, after that visionary
idealism of the villa. His voice, his glance, were like the breaking in of the
solid world upon one, amid the flimsy fictions of a dream. A shadow, handling
all things as shadows, had felt a sudden real and poignant heat in them.
Meantime, under his guidance, Marius was learning quickly and abundantly,
because with a good will. There was that in the actual effectiveness of his
figure which stimulated the younger lad to make the most of opportunity; and he
had experience already that education largely increased one’s capacity for
enjoyment. He was acquiring what it is the chief function of all higher education
to impart, the art, namely, of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits, the
elements of distinction, in our everyday life of so exclusively living in them
that the unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift or débris of our days, comes
to be as though it were not. And the consciousness of this aim came with the
reading of one particular book, then fresh in the world, with which he fell in
about this time a book which awakened the poetic or romantic capacity as
perhaps some other book might have done, but was peculiar in giving it a
direction emphatically sensuous. It made him, in that visionary reception of
every-day life, the seer, more especially, of a revelation in colour and form.
If our modern education, in its better efforts, really conveys to any of us
that kind of idealising power, it does so (though dealing mainly, as its
professed instruments, with the most select and ideal remains of ancient
literature) oftenest by truant reading; and thus it happened also, long ago,
with Marius and his friend. Transliteration: Mouseion. The word means “seat of
the muses.” Translation: “O sea! O shore! my own Helicon, / How many things
have you uncovered to me, how many things suggested!” Pliny, Letters, Book I,
ix, to Minicius Fundanus. 50. +Transliteration: hoia theous epenênothen aien
eontas. Translation: “such as the gods are endowed with.” Homer, Odyssey,
8.365. The two lads were lounging together over a book, half-buried in a heap
of dry corn, in an old granary the quiet corner to which they had climbed out
of the way of their noisier companions on one of their blandest holiday
afternoons. They looked round: the western sun smote through the broad chinks
of the shutters. How like a picture! and it was precisely the scene described
in what they were reading, with just that added poetic touch in the book which
made it delightful and select, and, in the actual place, the ray of sunlight
transforming the rough grain among the cool brown shadows into heaps of gold.
What they were intent on was, indeed, the book of books, the “golden” book of
that day, a gift to Flavian, as was shown by the purple writing on the handsome
yellow wrapper, following the title Flaviane! it said, Flaviane! lege
Felicitur! Flaviane! Vivas! Fioreas! Flaviane! Vivas! Gaudeas! It was perfumed
with oil of sandal-wood, and decorated with carved and gilt ivory bosses at the
ends of the roller. And the inside was something not less dainty and fine, full
of the archaisms and curious felicities in which that generation delighted,
quaint terms and images picked fresh from the early dramatists, the lifelike
phrases of some lost poet preserved by an old grammarian, racy morsels of the
vernacula r and studied prettinesses: all alike, mere playthings for the
genuine power and natural eloquence of the erudite artist, unsuppressed by his
erudition, which, however, made some people angry, chiefly less well “got-up”
people, and especially those who were untidy from indolence. No! it was
certainly not that old-fashioned, unconscious ease of the early literature,
which could never come again; which, after all, had had more in common with the
“infinite patience” of Apuleius than with the hack-work readiness of his
detractors, who might so well have been “self-conscious” of going slip-shod.
And at least his success was unmistakable as to the precise literary effect he
had intended, including a certain tincture of “neology” in expression nonnihil
interdum elocutione novella parum signatum in the language of CORNELIO FRONTONE
(si veda), the contemporary prince of rhetoricians. What words he had found for
conveying, with a single touch, the sense of textures, colours, incidents!
“Like jewellers’ work! Like a myrrhine vase!” admirers said of his writing.
“The golden fibre in the hair, the gold thread-work in the gown marked her as
the mistress” aurum in comis et in tunicis, ibi inflexum hic intextum, matronam
profecto confitebatur he writes, with his “curious felicity,” of one of his
heroines. Aurum intextum: gold fibre: well! there was something of that kind in
his own work. And then, in an age when people, from the emperor Aurelius
downwards, prided themselves unwisely on writing in Greek, he had written for
Latin people in their own tongue; though still, in truth, with all the care of
a learned language. Not less happily inventive were the incidents recorded
story within story stories with the sudden, unlooked-for changes of dreams. He
had his humorous touches also. And what went to the ordinary boyish taste, in
those somewhat peculiar readers, what would have charmed boys more purely
boyish, was the adventure: the bear loose in the house at night, the wolves
storming the farms in winter, the exploits of the robbers, their charming
caves, the delightful thrill one had at the question “Don’t you know that these
roads are infested by robbers?” The scene of the romance was laid in Thessaly,
the original land of witchcraft, and took one up and down its mountains, and
into its old weird towns, haunts of magic and incantation, where all the more
genuine appliances of the black art, left behind her by Medea when she fled
through that country, were still in use. In the city of Hypata, indeed, nothing
seemed to be its true self “You might think that through the murmuring of some
cadaverous spell, all things had been changed into forms not their own; that
there was humanity in the hardness of the stones you stumbled on; that the
birds you heard singing were feathered men; that the trees around the walls
drew their leaves from a like source. The statues seemed about to move, the walls
to speak, the dumb cattle to break out in prophecy; nay! the very sky and the
sunbeams, as if they might suddenly cry out.” Witches are there who can draw
down the moon, or at least the lunar virus that white fluid she sheds, to be
found, so rarely, “on high, heathy places: which is a poison. A touch of it
will drive men mad.” And in one very remote village lives the sorceress
Pamphile, who turns her neighbours into various animals. What true humour in
the scene where, after mounting the rickety stairs, LUCIO, peeping curiously
through a chink in the door, is a spectator of the transformation of the old
witch herself into a bird, that she may take flight to the object of her
affections into an owl! “First she stripped off every rag she had. Then opening
a certain chest she took from it many small boxes, and removing the lid of one
of them, rubbed herself over for a long time, from head to foot, with an
ointment it contained, and after much low muttering to her lamp, began to jerk
at last and shake her limbs. And as her limbs moved to and fro, out burst the
soft feathers: stout wings came forth to view: the nose grew hard and hooked:
her nails were crooked into claws; and Pamphile was an owl. She uttered a
queasy screech; and, leaping little by little from the ground, making trial of
herself, fled presently, on full wing, out of doors.” By clumsy imitation of
this process, Lucius, the hero of the romance, transforms himself, not as he
had intended into a showy winged creature, but into the animal which has given
name to the book; for throughout it there runs a vein of racy, homely satire on
the love of magic then prevalent, curiosity concerning which had led Lucius to
meddle with the old woman’s appliances. “Be you my Venus,” he says to the
pretty maid-servant who has introduced him to the view of Pamphile, “and let me
stand by you a winged Cupid!” and, freely applying the magic ointment, sees
himself transformed, “not into a bird, but into an ass!” Well! the proper
remedy for his distress is a supper of roses, could such be found, and many are
his quaintly picturesque attempts to come by them at that adverse season; as he
contrives to do at last, when, the grotesque procession of Isis passing by with
a bear and other strange animals in its train, the ass following along with the
rest suddenly crunches the chaplet of roses carried in the High-priest’s hand.
Meantime, however, he must wait for the spring, with more than the outside of
an ass; “though I was not so much a fool, nor so truly an ass,” he tells us, when
he happens to be left alone with a daintily spread table, “as to neglect this
most delicious fare, and feed upon coarse hay.” For, in truth, all through the
book, there is an unmistakably real feeling for asses, with bold touches like
Swift’s, and a genuine animal breadth. Lucius was the original ass, who peeping
slily from the window of his hiding-place forgot all about the big shade he
cast just above him, and gave occasion to the joke or proverb about “the
peeping ass and his shadow.” But the marvellous, delight in which is one of the
really serious elements in most boys, passed at times, those young readers
still feeling its fascination, into what French writers call the macabre that
species of almost insane pre-occupation with the materialities of our
mouldering flesh, that luxury of disgust in gazing on corruption, which was
connected, in this writer at least, with not a little obvious coarseness. It
was a strange notion of the gross lust of the actual world, that Marius took
from some of these episodes. “I am told,” they read, “that when foreigners are
interred, the old witches are in the habit of out-racing the funeral
procession, to ravage the corpse” in order to obtain certain cuttings and
remnants from it, with which to injure the living “especially if the witch has
happened to cast her eye upon some goodly young man.” And the scene of the
night-watching of a dead body lest the witches should come to tear off the
flesh with their teeth, is worthy of Théophile Gautier. But set as one of the
episodes in the main narrative, a true gem amid its mockeries, its coarse
though genuine humanity, its burlesque horrors, came the tale of Cupid and
Psyche, full of brilliant, life-like situations, speciosa locis, and abounding
in lovely visible imagery (one seemed to see and handle the golden hair, the
fresh flowers, the precious works of art in it!) yet full also of a gentle
idealism, so that you might take it, if you chose, for an allegory. With a
concentration of all his finer literary gifts, Apuleius had gathered into it
the floating star-matter of many a delightful old story. The Story of Cupid and
Psyche. In a certain city lived a king and queen who had three daughters
exceeding fair. But the beauty of the elder sisters, though pleasant to behold,
yet passed not the measure of human praise, while such was the loveliness of
the youngest that men’s speech was too poor to commend it worthily and could
express it not at all. Many of the citizens and of strangers, whom the fame of
this excellent vision had gathered thither, confounded by that matchless
beauty, could but kiss the finger-tips of their right hands at sight of her, as
in adoration to the goddess Venus herself. And soon a rumour passed through the
country that she whom the blue deep had borne, forbearing her divine dignity,
was even then moving among men, or that by some fresh germination from the
stars, not the sea now, but the earth, had put forth a new Venus, endued with
the flower of virginity. This belief, with the fame of the maiden’s loveliness,
went daily further into distant lands, so that many people were drawn together
to behold that glorious model of the age. Men sailed no longer to Paphos, to
Cnidus or Cythera, to the presence of the goddess Venus: her sacred rites were
neglected, her images stood uncrowned, the cold ashes were left to disfigure
her forsaken altars. It was to a maiden that men’s prayers were offered, to a
human countenance they looked, in propitiating so great a godhead: when the
girl went forth in the morning they strewed flowers on her way, and the victims
proper to that unseen goddess were presented as she passed along. This
conveyance of divine worship to a mortal kindled meantime the anger of the true
Venus. “Lo! now, the ancient parent of nature,” she cried, “the fountain of all
elements! Behold me, Venus, benign mother of the world, sharing my honours with
a mortal maiden, while my name, built up in heaven, is profaned by the mean
things of earth! Shall a perishable woman bear my image about with her? In vain
did the shepherd of Ida prefer me! Yet shall she have little joy, whosoever she
be, of her usurped and unlawful loveliness!” Thereupon she called to her that
winged, bold boy, of evil ways, who wanders armed by night through men’s
houses, spoiling their marriages; and stirring yet more by her speech his
inborn wantonness, she led him to the city, and showed him Psyche as she
walked. “I pray thee,” she said, “give thy mother a full revenge. Let this maid
become the slave of an unworthy love.” Then, embracing him closely, she
departed to the shore and took her throne upon the crest of the wave. And lo!
at her unuttered will, her ocean-servants are in waiting: the daughters of
Nereus are there singing their song, and Portunus, and Salacia, and the tiny
charioteer of the dolphin, with a host of Tritons leaping through the billows.
And one blows softly through his sounding sea-shell, another spreads a silken
web against the sun, a third presents the mirror to the eyes of his mistress,
while the others swim side by side below, drawing her chariot. Such was the
escort of Venus as she went upon the sea. Psyche meantime, aware of her
loveliness, had no fruit thereof. All people regarded and admired, but none
sought her in marriage. It was but as on the finished work of the craftsman
that they gazed upon that divine likeness. Her sisters, less fair than she,
were happily wedded. She, even as a widow, sitting at home, wept over her
desolation, hating in her heart the beauty in which all men were pleased. And
the king, supposing the gods were angry, inquired of the oracle of Apollo, and
Apollo answered him thus: “Let the damsel be placed on the top of a certain
mountain, adorned as for the bed of marriage and of death. Look not for a
son-in-law of mortal birth; but for that evil serpent-thing, by reason of whom
even the gods tremble and the shadows of Styx are afraid.” So the king returned
home and made known the oracle to his wife. For many days she lamented, but at
last the fulfilment of the divine precept is urgent upon her, and the company
make ready to conduct the maiden to her deadly bridal. And now the nuptial
torch gathers dark smoke and ashes: the pleasant sound of the pipe is changed
into a cry: the marriage hymn concludes in a sorrowful wailing: below her
yellow wedding-veil the bride shook away her tears; insomuch that the whole
city was afflicted together at the ill-luck of the stricken house. But the
mandate of the god impelled the hapless Psyche to her fate, and, these
solemnities being ended, the funeral of the living soul goes forth, all the
people following. Psyche, bitterly weeping, assists not at her marriage but at
her own obsequies, and while the parents hesitate to accomplish a thing so
unholy the daughter cries to them: “Wherefore torment your luckless age by long
weeping? This was the prize of my extraordinary beauty! When all people
celebrated us with divine honours, and in one voice named the New Venus, it was
then ye should have wept for me as one dead. Now at last I understand that that
one name of Venus has been my ruin. Lead me and set me upon the appointed
place. I am in haste to submit to that well-omened marriage, to behold that
goodly spouse. Why delay the coming of him who was born for the destruction of
the whole world?” She was silent, and with firm step went on the way. And they
proceeded to the appointed place on a steep mountain, and left there the maiden
alone, and took their way homewards dejectedly. The wretched parents, in their
close-shut house, yielded themselves to perpetual night; while to Psyche,
fearful and trembling and weeping sore upon the mountain-top, comes the gentle
Zephyrus. He lifts her mildly, and, with vesture afloat on either side, bears
her by his own soft breathing over the windings of the hills, and sets her
lightly among the flowers in the bosom of a valley below. Psyche, in those
delicate grassy places, lying sweetly on her dewy bed, rested from the
agitation of her soul and arose in peace. And lo! a grove of mighty trees, with
a fount of water, clear as glass, in the midst; and hard by the water, a
dwelling-place, built not by human hands but by some divine cunning. One
recognised, even at the entering, the delightful hostelry of a god. Golden
pillars sustained the roof, arched most curiously in cedar-wood and ivory. The
walls were hidden under wrought silver: all tame and woodland creatures leaping
forward to the visitor’s gaze. Wonderful indeed was the craftsman, divine or
half-divine, who by the subtlety of his art had breathed so wild a soul into
the silver! The very pavement was distinct with pictures in goodly stones. In
the glow of its precious metal the house is its own daylight, having no need of
the sun. Well might it seem a place fashioned for the conversation of gods with
men! Psyche, drawn forward by the delight of it, came near, and, her courage
growing, stood within the doorway. One by one, she admired the beautiful things
she saw; and, most wonderful of all! no lock, no chain, nor living guardian
protected that great treasure house. But as she gazed there came a voice a
voice, as it were unclothed of bodily vesture “Mistress!” it said, “all these
things are thine. Lie down, and relieve thy weariness, and rise again for the
bath when thou wilt. We thy servants, whose voice thou hearest, will be
beforehand with our service, and a royal feast shall be ready.” And Psyche
understood that some divine care was providing, and, refreshed with sleep and
the Bath, sat down to the feast. Still she saw no one: only she heard words
falling here and there, and had voices alone to serve her. And the feast being
ended, one entered the chamber and sang to her unseen, while another struck the
chords of a harp, invisible with him who played on it. Afterwards the sound of
a company singing together came to her, but still so that none were present to
sight; yet it appeared that a great multitude of singers was there. And the
hour of evening inviting her, she climbed into the bed; and as the night was
far advanced, behold a sound of a certain clemency approaches her. Then,
fearing for her maidenhood in so great solitude, she trembled, and more than
any evil she knew dreaded that she knew not. And now the husband, that unknown
husband, drew near, and ascended the couch, and made her his wife; and lo!
before the rise of dawn he had departed hastily. And the attendant voices
ministered to the needs of the newly married. And so it happened with her for a
long season. And as nature has willed, this new thing, by continual use, became
a delight to her: the sound of the voice grew to be her solace in that
condition of loneliness and uncertainty. One night the bridegroom spoke thus to
his beloved, “O Psyche, most pleasant bride! Fortune is grown stern with us,
and threatens thee with mortal peril. Thy sisters, troubled at the report of
thy death and seeking some trace of thee, will come to the mountain’s top. But
if by chance their cries reach thee, answer not, neither look forth at all,
lest thou bring sorrow upon me and destruction upon thyself.” Then Psyche
promised that she would do according to his will. But the bridegroom was fled
away again with the night. And all that day she spent in tears, repeating that
she was now dead indeed, shut up in that golden prison, powerless to console
her sisters sorrowing after her, or to see their faces; and so went to rest
weeping. And after a while came the bridegroom again, and lay down beside her,
and embracing her as she wept, complained, “Was this thy promise, my Psyche?
What have I to hope from thee? Even in the arms of thy husband thou ceasest not
from pain. Do now as thou wilt. Indulge thine own desire, though it seeks what
will ruin thee. Yet wilt thou remember my warning, repentant too late.” Then,
protesting that she is like to die, she obtains from him that he suffer her to
see her sisters, and present to them moreover what gifts she would of golden
ornaments; but therewith he ofttimes advised her never at any time, yielding to
pernicious counsel, to enquire concerning his bodily form, lest she fall,
through unholy curiosity, from so great a height of fortune, nor feel ever his
embrace again. “I would die a hundred times,” she said, cheerful at last,
“rather than be deprived of thy most sweet usage. I love thee as my own soul,
beyond comparison even with Love himself. Only bid thy servant ZEFIRO bring hither
my sisters, as he brought me. My honeycomb! My husband! Thy Psyche’s breath of
life!” So he promised; and after the embraces of the night, ere the light
appeared, vanished from the hands of his bride. And the sisters, coming to the
place where Psyche was abandoned, wept loudly among the rocks, and called upon
her by name, so that the sound came down to her, and running out of the palace
distraught, she cried, “Wherefore afflict your souls with lamentation? I whom
you mourn am here.” Then, summoning ZEFIRO, she reminded him of her husband’s
bidding; and he bare them down with a gentle blast. “Enter now,” she said,
“into my house, and relieve your sorrow in the company of Psyche your sister.”
And Psyche displayed to them all the treasures of the golden house, and its
great family of ministering voices, nursing in them the malice which was
already at their hearts. And at last one of them asks curiously who the lord of
that celestial array may be, and what manner of man her husband? And Psyche
answered dissemblingly, “A young man, handsome and mannerly, with a goodly
beard. For the most part he hunts upon the mountains.” And lest the secret
should slip from her in the way of further speech, loading her sisters with
gold and gems, she commanded Zephyrus to bear them away. And they returned
home, on fire with envy. “See now the injustice of fortune!” cried one. “We,
the elder children, are given like servants to be the wives of strangers, while
the youngest is possessed of so great riches, who scarcely knows how to use
them. You saw, Sister! what a hoard of wealth lies in the house; what
glittering gowns; what splendour of precious gems, besides all that gold
trodden under foot. If she indeed hath, as she said, a bridegroom so goodly,
then no one in all the world is happier. And it may be that this husband, being
of divine nature, will make her too a goddess. Nay! so in truth it is. It was
even thus she bore herself. Already she looks aloft and breathes divinity, who,
though but a woman, has voices for her handmaidens, and can command the winds.”
“Think,” answered the other, “how arrogantly she dealt with us, grudging us
these trifling gifts out of all that store, and when our company became a
burden, causing us to be hissed and driven away from her through the air! But I
am no woman if she keep her hold on this great fortune; and if the insult done
us has touched thee too, take we counsel together. Meanwhile let us hold our
peace, and know naught of her, alive or dead. For they are not truly happy of
whose happiness other folk are unaware.” And the bridegroom, whom still she
knows not, warns her thus a second time, as he talks with her by night: “Seest
thou what peril besets thee? Those cunning wolves have made ready for thee
their snares, of which the sum is that they persuade thee to search into the
fashion of my countenance, the seeing of which, as I have told thee often, will
be the seeing of it no more for ever. But do thou neither listen nor make
answer to aught regarding thy husband. Besides, we have sown also the seed of
our race. Even now this bosom grows with a child to be born to us, a child, if
thou but keep our secret, of divine quality; if thou profane it, subject to
death.” And Psyche was glad at the tidings, rejoicing in that solace of a
divine seed, and in the glory of that pledge of love to be, and the dignity of
the name of mother. Anxiously she notes the increase of the days, the waning
months. And again, as he tarries briefly beside her, the bridegroom repeats his
warning: “Even now the sword is drawn with which thy sisters seek thy life.
Have pity on thyself, sweet wife, and upon our child, and see not those evil
women again.” But the sisters make their way into the palace once more, crying
to her in wily tones, “O Psyche! and thou too wilt be a mother! How great will
be the joy at home! Happy indeed shall we be to have the nursing of the golden
child. Truly if he be answerable to the beauty of his parents, it will be a
birth of Cupid himself.” So, little by little, they stole upon the heart of
their sister. She, meanwhile, bids the lyre to sound for their delight, and the
playing is heard: she bids the pipes to move, the quire to sing, and the music
and the singing come invisibly, soothing the mind of the listener with sweetest
modulation. Yet not even thereby was their malice put to sleep: once more they
seek to know what manner of husband she has, and whence that seed. And Psyche,
simple over-much, forgetful of her first story, answers, “My husband comes from
a far country, trading for great sums. He is already of middle age, with
whitening locks.” And therewith she dismisses them again. And returning home
upon the soft breath of Zephyrus one cried to the other, “What shall be said of
so ugly a lie? He who was a young man with goodly beard is now in middle life.
It must be that she told a false tale: else is she in very truth ignorant what
manner of man he is. Howsoever it be, let us destroy her quickly. For if she
indeed knows not, be sure that her bridegroom is one of the gods: it is a god
she bears in her womb. And let that be far from us! If she be called mother of
a god, then will life be more than I can bear.” So, full of rage against her,
they returned to Psyche, and said to her craftily, “Thou livest in an ignorant
bliss, all incurious of thy real danger. It is a deadly serpent, as we
certainly know, that comes to sleep at thy side. Remember the words of the
oracle, which declared thee destined to a cruel beast. There are those who have
seen it at nightfall, coming back from its feeding. In no long time, they say,
it will end its blandishments. It but waits for the babe to be formed in thee,
that it may devour thee by so much the richer. If indeed the solitude of this
musical place, or it may be the loathsome commerce of a hidden love, delight thee,
we at least in sisterly piety have done our part.” And at last the unhappy
Psyche, simple and frail of soul, carried away by the terror of their words,
losing memory of her husband’s precepts and her own promise, brought upon
herself a great calamity. Trembling and turning pale, she answers them, “And
they who tell those things, it may be, speak the truth. For in very deed never
have I seen the face of my husband, nor know I at all what manner of man he is.
Always he frights me diligently from the sight of him, threatening some great
evil should I too curiously look upon his face. Do ye, if ye can help your
sister in her great peril, stand by her now.” Her sisters answered her, “The
way of safety we have well considered, and will teach thee. Take a sharp knife,
and hide it in that part of the couch where thou art wont to lie: take also a
lamp filled with oil, and set it privily behind the curtain. And when he shall
have drawn up his coils into the accustomed place, and thou hearest him breathe
in sleep, slip then from his side and discover the lamp, and, knife in hand,
put forth thy strength, and strike off the serpent’s head.” And so they
departed in haste. And Psyche left alone (alone but for the furies which beset
her) is tossed up and down in her distress, like a wave of the sea; and though
her will is firm, yet, in the moment of putting hand to the deed, she falters,
and is torn asunder by various apprehension of the great calamity upon her. She
hastens and anon delays, now full of distrust, and now of angry courage: under
one bodily form she loathes the monster and loves the bridegroom. But twilight
ushers in the night; and at length in haste she makes ready for the terrible
deed. Darkness came, and the bridegroom; and he first, after some faint essay of
love, falls into a deep sleep. And she, erewhile of no strength, the hard
purpose of destiny assisting her, is confirmed in force. With lamp plucked
forth, knife in hand, she put by her sex; and lo! as the secrets of the bed
became manifest, the sweetest and most gentle of all creatures, Love himself,
reclined there, in his own proper loveliness! At sight of him the very flame of
the lamp kindled more gladly! But Psyche was afraid at the vision, and, faint
of soul, trembled back upon her knees, and would have hidden the steel in her
own bosom. But the knife slipped from her hand; and now, undone, yet ofttimes
looking upon the beauty of that divine countenance, she lives again. She sees
the locks of that golden head, pleasant with the unction of the gods, shed down
in graceful entanglement behind and before, about the ruddy cheeks and white
throat. The pinions of the winged god, yet fresh with the dew, are spotless
upon his shoulders, the delicate plumage wavering over them as they lie at
rest. Smooth he was, and, touched with light, worthy of Venus his mother. At
the foot of the couch lay his bow and arrows, the instruments of his power,
propitious to men. And Psyche, gazing hungrily thereon, draws an arrow from the
quiver, and trying the point upon her thumb, tremulous still, drave in the
barb, so that a drop of blood came forth. Thus fell she, by her own act, and
unaware, into the love of Love. Falling upon the bridegroom, with indrawn
breath, in a hurry of kisses from eager and open lips, she shuddered as she
thought how brief that sleep might be. And it chanced that a drop of burning
oil fell from the lamp upon the god’s shoulder. Ah! maladroit minister of love,
thus to wound him from whom all fire comes; though ’twas a lover, I trow, first
devised thee, to have the fruit of his desire even in the darkness! At the
touch of the fire the god started up, and beholding the overthrow of her faith,
quietly took flight from her embraces. And Psyche, as he rose upon the wing,
laid hold on him with her two hands, hanging upon him in his passage through
the air, till she sinks to the earth through weariness. And as she lay there,
the divine lover, tarrying still, lighted upon a cypress tree which grew near,
and, from the top of it, spake thus to her, in great emotion. “Foolish one!
unmindful of the command of Venus, my mother, who had devoted thee to one of
base degree, I fled to thee in his stead. Now know I that this was vainly done.
Into mine own flesh pierced mine arrow, and I made thee my wife, only that I
might seem a monster beside thee that thou shouldst seek to wound the head
wherein lay the eyes so full of love to thee! Again and again, I thought to put
thee on thy guard concerning these things, and warned thee in loving-kindness.
Now I would but punish thee by my flight hence.” And therewith he winged his
way into the deep sky. Psyche, prostrate upon the earth, and following far as
sight might reach the flight of the bridegroom, wept and lamented; and when the
breadth of space had parted him wholly from her, cast herself down from the
bank of a river which was nigh. But the stream, turning gentle in honour of the
god, put her forth again unhurt upon its margin. And as it happened, Pan, the
rustic god, was sitting just then by the waterside, embracing, in the body of a
reed, the goddess Canna; teaching her to respond to him in all varieties of
slender sound. Hard by, his flock of goats browsed at will. And the shaggy god
called her, wounded and outworn, kindly to him and said, “I am but a rustic
herdsman, pretty maiden, yet wise, by favour of my great age and long
experience; and if I guess truly by those faltering steps, by thy sorrowful
eyes and continual sighing, thou labourest with excess of love. Listen then to
me, and seek not death again, in the stream or otherwise. Put aside thy woe,
and turn thy prayers to Cupid. He is in truth a delicate youth: win him by the
delicacy of thy service.” So the shepherd-god spoke, and Psyche, answering
nothing, but with a reverence to his serviceable deity, went on her way. And
while she, in her search after Cupid, wandered through many lands, he was lying
in the chamber of his mother, heart-sick. And the white bird which floats over
the waves plunged in haste into the sea, and approaching Venus, as she bathed,
made known to her that her son lies afflicted with some grievous hurt, doubtful
of life. And Venus cried, angrily, “My son, then, has a mistress! And it is
Psyche, who witched away my beauty and was the rival of my godhead, whom he
loves!” Therewith she issued from the sea, and returning to her golden chamber,
found there the lad, sick, as she had heard, and cried from the doorway, “Well
done, truly! to trample thy mother’s precepts under foot, to spare my enemy
that cross of anunworthy love; nay, unite her to thyself, child as thou art,
that I might have a daughter-in-law who hates me! I will make thee repent of
thy sport, and the savour of thy marriage bitter. There is one who shall
chasten this body of thine, put out thy torch and unstring thy bow. Not till
she has plucked forth that hair, into which so oft these hands have smoothed
the golden light, and sheared away thy wings, shall I feel the injury done me
avenged.” And with this she hastened in anger from the doors. And Ceres and
Juno met her, and sought to know the meaning of her troubled countenance. “Ye
come in season,” she cried; “I pray you, find for me Psyche. It must needs be
that ye have heard the disgrace of my house.”And they, ignorant of what was
done, would have soothed her anger, saying, “What fault, Mistress, hath thy son
committed, that thou wouldst destroy the girl he loves? Knowest thou not that
he is now of age? Because he wears his years so lightly must he seem to thee
ever but a child? Wilt thou for ever thus pry into the pastimes of thy son, always
accusing his wantonness, and blaming in him those delicate wiles which are all
thine own?” Thus, in secret fear of the boy’s bow, did they seek to please him
with their gracious patronage. But Venus, angry at their light taking of her
wrongs, turned her back upon them, and with hasty steps made her way once more
to the sea. Meanwhile Psyche, tost in soul, wandering hither and thither,
rested not night or day in the pursuit of her husband, desiring, if she might
not soothe his anger by the endearments of a wife, at the least to propitiate
him with the prayers of a handmaid. And seeing a certain temple on the top of a
high mountain, she said, “Who knows whether yonder place be not the abode of my
lord?” Thither, therefore, she turned her steps, hastening now the more because
desire and hope pressed her on, weary as she was with the labours of the way,
and so, painfully measuring out the highest ridges of the mountain, drew near
to the sacred couches. She sees ears of wheat, in heaps or twisted into chaplets;
ears of barley also, with sickles and all the instruments of harvest, lying
there in disorder, thrown at random from the hands of the labourers in the
great heat. These she curiously sets apart, one by one, duly ordering them; for
she said within herself, “I may not neglect the shrines, nor the holy service,
of any god there be, but must rather win by supplication the kindly mercy of
them all.” And Ceres found her bending sadly upon her task, and cried aloud,
“Alas, Psyche! Venus, in the furiousness of her anger, tracks thy footsteps
through the world, seeking for thee to pay her the utmost penalty; and thou,
thinking of anything rather than thine own safety, hast taken on thee the care
of what belongs to me!” Then Psyche fell down at her feet, and sweeping the
floor with her hair, washing the footsteps of the goddess in her tears,
besought her mercy, with many prayers: By the gladdening rites of harvest, by
the lighted lamps and mystic marches of the Marriage and mysterious Invention
of thy daughter Proserpine, and by all beside that the holy place of Attica
veils in silence, minister, I pray thee, to the sorrowful heart of Psyche!
Suffer me to hide myself but for a few days among the heaps of corn, till time
have softened the anger of the goddess, and my strength, out-worn in my long
travail, be recovered by a little rest.” But Ceres answered her, “Truly thy
tears move me, and I would fain help thee; only I dare not incur the ill-will
of my kinswoman. Depart hence as quickly as may be.” And Psyche, repelled against
hope, afflicted now with twofold sorrow, making her way back again, beheld
among the half-lighted woods of the valley below a sanctuary builded with
cunning art. And that she might lose no way of hope, howsoever doubtful, she
drew near to the sacred doors. She sees there gifts of price, and garments
fixed upon the door-posts and to the branches of the trees, wrought with
letters of gold which told the name of the goddess to whom they were dedicated,
with thanksgiving for that she had done. So, with bent knee and hands laid
about the glowing altar, she prayed saying, “Sister and spouse of Jupiter! be
thou to these my desperate fortune’s Juno the Auspicious! I know that thou dost
willingly help those in travail with child; deliver me from the peril that is
upon me.” And as she prayed thus, Juno in the majesty of her godhead, was
straightway present, and answered, “Would that I might incline favourably to
thee; but against the will of Venus, whom I have ever loved as a daughter, I
may not, for very shame, grant thy prayer.” And Psyche, dismayed by this new
shipwreck of her hope, communed thus with herself, “Whither, from the midst of
the snares that beset me, shall I take my way once more? In what dark solitude
shall I hide me from the all-seeing eye of VENERE? What if I put on at length a
man’s courage, and yielding myself unto her as my mistress, soften by a
humility not yet too late the fierceness of her purpose? Who knows but that I
may find him also whom my soul seeketh after, in the abode of his mother?” And
Venus, renouncing all earthly aid in her search, prepared to return to heaven.
She ordered the chariot to be made ready, wrought for her by Vulcan as a
marriage-gift, with a cunning of hand which had left his work so much the
richer by the weight of gold it lost under his tool. From the multitude which
housed about the bed-chamber of their mistress, white doves came forth, and
with joyful motions bent their painted necks beneath the yoke. Behind it, with
playful riot, the sparrows sped onward, and other birds sweet of song, making
known by their soft notes the approach of the goddess. Eagle and cruel hawk
alarmed not the quireful family of Venus. And the clouds broke away, as the
uttermost ether opened to receive her, daughter and goddess, with great joy.
And Venus passed straightway to the house of Jupiter to beg from him the
service of Mercury, the god of speech. And Jupiter refused not her prayer. And
Venus and Mercury descended from heaven together; and as they went, the former
said to the latter, “Thou knowest, my brother of Arcady, that never at any time
have I done anything without thy help; for how long time, moreover, I have
sought a certain maiden in vain. And now naught remains but that, by thy
heraldry, I proclaim a reward for whomsoever shall find her. Do thou my bidding
quickly.” And therewith she conveyed to him a little scrip, in the which was
written the name of Psyche, with other things; and so returned home. And
Mercury failed not in his office; but departing into all lands, proclaimed that
whosoever delivered up to Venus the fugitive girl, should receive from herself
seven kisses one thereof full of the inmost honey of her throat. With that the
doubt of Psyche was ended. And now, as she came near to the doors of Venus, one
of the household, whose name was Use-and-Wont, ran out to her, crying, “Hast
thou learned, Wicked Maid! now at last! that thou hast a mistress?” And seizing
her roughly by the hair, drew her into the presence of Venus. And when Venus
saw her, she cried out, saying, “Thou hast deigned then to make thy salutations
to thy mother-in-law. Now will I in turn treat thee as becometh a dutiful
daughter-in-law!” And she took barley and millet and poppy-seed, every kind of
grain and seed, and mixed them together, and laughed, and said to her:
“Methinks so plain a maiden can earn lovers only by industrious ministry: now
will I also make trial of thy service. Sort me this heap of seed, the one kind
from the others, grain by grain; and get thy task done before the evening.” And
Psyche, stunned by the cruelty of her bidding, was silent, and moved not her
hand to the inextricable heap. And there came forth a little ant, which had
understanding of the difficulty of her task, and took pity upon the consort of
the god of Love; and he ran deftly hither and thither, and called together the
whole army of his fellows. “Have pity,” he cried, “nimble scholars of the
Earth, Mother of all things! have pity upon the wife of Love, and hasten to
help her in her perilous effort.” Then, one upon the other, the hosts of the
insect people hurried together; and they sorted asunder the whole heap of seed,
separating every grain after its kind, and so departed quickly out of sight.
And at nightfall Venus returned, and seeing that task finished with so wonderful
diligence, she cried, “The work is not thine, thou naughty maid, but his in
whose eyes thou hast found favour.” And calling her again in the morning, “See
now the grove,” she said, “beyond yonder torrent. Certain sheep feed there,
whose fleeces shine with gold. Fetch me straightway a lock of that precious
stuff, having gotten it as thou mayst.” And Psyche went forth willingly, not to
obey the command of Venus, but even to seek a rest from her labour in the
depths of the river. But from the river, the green reed, lowly mother of music,
spake to her: “O Psyche! pollute not these waters by self-destruction, nor
approach that terrible flock; for, as the heat groweth, they wax fierce. Lie
down under yon plane-tree, till the quiet of the river’s breath have soothed
them. Thereafter thou mayst shake down the fleecy gold from the trees of the
grove, for it holdeth by the leaves.” And Psyche, instructed thus by the simple
reed, in the humanity of its heart, filled her bosom with the soft golden
stuff, and returned to Venus. But the goddess smiled bitterly, and said to her,
“Well know I who was the author of this thing also. I will make further trial
of thy discretion, and the boldness of thy heart. Seest thou the utmost peak of
yonder steep mountain? The dark stream which flows down thence waters the
Stygian fields, and swells the flood of Cocytus. Bring me now, in this little
urn, a draught from its innermost source.” And therewith she put into her hands
a vessel of wrought crystal. And Psyche set forth in haste on her way to the
mountain, looking there at last to find the end of her hapless life. But when
she came to the region which borders on the cliff that was showed to her, she
understood the deadly nature of her task. From a great rock, steep and
slippery, a horrible river of water poured forth, falling straightway by a
channel exceeding narrow into the unseen gulf below. And lo! creeping from the
rocks on either hand, angry serpents, with their long necks and sleepless eyes.
The very waters found a voice and bade her depart, in smothered cries of,
Depart hence! and What doest thou here? Look around thee! and Destruction is
upon thee! And then sense left her, in the immensity of her peril, as one
changed to stone. Yet not even then did the distress of this innocent soul
escape the steady eye of a gentle providence. For the bird of Jupiter spread
his wings and took flight to her, and asked her, “Didst thou think, simple one,
even thou! that thou couldst steal one drop of that relentless stream, the holy
river of Styx, terrible even to the gods? But give me thine urn.” And the bird
took the urn, and filled it at the source, and returned to her quickly from
among the teeth of the serpents, bringing with him of the waters, all unwilling
nay! warning him to depart away and not molest them. And she, receiving the urn
with great joy, ran back quickly that she might deliver it to Venus, and yet
again satisfied not the angry goddess. “My child!” she said, “in this one thing
further must thou serve me. Take now this tiny casket, and get thee down even
unto hell, and deliver it to Proserpine. Tell her that Venus would have of her
beauty so much at least as may suffice for but one day’s use, that beauty she
possessed erewhile being foreworn and spoiled, through her tendance upon the
sick-bed of her son; and be not slow in returning.” And Psyche perceived there
the last ebbing of her fortune that she was now thrust openly upon death, who
must go down, of her own motion, to Hades and the Shades. And straightway she
climbed to the top of an exceeding high tower, thinking within herself, “I will
cast myself down thence: so shall I descend most quickly into the kingdom of
the dead.” And the tower again, broke forth into speech: “Wretched Maid!
Wretched Maid! Wilt thou destroy thyself? If the breath quit thy body, then
wilt thou indeed go down into Hades, but by no means return hither. Listen to
me. Among the pathless wilds not far from this place lies a certain mountain,
and therein one of hell’s vent-holes. Through the breach a rough way lies open,
following which thou wilt come, by straight course, to the castle of Orcus. And
thou must not go empty-handed. Take in each hand a morsel of barley-bread,
soaked in hydromel; and in thy mouth two pieces of money. And when thou shalt
be now well onward in the way of death, then wilt thou overtake a lame ass
laden with wood, and a lame driver, who will pray thee reach him certain cords
to fasten the burden which is falling from the ass: but be thou cautious to
pass on in silence. And soon as thou comest to the river of the dead, Charon,
in that crazy bark he hath, will put thee over upon the further side. There is
greed even among the dead: and thou shalt deliver to him, for the ferrying, one
of those two pieces of money, in such wise that he take it with his hand from
between thy lips. And as thou passest over the stream, a dead old man, rising
on the water, will put up to thee his mouldering hands, and pray thee draw him
into the ferry-boat. But beware thou yield not to unlawful pity. “When thou
shalt be come over, and art upon the causeway, certain aged women, spinning,
will cry to thee to lend thy hand to their work; and beware again that thou
take no part therein; for this also is the snare of Venus, whereby she would
cause thee to cast away one at least of those cakes thou bearest in thy hands.
And think not that a slight matter; for the loss of either one of them will be
to thee the losing of the light of day. For a watch-dog exceeding fierce lies
ever before the threshold of that lonely house of Proserpine. Close his mouth
with one of thy cakes; so shalt thou pass by him, and enter straightway into
the presence of Proserpine herself. Then do thou deliver thy message, and
taking what she shall give thee, return back again; offering to the watch-dog
the other cake, and to the ferryman that other piece of money thou hast in thy
mouth. After this manner mayst thou return again beneath the stars. But withal,
I charge thee, think not to look into, nor open, the casket thou bearest, with
that treasure of the beauty of the divine countenance hidden therein.” So spake
the stones of the tower; and Psyche delayed not, but proceeding diligently
after the manner enjoined, entered into the house of Proserpine, at whose feet
she sat down humbly, and would neither the delicate couch nor that divine food
the goddess offered her, but did straightway the business of Venus. And
Proserpine filled the casket secretly and shut the lid, and delivered it to
Psyche, who fled therewith from Hades with new strength. But coming back into
the light of day, even as she hasted now to the ending of her service, she was
seized by a rash curiosity. “Lo! now,” she said within herself, “my simpleness!
who bearing in my hands the divine loveliness, heed not to touch myself with a
particle at least therefrom, that I may please the more, by the favour of it,
my fair one, my beloved.” Even as she spoke, she lifted the lid; and behold!
within, neither beauty, nor anything beside, save sleep only, the sleep of the
dead, which took hold upon her, filling all her members with its drowsy vapour,
so that she lay down in the way and moved not, as in the slumber of death. And
Cupid being healed of his wound, because he would endure no longer the absence
of her he loved, gliding through the narrow window of the chamber wherein he
was holden, his pinions being now repaired by a little rest, fled forth swiftly
upon them, and coming to the place where Psyche was, shook that sleep away from
her, and set him in his prison again, awaking her with the innocent point of
his arrow. “Lo! thine old error again,” he said, “which had like once more to
have destroyed thee! But do thou now what is lacking of the command of my
mother: the rest shall be my care. With these words, the lover rose upon the
air; and being consumed inwardly with the greatness of his love, penetrated
with vehement wing into the highest place of heaven, to lay his cause before
the father of the gods. And the father of gods took his hand in his, and kissed
his face and said to him, “At no time, my son, hast thou regarded me with due
honour. Often hast thou vexed my bosom, wherein lies the disposition of the
stars, with those busy darts of thine. Nevertheless, because thou hast grown up
between these mine hands, I will accomplish thy desire.” And straightway he
bade Mercury call the gods together; and, the council-chamber being filled,
sitting upon a high throne, “Ye gods,” he said, “all ye whose names are in the
white book of the Muses, ye know yonder lad. It seems good to me that his
youthful heats should by some means be restrained. And that all occasion may be
taken from him, I would even confine him in the bonds of marriage. He has
chosen and embraced a mortal maiden. Let him have fruit of his love, and
possess her for ever.” Thereupon he bade MERCURIO produce Psyche in heaven; and
holding out to her his ambrosial cup, “Take it,” he said, “and live for ever;
nor shall CUPIDO ever depart from thee.” And the gods sat down together to the
marriage-feast. On the first couch lay the bridegroom, and Psyche in his bosom.
His rustic serving-boy bare the wine to Jupiter; and Bacchus to the rest. The
Seasons crimsoned all things with their roses. Apollo sang to the lyre, while a
little Pan prattled on his reeds, and VENERE danced very sweetly to the soft
music. Thus, with due rites, did Psyche pass into the power of Cupid; and from
them was born the daughter whom men call Voluptas. So the famous story composed
itself in the memory of Marius, with an expression changed in some ways from
the original and on the whole graver. The petulant, boyish Cupid of APULEIO was
become more like that “Lord, of terrible aspect,” who stood at Dante’s bedside
and wept, or had at least grown to the manly earnestness of the Erôs of
Praxiteles. Set in relief amid the coarser matter of the book, this episode of
Cupid and Psyche served to combine many lines of meditation, already familiar
to Marius, into the ideal of a perfect imaginative love, centered upon a type
of beauty entirely flawless and clean an ideal which never wholly faded from
his thoughts, though he valued it at various times in different degrees. The
human body in its beauty, as the highest potency of all the beauty of material
objects, seemed to him just then to be matter no longer, but, having taken
celestial fire, to assert itself as indeed the true, though visible, soul or
spirit in things. In contrast with that ideal, in all the pure brilliancy, and
as it were in the happy light, of youth and morning and the springtide, men’s
actual loves, with which at many points the book brings one into close contact,
might appear to him, like the general tenor of their lives, to be somewhat mean
and sordid. The hiddenness of perfect things: a shrinking mysticism, a
sentiment of diffidence like that expressed in Psyche’s so tremulous hope
concerning the child to be born of the husband she had never yet seen “in the
face of this little child, at the least, shall I apprehend thine” in hoc saltem
parvulo cognoscam faciem tuam: the fatality which seems to haunt any signal+
beauty, whether moral or physical, as if it were in itself something illicit
and isolating: the suspicion and hatred it so often excites in the vulgar:
these were some of the impressions, forming, as they do, a constant tradition
of somewhat cynical pagan experience, from Medusa and Helen downwards, which
the old story enforced on him. A book, like a person, has its fortunes with
one; is lucky or unlucky in the precise moment of its falling in our way, and
often by some happy accident counts with us for something more than its
independent value. The Metamorphoses of APULEIO, coming to Marius just then,
figured for him as indeed The Golden Book: he felt a sort of personal gratitude
to its writer, and saw in it doubtless far more than was really there for any other
reader. It occupied always a peculiar place in his remembrance, never quite
losing its power in frequent return to it for the revival of that first glowing
impression. Its effect upon the elder youth was a more practical one: it
stimulated the literary ambition, already so strong a motive with him, by a
signal example of success, and made him more than ever an ardent, indefatigable
student of words, of the means or instrument of the literary art. The secrets
of utterance, of expression itself, of that through which alone any
intellectual or spiritual power within one can actually take effect upon
others, to over-awe or charm them to one’s side, presented themselves to this
ambitious lad in immediate connexion with that desire for predominance, for the
satisfaction of which another might have relied on the acquisition and display
of brilliant military qualities. In him, a fine instinctive sentiment of the
exact value and power of words was connate with the eager longing for sway over
his fellows. He saw himself already a gallant and effective leader, innovating
or conservative as occasion might require, in the rehabilitation of the
mother-tongue, then fallen so tarnished and languid; yet the sole object, as he
mused within himself, of the only sort of patriotic feeling proper, or
possible, for one born of slaves. The popular speech was gradually departing
from the form and rule of literary language, a language always and increasingly
artificial. While the learned dialect was yearly becoming more and more barbarously
pedantic, the colloquial idiom, on the other hand, offered a thousand
chance-tost gems of racy or picturesque expression, rejected or at least
ungathered by what claimed to be classical Latin. The time was coming when
neither the pedants nor the people would really understand CICERONE (si veda);
though there were some indeed, like this new writer, Apuleius, who, departing
from the custom of writing in Greek, which had been a fashionable affectation
among the sprightlier wits since the days of Hadrian, had written in the
vernacular. The literary prog ramme which Flavian had already designed for
himself would be a work, then, partly conservative or reactionary, in its
dealing with the instrument of the literary art; partly popular and
revolutionary, asserting, so to term them, the rights of the proletariate of
speech. More than fifty years before, the younger Pliny, himself an effective
witness for the delicate power of the Latin tongue, had said, “I am one of
those who admire the ancients, yet I do not, like some others, underrate
certain instances of genius which our own times afford. For it is not true that
nature, as if weary and effete, no longer produces what is admirable.” And he,
Flavian, would prove himself the true master of the opportunity thus indicated.
In his eagerness for a not too distant fame, he dreamed over all that, as the
young Caesar may have dreamed of campaigns. Others might brutalise or neglect
the native speech, that true “open field” for charm and sway over men. He would
make of it a serious study, weighing the precise power of every phrase and
word, as though it were precious metal, disentangling the later associations
and going back to the original and native sense of each, restoring to full
significance all its wealth of latent figurative expression, reviving or
replacing its outworn or tarnished images. Latin literature and the Latin
tongue were dying of routine and languor; and what was necessary, first of all,
was to re-establish the natural and direct relationship between thought and
expression, between the sensation and the term, and restore to words their
primitive power. For words, after all, words manipulated with all his delicate
force, were to be the apparatus of a war for himself. To be forcibly impressed,
in the first place; and in the next, to find the means of making visible to
others that which was vividly apparent, delightful, of lively interest to
himself, to the exclusion of all that was but middling, tame, or only half-true
even to him this scrupulousness of literary art actually awoke in Flavian, for
the first time, a sort of chivalrous conscience. What care for style! what
patience of execution! what research for the significant tones of ancient idiom
sonantia verba et antiqua! What stately and regular word-building gravis et
decora constructio! He felt the whole meaning of the sceptical Pliny’s somewhat
melancholy advice to one of his friends, that he should seek in literature
deliverance from mortality ut studiis se literarum a mortalitate vindicet. And
there was everything in the nature and the training of Marius to make him a
full participator in the hopes of such a new literary school, with Flavian for
its leader. In the refinements of that curious spirit, in its horror of
profanities, its fastidious sense of a correctness in external form, there was
something which ministered to the old ritual interest, still surviving in him;
as if here indeed were involved a kind of sacred service tothe mother-tongue.
Here, then, was the theory of Euphuism, as manifested in every age in which the
literary conscience has been awakened to forgotten duties towards language,
towards the instrument of expression: infact it does but modify a little the
principles of all effective expression at all times. ’Tis art’s function to conceal
itself: ars est celare artem: is a saying, which, exaggerated by inexact
quotation, has perhaps been oftenest and most confidently quoted by those who
have had little literary or other art to conceal; and from the very beginning
of professional literature, the “labour of the file” a labour in the case of
L’ACCADEMIA, for instance, or VIRGILIO (si veda), like that of the oldest of
goldsmiths as described by Apuleius, enriching the work by far more than the
weight of precious metal it removed has always had its function. Sometimes,
doubtless, as in later examples of it, this Roman Euphuism, determined at any
cost to attain beauty in writing es kallos graphein+ might lapse into its
characteristic fopperies or mannerisms, into the “defects of its qualities,” in
truth, not wholly unpleasing perhaps, or at least excusable, when looked at as
but the toys (so CICERONE (si veda) calls them), the strictly congenial and
appropriate toys, of an assiduously cultivated age, which could not help being
polite, critical, self-conscious. The mere love of novelty also had, of course,
its part there: as with the Euphuism of the Elizabethan age, and of the modern
French romanticists, its neologies were the ground of one of the favourite
charges against it; though indeed, as regards these tricks of taste also, there
is nothing new, but a quaint family likeness rather, between the Euphuists of
successive ages. Here, as elsewhere, the power of “fashion,” as it is called,
is but one minor form, slight enough, it may be, yet distinctly symptomatic, of
that deeper yearning of human nature towards ideal perfection, which is a
continuous force in it; and since in this direction too human nature is
limited, such fashions must necessarilyreproduce themselves. Among other
resemblances to later growths of Euphuism, its archaisms on the one hand, and
its neologies on the other, the Euphuism of the days of Marcus Aurelius had, in
the composition of verse, its fancy for the refrain. It was a snatch from a
popular chorus, something he had heard sounding all over the town of Pisa one
April night, one of the firstbland and summer-like nights of the year, that
Flavian had chosen for the refrain of a poem he was then pondering the
Pervigilium Veneris the vigil, or “nocturn,” of Venus. Certain elderly
counsellors, filling what may be thought a constant part in the little
tragi-comedy which literature and its votaries are playing in all ages, would
ask, suspecting some affectation or unreality in that minute culture of form:
Cannot those who have a thing to say, say it directly? Why not be simple and
broad, like the old writers of Greece? And this challenge had at least the
effect of setting his thoughts at work on the intellectual situation as it lay
between the children of the present and those earliest masters. Certainly, the
most wonderful, the unique, point, about the Greek genius, in literature as in
everything else, was the entire absence of imitation in its productions. How
had the burden of precedent, laid upon every artist, increased since then! It
was all around one: that smoothly built world of old classical taste, an
accomplished fact, with overwhelming authority on every detail of the conduct
of one’s work. With no fardel on its own back, yet so imperious towards those
who came labouring after it, Hellas, in its early freshness, looked as distant
from him even then as it does from ourselves. There might seem to be no place
left for novelty or originality, place only for a patient, an infinite,
faultlessness. On this question too Flavian passed through a world of curious
art-casuistries, of self-tormenting, at the threshold of his work. Was poetic
beauty a thing ever one and the same, a type absolute; or, changing always with
the soul of time itself, did it depend upon the taste, the peculiar trick of
apprehension, the fashion, as we say, of each successive age? Might one recover
that old, earlier sense of it, that earlier manner, in a mas terly effort to
recall all the complexities of the life, moral and intellectual, of the earlier
age to which it had belonged? Had there been really bad ages in art or
literature? Were all ages, even those earliest, adventurous, matutinal days, in
themselves equally poetical or unpoetical; and poetry, the literary beauty, the
poetic ideal, always but a borrowed light upon men’s actual life? Homer had
said Hoi d’hote dê limenos polybentheos entos hikonto, Histia men steilanto,
thesan d’ en nêi melainê... Ek de kai autoi bainon epi phêgmini thalassês.+ And
how poetic the simple incident seemed, told just thus! Homer was always telling
things after this manner. And one might think there had been no effort in it:
that here was but the almost mechanical transcript of a time, naturally,
intrinsically, poetic, a time in which one could hardly have spoken at all
without ideal effect, or, the sailors pulled down their boat without making a
picture in “the great style,” against a sky charged with marvels. Must not the
mere prose of an age, itself thus ideal, have coun ted for more than half of
Homer’s poetry? Or might the closer student discover even here, even in Homer,
the really mediatorial function of the poet, as between the reader and the
actual matter of his experience; the poet waiting, so to speak, in an age which
had felt itself trite and commonplace enough, on his opportunity for the touch
of “golden alchemy,” or at least for the pleasantly lighted side of things
themselves? Might not another, in one’s own prosaic and used-up time, so
uneventful as it had been through the long reign of these quiet Antonines, in
like manner, discover his ideal, by a due waiting upon it? Would not a future
generation, looking back upon this, under the power of the enchanted-distance
fallacy, find it ideal to view, in contrast with its own languor the languor
that for some reason (concerning which Augustine will one day have his view)
seemed to haunt men always? Had Homer, even, appeared unreal and affected in
his poetic flight, to some of the people of his own age, as seemed to happen
with every new literature in turn? In any case, the intellectual conditions of
early Greece had been how different from these! And a true literary tact would
accept that difference in forming the primary conception of the literary
function at a later time. Perhaps the utmost one could get by conscious effort,
in the way of a reaction or return to the conditions of an earlier and fresher
age, would be but novitas, artificial artlessness, naïveté; and this quality
too might have its measure of euphuistic charm, direct and sensible enough,
though it must count, in comparison with that genuine early Greek newness at
the beginning, not as the freshness of the open fields, but only of a bunch of
field-flowers in a heated room. There was, meantime, all this: on one side, the
old pagan culture, for us but a fragment, for him an accomplished yet present
fact, still a living, united, organic whole, in the entirety of its art, its
thought, its religions, its sagacious forms of polity, that so weighty
authority it exercised on every point, being in reality only the measure of its
charm for every one: on the other side, the actual world in all its eager
self-assertion, with Flavian himself, in his boundless animation, there, at the
centre of the situation. From the natural defects, from the pettiness, of his
euphuism, his assiduous cultivation of manner, he was saved by the
consciousness that he had a matter to present, very real, at least to him. That
preoccupation of the dilettante with what might seem mere details of form,
after all, did but serve the purpose of bringing to the surface, sincerely and
in their integrity, certain strong personal intuitions, a certain vision or
apprehension of things as really being, with important results, thus, rather
than thus, intuitions which the artistic or literary faculty was called upon to
follow, with the exactness of wax or clay, clothing the model within. Flavian
too, with his fine clear mastery of the practically effective, had early laid
hold of the principle, as axiomatic in literature: that to know when one’s self
is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people. It was a
principle, the forcible apprehension of which made him jealous and fastidious
in the selection of his intellectual food; often listless while others read or
gazed diligently; never pretending to be moved out of mere complaisance to
people’s emotions: it served to foster in him a very scrupulous literary
sincerity with himself. And it was this uncompromising demand for a matter, in
all art, derived immediately from lively personal intuition, this constant
appeal to individual judgment, which saved his euphuism, even at its weakest,
from lapsing into mere artifice. Was the magnificent exordium of Lucretius,
addressed to the goddess Venus, the work of his earlier manhood, and designed
originally to open an argument less persistently sombre than that protest
against the whole pagan heaven which actually follows it? It is certainly the
most typical expression of a mood, still incident to the young poet, as a thing
peculiar to his youth, when he feels the sentimental current setting forcibly
along his veins, and so much as a matter of purely physical excitement, that he
can hardly distinguish it from the animation of external nature, the upswelling
of the seed in the earth, and of the sap through the trees. Flavian, to whom,
again, as to his later euphuistic kinsmen, old mythology seemed as full of
untried, unexpressed motives and interest as human life itself, had long been
occupied with a kind of mystic hymn to the vernal principle of life in things; a
composition shaping itself, little by little, out of a thousand dim
perceptions, into singularly definite form (definite and firm as fine-art in
metal, thought Marius) for which, as I said, he had caught his “refrain,” from
the lips of the young men, singing because they could not help it, in the
streets of Pisa. And as oftenest happens also, with natures of genuinely poetic
quality, those piecemeal beginnings came suddenly to harmonious completeness
among the fortunate incidents, the physical heat and light, of one singularly
happy day. It was one of the first hot days of March “the sacred day” on which,
from Pisa, as from many another harbour on the Mediterranean, the Ship of Isis
went to sea, and every one walked down to the shore-side to witness the freighting
of the vessel, its launching and final abandonment among the waves, as an
object really devoted to the Great Goddess, that new rival, or “double,” of
ancient VENERE, and like her a favourite patroness of sailors. On the evening
next before, all the world had been abroad to view the illumination of the
river; the stately lines of building being wreathed with hundreds of
many-coloured lamps. The young men had poured forth their chorus Cras amet qui
nunquam amavit, Quique amavit cras amet as they bore their torches through the
yielding crowd, or rowed their lanterned boats up and down the stream, till far
into the night, when heavy rain-drops had driven the last lingerers home.
Morning broke, however, smiling and serene; and the long procession started
betimes. The river, curving slightly, with the smoothly paved streets on either
side, between its low marble parapet and the fair dwelling-houses, formed the
main highway of the city; and the pageant, accompanied throughout by
innumerable lanterns and wax tapers, took its course up one of these streets,
crossing the water by a bridge up-stream, and down the other, to the haven,
every possible standing-place, out of doors and within, being crowded with
sight-seers, of whom Marius was one of the most eager, deeply interested in
finding the spectacle much as Apuleius had described it in his famous book. At
the head of the procession, the master of ceremonies, quietly waving back the
assistants, made way for a number of women, scattering perfumes. They were succeeded
by a company of musicians, piping and twanging, on instruments the strangest
MARIO had ever beheld, the notes of a hymn, narrating the first origin of this
votive rite to a choir of youths, who marched behind them singing it. The
tire-women and other personal attendants of the great goddess came next,
bearing the instruments of their ministry, and various articles from the sacred
wardrobe, wrought of the most precious material; some of them with long ivory
combs, plying their hands in wild yet graceful concert of movement as they
went, in devout mimicry of the toilet. Placed in their rear were the
mirror-bearers of the goddess, carrying large mirrors of beaten brass or
silver, turned in such a way as to reflect to the great body of worshippers who
followed, the face of the mysterious image, as it moved on its way, and their
faces to it, as though they were in fact advancing to meet the heavenly
visitor. They comprehended a multitude of both sexes and of all ages, already
initiated into the divine secret, clad in fair linen, the females veiled, the
males with shining tonsures, and every one carrying a sistrum the richer sort
of silver, a few very dainty persons of fine gold rattling the reeds, with a
noise like the jargon of innumerable birds and insects awakened from torpor and
abroad in the spring sun. Then, borne upon a kind of platform, came the goddess
herself, undulating above the heads of the multitude as the bearers walked, in
mystic robe embroidered with the moon and stars, bordered gracefully with a
fringe of real fruit and flowers, and with a glittering crown upon the head.
The train of the procession consisted of the priests in long white vestments,
close from head to foot, distributed into various groups, each bearing, exposed
aloft, one of the sacred symbols of Isis the corn-fan, the golden asp, the
ivory hand of equity, and among them the votive ship itself, carved and gilt,
and adorned bravely with flags flying. Last of all walked the high priest; the
people kneeling as he passed to kiss his hand, in which were those
well-remembered roses. MARIO follows with the rest to the harbour, where the
mystic ship, lowered from the shoulders of the priests, was loaded with as much
as it could carry of the rich spices and other costly gifts, offered in great
profusion by the worshippers, and thus, launched at last upon the water, left
the shore, crossing the harbour-bar in the wake of a much stouter vessel than
itself with a crew of white-robed mariners, whose function it was, at the
appointed moment, finally to desert it on the open sea. The remainder of the
day was spent by most in parties on the water. Flavian and Marius sailed
further than they had ever done before to a wild spot on the bay, the
traditional site of a little Greek colony, which, having had its eager,
stirring life at the time when Etruria was still a power in Italy, had perished
in the age of the civil wars. In the absolute transparency of the air on this
gracious day, an infinitude of detail from sea and shore reached the eye with
sparkling clearness, as the two lads sped rapidly over the waves Flavian at
work suddenly, from time to time, with his tablets. They reached land at last.
The coral fishers had spread their nets on the sands, with a tumble-down of
quaint, many-hued treasures, below a little shrine of Venus, fluttering and gay
with the scarves and napkins and gilded shells which these people had offered
to the image. FLAVIANO and MARIO sit down under the shadow of a mass of gray
rock or ruin, where the sea-gate of the Greek town had been, and talked of life
in those old Greek colonies. Of this place, all that remained, besides those
rude stones, was a handful of silver coins, each with a head of pure and
archaic beauty, though a little cruel perhaps, supposed to represent the Siren
Ligeia, whose tomb was formerly shown here only these, and an ancient song, the
very strain which Flavian had recovered in those last months. They were records
which spoke, certainly, of the charm of life within those walls. How strong
must have been the tide of men’s existence in that little republican town, so
small that this circle of gray stones, of service now only by the moisture they
gathered for the blue-flowering gentians among them, had been the line of its
rampart! An epitome of all that was liveliest, most animated and adventurous,
in the old Greek people of which it was an offshoot, it had enhanced the effect
of these gifts by concentration within narrow limits. The band of “devoted
youth,” hiera neotês.+ of the brothers, devoted to the gods and whatever luck
the gods might afford, because there was no room for them at home went forth,
bearing the sacred flame from the mother hearth; itself a flame, of power to
consume the whole material of existence in clear light and heat, with no
smouldering residue. The life of those vanished townsmen, so brilliant and
revolutionary, applying so abundantly the personal qualities which alone just
then Marius seemed to value, associated itself with the actual figure of his
companion, standing there before him, his face enthusiastic with the sudden
thought of all that; and struck him vividly as precisely the fitting
opportunity for a nature like his, so hungry for control, for ascendency over
men. Marius noticed also, however, as high spirits flagged at last, on the way
home through the heavy dew of the evening, more than physical fatigue in
Flavian, who seemed to find no refreshment in the coolness. There had been
something feverish, perhaps, and like the beginning of sickness, about his
almost forced gaiety, in this sudden spasm of spring; and by the evening of the
next day he was lying with a burning spot on his forehead, stricken, as was
thought from the first, by the terrible new disease. NOTES 93. +Corrected from
the Macmillan edition misprint “singal.” 98. +Transliteration: es kallos
graphein. Translation: “To write beautifully.”Iliad 1.432-33, 437.
Transliteration: Hoi d’ hote dê limenos polybentheos entos hikonto, Histia men
steilanto, thesan d’ en nêi melainê... Ek de kai autoi bainon epi phêgmini thalassês.
Etext editor’s translation: When they had safely made deep harbor They took in
the sail, laid it in their black ship... And went ashore just past the
breakers. 109. +Transliteration: hiera neotês. Pater translates the phrase,
“devoted youth.” For the fantastical colleague of the philosophic emperor
Marcus Aurelius, returning in triumph from the East, had brought in his train,
among the enemies of Rome, one by no means a captive. People actually sickened
at a sudden touch of the unsuspected foe, as they watched in dense crowds the
pathetic or grotesque imagery of failure or success in the triumphal
procession. And, as usual, the plague brought with it a power to develop all
pre-existent germs of superstition. It was by dishonour done to Apollo himself,
said popular rumour to Apollo, the old titular divinity of pestilence, that the
poisonous thing had come abroad. Pent up in a golden coffer consecrated to the
god, it had escaped in the sacrilegious plundering of his temple at Seleucia by
the soldiers of Lucius Verus, after a traitorous surprise of that town and a
cruel massacre. Certainly there was something which baffled all imaginable
precautions and all medical science, in the suddenness with which the disease
broke out simultaneously, here and there, among both soldiers and citizens,
even in places far remote from the main line of its march in the rear of the
victorious army. It seemed to have invaded the whole empire, and some have even
thought that, in a mitigated form, it permanently remained there. In Rome
itself many thousands perished; and old authorities tell of farmsteads, whole
towns, and even entire neighbourhoods, which from that time continued without
inhabitants and lapsed into wildness or ruin. Flavian lay at the open window of
his lodging, with a fiery pang in the brain, fancying no covering thin or light
enough to be applied to his body. His head being relieved after a while, there
was distress at the chest. It was but the fatal course of the strange new
sickness, under many disguises; travelling from the brain to the feet, like a
material resident, weakening one after another of the organic centres; often,
when it did not kill, depositing various degrees of lifelong infirmity in this
member or that; and after such descent, returning upwards again, now as a
mortal coldness, leaving the entrenchments of the fortress of life overturned,
one by one, behind it. Flavian lay there, with the enemy at his breast now in a
painful cough, but relieved from that burning fever in the head, amid the rich-scented
flowers rare Paestum roses, and the like procured by Marius for his solace, in
a fancied convalescence; and would, at intervals, return to labour at his
verses, with a great eagerness to complete and transcribe the work, while
Marius sat and wrote at his dictation, one of the latest but not the poorest
specimens of genuine Latin poetry. It was in fact a kind of nuptial hymn,
which, taking its start from the thought of nature as the universal mother,
celebrated the preliminary pairing and mating together of all fresh things, in
the hot and genial spring-time the immemorial nuptials of the soul of spring
itself and the brown earth; and was full of a delighted, mystic sense of what
passed between them in that fantastic marriage. That mystic burden was relieved,
at intervals, by the familiar playfulness of the Latin verse-writer in dealing
with mythology, which, though coming at so late a day, had still a wonderful
freshness in its old age. “Amor has put his weapons by and will keep holiday.
He was bidden go without apparel, that none might be wounded by his bowand
arrows. But take care! In truth he is none the less armed than usual, though he
be all unclad.” In the expression of all this Flavian seemed, while making it
his chief aim to retain the opulent, many-syllabled vocabulary of the Latin
genius, at some points even to have advanced beyond it, in anticipation of
wholly new laws of taste as regards sound, a new range of sound itself. The
peculiar resultant note, associating itself with certain other experiences of
his, was to Marius like the foretaste of an entirely novel world of poetic
beauty to come. Flavian had caught, indeed, something of the rhyming cadence,
the sonorous organ-music of the medieval Latin, and therewithal something of
its unction and mysticity of spirit. There was in his work, along with the last
splendour of the classical language, a touch, almost prophetic, of that
transformed life it was to have in the rhyming middle age, just about to dawn.
The impression thus forced upon Marius connected itself with a feeling, the
exact inverse of that, known to every one, which seems to say, You have been
just here, just thus, before! a feeling, in his case, not reminiscent but
prescient of the future, which passed over him afterwards many times, as he
came across certain places and people. It was as if he detected there the
process of actual change to a wholly undreamed-of and renewed condition of
human body and soul: as if he saw the heavy yet decrepit old Roman
architectureabout him, rebuilding on an intrinsically better pattern. Could it
have been actually on a new musical instrument that Flavian had first heard the
novel accents of his verse? And still Marius noticed there, amid all its
richness of expression and imagery, that firmness of outline he had always
relished so much in the composition of Flavian. Yes! a firmness like that of
some master of noble metal-work, manipulating tenacious bronze or gold. Even
now that haunting refrain, with its impromptu variations, from the throats of
those strong young men, came floating through the window. Cras amet qui nunquam
amavit, Quique amavit cras amet! repeated Flavian, tremulously, dictating yet
one stanza more. What he was losing, his freehold of a soul and body so
fortunately endowed, the mere liberty of life above-ground, “those sunny
mornings in the cornfields by the sea,” as he recollected them one day, when
the window was thrown open upon the early freshness his sense of all this, was
from the first singularly near and distinct, yet rather as of something he was
but debarred the use of for a time than finally bidding farewell to. That was
while he was still with no very grave misgivings as to the issue of his
sickness, and felt the sources of life still springing essentially unadulterate
within him. From time to time, indeed, Marius, labouring eagerly at the poem
from his dictation, was haunted by a feeling of the triviality of such work
just then. The recurrent sense of some obscure danger beyond the mere danger of
death, vaguer than that and by so much the more terrible, like the menace of
some shadowy adversary in the dark with whose mode of attack they had no
acquaintance, disturbed him now and again through those hours of excited
attention to his manuscript, and to the purely physical wants of Flavian.
Still, during these three days there was much hope and cheerfulness, and even
jesting. Half-consciously Marius tried to prolong one or another relieving
circumstance of the day, the preparations for rest and morning refreshment, for
instance; sadly making the most of the little luxury of this or that, with
something of the feigned cheer of the mother who sets her last morsels before
her famished child as for a feast, but really that he “may eat it and die.” On
the afternoon of the seventh day he allowed Marius finally to put aside the
unfinished manuscript. For the enemy, leaving the chest quiet at length though
much exhausted, had made itself felt with full power again in a painful
vomiting, which seemed to shake his body asunder, with great consequent
prostration. From that time the distress increased rapidly downwards. Omnia tum
vero vitai claustra lababant;+ and soon the cold was mounting with sure pace
from the dead feet to the head. And now Marius began more than to suspect what
the issue must be, and henceforward could but watch with a sort of agonised
fascination the rapid but systematic work of the destroyer, faintly relieving a
little the mere accidents of the sharper forms of suffering. Flavian himself
appeared, in full consciousness at last in clear-sighted, deliberate estimate
of the actual crisis to be doing battle with his adversary. His mind surveyed,
with great distinctness, the various suggested modes of relief. He must without
fail get better, he would fancy, might he be removed to a certain place on the
hills where as a child he had once recovered from sickness, but found that he
could scarcely raise his head from the pillow without giddiness. As if now
surely foreseeing the end, he would set himself, with an eager effort, and with
that eager and angry look, which is noted as one of the premonitions of death
in this disease, to fashion out, without formal dictation, still a few more
broken verses of his unfinished work, in hard-set determination, defiant of
pain, to arrest this or that little drop at least from the river of sensuous
imagery rushing so quickly past him. But at length delirium symptom that the
work of the plague was done, and the last resort of life yielding to the enemy
broke the coherent order of words and thoughts; and MARIO, intent on the coming
agony, found his best hope in the increasing dimness of the patient’s mind. In
intervals of clearer consciousness the visible signs of cold, of sorrow and
desolation, were very painful. No longer battling with the disease, he seemed
as it were to place himself at the disposal of the victorious foe, dying
passively, like some dumb creature, in hopeless acquiescence at last. That old,
half-pleading petulance, unamiable, yet, as it might seem, only needing
conditions of life a little happier than they had actually been, to become
refinement of affection, a delicate grace in its demand on the sympathy of
others, had changed in those moments of full intelligence to a clinging and
tremulous gentleness, as he lay “on the very threshold of death” with a sharply
contracted hand in the hand of Marius, to his almost surprised joy, winning him
now to an absolutely self-forgetful devotion. There was a new sort of pleading
in the misty eyes, just because they took such unsteady note of him, which made
Marius feel as if guilty; anticipating thus a form of self-reproach with which
even the tenderest ministrant may be sometimes surprised, when, at death,
affectionate labour suddenly ceasing leaves room for the suspicion of some
failure of love perhaps, at one or another minute point in it. Marius almost
longed to take his share in the suffering, that he might understand so the
better how to relieve it. It seemed that the light of the lamp distressed the
patient, and Marius extinguished it. The thunder which had sounded all day
among the hills, with a heat not unwelcome to FLAVIANO, had given way at
nightfall to steady rain; and in the darkness MARIO lies down beside him,
faintly shivering now in the sudden cold, to lend him his own warmth, undeterred
by the fear of contagion which had kept other people from passing near the
house. At length about day-break he perceived that the last effort had come
with a revival of mental clearness, as Marius understood by the contact, light
as it was, in recognition of him there. “Is it a comfort,” he whispered then,
“that I shall often come and weep over you?” “Not unless I be aware, and hear
you weeping!” The sun shone out on the people going to work for a long hot day,
and Marius was standing by the dead, watching, with deliberate purpose to fix
in his memory every detail, that he might have this picture in reserve, should
any hour of forgetfulness hereafter come to him with the temptation to feel
completely happy again. A feeling of outrage, of resentment against nature
itself, mingled with an agony of pity, as he noted on the now placid features a
certain look of humility, almost abject, like the expression of a smitten child
or animal, as of one, fallen at last, after bewildering struggle, wholly under
the power of a merciless adversary. From mere tenderness of soul he would not
forget one circumstance in all that; as a man might piously stamp on his memory
the death-scene of a brother wrongfully condemned to die, against a time that
may come. The fear of the corpse, which surprised him in his effort to watch by
it through the darkness, was a hint of his own failing strength, just in time.
The first night after the washing of the body, he bore stoutly enough the tax
which affection seemed to demand, throwing the incense from time to time on the
little altar placed beside the bier. It was the recurrence of the thing that
unchanged outline below the coverlet, amid a silence in which the faintest
rustle seemed to speak that finally overcame his determination. Surely, here,
in this alienation, this sense of distance between them, which had come over
him before though in minor degree when the mind of Flavian had wandered in his
sickness, was another of the pains of death. Yet he was able to make all due
preparations, and go through the ceremonies, shortened a little because of the
infection, when, on a cloudless evening, the funeral procession went forth;
himself, the flames of the pyre having done their work, carrying away the urn
of the deceased, in the folds of his toga, to its last resting-place in the
cemetery beside the highway, and so turning home to sleep in his own desolate
lodging. Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus Tam cari capitis? + What thought of
others’ thoughts about one could there be with the regret for “so dear a head”
fresh at one’s heart? NOTES 116. +Lucretius, Book VI.1153. 120. +Horace, Odes
I.xxiv.1-2. Animula, vagula, blandula Hospes comesque corporis, Quae nunc
abibis in loca? Pallidula, rigida, nudula. The Emperor Hadrian to his Soul
Flavian was no more. The little marble chest with its dust and tears lay cold
among the faded flowers. For most people the actual spectacle of death brings
out into greater reality, at least for the imagination, whatever confidence
they may entertain of the soul’s survival in another life. To Marius, greatly
agitated by that event, the earthly end of Flavian came like a final revelation
of nothing less than the soul’s extinction. Flavian had gone out as utterly as
the fire among those still beloved ashes. Even that wistful suspense of
judgment expressed by the dying Hadrian, regarding further stages of being
still possible for the soul in some dim journey hence, seemed wholly untenable,
and, with it, almost all that remained of the religion of his childhood. Future
extinction seemed just then to be what the unforced witness of his own nature
pointed to. On the other hand, there came a novel curiosity as to what the
various schools of ancient philosophy had had to say concerning that strange,
fluttering creature; and that curiosity impelled him to certain severe studies,
in which his earlier religious conscience seemed still to survive, as a
principle of hieratic scrupulousness or integrity of thought, regarding this
new service to intellectual light. At this time, by his poetic and inward
temper, he might have fallen a prey to the enervating mysticism, then in wait
for ardent souls in many a melodramatic revival of old religion or theosophy.
From all this, fascinating as it might actually be to one side of his character,
he was kept by a genuine virility there, effective in him, among other results,
as a hatred of what was theatrical, and the instinctive recognition that in
vigorous intelligence, after all, divinity was most likely to be found a
resident. With this was connected the feeling, increasing with his advance to
manhood, of a poetic beauty in mere clearness of thought, the actually
aesthetic charm of a cold austerity of mind; as if the kinship of that to the
clearness of physical light were something more than a figure of speech. Of all
those various religious fantasies, as so many forms of enthusiasm, he could
well appreciate the picturesque; that was made easy by his natural
Epicureanism, already prompting him to conceive of himself as but the passive
spectator of the world around him. But it was to the severer reasoning, of
which such matters as Epicurean theory are born, that, in effect, he now betook
himself. Instinctively suspicious of those mechanical arcana, those pretended
“secrets unveiled” of the professional mystic, which really bring great and
little souls to one level, for Marius the only possible dilemma lay between
that old, ancestral Roman religion, now become so incredible to him and the
honest action of his own untroubled, unassisted intelligence. Even the Arcana
Celestia of Platonism what the sons of Plato had had to say regarding the
essential indifference of pure soul to its bodily house and merely occasional
dwelling-place seemed to him while his heart was there in the urn with the
material ashes of Flavian, or still lingering in memory over his last agony,
wholly inhuman or morose, as tending to alleviate his resentment at nature’s
wrong. It was to the sentiment of the body, and the affections it defined the
flesh, of whose force and colour that wandering Platonic soul was but so frail
a residue or abstract he must cling. The various pathetic traits of the
beloved, suffering, perished body of Flavian, so deeply pondered, had made him
a materialist, but with something of the temper of a devotee. As a consequence
it might have seemed at first that his care for poetry had passed away, to be
replaced by the literature of thought. His much-pondered manuscript verses were
laid aside; and what happened now to one, who was certainly to be something of a
poet from first to last, looked at the moment like a change from poetry to
prose. He came of age about this time, his own master though with beardless
face; and at eighteen, an age at which, then as now, many youths of capacity,
who fancied themselves poets, secluded themselves from others chiefly in
affectation and vague dreaming, he secluded himself indeed from others, but in
a severe intellectual meditation, that salt of poetry, without which all the
more serious charm is lacking to the imaginative world. Still with something of
the old religious earnestness of hischildhood, he set himself Sich im Denken zu
orientiren to determine his bearings, as by compass, in the world of thought to
get that precise acquaintance with the creative intelligence itself, its
structure and capacities, its relation to other parts of himself and to other
things, without which, certainly, no poetry can be masterly. Like a young man
rich in this world’s goods coming of age, he must go into affairs, and
ascertain his outlook. There must be no disguises. An exact estimate of
realities, as towards himself, he must have a delicately measured gradation of
certainty in things from the distant, haunted horizon of mere surmise or
imagination, to the actual feeling of sorrow in his heart, as he reclined one
morning, alone instead of in pleasant company, to ponder the hard sayings of an
imperfect old Greek manuscript, unrolled beside him. His former gay companions,
meeting him in the streets of the old Italian town, and noting the graver lines
coming into the face of the sombre but enthusiastic student of intellectual
structure, who could hold his own so well in the society of accomplished older
men, were half afraid of him, though proud to have him of their company. Why
this reserve? they asked, concerning the orderly, self-possessed youth, whose
speech and carriage seemed so carefully measured, who was surely no poet like
the rapt, dishevelled Lupus. Was he secretly in love, perhaps, whose toga was
so daintily folded, and who was always as fresh as the flowers he wore; or bent
on his own line of ambition: or even on riches? Marius, meantime, was reading
freely, in early morning for the most part, those writers chiefly who had made
it their business to know what might be thought concerning that strange,
enigmatic, personal essence, which had seemed to go out altogether, along with
the funeral fires. And the old Greek who more than any other was now giving
form to his thoughts was a very hard master. From Epicurus, from the thunder
and lightning of Lucretius like thunder and lightning some distance off, one
might recline to enjoy, in a garden of roses he had gone back to the writer who
was in a ce rtain sense the teacher of both, Heraclitus of Ionia. His difficult
book “Concerning Nature” was even then rare, for people had long since
satisfied themselves by the quotation of certain brilliant, isolated, oracles
only, out of what was at best a taxing kind of lore. But the difficulty of the
early Greek prose did but spur the curiosity of Marius; the writer, the
superior clearness of whose intellectual view had so sequestered him from other
men, who had had so little joy of that superiority, being avowedly exacting as
to the amount of devout attention he required from the student. “The many,” he
said, always thus emphasising the difference between the many and the few, are
“like people heavy with wine,” “led by children,” “knowing not whither they
go;” and yet, “much learning doth not make wise;” and again, “the ass, after
all, would have his thistles rather than fine gold.” Heraclitus, indeed, had
not under-rated the difficulty for “the many” of the paradox with which his
doctrine begins, and the due reception of which must involve a denial of
habitual impressions, as the necessary first step in the way of truth. His
philosophy had been developed in conscious, outspoken opposition to the current
mode of thought, as a matter requiring some exceptional loyalty to pure reason
and its “dry light.” Men are subject to an illusion, he protests, regarding matters
apparent to sense. What the uncorrected sense gives was a false impression of
permanence or fixity in things, which have really changed their nature in the
very moment in which we see and touch them. And the radical flaw in the current
mode of thinking would lie herein: that, reflecting this false or uncorrected
sensation, it attributes to the phenomena of experience a durability which does
not really belong to them. Imaging forth from those fluid impressions a world
of firmly out-lined objects, it leads one to regard as a thing stark and dead
what is in reality full of animation, of vigour, of the fire of life that
eternal process of nature, of which at a later time Goethe spoke as the “Living
Garment,” whereby God is seen of us, ever in weaving at the “Loom of Time.” And
the appeal which the old Greek thinker made was, in the first instance, from
confused to unconfused sensation; with a sort of prophetic seriousness, a great
claim and assumption, such as we may understand, if we anticipate in this preliminary
scepticism the ulterior scope of his speculation, according to which the
universal movement of all natural things is but one particular stage, or
measure, of that ceaseless activity wherein the divine reason consists. The one
true being that constant subject of all early thought it was his merit to have
conceived, not as sterile and stagnant inaction, but as a perpetual energy,
from the restless stream of which, at certain points, some elements detach
themselves, and harden into non-entity and death, corresponding, as outward
objects, to man’s inward condition of ignorance: that is, to the slowness of
his faculties. It is with this paradox of a subtle, perpetual change in all
visible things, that the high speculation of Heraclitus begins. Hence the scorn
he expresses for anything like a careless, half-conscious, “use-and-wont”
reception of our experience, which took so strong a hold on men’s memories!
Hence those many precepts towards a strenuous self-consciousness in all we
think and do, that loyalty to cool and candid reason, which makes strict
attentiveness of mind a kind of religious duty and service. The negative
doctrine, then, that the objects of our ordinary experience, fixed as they
seem, are really in perpetual change, had been, as originally conceived, but
the preliminary step towards a large positive system of almost religious
philosophy. Then as now, the illuminated philosophic mind might apprehend, in
what seemed a mass of lifeless matter, the movement of that universal life, in
which things, and men’s impressions of them, were ever “coming to be,”
alternately consumed and renewed. That continual change, to be discovered by
the attentive understanding where common opinion found fixed objects, was but
the indicator of a subtler but all-pervading motion the sleepless,
ever-sustained, inexhaustible energy of the divine reason itself, proceeding
always by its own rhythmical logic, and lendingto all mind and matter, in turn,
what life they had. In this “perpetual flux” of things and of souls, there was,
as ERACLITO conceived, a continuance, if not of their material or spiritual
elements, yet of orderly intelligible relationships, like the harmony of
musical notes, wrought out in and through the series of their mutations
ordinances of the divine reason, maintained throughout the changes of the
phenomenal world; and this harmony in their mutation and opposition, was, after
all, a principle of sanity, of reality, there. But it happened, that, of all
this, the first, merely sceptical or negative step, that easiest step on the
threshold, had alone remained in general memory; and the “doctrine of motion”
seemed to those who had felt its seduction to make all fixed knowledge
impossible. The swift passage of things, the still swifter passage of those
modes of our conscious being which seemed to reflect them, might indeed be the
burning of the divine fire: but what was ascertained was that they did pass
away like a devouring flame, or like the race of water in the mid-stream too
swiftly for any real knowledge of them to be attainable. Heracliteanism had
grown to be almost identical with the famous doctrine of the sophist PROTAGORA,
that the momentary, sensible apprehension of the individual was the only
standard of what is or is not, and each one the measure of all things to
himself. The impressive name of Heraclitus had become but an authority for a
philosophy of the despair of knowledge. And as it had been with his original
followers in Greece, so it happened now with the later Roman disciple. He, too,
paused at the apprehension of that constant motion of things the drift of
flowers, of little or great souls, of ambitious systems, in the stream around
him, the first source, the ultimate issue, of which, in regions out of sight,
must count with him as but a dim problem. The bold mental flight of the old
Greek master from the fleeting, competing objects of experience to that one
universal life, in which the whole sphere of physical change might be reckoned
as but a single pulsation, remained by him as hypothesis only the hypothesis he
actually preferred, as in itself most credible, however scantily realisable
even by the imagination yet still as but one unverified hypothesis, among many
others, concerning the first principle of things. He might reserve it as a fine,
high, visionary consideration, very remote upon the intellectual ladder, just
at the point, indeed, where that ladder seemed to pass into the clouds, but for
which there was certainly no time left just now by his eager interest in the
real objects so close to him, on the lowlier earthy steps nearest the ground.
And those childish days of reverie, when he played at priests, played in many
another day-dream, working his way from the actual present, as far as he might,
with a delightful sense of escape in replacing the outer world of other people
by an inward world as himself really cared to have it, had made him a kind of
“idealist.” He was become aware of the possibility of a large dissidence
between an inward and somewhat exclusive world of vivid personal apprehension,
and the unimproved, unheightened reality of the life of those about him. As a
consequence, he was ready now to concede, somewhat more easily than others, the
first point of his new lesson, that the individual is to himself the measure of
all things, and to rely on the exclusive certainty to himself of his own
impressions. To move afterwards in that outer world of other people, as though
taking it at their estimate, would be possible henceforth only as a kind of
irony. And as with the Vicaire Savoyard, after reflecting on the variations of
philosophy, “the first fruit he drew from that reflection was the lesson of a
limitation of his researches to what immediately interested him; to rest
peacefully in a profound ignorance as to all beside; to disquiet himself only
concerning those things which it was of import for him to know.” At least he
would entertain no theory of conduct which did not allow its due weight to this
primary element of incertitude or negation, in the conditions of man’s life. Just
here he joined company, retracing in his individual mental pilgrimage the
historic order of human thought, with another wayfarer on the journey, another
ancient Greek master, the founder of the Cyrenaic philosophy, whose weighty
traditional utterances (for he had left no writing) served in turn to give
effective outline to the contemplations of Marius. There was something in the
doctrine itself congruous with the place wherein it had its birth; and for a
time Marius lived much, mentally, in the brilliant Greek colony which had given
a dubious name to the philosophy of pleasure. It hung, for his fancy, between
the mountains and the sea, among richer than Italian gardens, on a certain
breezy table-land projecting from the African coast, some hundreds of miles
southward from Greece. There, in a delightful climate, with something of
transalpine temperance amid its luxury, and withal in an inward atmosphere of
temperance which did but further enhance the brilliancy of human life, the
school of Cyrene had maintained itself as almost one with the family of its
founder; certainly as nothing coarse or unclean, and under the influence of
accomplished women. Aristippus of Cyrene too had left off in suspense of
judgment as to what might really lie behind flammantia moenia mundi: the
flaming ramparts of the world. Those strange, bold, sceptical surmises, which
had haunted the minds of the first Greek enquirers as merely abstract doubt,
which had been present to the mind of Heraclitus as one element only in a
system of abstract philosophy, became with Aristippus a very subtly practical
worldly-wisdom. The difference between him and those obscure earlier thinkers
is almost like that between an ancient thinker generally, and a modern man of
the world: it was the difference between the mystic in his cell, or the prophet
in the desert, and the expert, cosmopolitan, administrator of his dark sayings,
translating the abstract thoughts of the master into terms, first of all, of
sentiment. It has been sometimes seen, in the history of the human mind, that
when thus translated into terms of sentiment of sentiment, as lying already
half-way towards practice the abstract ideas of metaphysics for the first time
reveal their true significance. The metaphysical principle, in itself, as it were,
without hands or feet, becomes impressive, fascinating, of effect, when
translated into a precept as to how it were best to feel and act; in other
words, under its sentimental or ethical equivalent. The leading idea of the
great master of Cyrene, his theory that things are but shadows, and that we,
even as they, never continue in one stay, might indeed have taken effect as a
languid, enervating, consumptive nihilism, as a precept of “renunciation,”
which would touch and handle and busy itself with nothing. But in the reception
of metaphysical formulae, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior
result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which
they fall the company they find already present there, on their admission into
the house of thought; there being at least so much truth as this involves in
the theological maxim, that the reception of this or that speculative
conclusion is really a matter of will. The persuasion that all is vanity, with
this happily constituted Greek, who had been a genuine disciple of Socrates and
reflected, presumably, something of his blitheness in the face of the world,
his happy way of taking all chances, generated neither frivolity nor sourness,
but induced, rather, an impression, just serious enough, of the call upon men’s
attention of the crisis in which they find themselves. It became the stimulus
towards every kind of activity, and prompted a perpetual, inextinguishable
thirst after experience. With Marius, then, the influence of the philosopher of
pleasure depended on this, that in him an abstract doctrine, originally
somewhat acrid, had fallen upon a rich and genial nature, well fitted to
transform it into a theory of practice, of considerable stimulative power
towards a fair life. What Marius saw in him was the spectacle of one of the
happiest temperaments coming, so to speak, to an understanding with the most
depressing of theories; accepting the results of a metaphysical system which
seemed to concentrate into itself all the weakening trains of thought in
earlier Greek speculation, and making the best of it; turning its hard, bare
truths, with wonderful tact, into precepts of grace, and delicate wisdom, and a
delicate sense of honour. Given the hardest terms, supposing our days are indeed
but a shadow, even so, we may well adorn and beautify, in scrupulous
self-respect, our souls, and whatever our souls touch upon these wonderful
bodies, these material dwelling-places through which the shadows pass together
for a while, the very raiment we wear, our very pastimes and the intercourse of
society. The most discerning judges saw in him something like the graceful
“humanities” of the later Roman, and our modern “culture,” as it is termed;
while Horace recalled his sayings as expressing best his own consummate amenity
in the reception of life. In this way, for Marius, under the guidance of that
old master of decorous living, those eternal doubts as to the criteria of truth
reduced themselves to a scepticism almost drily practical, a scepticism which
developed the opposition between things as they are and our impressions and
thoughts concerning them the possibility, if an outward world does really
exist, of some faultiness in our apprehension of it the doctrine, in short, of
what is termed “the subjectivity of knowledge.” That is a consideration,
indeed, which lies as an element of weakness, like some admitted fault or flaw,
at the very foundation of every philosophical account of the universe; which
confronts all philosophies at their starting, but with which none have really
dealt conclusively, some perhaps not quite sincerely; which those who are not
philosophers dissipate by “common,” but unphilosophical, sense, or by religious
faith. The peculiar strength of Marius was, to have apprehended this weakness
on the threshold of human knowledge, in the whole range of its consequences.
Our knowledge is limited to what we feel, he reflected: we need no proof that
we feel. But can we be sure that things are at all like our feelings? Mere
peculiarities in the instruments of our cognition, like the little knots and
waves on the surface of a mirror, may distort the matter they seem but to
represent. Of other people we cannot truly know even the feelings, nor how far
they would indicate the same modifications, each one of a personality really
unique, in using the same terms as ourselves; that “common experience,” which
is sometimes proposed as a satisfactory basis of certainty, being after all
only a fixity of language. But our own impressions! The light and heat of that
blue veil over our heads, the heavens spread out, perhaps not like a curtain
over anything! How reassuring, after so long a debate about the rival criteria
of truth, to fall back upon direct sensation, to limit one’s aspirations after
knowledge to that! In an age still materially so brilliant, so expert in the
artistic handling of material things, with sensible capacities still in
undiminished vigour, with the whole world of classic art and poetry outspread
before it, and where there was more than eye or ear could well take in how
natural the determination to rely exclusively upon the phenomena of the senses,
which certainly never deceive us about themselves, about which alone we can
never deceive ourselves! And so the abstract apprehension that the little point
of this present moment alone really is, between a past which has just ceased to
be and a future which may never come, became practical with Marius, under the
form of a resolve, as far as possible, to exclude regret and desire, and yield
himself to the improvement of the present with an absolutely disengaged mind.
America is here and now here, or nowhere: as Wilhelm Meister finds out one day,
just not too late, after so long looking vaguely across the ocean for the
opportunity of the development of his capacities. It was as if, recognising in
perpetual motion the law of nature, Marius identified his own way of life
cordially with it, “throwing himself into the stream,” so to speak. He too must
maintain a harmony with that soul of motion in things, by constantly renewed
mobility of character. Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res. Thus
ORAZIO (si veda) had summed up that perfect manner in the reception of life
attained by his old Cyrenaic master; and the first practical consequence of the
metaphysic which lay behind that perfect manner, had been a strict limitation,
almost the renunciation, of metaphysical enquiry itself. Metaphysic that art,
as it has so often proved, in the words of Michelet, _de s’égarer avec
méthode_, of bewildering oneself methodically: one must spend little time upon
that! In the school of Cyrene, great as was its mental incisiveness, logical
and physical speculation, theoretic interests generally, had been valued only
so far as they served to give a groundwork, an intellectual justification, to
that exclusive concern with practical ethics which was a note of the Cyrenaic
philosophy. How earnest and enthusiastic, how true to itself, under how many
varieties of character, had been the effort of the Greeks after Theory Theôria
that vision of a wholly reasonable world, which, according to the greatest of
them, literally makes man like God: how loyally they had still persisted in the
quest after that, in spite of how many disappointments! In the Gospel of Saint
John, perhaps, some of them might have found the kind of vision they were
seeking for; but not in “doubtful disputations” concerning “being” and “not
being,” knowledge and appearance. Men’s minds, even young men’s minds, at that
late day, might well seem oppressed by the weariness of systems which had so
far outrun positive knowledge; and in the mind of Marius, as in that old school
of Cyrene, this sense of ennui, combined with appetites so youthfully vigorous,
brought about reaction, a sort of suicide (instances of the like have been seen
since) by which a great metaphysical acumen was devoted to the function of
proving metaphysical speculation impossible, or useless. Abstract theory was to
be valued only just so far as it might serve to clear the tablet of the mind
from suppositions no more than half realisable, or wholly visionary, leaving it
in flawless evenness of surface to the impressions of an experience, concrete
and direct. To be absolutely virgin towards such experience, by ridding
ourselves of such abstractions as are but the ghosts of bygone impressions to
be rid of the notions we have made for ourselves, and that so often only
misrepresent the experience of which they profess to be the representation
_idola_, idols, false appearances, as Bacon calls them later to neutralise the
distorting influence of metaphysical system by an all-accomplished metaphysic
skill: it is this bold, hard, sober recognition, under a very “dry light,” of
its own proper aim, in union with a habit of feeling which on the practical
side may perhaps open a wide doorway to human weakness, that gives to the
Cyrenaic doctrine, to reproductions of this doctrine in the time of Marius or
in our own, their gravity and importance. It was a school to which the young
man might come, eager for truth, expecting much from philosophy, in no ignoble
curiosity, aspiring after nothing less than an “initiation.” He would be sent
back, sooner or later, to experience, to the world of concrete impressions, to
things as they may be seen, heard, felt by him; but with a wonderful machinery
of observation, and free from the tyranny of mere theories. So, in intervals of
repose, after the agitation which followed the death of Flavian, the thoughts
of Marius ran, while he felt himself as if returned to the fine, clear,
peaceful light of that pleasant school of healthfully sensuous wisdom, in the
brilliant old Greek colony, on its fresh upland by the sea. Not pleasure, but a
general completeness of life, was the practical ideal to which this
anti-metaphysical metaphysic really pointed. And towards such a full or
complete life, a life of various yet select sensation, the most direct and
effective auxiliary must be, in a word, Insight. Liberty of soul, freedom from
all partial and misrepresentative doctrine which does but relieve one element
in our experience at the cost of another, freedom from all embarrassment alike
of regret for the past and of calculation on the future: this would be but
preliminary to the real business of education insight, insight through culture,
into all that the present moment holds in trust for us, as we stand so briefly
in its presence. From that maxim of Life as the end of life, followed, as a
practical consequence, the desirableness of refining all the instruments of
inward and outward intuition, of developing all their capacities, of testing
and exercising one’s self in them, till one’s whole nature became one complex
medium of reception, towards the vision the “beatific vision,” if we really
cared to make it such of our actual experience in the world. Not the conveyance
of an abstract body of truths or principles, would be the aim of the right
education of one’s self, or of another, but the conveyance of an art an art in
some degree peculiar to each individual character; with the modifications, that
is, due to its special constitution, and the peculiar circumstances of its
growth, inasmuch as no one of us is “like another, all in all.” Such were the
practical conclusions drawn for himself by Marius, when somewhat later he had
outgrown the mastery of others, from the principle that “all is vanity.” If he
could but count upon the present, if a life brief at best could not certainly
be shown to conduct one anywhere beyond itself, if men’s highest curiosity was
indeed so persistently baffled then, with the Cyrenaics of all ages, he would
at least fill up the measure of that present with vivid sensations, and such
intellectual apprehensions, as, in strength and directness and their
immediately realised values at the bar of an actual experience, are most like
sensations. So some have spoken in every age; for, like all theories which
really express a strong natural tendency of the human mind or even one of its
characteristic modes of weakness, this vein of reflection is a constant
tradition in philosophy. Every age of European thought has had its Cyrenaics or
Epicureans, under many disguises: even under the hood of the monk. But Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die! is a proposal, the real import of which
differs immensely, according to the natural taste, and the acquired judgment,
of the guests who sit at the table. It may express nothing better than the
instinct of ALIGHIERI (si veda)’s Ciacco, the accomplished glutton, in the mud
of the Inferno;+ or, since on no hypothesis does man “live by bread alone,” may
come to be identical with “My meat is to do what is just and kind;” while the
soul, which can make no sincere claim to have apprehended anything beyond the
veil of immediate experience, yet never loses a sense of happiness in
conforming to the highest moral ideal it can clearly define for itself; and
actually, though but with so faint hope, does the “Father’s business.” In that
age of Marcus Aurelius, so completely disabused of the metaphysical ambition to
pass beyond “the flaming ramparts of the world,” but, on the other hand,
possessed of so vast an accumulation of intellectual treasure, with so wide a
view before it over all varieties of what is powerful or attractive in man and
his works, the thoughts of Marius did but follow the line taken by the majority
of educated persons, though to a different issue. Pitched to a really high and
serious key, the precept Be perfect in regard to what is here and now: the
precept of “culture,” as it is called, or of a complete education might at
least save him from the vulgarity and heaviness of a generation, certainly of
no general fineness of temper, though with a material well-being abundant
enough. Conceded that what is secure in our existence is but the sharp apex of
the present moment between two hypothetical eternities, and all that is real in
our experience but a series of fleeting impressions: so Marius continued the
sceptical argument he had condensed, as the matter to hold by, from his various
philosophical reading: given, that we are never to get beyond the walls of the
closely shut cell of one’s own personality; that the ideas we are somehow
impelled to form of an outer world, and of other minds akin to our own, are, it
may be, but a day-dream, and the thought of any world beyond, a day-dream perhaps
idler still: then, he, at least, in whom those fleeting impressions faces,
voices, material sunshine were very real and imperious, might well set himself
to the consideration, how such actual moments as they passed might be made to
yield their utmost, by the most dexterous training of capacity. Amid abstract
metaphysical doubts, as to what might lie one step only beyond that experience,
reinforcing the deep original materialism or earthliness of human nature
itself, bound so intimately to the sensuous world, let him at least make the
most of what was “here and now.” In the actual dimness of ways from means to
ends ends in themselves desirable, yet for the most part distant and for him,
certainly, below the visible horizon he would at all events be sure that the
means, to use the well-worn terminology, should have something of finality or
perfection about them, and themselves partake, in a measure, of the more
excellent nature of ends that the means should justify the end. With this view
he would demand culture, paideia,+ as the Cyrenaics said, or, in other words, a
wide, a complete, education an education partly negative, as ascertaining the
true limits of man’s capacities, but for the most part positive, and directed
especially to the expansion and refinement of the power of reception; of those
powers, above all, which are immediately relative to fleeting phenomena, the
powers of emotion and sense. In such an education, an “aesthetic” education, as
it might now be termed, and certainly occupied very largely with those aspects
of things which affect us pleasurably through sensation, art, of course,
including all the finer sorts of literature, would have a great part to play.
The study of music, in that wider Platonic sense, according to which, music comprehends
all those matters over which the Muses of Greek mythology preside, would
conduct one to an exquisite appreciation of all the finer traits of nature and
of man. Nay! the products of the imagination must themselves be held to present
the most perfect forms of life spirit and matter alike under their purest and
most perfect conditions the most strictly appropriate objects of that
impassioned contemplation, which, in the world of intellectual discipline, as
in the highest forms of morality and religion, must be held to be the essential
function of the “perfect.” Such manner of life might come even to seem a kind
of religion an inward, visionary, mystic piety, or religion, by virtue of its
effort to live days “lovely and pleasant” in themselves, here and now, and with
an all-sufficiency of well-being in the immediate sense of the object
contemplated, independently of any faith, or hope that might be entertained as
to their ulterior tendency. In this way, the true aesthetic culture would be
realisable as a new form of the contemplative life, founding its claim on the
intrinsic “blessedness” of “vision” the vision of perfect men and things. One’s
human nature, indeed, would fain reckon on an assured and endless future,
pleasing itself with the dream of a final home, to be attained at some still
remote date, yet with a conscious, delightful home-coming at last, as depicted
in many an old poetic Elysium. On the other hand, the world of perfected
sensation, intelligence, emotion, is so close to us, and so attractive, that
the most visionary of spirits must needs represent the world unseen in colours,
and under a form really borrowed from it. Let me be sure then might he not
plausibly say? that I miss no detail of this life of realised consciousness in
the present! Here at least is a vision, a theory, theôria,+ which reposes on no
basis of unverified hypothesis, which makes no call upon a future after all
somewhat problematic; as it would be unaffected by any discovery of an
Empedocles(improving on the old story of Prometheus) as to what had really been
the origin, and course of development, of man’s actually attained faculties and
that seemingly divine particle of reason or spirit in him. Such a doctrine, at
more leisurable moments, would of course have its precepts to deliver on the
embellishment, generally, of what is near at hand, on the adornment of life,
till, in a not impracticable rule of conduct, one’s existence, from day to day,
came to be like a well-executed piece of music; that “perpetual motion” in things
(so Marius figured the matter to himself, under the old Greek imageries)
according itself to a kind of cadence or harmony. It was intelligible that this
“aesthetic” philosophy might find itself (theoretically, at least, and by way
of a curious question in casuistry, legitimate from its own point of view)
weighing the claims of that eager, concentrated, impassioned realisation of
experience, against those of the received morality. Conceiving its own function
in a somewhat desperate temper, and becoming, as every high-strung form of
sentiment, as the religious sentiment itself, may become, somewhat antinomian,
when, in its effort towards the order of experiences it prefers, it is
confronted with the traditional and popular morality, at points where that morality
may look very like a convention, or a mere stage-property of the world, it
would be found, from time to time, breaking beyond the limits of the actual
moral order; perhaps not without some pleasurable excitement in so bold a
venture. With the possibility of some such hazard as this, in thought or even
in practice that it might be, though refining, or tonic even, in the case of
those strong and in health, yet, as Pascal says of the kindly and temperate
wisdom of Montaigne, “pernicious for those who have any natural tendency to
impiety or vice,” the line of reflection traced out above, was fairly
chargeable. Not, however, with “hedonism” and its supposed consequences. The
blood, the heart, of Marius were still pure. He knew that his carefully
considered theory of practice braced him, with the effect of a moral principle
duly recurring to mind every morning, towards the work of a student, for which
he might seem intended. Yet there were some among his acquaintance who jumped
to the conclusion that, with the “Epicurean stye,” he was making pleasure
pleasure, as they so poorly conceived it the sole motive of life; and they
precluded any exacter estimate of the situation by covering it with a
high-sounding general term, through the vagueness of which they were enabled to
see the severe and laborious youth in the vulgar company of Lais. Words like
“hedonism” terms of large and vague comprehension above all when used for a
purpose avowedly controversial, have ever been the worst examples of what are
called “question-begging terms;” and in that late age in which Marius lived,
amid the dust of so many centuries of philosophical debate, the air was full of
them. Yet those who used that reproachful Greek term for the philosophy of
pleasure, were hardly more likely than the old Greeks themselves (on whom
regarding this very subject of the theory of pleasure, their masters in the art
of thinking had so emphatically to impress the necessity of “making
distinctions”) to come to any very delicately correct ethical conclusions by a
reasoning, which began with a general term, comprehensive enough to cover
pleasures so different in quality, in their causes and effects, as the
pleasures of wine and love, of art and science, of religious enthusiasm and
political enterprise, and of that taste or curiosity which satisfied itself
with long days of serious study. Yet, in truth, each of those pleasurable modes
of activity, may, in its turn, fairly become the ideal of the “hedonistic”
doctrine. Really, to the phase of reflection through which Marius was then
passing, the charge of “hedonism,” whatever its true weight might be, was not
properly applicable at all. Not pleasure, but fulness of life, and “insight” as
conducting to that fulness energy, variety, and choice of experience, including
noble pain and sorrow even, loves such as those in the exquisite old story of
Apuleius, sincere and strenuous forms of the moral life, such as Seneca and
Epictetus whatever form of human life, in short, might be heroic, impassioned,
ideal: from these the “new Cyrenaicism” of Mariustook its criterion of values.
It was a theory, indeed, which might properly be regarded as in great degree
coincident with the main principle of the Stoics themselves, and an older
version of the precept “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy
might” a doctrine so widely acceptable among the nobler spirits of that time.
And, as with that, its mistaken tendency would lie in the direction of a kind
of idolatry of mere life, or natural gift, or strength l’idôlatrie des talents.
To understand the various forms of ancient art and thought, the various forms
of actual human feeling (the only new thing, in a world almost too opulent in
what was old) to satisfy, with a kind of scrupulous equity, the claims of these
concrete and actual objects on his sympathy, his intelligence, his senses to
“pluck out the heart of their mystery,” and in turn become the interpreter of
them to others: this had now defined itself for Marius as a very narrowly
practical design: it determined his choice of a vocation to live by. It was the
era of the rhetoricians, or sophists, as they were sometimes called; of men who
came in some instances to great fame and fortune, by way of a literary
cultivation of “science.” That science, it has been often said, must have been
wholly an affair of words. But in a world, confessedly so opulent in what was
old, the work, even of genius, must necessarily consist very much in criticism;
and, in the case of the more excellent specimens of his class, the rhetorician
was, after all, the eloquent and effective interpreter, for the delighted ears
of others, of what understanding himself had come by, in years of travel and
study, of the beautiful house of art and thought which was the inheritance of
the age. The emperor Marcus Aurelius, to whose service Marius had now been
called, was himself, more or less openly, a “lecturer.” That late world, amid
many curiously vivid modern traits, had this spectacle, so familiar to
ourselves, of the public lecturer or essayist; in some cases adding to his
other gifts that of the Christian preacher, who knows how to touch people’s
sensibilities on behalf of the suffering. To follow in the way of these
successes, was the natural instinct of youthful ambition; and it was with no
vulgar egotism that MARIO, determined, like many another young man of parts, to
enter as a student of rhetoric at Rome. Though the manner of his work was
changed formally from poetry to prose, he remained, and must always be, of the
poetic temper: by which, I mean, among other things, that quite independently
of the general habit of that pensive age he lived much, and as it were by
system, in reminiscence. Amid his eager grasping at the sensation, the
consciousness, of the present, he had come to see that, after all, the main
point of economy in the conduct of the present, was the question: How will it
look to me, at what shall I value it, this day next year? that in any given day
or month one’s main concern was its impression for the memory. A strange trick
memory sometimes played him; for, with no natural gradation, what was of last
month, or of yesterday, of to-day even, would seem as far off, as entirely
detached from him, as things of ten years ago. Detached from him, yet very
real, there lay certain spaces of his life, in delicate perspective, under a
favourable light; and, somehow, all the less fortunate detail and circumstance
had parted from them. Such hours were oftenest those in which he had been
helped by work of others to the pleasurable apprehension of art, of nature, or
of life. “Not what I do, but what I am, under the power of this vision” he
would say to himself “is what were indeed pleasing to the gods!” And yet, with
a kind of inconsistency in one who had taken for his philosophic ideal the
monochronos hêdonê+ of Aristippus the pleasure of the ideal present, of the
mystic now there would come, together with that precipitate sinking of things
into the past, a desire, after all, to retain “what was so transitive.” Could
he but arrest, for others also, certain clauses of experience, as the
imaginative memory presented them to himself! In those grand, hot summers, he
would have imprisoned the very perfume of the flowers. To create, to live,
perhaps, a little while beyond the allotted hours, if it were but in a fragment
of perfect expression: it was thus his longing defined itself for something to
hold by amid the “perpetual flux.” With men of his vocation, people were apt to
say, words were things. Well! with him, words should be indeed things, the
word, the phrase, valuable in exact proportion to the transparency with which
it conveyed to others the apprehension, the emotion, the mood, so vividly real
within himself. Verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur:+ Virile
apprehension of the true nature of things, of the true nature of one’s own
impression, first of all! words would follow that naturally, a true
understanding of one’s self being ever the first condition of genuine style.
Language delicate and measured, the delicate Attic phrase, for instance, in
which the eminent Aristeides could speak, was then a power to which people’s
hearts, and sometimes even their purses, readily responded. And there were many
points, as Marius thought, on which the heart of that age greatly needed to be
touched. He hardly knew how strong that old religious sense of responsibility,
the conscience, as we call it, still was within him a body of inward
impressions, as real as those so highly valued outward ones to offend against
which, brought with it a strange feeling of disloyalty, as to a person. And the
determination, adhered to with no misgiving, to add nothing, not so much as a
transient sigh, to the great total of men’s unhappiness, in his way through the
world: that too was something to rest on, in the drift of mere “appearances.”
All this would involve a life of industry, of industrious study, only possible
through healthy rule, keeping clear the eye alike of body and soul. For the
male element, the logical conscience asserted itself now, with opening manhood
asserted itself, even in his literary style, by a certain firmness of outline,
that touch of the worker in metal, amid its richness. Already he blamed
instinctively alike in his work and in himself, as youth so seldom does, all
that had not passed a long and liberal process of erasure. The happy phrase or
sentence was really modelled upon a cleanly finished structure of scrupulous
thought. The suggestive force of the one master of his development, who had
battled so hard with imaginative prose; the utterance, the golden utterance, of
the other, so content with its living power of persuasion that he had never
written at all, in the commixture of these two qualities he set up his literary
ideal, and this rare blending of grace with an intellectual rigour or
astringency, was the secret of a singular expressiveness in it. He acquired at
this time a certain bookish air, the somewhat sombre habitude of the avowed
scholar, which though it never interfered with the perfect tone, “fresh and
serenely disposed,” of the Roman gentleman, yet qualified it as by an
interesting oblique trait, and frightened away some of his equals in age and
rank. The sober discretion of his thoughts, his sustained habit of meditation,
the sense of those negative conclusions enabling him to concentrate himself,
with an absorption so entire, upon what is immediately here and now, gave him a
peculiar manner of intellectual confidence, as of one who had indeed been
initiated into a great secret. Though with an air so disengaged, he seemed to
be living so intently in the visible world! And now, in revolt against that
pre-occupation with other persons, which had so often perturbed his spirit, his
wistful speculations as to what the real, the greater, experience might be,
determined in him, not as the longing for love to be with Cynthia, or Aspasia
but as a thirst for existence in exquisite places. The veil that was to be
lifted for him lay over the works of the old masters of art, in places where
nature also had used her mastery. And it was just at this moment that a summons
to Rome reached him. 145. +Canto VI. 147. +Transliteration: paideia. Definition
“rearing, education.” +Transliteration: theôria. Definition “a looking at ...
observing ... contemplation.” +Transliteration: monochronos hêdonê. Pater’s
definition “the pleasure of the ideal present, of the mystic now.” The
definition is fitting; the unusual adjective monokhronos means, literally,
“single or unitary time.” 155. +Horace, Ars Poetica 311. +Etext editor’s
translation: “The subject once foreknown, the words will follow easily.” Mirum est ut animus agitatione
motuque corporis excitetur. Pliny’s Letters. Many points in that train of thought, its harder and
more energetic practical details especially, at first surmised but vaguely in
the intervals of his visits to the tomb of Flavian, attained the coherence of
formal principle amid the stirring incidents of the journey, which took him,
still in all the buoyancy of his nineteen years and greatly expectant, to Rome.
That summons had come from one of the former friends of his father in the
capital, who had kept himself acquainted with the lad’s progress, and, assured
of his parts, his courtly ways, above all of his beautiful penmanship, now
offered him a place, virtually that of an amanuensis, near the person of the
philosophic emperor. The old town-house of his family on the Caelian hill, so
long neglected, might well require his personal care; and Marius, relieved a
little by his preparations for travelling from a certain over-tension of spirit
in which he had lived of late, was presently on his way, to await introduction
to Aurelius, on his expected return home, after a first success, illusive
enough as it was soon to appear, against the invaders from beyond the Danube.
The opening stage of his journey, through the firm, golden weather, for which
he had lingered three days beyond the appointed time of starting days brown
with the first rains of autumn brought him, by the byways among the lower
slopes of the Apennines of Luna, to the town of Luca, a station on the Cassian
Way; travelling so far mainly on foot, while the baggage followed under the
care of his attendants. He wore a broad felt hat, in fashion not unlike a more
modern pilgrim’s, the neat head projecting from the collar of his gray paenula,
or travelling mantle, sewed closely together over the breast, but with its two
sides folded up upon the shoulders, to leave the arms free in walking, and was
altogether so trim and fresh, that, as he climbed the hill from Pisa, by the
long steep lane through the olive-yards, and turned to gaze where he could just
discern the cypresses of the old school garden, like two black lines down the
yellow walls, a little child took possession of his hand, and, looking up at
him with entire confidence, paced on bravely at his side, for the mere pleasure
of his company, to the spot where the road declined again into the valley
beyond. From this point, leaving the servants behind, he surrendered himself, a
willing subject, as he walked, to the impressions of the road, and was almost
surprised, both at the suddenness with which evening came on, and the distance
from his old home at which it found him. And at the little town of Luca, he
felt that indescribable sense of a welcoming in the mere outward appearance of
things, which seems to mark out certain places for the special purpose of
evening rest, and gives them always a peculiar amiability in retrospect. Under
the deepening twilight, the rough-tiled roofs seem to huddle together side by
side, like one continuous shelter over the whole township, spread low and broad
above the snug sleeping-rooms within; and the place one sees for the first
time, and must tarry in but for a night, breathes the very spirit of home. The
cottagers lingered at their doors for a few minutes as the shadows grew larger,
and went to rest early; though there was still a glow along the road through
the shorn corn-fields, and the birds were still awake about the crumbling gray
heights of an old temple. So quiet and air-swept was the place, you could
hardly tell where the country left off in it, and the field-paths became its
streets. Next morning he must needs change the manner of his journey. The light
baggage-wagon returned, and he proceeded now more quickly, travelling a stage
or two by post, along the Cassian Way, where the figures and incidents of the
great high-road seemed already to tell of the capital, the one centre to which
all were hastening, or had lately bidden adieu. That Way lay through the heart
of the old, mysterious and visionary country of Etruria; and what he knew of
its strange religion of the dead, reinforced by the actual sight of the funeral
houses scattered so plentifully among the dwelling-places of the living,
revived in him for a while, in all its strength, his old instinctive yearning towards
those inhabitants of the shadowy land he had known in life. It seemed to him
that he could half divine how time passed in those painted houses on the
hillsides, among the gold and silver ornaments, the wrought armour and
vestments, the drowsy and dead attendants; and the close consciousness of that
vast population gave him no fear, but rather a sense of companionship, as he
climbed the hills on foot behind the horses, through the genial afternoon. The
road, next day, passed below a town not less primitive, it might seem, than its
rocky perch white rocks, that had long been glistening before him in the
distance. Down the dewy paths the people were descending from it, to keep a
holiday, high and low alike in rough, white-linen smocks. A homely old play was
just begun in an open-air theatre, with seats hollowed out of the turf-grown
slope. Marius caught the terrified expression of a child in its mother’s arms,
as it turned from the yawning mouth of a great mask, for refuge in her bosom.
The way mounted, and descended again, down the steep street of another place,
all resounding with the noise of metal under the hammer; for every house had
its brazier’s workshop, the bright objects of brass and copper gleaming, like
lights in a cave, out of their dark roofs and corners. Around the anvils the
children were watching the work, or ran to fetch water to the hissing, red-hot
metal; and Marius too watched, as he took his hasty mid-day refreshment, a mess
of chestnut-meal and cheese, while the swelling surface of a great copper
water-vessel grew flowered all over with tiny petals under the skilful strokes.
Towards dusk, a frantic woman at the roadside, stood and cried out the words of
some philter, or malison, in verse, with weird motion of her hands, as the
travellers passed, like a wild picture drawn from Virgil. But all along,
accompanying the superficial grace of these incidents of the way, Marius noted,
more and more as he drew nearer to Rome, marks of the great plague. Under
Hadrian and his successors, there had been many enactments to improve the
condition of the slave. The ergastula+ were abolished. But no system of free
labour had as yet succeeded. A whole mendicant population, artfully
exaggerating every symptom and circumstance of misery, still hung around, or
sheltered themselves within, the vast walls of their old, half-ruined
task-houses. And for the most part they had been variously stricken by the
pestilence. For once, the heroic level had been reached in rags, squints, scars
every caricature of the human type ravaged beyond what could have been thought
possible if it were to survive at all. Meantime, the farms were less carefully
tended than of old: here and there they were lapsing into their natural
wildness: some villas also were partly fallen into ruin. The picturesque,
romantic Italy of a later time the Italy of Claude and Salvator Rosa was
already forming, for the delight of the modern romantic traveller. And again
Marius was aware of a real change in things, on crossing the Tiber, as if some
magic effect lay in that; though here, in truth, the Tiber was but a modest
enough stream of turbid water. Nature, under the richer sky, seemed readier and
more affluent, and man fitter to the conditions around him: even in people hard
at work there appeared to be a less burdensome sense of the mere business of
life. How dreamily the women were passing up through the broad light and shadow
of the steep streets with the great water-pots resting on their heads, like
women of Caryae, set free from slavery in old Greek temples. With what a fresh,
primeval poetry was daily existence here impressed all the details of the
threshing-floor and the vineyard; the common farm-life even; the great bakers’
fires aglow upon the road in the evening. In the presence of all this Marius
felt for a moment like those old, early, unconscious poets, who created the
famousGreek myths of Dionysus, and the Great Mother, out of the imagery of the
wine-press and the ploughshare. And still the motion of the journey was
bringing his thoughts to systematic form. He seemed to have grown to the
fulness of intellectual manhood, on his way hither. The formative and literary
stimulus, so to call it, of peaceful exercise which he had always observed in
himself, doing its utmost now, the form and the matter of thought alike
detached themselves clearly and with readiness from the healthfully excited
brain. “It is wonderful,” says Pliny, “how the mind is stirred to activity by
brisk bodily exercise.” The presentable aspects of inmost thought and feeling
became evident to him: the structure of all he meant, its order and outline,
defined itself: his general sense of a fitness and beauty in words became
effective in daintily pliant sentences, with all sorts of felicitous linking of
figure to abstraction. It seemed just then as if the desire of the artist in
him that old longing to produce might be satisfied by the exact and literal
transcript of what was then passing around him, in simple prose, arresting the
desirable moment as it passed, and prolonging its life a little. To live in the
concrete! To be sure, at least, of one’s hold upon that! Again, his philosophic
scheme was but the reflection of the data of sense, and chiefly of sight, a
reduction to the abstract, of the brilliant road he travelled on, through the
sunshine. But on the seventh evening there came a reaction in the cheerful flow
of our traveller’s thoughts, a reaction with which mere bodily fatigue,
asserting itself at last over his curiosity, had much to do; and he fell into a
mood, known to all passably sentimental wayfarers, as night deepens again and
again over their path, in which all journeying, from the known to the unknown,
comes suddenly to figure as a mere foolish truancy like a child’s running away
from home with the feeling that one had best return at once, even through the
darkness. He had chosen to climb on foot, at his leisure, the long windings by
which the road ascended to the place where that day’s stage was to end, and
found himself alone in the twilight, far behind the rest of his travelling-companions.
Would the last zigzag, round and round those dark masses, half natural rock,
half artificial substructure, ever bring him within the circuit of the walls
above? It was now that a startling incident turned those misgivings almost into
actual fear. From the steep slope a heavy mass of stone was detached, after
some whisperings among the trees above his head, and rushing down through the
stillness fell to pieces in a cloud of dust across the road just behind him, so
that he felt the touch upon his heel. That was sufficient, just then, to rouse
out of its hiding-place his old vague fear of evil of one’s “enemies” a
distress, so much a matter of constitution with him, that at times it would
seem that the best pleasures of life could but be snatched, as it were hastily,
in one moment’s forgetfulness of its dark, besetting influence. A sudden
suspicion of hatred against him, of the nearness of “enemies,” seemed all at
once to alter the visible form of things, as with the child’s hero, when he found
the footprint on the sand of his peaceful, dreamy island. His elaborate
philosophy had not put beneath his feet the terror of mere bodily evil; much
less of “inexorable fate, and the noise of greedy Acheron.” The resting-place
to which he presently came, in the keen, wholesome air of the market-place of
the little hill-town, was a pleasant contrast to that last effort of his
journey. The room in which he sat down to supper, unlike the ordinary Roman
inns at that day, was trim and sweet. The firelight danced cheerfully upon the
polished, three-wicked lucernae burning cleanly with the best oil, upon the
white-washed walls, and the bunches of scarlet carnations set in glass goblets.
The white wine of the place put before him, of the true colour and flavour of
the grape, and with a ring of delicate foam as it mounted in the cup, had a
reviving edge or freshness he had found in no other wine. These things had
relieved a little the melancholy of the hour before; and it was just then that
he heard the voice of one, newly arrived at the inn, making his way to the
upper floor a youthful voice, with a reassuring clearness of note, which
completed his cure. He seemed to hear that voice again in dreams, uttering his
name: then, awake in the full morning light and gazing from the window, saw the
guest of the night before, a very honourable-looking youth, in the rich habit
of a military knight, standing beside his horse, and already making
preparations to depart. It happened that Marius, too, was to take that day’s journey
on horseback. Riding presently from the inn, he overtook CORNELIO of the
Twelfth Legion advancing carefully down the steep street; and before they had
issued from the gates of Urbs-vetus, the two young men had broken into talk
together. They were passing along the street of the goldsmiths; and Cornelius
must needs enter one of the workshops for the repair of some button or link of
his knightly trappings. Standing in the doorway, Marius watched the work, as he
had watched the brazier’s business a few days before, wondering most at the
simplicity of its processes, a simplicity, however, on which only genius in
that craft could have lighted. By what unguessed-at stroke of hand, for
instance, had the grains of precious metal associated themselves with so daintily
regular a roughness, over the surface of the little casket yonder? And the
conversation which followed, hence arising, left the two travellers with
sufficient interest in each other to insure an easy companionship for the
remainder of their journey. In time to come, Marius was to depend very much on
the preferences, the personal judgments, of the comrade who now laid his hand
so brotherly on his shoulder, as they left the workshop. Itineris matutini
gratiam capimus,+ observes one of our scholarly travellers; and their road that
day lay through a country, well-fitted, by the peculiarity of its landscape, to
ripen a first acquaintance into intimacy; its superficial ugliness throwing the
wayfarers back upon each other’s entertainment in a real exchange of ideas, the
tension of which, however, it would relieve, ever and anon, by the unexpected
assertion of something singularly attractive. The immediate aspect of the land
was, indeed, in spite of abundant olive and ilex, unpleasing enough. A river of
clay seemed, “in some old night of time,” to have burst up over valley and
hill, and hardened there into fantastic shelves and slides and angles of
cadaverous rock, up and down among the contorted vegetation; the hoary roots
and trunks seeming to confess some weird kinship with them. But that was long
ago; and these pallid hillsides needed only the declining sun, touching the
rock with purple, and throwing deeper shadow into the immemorial foliage, to
put on a peculiar, because a very grave and austere, kind of beauty; while the
graceful outlines common to volcanic hills asserted themselves in the broader
prospect. And, for sentimental Marius, all this was associated, by some perhaps
fantastic affinity, with a peculiar trait of severity, beyond his guesses as to
the secret of it, which mingled with the blitheness of his new companion.
Concurring, indeed, with the condition of a Roman soldier, it was certainly
something far more than the expression of military hardness, or ascêsis; and
what was earnest, or even austere, in the landscape they had traversed
together, seemed to have been waiting for the passage of this figure to
interpret or inform it. Again, as in his early days with Flavian, a vivid
personal presence broke through the dreamy idealism, which had almost come to
doubt of other men’s reality: reassuringly, indeed, yet not without some sense
of a constraining tyranny over him from without. For Cornelius, returning from
the campaign, to take up his quarters on the Palatine, in the imperial guard,
seemed to carry about with him, in that privileged world of comely usage to
which he belonged, the atmosphere of some still more jealously exclusive
circle. They halted on the morrow at noon, not at an inn, but at the house of
one of the young soldier’s friends, whom they found absent, indeed, in
consequence of the plague in those parts, so that after a mid-day rest only,
they proceeded again on their journey. The great room of the villa, to which
they were admitted, had lain long untouched; and the dust rose, as they
entered, into the slanting bars of sunlight, that fell through the half-closed
shutters. It was here, to while away the time, that Cornelius bethought himself
of displaying to his new friend the various articles and ornaments of his
knightly array the breastplate, the sandals and cuirass, lacing them on, one by
one, with the assistance of Marius, and finally the great golden bracelet on
the right arm, conferred on him by his general for an act of valour. And as he
gleamed there, amid that odd interchange of light and shade, with the staff of
a silken standard firm in his hand, Marius felt as if he were face to face, for
the first time, with some new knighthood or chivalry, just then coming into the
world. It was soon after they left this place, journeying now by carriage, that
Rome was seen at last, with much excitement on the part of our travellers;
CORNELIO, and some others of whom the party then consisted, agreeing, chiefly
for the sake of MARIO, to hasten forward, that it might be reached by daylight,
with a cheerful noise of rapid wheels as they passed over the flagstones. But
the highest light upon the mausoleum of Hadrian was quite gone out, and it was
dark, before they reached the Flaminian Gate. The abundant sound of water was
the one thing that impressed MARIO as they passed down a long street, with many
open spaces on either hand: Cornelius to his military quarters, and MARIO to
the old dwelling-place of his fathers. . +E-text editor’s note: ergastula were
the Roman agrarian equivalent of prison-workhouses. 168. +Apuleius, The Golden
Ass, I.17. Marius awoke early and passed curiously from room to room, noting
for more careful inspection by and by the rolls of manuscripts. Even greater
than his curiosity in gazing for the first time on this ancient possession, was
his eagerness to look out upon Rome itself, as he pushed back curtain and
shutter, and stepped forth in the fresh morning upon one of the many balconies,
with an oft-repeated dream realised at last. He was certainly fortunate in the
time of his coming to Rome. That old pagan world, of which Rome was the flower,
had reached its perfection in the things of poetry and art a perfection which
indicated only too surely the eve of decline. As in some vast intellectual
museum, all its manifold products were intact and in their places, and with
custodians also still extant, duly qualified to appreciate and explain them.
And at no period of history had the material Rome itself been better worth
seeing lying there not less consummate than that world of pagan intellect which
it represented in every phase of its darkness and light. The various work of
many ages fell here harmoniously together, as yet untouched save by time,
adding the final grace of a rich softness to its complex expression. Much which
spoke of ages earlier than Nero, the great re-builder, lingered on, antique,
quaint, immeasurably venerable, like the relics of the medieval city in the
Paris of Lewis the Fourteenth: the work of Nero’s own time had come to have
that sort of old world and picturesque interest which the work of Lewis has for
ourselves; while without stretching a parallel too far we might perhaps liken
the architectural finesses of the archaic Hadrian to the more excellent
products of our own Gothic revival. The temple of Antoninus and Faustina was
still fresh in all the majesty of its closely arrayed columns of cipollino;
but, on the whole, little had been added under the late and present emperors,
and during fifty years of public quiet, a sober brown and gray had grown apace
on things. The gilding on the roof of many a temple had lost its garishness:
cornice and capital of polished marble shone out with all the crisp freshness
of real flowers, amid the already mouldering travertine and brickwork, though
the birds had built freely among them. What Marius then saw was in many
respects, after all deduction of difference, more like the modern Rome than the
enumeration of particular losses might lead us to suppose; the Renaissance, in
its most ambitious mood and with amplest resources, having resumed the ancient
classical tradition there, with no break or obstruction, as it had happened, in
any very considerable work of the middle age. Immediately before him, on the
square, steep height, where the earliest little old Rome had huddled itself
together, arose the palace of the Caesars. Half-veiling the vast substruction
of rough, brown stone line upon line of successive ages of builders the trim,
old-fashioned garden walks, under their closely-woven walls of dark glossy
foliage, test of long and careful cultivation, wound gradually, among choice
trees, statues and fountains, distinct and sparkling in the full morning
sunlight, to the richly tinted mass of pavilions and corridors above, centering
in the lofty, white-marble dwelling-place of Apollo himself. How often had
Marius looked forward to that first, free wandering through Rome, to which he
now went forth with a heat in the town sunshine (like a mist of fine gold-dust
spread through the air) to the height of his desire, making the dun coolness of
the narrow streets welcome enough at intervals. He almost feared, descending
the stair hastily, lest some unforeseen accident should snatch the little cup
of enjoyment from him ere he passed the door. In such morning rambles in places
new to him, life had always seemed to come at its fullest: it was then he could
feel his youth, that youth the days of which he had already begun to count
jealously, in entire possession. So the grave, pensive figure, a figure, be it
said nevertheless, fresher far than often came across it now, moved through the
old city towards the lodgings of Cornelius, certainly not by the most direct
course, however eager to rejoin the friend of yesterday. Bent as keenly on
seeing as if his first day in Rome were to be also his last, the two friends
descended along the _Vicus Tuscus_, with its rows of incense-stalls, into the
_Via Nova_, where the fashionable people were busy shopping; and Marius saw
with much amusement the frizzled heads, then _à la mode_. A glimpse of the
_Marmorata_, the haven at the river-side, where specimens of all the precious
marbles of the world were lying amid great white blocks from the quarries of
Luna, took his thoughts for a moment to his distant home. They visited the
flower-market, lingering where the _coronarii_ pressed on them the newest
species, and purchased zinias, now in blossom (like painted flowers, thought
Marius), to decorate the folds of their togas. Loitering to the other side of
the Forum, past the great Galen’s drug-shop, after a glance at the
announcements of new poems on sale attached to the doorpost of a famous
bookseller, they entered the curious library of the Temple of Peace, then a
favourite resort of literary men, and read, fixed there for all to see, the
_Diurnal_ or Gazette of the day, which announced, together with births and
deaths, prodigies and accidents, and much mere matter of business, the date and
manner of the philosophic emperor’s joyful return to his people; and,
thereafter, with eminent names faintly disguised, what would carry that day’s
news, in many copies, over the provinces a certain matter concerning the great
lady, known to be dear to him, whom he had left at home. It was a story, with
the development of which “society” had indeed for some time past edified or amused
itself, rallying sufficiently from the panic of a year ago, not only to welcome
back its ruler, but also to relish a _chronique scandaleuse;_ and thus, when
soon after Marius saw the world’s wonder, he was already acquainted with the
suspicions which have ever since hung about her name. Twelve o’clock was come
before they left the Forum, waiting in a little crowd to hear the _Accensus_,
according to old custom, proclaim the hour of noonday, at the moment when, from
the steps of the Senate-house, the sun could be seen standing between the
_Rostra_ and the _Græcostasis_. He exerted for this function a strength of
voice, which confirmed in Marius a judgment the modern visitor may share with
him, that Roman throats and Roman chests, namely, must, in some peculiar way,
be differently constructed from those of other people. Such judgment indeed he
had formed in part the evening before, noting, as a religious procession passed
him, how much noise a man and a boy could make, though not without a great deal
of real music, of which in truth the Romans were then as ever passionately
fond. Hence the two friends took their way through the Via Flaminia, almost
along the line of the modern Corso, already bordered with handsome villas,
turning presently to the left, into the Field-of-Mars, still the playground of
Rome. But the vast public edifices were grown to be almost continuous over the
grassy expanse, represented now only by occasional open spaces of verdure and
wild-flowers. In one of these a crowd was standing, to watch a party of
athletes stripped for exercise. Marius had been surprised at the luxurious
variety of the litters borne through Rome, where no carriage horses were
allowed; and just then one far more sumptuous than the rest, with dainty
appointments of ivory and gold, was carried by, all the town pressing with
eagerness to get a glimpse of its most beautiful woman, as she passed rapidly.
Yes! there, was the wonder of the world the empress Faustina herself: Marius
could distinguish, could distinguish clearly, the well-known profile, between
the floating purple curtains. For indeed all Rome was ready to burst into
gaiety again, as it awaited with much real affection, hopeful and animated, the
return of its emperor, for whose ovation various adornments were preparing
along the streets through which the imperial procession would pass. He had left
Rome just twelve months before, amid immense gloom. The alarm of a barbarian
insurrection along the whole line of the Danube had happened at the moment when
Rome was panic-stricken by the great pestilence. In fifty years of peace,
broken only by that conflict in the East from which Lucius Verus, among other
curiosities, brought back the plague, war had come to seem a merely romantic,
superannuated incident of bygone history. And now it was almost upon Italian
soil. Terrible were the reports of the numbers and audacity of the assailants.
Aurelius, as yet untried in war, and understood by a few only in the whole
scope of a really great character, was known to the majority of his subjects as
but a careful administrator, though a student of philosophy, perhaps, as we
say, a dilettante. But he was also the visible centre of government, towards
whom the hearts of a whole people turned, grateful for fifty years of public
happiness its good genius, its “Antonine” whose fragile person might be
foreseen speedily giving way under the trials of military life, with a disaster
like that of the slaughter of the legions by Arminius. Prophecies of the
world’s impending conflagration were easily credited: “the secular fire” would
descend from heaven: superstitious fear had even demanded the sacrifice of a
human victim. Marcus Aurelius, always philosophically considerate of the
humours of other people, exercising also that devout appreciation of every
religious claim which was one of his characteristic habits, had invoked, in aid
of the commonwealth, not only all native gods, but all foreign deities as well,
however strange. “Help! Help! in the ocean space!” A multitude of foreign
priests had been welcomed to Rome, with their various peculiar religious rites.
The sacrifices made on this occasion were remembered for centuries; and the
starving poor, at least, found some satisfaction in the flesh of those herds of
“white bulls,” which came into the city, day after day, to yield the savour of
their blood to the gods. In spite of all this, the legions had but followed
their standards despondently. But prestige, personal prestige, the name of
“Emperor,” still had its magic power over the nations. The mere approach of the
Roman army made an impression on the barbarians. Aurelius and his colleague had
scarcely reached Aquileia when a deputation arrived to ask for peace. And now
the two imperial “brothers” were returning home at leisure; were waiting, indeed,
at a villa outside the walls, till the capital had made ready to receive them.
But although Rome was thus in genial reaction, with much relief, and
hopefulness against the winter, facing itself industriously in damask of red
and gold, those two enemies were still unmistakably extant: the barbarian army
of the Danube was but over-awed for a season; and the plague, as we saw when
Marius was on his way to Rome, was not to depart till it had done a large part
in the formation of the melancholy picturesque of modern Italy till it had
made, or prepared for the making of the Roman Campagna. The old, unaffected,
really pagan, peace or gaiety, of ANTONINO PIO that genuine though unconscious
humanist was gone for ever. And again and again, throughout this day of varied
observation, Marius had been reminded, above all else, that he was not merely
in “the most religious city of the world,” as one had said, but that Rome was
become the romantic home of the wildest superstition. Such superstition
presented itself almost as religious mania in many an incident of his long
ramble, incidents to which he gave his full attention, though contending in
some measure with a reluctance on the part of his companion, the motive of
which he did not understand till long afterwards. Marius certainly did not
allow this reluctance to deter his own curiosity. Had he not come to Rome
partly under poetic vocation, to receive all those things, the very impress of
life itself, upon the visual, the imaginative, organ, as upon a mirror; to reflect
them; to transmute them into golden words? He must observe that strange medley
of superstition, that centuries’ growth, layer upon layer, of the curiosities
of religion (one faith jostling another out of place) at least for its
picturesque interest, and as an indifferent outsider might, not too deeply
concerned in the question which, if any of them, was to be the survivor.
Superficially, at least, the Roman religion, allying itself with much
diplomatic economy to possible rivals, was in possession, as a vast and complex
system of usage, intertwining itself with every detail of public and private
life, attractively enough for those who had but “the historic temper,” and a
taste for the past, however much a Lucian might depreciate it. Roman religion,
as Marius knew, had, indeed, been always something to be done, rather than
something to be thought, or believed, or loved; something to be done in
minutely detailed manner, at a particular time and place, correctness in which
had long been a matter of laborious learning with a whole school of ritualists
as also, now and again, a matter of heroic sacrifice with certain exceptionally
devout souls, as when Caius Fabius Dorso, with his life in his hand, succeeded
in passing the sentinels of the invading Gauls to perform a sacrifice on the
Quirinal, and, thanks to the divine protection, had returned in safety. So
jealous was the distinction between sacred and profane, that, in the matter of
the “regarding of days,” it had made more than half the year a holiday. Aurelius
had, indeed, ordained that there should be no more than a hundred and
thirty-five festival days in the year; but in other respects he had followed in
the steps of his predecessor, Antoninus Pius commended especially for his
“religion,” his conspicuous devotion to its public ceremonies and whose coins
are remarkable for their reference to the oldest and most hieratic types of
Roman mythology. Aurelius had succeeded in more than healing the old feud
between philosophy and religion, displaying himself, in singular combination,
as at once the most zealous of philosophers and the most devout of polytheists,
and lending himself, with an air of conviction, to all the pageantries of
public worship. To his pious recognition of that one orderly spirit, which, according
to the doctrine of the Stoics, diffuses itself through the world, and animates
it a recognition taking the form, with him, of a constant effort towards inward
likeness thereto, in the harmonious order of his own soul he had added a warm
personal devotion towards the whole multitude of the old national gods, and a
great many new foreign ones besides, by him, at least, not ignobly conceived.
If the comparison may be reverently made, there was something here of the
method by which the catholic church has added the cultus of the saints to its
worship of the one Divine Being. And to the view of the majority, though the
emperor, as the personal centre of religion, entertained the hope of converting
his people to philosophic faith, and had even pronounced certain public
discourses for their instruction in it, that polytheistic devotion was his most
striking feature. Philosophers, indeed, had, for the most part, thought with
Seneca, “that a man need not lift his hands to heaven, nor ask the sacristan’s
leave to put his mouth to the ear of an image, that his prayers might be heard
the better.” Marcus Aurelius, “a master in Israel,” knew all that well enough.
Yet his outward devotion was much more than a concession to popular sentiment,
or a mere result of that sense of fellow-citizenship with others, which had
made him again and again, under most difficult circumstances, an excellent
comrade. Those others, too! amid all their ignorances, what were they but
instruments in the administration of the Divine Reason, “from end to end
sweetly and strongly disposing all things”? Meantime “Philosophy” itself had
assumed much of what we conceive to be the religious character. It had even
cultivated the habit, the power, of “spiritual direction”; the troubled soul
making recourse in its hour of destitution, or amid the distractions of the
world, to this or that director philosopho suo who could really best understand
it. And it had been in vain that the old, grave and discreet religion of Rome
had set itself, according to its proper genius, to prevent or subdue all
trouble and disturbance in men’s souls. In religion, as in other matters,
plebeians, as such, had a taste for movement, for revolution; and it had been
ever in the most populous quarters that religious changes began. To the
apparatus of foreign religion, above all, recourse had been made in times of
public disquietude or sudden terror; and in those great religious celebrations,
before his proceeding against the barbarians, Aurelius had even restored the
solemnities of Isis, prohibited in the capital since the time of Augustus,
making no secret of his worship of that goddess, though her temple had been
actually destroyed by authority in the reign of TIBERIO (si veda). Her singular
and in many ways beautiful ritual was now popular in Rome. And then what the
enthusiasm of the swarming plebeian quarters had initiated, was sure to be
adopted, sooner or later, by women of fashion. A blending of all the religions
of the ancient world had been accomplished. The new gods had arrived, had been
welcomed, and found their places; though, certainly, with no real security, in
any adequate ideal of the divine nature itself in the background of men’s
minds, that the presence of the new-comer should be edifying, or even refining.
High and low addressed themselves to all deities alike without scruple;
confusing them together when they prayed, and in the old, authorised, threefold
veneration of their visible images, by flowers, incense, and ceremonial lights
those beautiful usages, which the church, in her way through the world, ever
making spoil of the world’s goods for the better uses of the human spirit, took
up and sanctified in her service. And certainly “the most religious city in the
world” took no care to veil its devotion, however fantastic. The humblest house
had its little chapel or shrine, its image and lamp; while almost every one
seemed to exercise some religious function and responsibility. Colleges,
composed for the most part of slaves and of the poor, provided for the service
of the Compitalian Lares the gods who presided, respectively, over the several
quarters of the city. In one street, Marius witnessed an incident of the
festival of the patron deity of that neighbourhood, the way being strewn with
box, the houses tricked out gaily in such poor finery as they possessed, while
the ancient idol was borne through it in procession, arrayed in gaudy attire
the worse for wear. Numerous religious clubs had their stated anniversaries, on
which the members issued with much ceremony from their guild-hall, or schola,
and traversed the thoroughfares of Rome, preceded, like the confraternities of
the present day, by their sacred banners, to offer sacrifice before some famous
image. Black with the perpetual smoke of lamps and incense, oftenest old and
ugly, perhaps on that account the more likely to listen to the desires of the
suffering had not those sacred effigies sometimes given sensible tokens that
they were aware? The image of the Fortune of Women Fortuna Muliebris, in the
Latin Way, had spoken (not once only) and declared; Bene me, Matronae! vidistis
riteque dedicastis! The Apollo of Cumae had wept during three whole nights and
days. The images in the temple of Juno Sospita had been seen to sweat. Nay!
there was blood divine blood in the hearts of some of them: the images in the
Grove of Feronia had sweated blood! From one and all CORNELIO had turned away:
like the “atheist” of whom Apuleius tells he had never once raised hand to lip
in passing image or sanctuary, and had parted from Marius finally when the
latter determined to enter the crowded doorway of a temple, on their return
into the Forum, below the Palatine hill, where the mothers were pressing in,
with a multitude of every sort of children, to touch the lightning-struck image
of the wolf-nurse of Romulus so tender to little ones! just discernible in its
dark shrine, amid a blaze of lights. Marius gazed after his companion of the
day, as he mounted the steps to his lodging, singing to himself, as it seemed.
Marius failed precisely to catch the words. And, as the rich, fresh evening
came on, there was heard all over Rome, far above a whisper, the whole town
seeming hushed to catch it distinctly, the lively, reckless call to “play,”
from the sons and daughters of foolishness, to those in whom their life was
still green Donec virenti canities abest! Donec virenti canities abest!+ MARIO
could hardly doubt how Cornelius would have taken the call. And as for himself,
slight as was the burden of positive moral obligation with which he had entered
Rome, it was to no wasteful and vagrant affections, such as these, that his
Epicureanism had committed him. Horace, Odes I.ix.17. Translation: “So long as
youth is fresh and age is far away.” But ah! Maecenas is yclad in claye, And
great Augustus long ygoe is dead, And all the worthies liggen wrapt in lead,
That matter made for poets on to playe.+ Marcus Aurelius who, though he had
little relish for them himself, had ever been willing to humour the taste of
his people for magnificent spectacles, was received back to Rome with the
lesser honours of the Ovation, conceded by the Senate (so great was the public
sense of deliverance) with even more than the laxity which had become its habit
under imperial rule, for there had been no actual bloodshed in the late
achievement. Clad in the civic dress of the chief Roman magistrate, and with a
crown of myrtle upon his head, his colleague similarly attired walking beside
him, he passed up to the Capitol on foot, though in solemn procession along the
Sacred Way, to offer sacrifice to the national gods. The victim, a goodly
sheep, whose image we may still see between the pig and the ox of the
Suovetaurilia, filleted and stoled almost like some ancient canon of the
church, on a sculptured fragment in the Forum, was conducted by the priests,
clad in rich white vestments, and bearing their sacred utensils of massive
gold, immediately behind a company of flute-players, led by the great
choir-master, or conductor, of the day, visibly tetchy or delighted, according
as the instruments he ruled with his tuning-rod, rose, more or less adequately
amid the difficulties of the way, to the dream of perfect music in the soul
within him. The vast crowd, including the soldiers of the triumphant army, now
restored to wives and children, all alike in holiday whiteness, had left their
houses early in the fine, dry morning, in a real affection for “the father of
his country,” to await the procession, the two princes having spent the
preceding night outside the walls, at the old Villa of the Republic. Marius,
full of curiosity, had taken his position with much care; and stood to see the
world’s masters pass by, at an angle from which he could command the view of a
great part of the processional route, sprinkled with fine yellow sand, and punctiliously
guarded from profane footsteps. The coming of the pageant was announced by the
clear sound of the flutes, heard at length above the acclamations of the people
Salve Imperator! Dii te servent! shouted in regular time, over the hills. It
was on the central figure, of course, that the whole attention of Marius was
fixed from the moment when the procession came in sight, preceded by the
lictors with gilded fasces, the imperial image-bearers, and the pages carrying
lighted torches; a band of knights, among whom was Cornelius in complete
military, array, following. Amply swathed about in the folds of a richly worked
toga, after a manner now long since become obsolete with meaner persons, Marius
beheld a man of about five-and-forty years of age, with prominent eyes eyes,
which although demurely downcast during this essentially religious ceremony,
were by nature broadly and benignantly observant. He was still, in the main, as
we see him in the busts which represent his gracious and courtly youth, when Hadrian
had playfully called him, not Verus, after the name of his father, but
Verissimus, for his candour of gaze, and the bland capacity of the brow, which,
below the brown hair, clustering thickly as of old, shone out low, broad, and
clear, and still without a trace of the trouble of his lips. You saw the brow
of one who, amid the blindness or perplexity of the people about him,
understood all things clearly; the dilemma, to which his experience so far had
brought him, between Chance with meek resignation, and a Providence with
boundless possibilities and hope, being for him at least distinctly defined.
That outward serenity, which he valued so highly as a point of manner or
expression not unworthy the care of a public minister outward symbol, it might
be thought, of the inward religious serenity it had been his constant purpose
to maintain was increased to-day by his sense of the gratitude of his people;
that his life had been one of such gifts and blessings as made his person seem
in very deed divine to them. Yet the cloud of some reserved internal sorrow,
passing from time to time into an expression of fatigue and effort, of
loneliness amid the shouting multitude, might have been detected there by the
more observant as if the sagacious hint of one of his officers, “The soldiers
can’t understand you, they don’t know Greek,” were applicable always to his
relationships with other people. The nostrils and mouth seemed capable almost
of peevishness; and Marius noted in them, as in the hands, and in the spare body
generally, what was new to his experience something of asceticism, as we say,
of a bodily gymnastic, by which, although it told pleasantly in the clear blue
humours of the eye, the flesh had scarcely been an equal gainer with the
spirit. It was hardly the expression of “the healthy mind in the healthy body,”
but rather of a sacrifice of the body to the soul, its needs and aspirations,
that Marius seemed to divine in this assiduous student of the Greek sages a
sacrifice, in truth, far beyond the demands of their very saddest philosophy of
life. Dignify thyself with modesty and simplicity for thine ornaments! had been
ever a maxim with this dainty and high-bred Stoic, who still thought manners a
true part of morals, according to the old sense of the term, and who regrets
now and again that he cannot control his thoughts equally well with his
countenance. That outward composure was deepened during the solemnities of this
day by an air of pontifical abstraction; which, though very far from being
pride nay, a sort of humility rather yet gave, to himself, an air of
unapproachableness, and to his whole proceeding, in which every minutest act
was considered, the character of a ritual. Certainly, there was no haughtiness,
social, moral, or even philosophic, in Aurelius, who had realised, under more
trying conditions perhaps than any one before, that no element of humanity
could be alien from him. Yet, as he walked to-day, the centre of ten thousand
observers, with eyes discreetly fixed on the ground, veiling his head at times
and muttering very rapidly the words of the “supplications,” the rich, fresh
evening came on, there was heard all over Rome, far above a whisper, the whole
town seeming hushed to catch it distinctly, the lively, reckless call to
“play,” from the sons and daughters of foolishness, to those in whom their life
was still green Donec virenti canities abest! Donec virenti canities abest!+
Marius could hardly doubt how Cornelius would have taken the call. And as for
himself, slight as was the burden of positive moral obligation with which he
had entered Rome, it was to no wasteful and vagrant affections, such as these,
that his Epicureanism had committed him. . +Horace, Odes I.ix.17. Translation:
“So long as youth is fresh and age is far away.” But ah! Maecenas is yclad in
claye, And great Augustus long ygoe is dead, And all the worthies liggen wrapt
in lead, That matter made for poets on to playe.+ Marcus Aurelius who, though
he had little relish for them himself, had ever been willing to humour the
taste of his people for magnificent spectacles, was received back to Rome with
the lesser honours of the Ovation, conceded by the Senate (so great was the
public sense of deliverance) with even more than the laxity which had become
its habit under imperial rule, for there had been no actual bloodshed in the
late achievement. Clad in the civic dress of the chief Roman magistrate, and
with a crown of myrtle upon his head, his colleague similarly attired walking
beside him, he passed up to the Capitol on foot, though in solemn procession
along the Sacred Way, to offer sacrifice to the national gods.The victim, a
goodly sheep, whose image we may still see between the pig and the ox of the
Suovetaurilia, filleted and stoled almost like some ancient canon of the
church, on a sculptured fragment in the Forum, was conducted by the priests,
clad in rich white vestments, and bearing their sacred utensils of massive
gold, immediately behind a company of flute-players, led by the great
choir-master, or conductor, of the day, visibly tetchy or delighted, according
as the instruments he ruled with his tuning-rod, rose, more or less adequately
amid the difficulties of the way, to the dream of perfect music in the soul
within him. The vast crowd, including the soldiers of the triumphant army, now
restored to wives and children, all alike in holiday whiteness, had left their
houses early in the fine, dry morning, in a real affection for “the father of
his country,” to await the procession, the two princes having spent the
preceding night outside the walls, at the old Villa of the REPUBBLICA. MARIO,
full of curiosity, had taken his position with much care; and stood to see the
world’s masters pass by, at an angle from which he could command the view of a
great part of the processional route, sprinkled with fine yellow sand, and
punctiliously guarded from profane footsteps. The coming of the pageant was
announced by the clear sound of the flutes, heard at length above the
acclamations of the people Salve Imperator! Dii te servent! shouted in regular
time, over the hills. It was on the central figure, of course, that the whole
attention of MARIO is fixed from the moment when the procession came in sight,
preceded by the lictors with gilded fasces, the imperial image-bearers, and the
pages carrying lighted torches; a band of knights, among whom was CORNELIO in
complete military, array, following. Amply swathed about in the folds of a
richly worked toga, after a manner now long since become obsolete withmeaner
persons, Marius beheld a man of about five-and-forty years of age, with
prominent eyes eyes, which although demurely downcast during this essentially
religious ceremony, were by nature broadly and benignantly observant. He was
still, in the main, as we see him in the busts which represent his gracious and
courtly youth, when Hadrian had playfully called him, not Verus, after the name
of his father, but Verissimus, for his candour of gaze, and the bland capacity
of the brow, which, below the brown hair, clustering thickly as of old, shone
out low, broad, and clear, and still without a trace of the trouble of his
lips. You saw the brow of one who, amid the blindness or perplexity of the
people about him, understood all things clearly; the dilemma, to which his
experience so far had brought him, between Chance with meek resignation, and a
Providence with boundless possibilities and hope, being for him at least
distinctly defined. That outward serenity, which he valued so highly as a point
of manner or expression not unworthy the care of a public minister outward
symbol, it might be thought, of the inward religious serenity it had been his
constant purpose to maintain was increased to-day by his sense of the gratitude
of his people; that his life had been one of such gifts and blessings as made his
person seem in very deed divine to them. Yet the cloud of some reserved
internal sorrow, passing from time to time into an expression of fatigue and
effort, of loneliness amid the shouting multitude, might have been detected
there by the more observant as if the sagacious hint of one of his officers,
“The soldiers can’t understand you, they don’t know Greek,” were applicable
always to his relationships with other people. The nostrils and mouth seemed
capable almost of peevishness; and Marius noted in them, as in the hands, and
in the spare body generally, what was new to his experience something of
asceticism, as we say, of a bodily gymnastic, by which, although it told
pleasantly in the clear blue humours of the eye, the flesh had scarcely been an
equal gainer with the spirit. It was hardly the expression of “the healthy mind
in the healthy body,” but rather of a sacrifice of the body to the soul, its
needs and aspirations, that Marius seemed to divine in this assiduous student
of the Greek sages a sacrifice, in truth, far beyond the demands of their very
saddest philosophy of life. Dignify thyself with modesty and simplicity for
thine ornaments! had been ever a maxim with this dainty and high -bred Stoic,
who still thought manners a true part of morals, according to the old sense of
the term, and who regrets now and again that he cannot control his thoughts
equally well with his countenance. That outward composure was deepened during
the solemnities of this day by an air of pontifical abstraction; which, though
very far from being pride nay, a sort of humility rather yet gave, to himself,
an air of unapproachableness, and to his whole proceeding, in which every
minutest act was considered, the character of a ritual. Certainly, there was no
haughtiness, social, moral, or even philosophic, in Aurelius, who had realised,
under more trying conditions perhaps than any one before, that no element of
humanity could be alien from him. Yet, as he walked to-day, the centre of ten
thousand observers, with eyes discreetly fixed on the ground, veiling his head
at times and muttering very rapidly the words of the “supplications,” there was
something many spectators may have noted as a thing new in their experience,
for Aurelius, unlike his predecessors, took all this with absolute seriousness.
The doctrine of the sanctity of kings, that, in the words of Tacitus, Princes
are as Gods Principes instar deorum esse seemed to have taken a novel, because
a literal, sense. For ANTONINO (si veda), indeed, the old legend of his descent
from NUMA (si veda), from NUMA (si veda) who had talked with the gods, meant
much. Attached in very early years to the service of the altars, like many
another noble youth, he was “observed to perform all his sacerdotal functions
with a constancy and exactness unusual at that age; was soon a master of the
sacred music; and had all the forms and ceremonies by heart.” And now, as the
emperor, who had not only a vague divinity about his person, but was actually
the chief religious functionary of the state, recited from time to time the
forms of invocation, he needed not the help of the prompter, or ceremoniarius,
who then approached, to assist him by whispering the appointed words in his
ear. It was that pontifical abstraction which then impressed itself on MARIO as
the leading outward characteristic of ANTONINO (si veda); though to him alone,
perhaps, in that vast crowd of observers, it was no strange thing, but a matter
he had understood from of old. Some fanciful writers have assigned the origin
of these triumphal processions to the mythic pomps of Dionysus, after his
conquests in the East; the very word Triumph being, according to this
supposition, only Thriambos-the Dionysiac Hymn. And certainly the younger of
the two imperial “brothers,” who, with the effect of a strong contrast, walked
beside Aurelius, and shared the honours of the day, might well have reminded
people of the delicate Greek god of flowers and wine. This new conqueror of the
East was now about thirty-six years old, but with his scrupulous care for all
the advantages of his person, and a soft curling beard powdered with gold,
looked many years younger. One result of the more genial element in the wisdom
of Aurelius had been that, amid most difficult circumstances, he had known
throughout life how to act in union with persons of character very alien from
his own; to be more than loyal to the colleague, the younger brother in empire,
he had too lightly taken to himself, five years before, then an uncorrupt
youth, “skilled in manly exercises and fitted for war.” When Aurelius thanks
the gods that a brother had fallen to his lot, whose character was a stimulus
to the proper care of his own, one sees that this could only have happened in
the way of an example, putting him on his guard against insidious faults. But
it is with sincere amiability that the imperial writer, who was indeed little
used to be ironical, adds that the lively respect and affection of the junior
had often “gladdened” him. To be able to make his use of the flower, when the fruit
perhaps was useless or poisonous: that was one of the practical successes of
his philosophy; and his people noted, with a blessing, “the concord of the two
Augusti.” The younger, certainly, possessed in full measure that charm of a
constitutional freshness of aspect which may defy for a long time extravagant
or erring habits of life; a physiognomy, healthy-looking, cleanly, and firm,
which seemed unassociable with any form of self-torment, and made one think of
the muzzle of some young hound or roe, such as human beings invariably like to
stroke a physiognomy, in effect, with all the goodliness of animalism of the
finer sort, though still wholly animal. The charm was that of the blond head,
the unshrinking gaze, the warm tints: neither more nor less than one may see
every English summer, in youth, manly enough, and with the stuff which makes
brave soldiers, in spite of the natural kinship it seems to have with
playthings and gay flowers. But innate in Lucius Verus there was that more than
womanly fondness for fond things, which had made the atmosphere of the old city
of Antioch, heavy with centuries of voluptuousness, a poison to him: he had
come to love his delicacies best out of season, and would have gilded the very
flowers. But with a wonderful power of self-obliteration, the elder brother at
the capital had directed his procedure successfully, and allowed him, become
now also the husband of his daughter Lucilla, the credit of a “Conquest,”
though Verus had certainly not returned a conqueror over himself. He had
returned, as we know, with the plague in his company, along with many another
strange creature of his folly; and when the people saw him publicly feeding his
favourite horse Fleet with almonds and sweet grapes, wearing the animal’s image
in gold, and finally building it a tomb, they felt, with some un-sentimental
misgiving, that he might revive the manners of Nero. What if, in the chances of
war, he should survive the protecting genius of that elder brother? He was all
himself to-day: and it was with much wistful curiosity that Marius regarded
him. For Lucius Verus was, indeed, but the highly expressive type of a class,
the true son of his father, adopted by Hadrian. Lucius Verus the elder, also,
had had the like strange capacity for misusing the adornments of life, with a
masterly grace; as if such misusing were, in truth, the quite adequate
occupation of an intelligence, powerful, but distorted by cynical philosophy or
some disappointment of the heart. It was almost a sort of genius, of which there
had been instances in the imperial purple: it was to ascend the throne, a few
years later, in the person of one, now a hopeful little lad at home in the
palace; and it had its following, of course, among the wealthy youth at Rome,
who concentrated no inconsiderable force of shrewdness and tact upon minute
details of attire and manner, as upon the one thing needful. Certainly, flowers
were pleasant to the eye. Such things had even their sober use, as making the
outside of human life superficially attractive, and thereby promoting the first
steps towards friendship and social amity. But what precise place could there
be for Verus and his peculiar charm, in that Wisdom, that Order of divine
Reason “reaching from end to end, strongly and sweetly disposing all things,”
from the vision of which Aurelius came down, so tolerant of persons like him?
Into such vision Marius too was certainly well-fitted to enter, yet, noting the
actual perfection of Lucius Verus after his kind, his undeniable achievement of
the select, in all minor things, felt, though with some suspicion of himself,
that he entered into, and could understand, this other so dubious sort of
character also. There was a voice in the theory he had brought to Rome with him
which whispered “nothing is either great nor small;” as there were times when
he could have thought that, as the “grammarian’s” or the artist’s ardour of
soul may be satisfied by the perfecting of the theory of a sentence, or the
adjustment of two colours, so his own life also might have been fulfilled by an
enthusiastic quest after perfection say, in the flowering and folding of a
toga. The emperors had burned incense before the image of Jupiter, arrayed in
its most gorgeous apparel, amid sudden shouts from the people of Salve
Imperator! turned now from the living princes to the deity, as they discerned
his countenance through the great open doors. The imperial brothers had
deposited their crowns of myrtle on the richly embroidered lapcloth of the god;
and, with their chosen guests, sat down to a public feast in the temple itself.
There followed what was, after all, the great event of the day: an appropriate
discourse, a discourse almost wholly de contemptu mundi, delivered in the
presence of the assembled Senate, by the emperor Aurelius, who had thus, on
certain rare occasions, condescended to instruct his people, with the double
authority of a chief pontiff and a laborious student of philosophy. In those
lesser honours of the ovation, there had been no attendant slave behind the
emperors, to make mock of their effulgence as they went; and it was as if with
the discretion proper to a philosopher, and in fear of a jealous Nemesis, he
had determined himself to protest in time against the vanity of all outward
success. IL SENATO is assembled to hear the emperor’s discourse in the vast
hall of the Curia Julia. A crowd of high-bred youths idled around, or on the
steps before the doors, with the marvellous toilets Marius had noticed in the
Via Nova; in attendance, as usual, to learn by observation the minute points of
senatorial procedure. MARIO had already some acquaintance with them, and
passing on found himself suddenly in the presence of what was still the most
august assembly the world had seen. Under Aurelius, ever full of veneration for
this ancient traditional guardian of public religion, the Senate had recovered
all its old dignity and independence. Among its members many hundreds in
number, visibly the most distinguished of them all, Marius noted the great
sophists or rhetoricians of the day, in all their magnificence. The antique
character of their attire, and the ancient mode of wearing it, still surviving
with them, added to the imposing character of their persons, while they sat,
with their staves of ivory in their hands, on their curule chairs almost the
exact pattern of the chair still in use in the Roman church when a Bishop
pontificates at the divine offices “tranquil and unmoved, with a majesty that
seemed divine,” as MARIO thought, like the old Gaul of the Invasion. The rays
of the early November sunset slanted full upon the audience, and made it
necessary for the officers of the Court to draw the purple curtains over the
windows, adding to the solemnity of the scene. In the depth of those warm
shadows, surrounded by her ladies, the empress Faustina was seated to listen.
The beautiful Greek statue of Victory, which since the days of Augustus had
presided over the assemblies of the Senate, had been brought into the hall, and
placed near the chair of the emperor; who, after rising to perform a brief
sacrificial service in its honour, bowing reverently to the assembled fathers
left and right, took his seat and began to speak. There was a certain
melancholy grandeur in the very simplicity or triteness of the theme: as it
were the very quintessence of all the old Roman epitaphs, of all that was
monumental in that city of tombs, layer upon layer of dead things and people.
As if in the very fervour of disillusion, he seemed to be composing Hôsper
epigraphas chronôn kai holôn ethnôn+ the sepulchral titles of ages and whole
peoples; nay! the very epitaph of the living Rome itself. The grandeur of the
ruins of Rome, heroism in ruin: it was under the influence of an imaginative
anticipation of this, that he appeared to be speaking. And though the impression
of the actual greatness of Rome on that day was but enhanced by the strain of
contempt, falling with an accent of pathetic conviction from the emperor
himself, and gaining from his pontifical pretensions the authority of a
religious intimation, yet the curious interest of the discourse lay in this,
that Marius, for one, as he listened, seemed to forsee a grass-grown Forum, the
broken ways of the Capitol, and the Palatine hill itself in humble occupation.
That impression connected itself with what he had already noted of an actual
change even then coming over Italian scenery. Throughout, he could trace
something of a humour into which Stoicism at all times tends to fall, the
tendency to cry, Abase yourselves! There was here the almost inhuman impassibility
of one who had thought too closely on the paradoxical aspect of the love of
posthumous fame. With the ascetic pride which lurks under all Platonism,
resultant from its opposition of the seen to the unseen, as falsehood to truth
the imperial Stoic, like his true descendant, the hermit of the middle age, was
ready, in no friendly humour, to mock, there in its narrow bed, the corpse
which had made so much of itself in life. Marius could but contrast all that
with his own Cyrenaic eagerness, just then, to taste and see and touch;
reflecting on the opposite issues deducible from the same text. “The world,
within me and without, flows away like a river,” he had said; “therefore let me
make the most of what is here and now.” “The world and the thinker upon it, are
consumed like a flame,” said Aurelius, “therefore will I turn away my eyes from
vanity: renounce: withdraw myself alike from all affections.” He seemed tacitly
to claim as a sort of personal dignity, that he was very familiarly versed in
this view of things, and could discern a death’s-head everywhere. Now and again
MARIO is reminded of the saying that “with the Stoics all people are the vulgar
save themselves;” and at times the orator seemed to have forgotten his
audience, and to be speaking only to himself. “Art thou in love with men’s
praises, get thee into the very soul of them, and see! see what judges they be,
even in those matters which concern themselves. Wouldst thou have their praise
after death, bethink thee, that they who shall come hereafter, and with whom
thou wouldst survive by thy great name, will be but as these, whom here thou
hast found so hard to live with. For of a truth, the soul of him who is
aflutter upon renown after death, presents not this aright to itself, that of
all whose memory he would have each one will likewise very quickly depart,
until memory herself be put out, as she journeys on by means of such as are
themselves on the wing but for a while, and are extinguished in their turn.
Making so much of those thou wilt never see! It is as if thou wouldst have had
those who were before thee discourse fair things concerning thee. “To him,
indeed, whose wit hath been whetted by true doctrine, that well-worn sentence
of Homer sufficeth, to guard him against regret and fear. Like the race of
leaves The race of man is: The wind in autumn strows The earth with old leaves:
then the spring the woods with new endows.+ Leaves! little leaves! thy
children, thy flatterers, thine enemies! Leaves in the wind, those who would
devote thee to darkness, who scorn or miscall thee here, even as they also
whose great fame shall outlast them. For all these, and the like of them, are
born indeed in the spring season Earos epigignetai hôrê+: and soon a wind hath
scattered them, and thereafter the wood peopleth itself again with another
generation of leaves. And what is common to all of them is but the littleness
of their lives: and yet wouldst thou love and hate, as if these things should
continue for ever. In a little while thine eyes also will be closed, and he on
whom thou perchance hast leaned thyself be himself a burden upon another.
“Bethink thee often of the swiftness with which the things that are, or are
even now coming to be, are swept past thee: that the very substance of them is
but the perpetual motion of water: that there is almost nothing which
continueth: of that bottomless depth of time, so close at thy side. Folly! to
be lifted up, or sorrowful, or anxious, by reason of things like these! Think
of infinite matter, and thy portion how tiny a particle, of it! of infinite
time, and thine own brief point there; of destiny, and the jot thou art in it;
and yield thyself readily to the wheel of Clotho, to spin of thee what web she
will. “As one casting a ball from his hand, the nature of things hath had its
aim with every man, not as to the ending only, but the first beginning of his
course, and passage thither. And hath the ball any profit of its rising, or
loss as it descendeth again, or in its fall? or the bubble, as it groweth or
breaketh on the air? or the flame of the lamp, from the beginning to the end of
its brief story? “All but at this present that future is, in which nature, who
disposeth all things in order, will transform whatsoever thou now seest,
fashioning from its substance somewhat else, and therefrom somewhat else in its
turn, lest the world grow old. We are such stuff as dreams are made of
disturbing dreams. Awake, then! and see thy dream as it is, in comparison with
that erewhile it seemed to thee. “And for me, especially, it were well to mind
those many mutations of empire in time past; therein peeping also upon the
future, which must needs be of like species with what hath been, continuing
ever within the rhythm and number of things which really are; so that in forty
years one may note of man and of his ways little less than in a thousand. Ah!
from this higher place, look we down upon the ship-wrecks and the calm!
Consider, for example, how the world went, under the emperor Vespasian. They
are married and given in marriage, they breed children; love hath its way with
them; they heap up riches for others or for themselves; they are murmuring at
things as then they are; they are seeking for great place; crafty, flattering,
suspicious, waiting upon the death of others: festivals, business, war,
sickness, dissolution: and now their whole life isno longer anywhere at all.
Pass on to the reign of TRAIANO (si veda): all things continue the same: and
that life also is no longer anywhere at all. Ah! but look again, and consider,
one after another, as it were the sepulchral inscriptions of all peoples and
times, according to one pattern. What multitudes, after their utmost striving a
little afterwards! were dissolved again into their dust. “Think again of life
as it was far off in the ancient world; as it must be when we shall be gone; as
it is now among the wild heathen. How many have never heard your names and
mine, or will soon forget them! How soon may those who shout my name to-day
begin to revile it, because glory, and the memory of men, and all things
beside, are but vanity a sand-heap under the senseless wind, the barking of
dogs, the quarrelling of children, weeping incontinently upon their laughter.
This hasteth to be; that other to have been: of that which now cometh to be,
even now somewhat hath been extinguished. And wilt thou make thy treasure of
any one of these things? It were as if one set his love upon the swallow, as it
passeth out of sight through the air! Bethink thee often, in all contentions
public and private, of those whom men have remembered by reason of their anger
and vehement spirit those famous rages, and the occasions of them the great
fortunes, and misfortunes, of men’s strife of old. What are they all now, and
the dust of their battles? Dust and ashes indeed; a fable, a mythus, or not so
much as that. Yes! keep those before thine eyes who took this or that, the like
of which happeneth to thee, so hardly; were so querulous, so agitated. And
where again are they? Wouldst thou have it not otherwise with thee? Consider
how quickly all things vanish away their bodily structure into the general
substance; the very memory of them into that great gulf and abysm of past
thoughts. Ah! ’tis on a tiny space of earth thou art creeping through life a
pigmy soul carrying a dead body to its grave. “Let death put thee upon the
consideration both of thy body and thy soul: what an atom of all matter hath
been distributed to thee; what a little particle of the universal mind. Turn
thy body about, and consider what thing it is, and that which old age, and
lust, and the languor of disease can make of it. Or come to its substantial and
causal qualities, its very type: contemplate that in itself, apart from the
accidents of matter, and then measure also the span of time for which the nature
of things, at the longest, will maintain that special type. Nay! in the very
principles and first constituents of things corruption hath its part so much
dust, humour, stench, and scraps of bone! Consider that thy marbles are but the
earth’s callosities, thy gold and silver its faeces; this silken robe but a
worm’s bedding, and thy purple an unclean fish. Ah! and thy life’s breath is
not otherwise, as it passeth out of matters like these, into the like of them
again. “For the one soul in things, taking matter like wax in the hands, moulds
and remoulds how hastily! beast, and plant, and the babe, in turn: and that
which dieth hath not slipped out of the order of nature, but, remaining
therein, hath also its changes there, disparting into those elements of which
nature herself, and thou too, art compacted. She changes without murmuring. The
oaken chest falls to pieces with no more complaining than when the carpenter
fitted it together. If one told thee certainly that on the morrow thou shouldst
die, or at the furthest on the day after, it would be no great matter to thee
to die on the day after to-morrow, rather than to-morrow. Strive to think it a
thing no greater that thou wilt die not to-morrow, but a year, or two years, or
ten years f rom to-day. “I find that all things are now as they were in the
days of our buried ancestors all things sordid in their elements, trite by long
usage, and yet ephemeral. How ridiculous, then, how like a countryman in town,
is he, who wonders at aught. Doth the sameness, the repetition of the public
shows, weary thee? Even so doth that likeness of events in the spectacle of the
world. And so must it be with thee to the end. For the wheel of the world hath
ever the same motion, upward and downward, from generation to generation. When,
when, shall time give place to eternity? “If there be things which trouble thee
thou canst put them away, inasmuch as they have their being but in thine own
notion concerning them. Consider what death is, and how, if one does but detach
from it the appearances, the notions, that hang about it, resting the eye upon
it as in itself it really is, it must be thought of but as an effect of nature,
and that man but a child whom an effect of nature shall affright. Nay! not
function and effect of nature, only; but a thing profitable also to herself.
“To cease from action the ending of thine effort to think and do: there is no
evil in that. Turn thy thought to the ages of man’s life, boyhood, youth,
maturity, old age: the change in every one of these also is a dying, but evil
nowhere. Thou climbedst into the ship, thou hast made thy voyage and touched
the shore. Go forth now! Be it into some other life: the divine breath is
everywhere, even there. Be it into forgetfulness for ever; at least thou wilt
rest from the beating of sensible images upon thee, from the passions which
pluck thee this way and that like an unfeeling toy, from those long marches of
the intellect, from thy toilsome ministry to the flesh. “Art thou yet more than
dust and ashes and bare bone a name only, or not so much as that, which, also,
is but whispering and a resonance, kept alive from mouth to mouth of dying
abjects who have hardly known themselves; how much less thee, dead so long ago!
“When thou lookest upon a wise man, a lawyer, a captain of war, think upon
another gone. When thou seest thine own face in the glass, call up there before
thee one of thine ancestors one of those old Caesars. Lo! everywhere, thy
double before thee! Thereon, let the thought occur to thee: And where are they?
anywhere at all, for ever? And thou, thyself how long? Art thou blind to that
thou art thy matter, how temporal; and thy function, the nature of thy
business? Yet tarry, at least, till thou hast assimilated even these things to
thine own proper essence, as a quick fire turneth into heat and light
whatsoever be cast upon it. “As words once in use are antiquated to us, so is
it with the names that were once on all men’s lips: CAMILLO (siveda), Volesus,
Leonnatus: then, in a little while, Scipio and Cato, and then Augustus, and
then Hadrian, and then Antoninus Pius. How many great physicians who lifted
wise brows at other men’s sick-beds, have sickened and died! Those wise
Chaldeans, who foretold, as a great matter, another man’s last hour, have
themselves been taken by surprise. Ay! and all those others, in their pleasant
places: those who doated on a Capreae like Tiberius, on their gardens, on the
baths: Pythagoras and Socrates, who reasoned so closely upon immortality:
Alexander, who used the lives of others as though his own should last for ever
he and his mule-driver alike now! one upon another. Well-nigh the whole court
of Antoninus is extinct. Panthea and Pergamus sit no longer beside the
sepulchre of their lord. The watchers over Hadrian’s dust have slipped from his
sepulchre. It were jesting to stay longer. Did they sit there still, would the
dead feel it? or feeling it, be glad? or glad, hold those watchers for ever?
The time must come when they too shall be aged men and aged women, and decease,
and fail from their places; and what shift were there then for imperial
service? This too is but the breath of the tomb, and a skinful of dead men’s
blood. “Think again of those inscriptions, which belong not to one soul only,
but to whole families: Eschatos tou idiou genous:+ He was the last of his race.
Nay! of the burial of whole cities: Helice, Pompeii: of others, whose very
burial place is unknown. “Thou hast been a citizen in this wide city. Count not
for how long, nor repine; since that which sends thee hence is no unrighteous
judge, no tyrant, but Nature, who brought thee hither; as when a player leaves
the stage at the bidding of the conductor who hired him. Sayest thou, ‘I have
not played five acts’? True! but in human life, three acts only make sometimes
an entire play. That is the composer’s business, not thine. Withdraw thyself
with a good will; for that too hath, perchance, a good will which dismisseth
thee from thy part.” The discourse ended almost in darkness, the evening having
set in somewhat suddenly, with a heavy fall of snow. The torches, made ready to
do him a useless honour, were of real service now, as the emperor was solemnly
conducted home; one man rapidly catching light from another a long stream of
moving lights across the white Forum, up the great stairs, to the palace. And,
in effect, that night winter began, the hardest that had been known for a
lifetime. The wolves came from the mountains; and, led by the carrion scent,
devoured the dead bodies which had been hastily buried during the plague, and,
emboldened by their meal, crept, before the short day was well past, over the
walls of the farmyards of the Campagna. The eagles were seen driving the flocks
of smaller birds across the dusky sky. Only, in the city itself the winter was
all the brighter for the contrast, among those who could pay for light and
warmth. The habit-makers made a great sale of the spoil of all such furry
creatures as had escaped wolves and eagles, for presents at the Saturnalia; and
at no time had the winter roses from Carthage seemed more lustrously yellow and
red. NOTES 188. +Spenser, Shepheardes Calendar, October, 61-66. 200.
+Transliteration: Hôsper epigraphas chronôn kai holôn ethnôn. Pater’s
Translation: “the sepulchral titles of ages and whole peoples.” 202. +OMERO,
Iliad VI.146-48. 202. +Transliteration: Earos epigignetai hôrê. Translation:
“born in springtime.” Homer, Iliad VI.147. 210. +Transliteration: Eschatos tou
idiou genous. Translation: “He was the last of his race.” After that sharp,
brief winter, the sun was already at work, softening leaf and bud, as you might
feel by a faint sweetness in the air; but he did his work behind an evenly
white sky, against which the abode of the Caesars, its cypresses and bronze
roofs, seemed like a picture in beautiful but melancholy colour, as Marius
climbed the long flights of steps to be introduced to the emperor Aurelius.
Attired in the newest mode, his legs wound in dainty fasciae of white leather,
with the heavy gold ring of the ingenuus, and in his toga of ceremony, he still
retained all his country freshness of complexion. The eyes of the “golden
youth” of Rome were upon him as the chosen friend of Cornelius, and the
destined servant of the emperor; but not jealously. In spite of, perhaps partly
because of, his habitual reserve of manner, he had become “the fashion,” even
among those who felt instinctively the irony which lay beneath that remarkable
self-possession, as of one taking all things with a difference from other
people, perceptible in voice, in expression, and even in his dress. It was, in
truth, the air of one who, entering vividly into life, and relishing to the
full the delicacies of its intercourse, yet feels all the while, from the point
of view of an ideal philosophy, that he is but conceding reality to suppositions,
choosing of his own will to walk in a day-dream, of the illusiveness of which
he at least is aware. In the house of the chief chamberlain Marius waited for
the due moment of admission to the emperor’s presence. He was admiring the
peculiar decoration of the walls, coloured like rich old red leather. In the
midst of one of them was depicted, under a trellis of fruit you might have
gathered, the figure of a woman knocking at a door with wonderful reality of
perspective. Then the summons came; and in a few minutes, the etiquette of the
imperial household being still a simple matter, he had passed the curtains
which divided the central hall of the palace into three parts three degrees of
approach to the sacred person and was speaking to Aurelius himself; not in
Greek, in which the emperor oftenest conversed with the learned, but, more
familiarly, in Latin, adorned however, or disfigured, by many a Greek phrase,
as now and again French phrases have made the adornment of fashionable English.
It was with real kindliness that ANTONINO (si veda) looks upon MARIO, as a
youth of great attainments in Greek letters and philosophy; and he liked also
his serious expression, being, as we know, a believer in the doctrine of
physiognomy that, as he puts it, not love only, but every other affection of
man’s soul, looks out very plainly from the window of the eyes. The apartment
in which MARIO finds himself was of ancient aspect, and richly decorated with
the favourite toys of two or three generations of imperial collectors, now
finally revised by the high connoisseurship of the Stoic emperor himself,
though destined not much longer to remain together there. It is the repeated
boast of ANTONINO (si veda) that he had learned from old Antoninus Pius to
maintain authority without the constant use of guards, in a robe woven by the
handmaids of his own consort, with no processional lights or images, and “that
a prince may shrink himself almost into the figure of a private gentleman.” And
yet, again as at his first sight of him, Marius was struck by the profound
religiousness of the surroundings of the imperial presence. The effect might
have been due in part to the very simplicity, the discreet and scrupulous
simplicity, of the central figure in this splendid abode; but Marius could not
forget that he saw before him not only the head of the Roman religion, but one
who might actually have claimed something like divine worship, had he cared to
do so. Though the fantastic pretensions of CALIGOLA (si veda) had brought some
contempt on that claim, which had become almost a jest under the ungainly
CLAUDIO (si veda), yet, from OTTAVIANO (si veda) downwards, a vague divinity
had seemed to surround the Caesars even in this life; and the peculiar
character of ANTONINO (si veda), at once a ceremonious polytheist never
forgetful of his pontifical calling, and a philosopher whose mystic speculation
encircled him with a sort of saintly halo, had restored to his person, without
his intending it, something of that divine prerogative, or prestige. Though he
would never allow the immediate dedication of altars to himself, yet the image
of his Genius his spirituality or celestial counterpart was placed among those
of the deified princes of the past; and his family, including Faustina and
COMMODO (si veda), was spoken of as the “holy” or “divine” house. Many a Roman
courtier agreed with the barbarian chief, who, after contemplating a
predecessor of Aurelius, withdrew from his presence with t he exclamation: “I
have seen a god to-day!” The very roof of his house, rising into a pediment or
gable, like that of the sanctuary of a god, the laurels on either side its
doorway, the chaplet of oak-leaves above, seemed to designate the place for
religious veneration. And notwithstanding all this, the household of ANTONINO
(si veda) is singularly modest, with none of the wasteful expense of palaces
after the fashion of Lewis the Fourteenth; the palatial dignity being felt only
in a peculiar sense of order, the absence of all that was casual, of vulgarity
and discomfort. A merely official residence of his predecessors, the Palatine
had become the favourite dwelling-place of ANTONINO (si veda); its
many-coloured memories suiting, perhaps, his pensive character, and the crude
splendours of NERONE (si veda) and ADRIANO (si veda) being now subdued by time.
The window-less Roman abode must have had much of what toa modern would be
gloom. How did the children, one wonders, endure houses with so little escape
for the eye into the world outside? Aurelius, who had altered little else,
choosing to live there, in a genuine homeliness, had shifted and made the most
of the level lights, and broken out a quite medieval window here and there, and
the clear daylight, fully appreciated by his youthful visitor, made pleasant
shadows among the objects of the imperial collection. Some of these, indeed, by
reason of their Greek simplicity and grace, themselves shone out like spaces of
a purer, early light, amid the splendours of the Roman manufacture. Though he
looked, thought Marius, like a man who did not sleep enough, he was abounding
and bright to-day, after one of those pitiless headaches, which since boyhood
had been the “thorn in his side,” challenging the pretensions of his philosophy
to fortify one in humble endurances. At the first moment, to Marius,
remembering the spectacle of the emperor in ceremony, it was almost bewildering
to be in private conversation with him. There was much in the philosophy of
Aurelius much consideration of mankind at large, of great bodies, aggregates and
generalities, after the Stoic manner which, on a nature less rich than his,
might have acted as an inducement to care for people in inverse proportion to
their nearness to him. That has sometimes been the result of the Stoic
cosmopolitanism. Aurelius, however, determined to beautify by all means, great
or little, a doctrine which had in it some potential sourness, had brought all
the quickness of his intelligence, and long years of observation, to bear on
the conditions of social intercourse. He had early determined “not to make
business an excuse to decline the offices of humanity not to pretend to be too
much occupied with important affairs to concede what life with others may
hourly demand;” and with such success, that, in an age which made much of the
finer points of that intercourse, it was felt that the mere honesty of his
conversation was more pleasing than other men’s flattery. His agreeableness to
his young visitor to-day was, in truth, a blossom of the same wisdom which had
made of Lucius Verus really a brother the wisdom of not being exigent with men,
any more than with fruit-trees (it is his own favourite figure) beyond their
nature. And there was another person, still nearer to him, regarding whom this
wisdom became a marvel, of equity of charity. The centre of a group of princely
children, in the same apartment with Aurelius, amid all the refined intimacies
of a modern home, sat the empress Faustina, warming her hands over a fire. With
her long fingers lighted up red by the glowing coals of the brazier Marius
looked close upon the most beautiful woman in the world, who was also the great
paradox of the age, among her boys and girls. As has been truly said of the
numerous representations of her in art, so in life, she had the air of one
curious, restless, to enter into conversation with the first comer. She had
certainly the power of stimulating a very ambiguous sort of curiosity about
herself. And Marius found this enigmatic point in her expression, that even
after seeing her many times he could never precisely recall her features in
absence. The lad of six years, looking older, who stood beside her, impatiently
plucking a rose to pieces over the hearth, was, in outward appearance, his
father the young Verissimus over again; but with a certain feminine length of
feature, and with all his mother’s alertness, or license, of gaze. Yet rumour
knocked at every door and window of the imperial house regarding the adulterers
who knocked at them, or quietly left their lovers’ garlands there. Was not that
likeness of the husband, in the boy beside her, really the effect of a shameful
magic, in which the blood of the murdered gladiator, his true father, had been
an ingredient? Were the tricks for deceiving husbands which the Roman poet
describes, really hers, and her household an efficient school of all the arts
of furtive love? Or, was the husband too aware, like every one beside? Were
certain sudden deaths which happened there, really the work of apoplexy, or the
plague? The man whose ears, whose soul, those rumours were meant to penetrate,
was, however, faithful to his sanguine and optimist philosophy, to his
determination that the world should be to him simply what the higher reason
preferred to conceive it; and the life’s journey Aurelius had made so far,
though involving much moral and intellectual loneliness, had been ever in
affectionate and helpful contact with other wayfarers, very unlike himself.
Since his days of earliest childhood in the Lateran gardens, he seemed to
himself, blessing the gods for it after deliberate survey, to have been always
surrounded by kinsmen, friends, servants, of exceptional virtue. From the great
Stoic idea, that we are all fellow-citizens of one city, he had derived a
tenderer, a more equitable estimate than was common among Stoics, of the
eternal shortcomings of men and women. Considerations that might tend to the
sweetening of his temper it was his daily care to store away, with a kind of
philosophic pride in the thought that no one took more good-naturedly than he
the “oversights” of his neighbours. For had not Plato taught (it was not
paradox, but simple truth of experience) that if people sin, it is because they
know no better, and are “under the necessity of their own ignorance”? Hard to
himself, he seemed at times, doubtless, to decline too softly upon unworthy
persons. Actually, he came thereby upon many a useful instrument. The empress
Faustina he would seem at least to have kept, by a constraining affection, from
becoming altogether what most people have believed her, and won in her (we must
take him at his word in the “Thoughts,” abundantly confirmed by letters, on
both sides, in his correspondence with Cornelius Fronto) a consolation, the
more secure, perhaps, because misknown of others. Was the secret of her actual
blamelessness, after all, with him who has at least screened her name? At all
events, the one thing quite certain about her, besides her extraordinary
beauty, is her sweetness to himself. No! The wise, who had made due observation
on the trees of the garden, would not expect to gather grapes of thorns or
fig-trees: and he was the vine, putting forth his genial fruit, by natural law,
again and again, after his kind, whatever use people might make of it.
Certainly, his actual presence never lost its power, and Faustina was glad in
it to-day, the birthday of one of her children, a boy who stood at her knee
holding in his fingers tenderly a tiny silver trumpet, one of his birthday
gifts. “For my part, unless I conceive my hurt to be such, I have no hurt at all,”
boasts the would-be apathetic emperor: “and how I care to conceive of the thing
rests with me.” Yet when his children fall sick or die, this pretence breaks
down, and he is broken-hearted: and one of the charms of certain of his letters
still extant, is his reference to those childish sicknesses. “On my return to
Lorium,” he writes, “I found my little lady domnulam meam in a fever;” and
again, in a letter to one of the most serious of men, “You will be glad to hear
that our little one is better, and running about the room parvolam nostram
melius valere et intra cubiculum discurrere.” The young Commodus had departed
from the chamber, anxious to witness the exercises of certain gladiators,
having a native taste for such company, inherited, according to popular rumour,
from his true father anxious also to escape from the too impressive company of
the gravest and sweetest specimen of old age Marius had ever seen, the tutor of
the imperial children, who had arrived to offer his birthday congratulations,
and now, very familiarly and affectionately, made a part of the group, falling
on the shoulders of the emperor, kissing the empress Faustina on the face, the
little ones on the face and hands. Marcus Cornelius Fronto, the “Orator,”
favourite teacher of the emperor’s youth, afterwards his most trusted
counsellor, and now the undisputed occupant of the sophistic throne, whose
equipage, elegantly mounted with silver, Marius had seen in the streets of
Rome, had certainly turned his many personal gifts to account with a good
fortune, remarkable even in that age, so indulgent to professors or
rhetoricians. The gratitude of the emperor Aurelius, always generous to his
teachers, arranging their very quarrels sometimes, for they were not always
fair to one another, had helped him to a really great place in the world. But
his sumptuous appendages, including the villa and gardens of Maecenas, had been
borne with an air perfectly becoming, by the professor of a philosophy which,
even in its most accomplished and elegant phase, presupposed a gentle contempt
for such things. With an intimate practical knowledge of manners,
physiognomies, smiles, disguises, flatteries, and courtly tricks of every kind
a whole accomplished rhetoric of daily life he applied them all to the
promotion of humanity, and especially of men’s family affection. Through a long
life of now eighty years, he had been, as it were, surrounded by the gracious
and soothing air of his own eloquence the fame, the echoes, of it like warbling
birds, or murmuring bees. Setting forth in that fine medium the best ideas of
matured pagan philosophy, he had become the favourite “director” of noble
youth. Yes! it was the one instance Marius, always eagerly on the look-out for
such, had yet seen of a perfectly tolerable, perfectly beautiful, old age an
old age in which there seemed, to one who perhaps habitually over-valued the
expression of youth, nothing to be regretted, nothing really lost, in what
years had taken away. The wise old man, whose blue eyes and fair skin were so
delicate, uncontaminate and clear, would seem to have replaced carefully and
consciously each natural trait of youth, as it departed from him, by an
equivalent grace of culture; and had the blitheness, the placid cheerfulness,
as he had also the infirmity, the claim on stronger people, of a delightful
child. And yet he seemed to be but awaiting his exit from life that moment with
which the Stoics were almost as much preoccupied as the Christians, however
differently and set Marius pondering on the contrast between a placidity like
this, at eighty years, and the sort of desperateness he was aware of in his own
manner of entertaining that thought. His infirmities nevertheless had been
painful and long-continued, with losses of children, of pet grandchildren. What
with the crowd, and the wretched streets, it was a sign of affection which had
cost him something, for the old man to leave his own house at all that day; and
he was glad of the emperor’s support, as he moved from place to place among the
children he protests so often to have loved as his own. For a strange piece of
literary good fortune, at the beginning of the present century, has set freethe
long-buried fragrance of this famous friendship of the old world, from below a
valueless later manuscript, in a series of letters, wherein the two writers
exchange, for the most part their evening thoughts, especially at family
anniversaries, and with entire intimacy, on their children, on the art of
speech, on all the various subtleties of the “science of images” rhetorical
images above all, of course, on sleep and matters of health. They are full of
mutual admiration of each other’s eloquence, restless in absence till they see
one another again, noting, characteristically, their very dreams of each other,
expecting the day which will terminate the office, the business or duty, which
separates them “as superstitious people watch for the star, at the rising of
which they may break their fast.” To one of the writers, to Aurelius, the
correspondence was sincerely of value. We see him once reading his letters with
genuine delight on going to rest. Fronto seeks to deter his pupil from writing
in Greek. Why buy, at great cost, a foreign wine, inferior to that from one’s
own vineyard? Aurelius, on the other hand, with an extraordinary innate
susceptibility to words la parole pour la parole, as the French say despairs,
in presence of Fronto’s rhetorical perfection. Like the modern visitor to the
Capitoline and some other museums, Fronto had been struck, pleasantly struck, by
the family likeness among the Antonines; and it was part of his friendship to
make much of it, in the case of the children of Faustina. “Well! I have seen
the little ones,” he writes to Aurelius, then, apparently, absent from them: “I
have seen the little ones the pleasantest sight of my life; for they are as
like yourself as could possibly be. It has well repaid me for my journey over
that slippery road, and up those steep rocks; for I beheld you, not simply face
to face before me, but, more generously, whichever way I turned, to my right
and my left. For the rest, I found them, Heaven be thanked! with healthy cheeks
and lusty voices. One was holding a slice of white bread, like a king’s son;
the other a crust of brown bread, as becomes the offspring of a philosopher. I
pray the gods to have both the sower and the seed in their keeping; to watch
over this field wherein the ears of corn are so kindly alike. Ah! I heard too
their pretty voices, so sweet that in the childish prattle of one and the other
I seemed somehow to be listening yes! in that chirping of your pretty chickens
to the limpid+ and harmonious notes of your own oratory. Take care! you will
find me growing independent, having those I could love in your place: love, on
the surety of my eyes and ears.” +“Limpid” is misprinted “Limped.” “Magistro
meo salutem!” replies the Emperor, “I too have seen my little ones in your
sight of them; as, also, I saw yourself in reading your letter. It is that
charming letter forces me to write thus:” with reiterations of affection, that
is, which are continual in these letters, on both sides, and which may strike a
modern reader perhaps as fulsome; or, again, as having something in common with
the old Judaic unction of friendship. They were certainly sincere. To one of
those children Fronto had now brought the birthday gift of the silver trumpet,
upon which he ventured to blow softly now and again, turning away with eyes
delighted at the sound, when he thought the old man was not listening. It was
the well-worn, valetudinarian subject of sleep, on which Fronto and Aurelius
were talking together; Aurelius always feeling it a burden, Fronto a thing of
magic capacities, so that he had written an encomium in its praise, and often
by ingenious arguments recommends his imperial pupil not to be sparing of it.
To-day, with his younger listeners in mind, he had a story to tell about it:
They say that our father GIOVE, when he ordered the world at the beginning,
divided time into two parts exactly equal: the one part he clothed with light,
the other with darkness: he called them Day and Night; and he assigned rest to
the night and to day the work of life. At that time Sleep was not yet born and
men passed the whole of their lives awake: only, the quiet of the night was
ordained for them, instead of sleep. But it came to pass, little by little,
being that the minds of men are restless, that they carried on their business
alike by night as by day, and gave no part at all to repose. And Jupiter, when
he perceived that even in the night-time they ceased not from trouble and
disputation, and that even the courts of law remained open (it was the pride of
Aurelius, as Fronto knew, to be assiduous in those courts till far into the
night) resolved to appoint one of his brothers to be the overseer of the night
and have authority over man’s rest. But Neptune pleaded in excuse the gravity
of his constant charge of the seas, and Father Dis the difficulty of keeping in
subjection the spirits below; and Jupiter, having taken counsel with the other
gods, perceived that the practice of nightly vigils was somewhat in favour. It
was then, for the most part, that Juno gave birth to her children: Minerva, the
mistress of all art and craft, loved the midnight lamp: Mars delighted in the
darkness for his plots and sallies; and the favour of Venus and Bacchus was
with those who roused by night. Then it was that Jupiter formed the design of
creating Sleep; and he added him to the number of the gods, and gave him the
charge over night and rest, putting into his hands the keys of human eyes. With
his own hands he mingled the juices wherewith Sleep should soothe the hearts of
mortals herb of Enjoyment and herb of Safety, gathered from a grove in Heaven;
and, from the meadows of Acheron, the herb of Death; expressing from it one
single drop only, no bigger than a tear one might hide. ‘With this juice,’ he
said, ‘pour slumber upon the eyelids of mortals. So soon as it hath touched
them they will lay themselves down motionless, under thy power. But be not
afraid: they shall revive, and in a while stand up again upon their feet.’
Thereafter, Jupiter gave wings to Sleep, attached, not, like Mercury’s, to his
heels, but to his shoulders, like the wings of Love. For he said, ‘It becomes
thee not to approach men’s eyes as with the noise of chariots, and the rushing
of a swift courser, but in placid and merciful flight, as upon the wings of a
swallow nay! with not so much as the flutter of the dove.’ Besides all this,
that he might be yet pleasanter to men, he committed to him also a multitude of
blissful dreams, according to every man’s desire. One watched his favourite
actor; another listened to the flute, or guided a charioteer in the race: in
his dream, the soldier was victorious, the general was borne in triumph, the
wanderer returned home. Yes! and sometimes those dreams come true! Just then
Aurelius was summoned to make the birthday offerings to his household gods. A
heavy curtain of tapestry was drawn back; and beyond it MARIO gazed for a few
moments into the Lararium, or imperial chapel. A patrician youth, in white
habit, was in waiting, with a little chest in his hand containing incense for
the use of the altar. On richly carved consoles, or side boards, around this
narrow chamber, were arranged the rich apparatus of worship and the golden or
gilded images, adorned to-day with fresh flowers, among them that image of
Fortune from the apartment of Antoninus Pius, and such of the emperor’s own
teachers as were gone to their rest. A dim fresco on the wall commemorated the
ancient piety of Lucius Albinius, who in flight from Rome on the morrow of a
great disaster, overtaking certain priests on foot with their sacred utensils,
descended from the wagon in which he rode and yielded it to the ministers of
the gods. As he ascended into the chapel the emperor paused, and with a grave
but friendly look at his young visitor, delivered a parting sentence, audible
to him alone: _Imitation is the most acceptable part of worship: the gods had
much rather mankind should resemble than flatter them. Make sure that those to
whom you come nearest be the happier by your presence!_ It was the very spirit
of the scene and the hour the hour Marius had spent in the imperial house. How
temperate, how tranquillising! what humanity! Yet, as he left the eminent
company concerning whose ways of life at home he had been so youthfully
curious, and sought, after his manner, to determine the main trait in all this,
he had to confess that it was a sentiment of mediocrity, though of a mediocrity
for once really golden. During the Eastern war there came a moment when schism
in the empire had seemed possible through the defection of LUCIO VERO (si
veda); when to ANTONINO (si veda) it had also seemed possible to confirm his
allegiance by no less a gift than his beautiful daughter Lucilla, the eldest of
his children the domnula, probably, of those letters. The little lady, grown
now to strong and stately maidenhood, had been ever something of the good
genius, the better soul, to LUCIO VERO (si veda), by the law of contraries, her
somewhat cold and apathetic modesty acting as counterfoil to the young man’s
tigrish fervour. Conducted to Ephesus, she had become his wife by form of civil
marriage, the more solemn wedding rites being deferred till their return to
Rome. The ceremony of the Confarreation, or religious marriage, in which bride
and bridegroom partook together of a certain mystic bread, was celebrated
accordingly, with due pomp, early in the spring; Aurelius himself assisting,
with much domestic feeling. A crowd of fashionable people filled the space
before the entrance to the apartments of Lucius on the Palatine hill, richly
decorated for the occasion, commenting, not always quite delicately, on the
various details of the rite, which only a favoured few succeeded in actually
witnessing. “She comes!” MARIO can hear them say, “escorted by her young
brothers: it is the young Commodus who carries the torch of white-thornwood,
the little basket of work-things, the toys for the children:” and then, after a
watchful pause, “she is winding the woollen thread round the doorposts. Ah! I
see the marriage-cake: the bridegroom presents the fire and water.” Then, in a
longer pause, was heard the chorus, Thalassie! Thalassie! and for just a few
moments, in the strange light of many wax tapers at noonday, Marius could see
them both, side by side, while the bride was lifted over the doorstep: LUCIO
VERO (si veda) heated and handsome the pale, impassive Lucilla looking very
long and slender, in her closely folded yellow veil, and high nuptial crown. As
Marius turned away, glad to escape from the pressure of the crowd, he found
himself face to face with Cornelius, an infrequent spectator on occasions such
as this. It was a relief to depart with him so fresh and quiet he looked,
though in all his splendid equestrian array in honour of the ceremony from the
garish heat of the marriage scene. The reserve which had puzzled Marius so much
on his first day in Rome, was but an instance of many, to him wholly
unaccountable, avoidances alike of things and persons, which must certainly
mean that an intimate companionship would cost him something in the way of
seemingly indifferent amusements. Some inward standard Marius seemed to detect
there (though wholly unable to estimate its nature) of distinction, selection,
refusal, amid the various elements of the fervid and corrupt life across which
they were moving together: some secret, constraining motive, ever on the alert
at eye and ear, which carried him through Rome as under a charm, so that Marius
could not but think of that figure of the white bird in the market-place as
undoubtedly made true of him. And Marius was still full of admiration for this
companion, who had known how to make himself very pleasant to him. Here was the
clear, cold corrective, which the fever of his present life demanded. Without
it, he would have felt alternately suffocated and exhausted by an existence, at
once so gaudy and overdone, and yet so intolerably empty; in which people, even
at their best, seemed only to be brooding, like the wise emperor himself, over
a world’s disillusion. For with all the severity of Cornelius, there was such a
breeze of hopefulness freshness and hopefulness, as of new morning, about him.
For the most part, as I said, those refusals, that reserve of his, seemed
unaccountable. But there were cases where the unknown monitor acted in a
direction with which the judgment, or instinct, of Marius himself wholly
concurred; the effective decision of Cornelius strengthening him further
therein, as by a kind of outwardly embodied conscience. And the entire drift of
his education determined him, on one point at least, to be wholly of the same
mind with this peculiar friend (they two, it might be, together, against the
world!) when, alone of a whole company of brilliant youth, he had withdrawn
from his appointed place in the amphitheatre, at a grand public show, which
after an interval of many months, was presented there, in honour of the
nuptials of Lucius Verus and Lucilla. And it was still to the eye, through
visible movement and aspect, that the character, or genius of Cornelius made
itself felt by Marius; even as on that afternoon when he had girt on his
armour, among the expressive lights and shades of the dim old villa at the
roadside, and every object of his knightly array had seemed to be but sign or
symbol of some other thing far beyond it. For, consistently with his really
poetic temper, all influence reached Marius, even more exclusively than he was
aware, through th e medium of sense. From Flavian in that brief early summer of
his existence, he had derived a powerful impression of the “perpetual flux”: he
had caught there, as in cipher or symbol, or low whispers more effective than
any definite language, his own Cyrenaic philosophy, presented thus, for the
first time, in an image or person, with much attractiveness, touched also,
consequently, with a pathetic sense of personal sorrow: a concrete image, the
abstract equivalent of which he could recognise afterwards, when the agitating
personal influence had settled down for him, clearly enough, into a theory of
practice. But of what possible intellectual formula could this mystic Cornelius
be the sensible exponent; seeming, as he did, to live ever in close
relationship with, and recognition of, a mental view, a source of discernment,
a light upon his way, which had certainly not yet sprung up for Marius?
Meantime, the discretion of Cornelius, his energetic clearness and purity, were
a charm, rather physical than moral: his exquisite correctness of spirit, at
all events, accorded so perfectly with the regular beauty of his person, as to
seem to depend upon it. And wholly different as was this later friendship, with
its exigency, its warnings, its restraints, from the feverish attachment to
Flavian, which had made him at times like an uneasy slave, still, like that, it
was a reconciliation to the world of sense, the visible world. From the
hopefulness o f this gracious presence, all visible things around him, even the
commonest objects of everyday life if they but stood together to warm their
hands at the same fire took for him a new poetry, a delicate fresh bloom, and
interest. It was as if his bodily eyes had been indeed mystically washed,
renewed, strengthened. And how eagerly, with what a light heart, would Flavian
have taken his placein the amphitheatre, among the youth of his own age! with
what an appetite for every detail of the entertainment, and its various
accessories: the sunshine, filtered into soft gold by the vela, with their
serpentine patterning, spread over the more select part of the company; the
Vestal virgins, taking their privilege of seats near the empress Faustina, who
sat there in a maze of double-coloured gems, changing, as she moved, like the
waves of the sea; the cool circle of shadow, in which the wonderful toilets of
the fashionable told so effectively around the blazing arena, covered again and
again during the many hours’ show, with clean sand for the absorption of
certain great red patches there, by troops of white-shirted boys, for whom the
good-natured audience provided a scramble of nuts and small coin, flung to them
over a trellis-work of silver-gilt and amber, precious gift of Nero, while a
rain of flowers and perfume fell over themselves, as they paused between the
parts of their long feast upon the spectacle of animal suffering. During his
sojourn at Ephesus, Lucius Verus had readily become a patron, patron or
protégé, of the great goddess of Ephesus, the goddess of hunters; and the show,
celebrated by way of a compliment to him to-day, was to present some incidents
of her story, where she figures almost as the genius of madness, in animals, or
in the humanity which comes in contact with them. The entertainment would have
an element of old Greek revival in it, welcome to the taste of a learned and
Hellenising society; and, as Lucius Verus was in some sense a lover of animals,
was to be a display of animals mainly. There would be real wild and domestic
creatures, all of rare species; and a real slaughter. On so happy an occasion, it
was hoped, the elder emperor might even concede a point, and a living criminal
fall into the jaws of the wild beasts. And the spectacle was, certainly, to end
in the destruction, by one mighty shower of arrows, of a hundred lions, “nobly”
provided by ANTONINO (si veda) himself for the amusement of his people. Tam
magnanimus fuit! The arena, decked and in order for the first scene, looked
delightfully fresh, re-inforcing on the spirits of the audience the actual
freshness of the morning, which at this season still brought the dew. Along the
subterranean ways that led up to it, the sound of an advancing chorus was heard
at last, chanting the words of a sacred song, or hymn to Diana; for the
spectacle of the amphitheatre was, after all, a religious occasion. To its grim
acts of blood-shedding a kind of sacrificial character still belonged in the
view of certain religious casuists, tending conveniently to soothe the humane
sensibilities of so pious an emperor as Aurelius, who, in his fraternal
complacency, had consented to preside over the shows. Artemis or Diana, as she
may be understood in the actual development of her worship, was, indeed, the
symbolical expression of two allied yet contrasted elements of human temper and
experience man’s amity, and also his enmity, towards the wild creatures, when
they were still, in a certain sense, his brothers. She is the complete, and
therefore highly complex, representative of a state, in which man was still
much occupied with animals, not as his flock, or as his servants after the
pastoral relationship of our later, orderly world, but rather as his equals, on
friendly terms or the reverse, a state full of primeval sympathies and
antipathies, of rivalries and common wants while he watched, and could enter
into, the humours of those “younger brothers,” with an intimacy, the
“survivals” of which in a later age seem often to have had a kind of madness
about them. Diana represents alike the bright and the dark side of such
relationship. But the humanities of that relationship were all forgotten to-day
in the excitement of a show, in which mere cruelty to animals, their useless
suffering and death, formed the main point of interest. People watched their
destruction, batch after batch, in a not particularly inventive fashion; though
it was expected that the animals themselves, as living creatures are apt to do
when hard put to it, would become inventive, and make up, by the fantastic
accidents of their agony, for the deficiencies of an age fallen behind in this
matter of manly amusement. It was as a Deity of Slaughter the Taurian goddess
who demands the sacrifice of the shipwrecked sailors thrown on her coasts the
cruel, moonstruck huntress, who brings not only sudden death, but rabies, among
the wild creatures that Diana was to be presented, in the person of a famous
courtesan. The aim at an actual theatrical illusion, after the first
introductory scene, was frankly surrendered to the display of the animals,
artificially stimulated and maddened to attack each other. And as Diana was
also a special protectress of new-born creatures, there would be a certain
curious interest in the dexterously contrived escape of the young from their
mother’s torn bosoms; as many pregnant animals as possible being carefully
selected for the purpose. The time had been, and was to come again, when the
pleasures of the amphitheatre centered in a similar practical joking upon human
beings. What more ingenious diversion had stage manager ever contrived than
that incident, itself a practical epigram never to be forgottten, when a
criminal, who, like slaves and animals, had no rights, was compelled to present
the part of Icarus; and, the wings failing him in due course, had fallen into a
pack of hungry bears? For the long shows of the amphitheatre were, so to speak,
the novel-reading of that age a current help provided for sluggish
imaginations, in regard, for instance, to grisly accidents, such as might
happen to one’s self; but with every facility for comfortable inspection.
Scaevola might watch his own hand, consuming, crackling, in the fire, in the
person of a culprit, willing to redeem his life by an act so delightful to the
eyes, the very ears, of a curious public. If the part of MARSIA was called for,
there was a criminal condemned to lose his skin. It might be almost edifying to
study minutely the expression of his face, while the assistants corded and
pegged him to the bench, cunningly; the servant of the law waiting by, who,
after one short cut with his knife, would slip the man’s leg from his skin, as
neatly as if it were a stocking a finesse in providing the due amount of
suffering for wrong-doers only brought to its height in Nero’s living bonfires.
But then, by making his suffering ridiculous, you enlist against the sufferer,
some real, and all would-be manliness, and do much to stifle any false
sentiment of compassion. The philosophic emperor, having no great taste for
sport, and asserting here a personal scruple, had greatly changed all that; had
provided that nets should be spread under the dancers on the tight-rope, and
buttons for the swords of the gladiators. But the gladiators were still there.
Their bloody contests had, under the form of a popular amusement, the efficacy
of a human sacrifice; as, indeed, the whole system of the public shows was
understood to possess a religious import. Just at this point, certainly, the
judgment of Lucretius on pagan religion is without reproach Tantum religio
potuit suadere malorum. And MARIO, weary and indignant, feeling isolated in the
great slaughter-house, could not but observe that, in his habitual complaisance
to Lucius Verus, who, with loud shouts of applause from time to time, lounged
beside him, Aurelius had sat impassibly through all the hours Marius himself
had remained there. For the most part indeed, the emperor had actually averted
his eyes from the show, reading, or writing on matters of public business, but
had seemed, after all, indifferent. He was revolving, perhaps, that old Stoic
paradox of the Imperceptibility of pain; which might serve as an excuse, should
those savage popular humours ever again turn against men and women. MARIO
remembers well his very attitude and expression on this day, when, a few years
later, certain things came to pass in Gaul, under his full authority; and that
attitude and expression defined already, even thus early in their so friendly
intercourse, and though he was still full of gratitude for his interest, a
permanent point of difference between the emperor and himself between himself,
with all the convictions of his life taking centre to-day in his merciful,
angry heart, and Aurelius, as representing all the light, all the apprehensive
power there might be in pagan intellect. There was something in a tolerance
such as this, in the bare fact that he could sit patiently through a scene like
this, which seemed to Marius to mark Aurelius as his inferior now and for ever
on the question of righteousness; to set them on opposite sides, in some great
conflict, of which that difference was but a single presentment. Due, in whatever
proportions, to the abstract principles he had formulated for himself, or in
spite of them, there was the loyal conscience within him, deciding, judging
himself and every one else, with a wonderful sort of authority: You ought,
methinks, to be something quite different from what you are; here! and here!
Surely Aurelius must be lacking in that decisive conscience at first sight, of
the intimations of which Marius could entertain no doubt which he looked for in
others. He at least, the humble follower of the bodily eye, was aware of a
crisis in life, in this brief, obscure existence, a fierce opposition of real
good and real evil around him, the issues of which he must by no means
compromise or confuse; of the antagonisms of which the “wise” Marcus Aurelius
was unaware. That long chapter of the cruelty of the Roman public shows may,
perhaps, leave with the children of the modern world a feeling of
self-complacency. Yet it might seem well to ask ourselves it is always well to
do so, when we read of the slave-trade, for instance, or of great religious
persecutions on this side or on that, or of anything else which raises in us
the question, “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?” not merely,
what germs of feeling we may entertain which, under fitting circumstances,
would induce us to the like; but, even more practically, what thoughts, what
sort of considerations, may be actually present to our minds such as might have
furnished us, living in another age, and in the midst of those legal crimes,
with plausible excuses for them: each age in turn, perhaps, having its own
peculiar point of blindness, with its consequent peculiar sin the touch-stone
of an unfailing conscience in the select few. Those cruel amusements were,
certainly, the sin of blindness, of deadness and stupidity, in the age of
Marius; and his light had not failed him regarding it. Yes! what was needed was
the heart that would make it impossible to witness all this; and the future
would be with the forces that could beget a heart like that. His chosen
philosophy had said, Trust the eye: Strive to be right always in regard to the
concrete experience: Beware of falsifying your impressions. And its sanction
had at least been effective here, in protesting “This, and this, is what you may
not look upon!” Surely evil was a real thing, and the wise man wanting in the
sense of it, where, not to have been, by instinctive election, on the right
side, was to have failed in life. The very finest flower of the same company
Aurelius with the gilded fasces borne before him, a crowd of exquisites, the
empress Faustina herself, and all the elegant blue -stockings of the day, who
maintained, people said, their private " sophists " to whisper
philosophy into their ears winsomely as they performed the duties of the toilet
was assembled again a few months later, in a different place and for a very
different purpose. The temple of Peace, a " modernising" foundation
of Hadrian, enlarged by a library and lecture-rooms, had grown into an institution
like something between a college and a literary club ; and here Cornelius
Pronto was to pronounce a discourse on the Nature of Morals. There were some,
indeed, who had desired the emperor Aurelius himself to declare his whole mind
on this matter. Rhetoric was become almost a function of the state : philosophy
was upon the throne ; and had from time to time, by request, delivered an
official utterance with wellnigh divine authority. And it was as the delegate
of this authority, under the full sanction of the philosophic emperor emperor
and pontiff, that the aged Pronto purposed to-day to expound some parts of the
Stoic doctrine, with the view of recommending morals to that refined but
perhaps prejudiced company, as being, in effect, one mode of comeliness in
things as it were music, or a kind of artistic order, in life. And he did this
earnestly, with an outlay of all his science of mind, and that eloquence of
which he was known to be a master. For Stoicism was no longer a rude a nd
unkempt thing. Received at court, it had largely decorated itself: it was grown
persuasive and insinuating, and sought not only to convince men's intelligence
but to allure their souls. Associated with the beautiful old age of the great
rhetorician, and his winning voice, it was almost Epicurean. And the old man
was at his best on the occasion ; the last on which he ever appeared in this
way. To-day was his own birthday. Early in the morning the imperial letter of
congratulation had reached him ; and all the pleasant animation it had caused was
in his face, when assisted by his daughter Gratia he took his place on the
ivory chair, as president of the Athenaeum of Rome, wearing with a wonderful
grace the philosophic pall, in reality neither more nor less than the loose
woollen cloak of the common soldier, but fastened on his right shoulder with a
magnificent clasp, the emperor's birthday gift. It was an age, as abundant
evidence shows, whose delight in rhetoric was but one result of a general
susceptibility an age not merely taking pleasure in words, but experiencing a
great moral power in them. Fronto's quaintly fashionable audience would have
wept, and also assisted with their purses, had his present purpose been, as
sometimes happened, the recommendation of an object of charity. As it was, arranging
themselves at their ease among the images and flowers, these amateurs of
exquisite language, with their tablets open for careful record of felicitous
word or phrase, were ready to give themselves wholly to the intellectual treat
prepared for them, applauding, blowing loud kisses through the air sometimes,
at the speaker's triumphant exit from one of his long, skilfully modulated
sentences ; while the younger of them meant to imitate everything about him,
down to the inflections of his voice and the very folds of his mantle.
Certainly there was rhetoric enough : a wealth of imagery ; illustrations from
painting, music, mythology, the experiences of love ; a management, by which
subtle, unexpected meaning was brought out of familiar terms, like flies from morsels
of amber, to use Fronto's own figure. But with all its richness, the higher
claim of his style was rightly understood to lie in gravity and self-command,
and an especial care for the purities of a vocabulary which rejected every
expression unsanctioned by the authority of approved ancient models. And it
happened with Marius, as it will sometimes happen, that this general discourse
to a general audience had the effect of an utterance adroitly designed for him.
His conscience still vibrating painfully under the shock of that scene in the
amphitheatre, and full of the ethical charm of CORNELIO, he was questioning
himself with much impatience as to the possibility of an adjustment between his
own elaborately thought/ out intellectual scheme and the " old
morality." In that intellectual scheme indeed the old morality had so far
been allowed no place, as seeming to demand from him the admission of certain
first principles such as might misdirect or retard him in his efforts towards a
complete, many-sided existence ; or distort the revelations of the experience
of life ; or curtail his natural liberty of heart and mind. But now (his
imagination being occupied for the moment with the noble and resolute air, the
gallantry, so to call it, which composed the outward mien and presentment of
his strange friend's inflexible ethics) he felt already some nascent suspicion
of his philosophic programme, in regard, precisely, to the question of good
taste. There was the taint of a graceless " antinomianism "
perceptible in it, a dissidence, a revolt against accustomed modes, the actual
impression of which on other men might rebound upon himself in some loss of
that personal pride to which it was part of his theory of life to allow so
much. And it was exactly a moral situation such as this that Pronto appeared to
be contemplating. He seemed to have before his mind the case of one Cyrenaic or
Epicurean, as the courtier tends to be, by habit and instinct, if not on
principle who yet experiences, actually, a strong tendency to moral assents,
and a desire, with as little logical inconsistency as may be, to find a place
for duty and righteousness in his house of thought. And the Stoic professor
found the key to this problem in the purely aesthetic beauty of the old
morality, as an element in things, fascinating to the imagination, to good
taste in its most highly developed form, through association a system or order,
as a matter of fact, in possession, not only of the larger world, but of the
rare minority of elite intelligences ; from which, therefore, least of all
would the sort of Epicurean he had in view endure to become, so to speak, an
outlaw. He supposed his hearer to be, with all sincerity, in search after some
principle of conduct (and it was here that he seemed to Marius to be speaking
straight to him) which might give unity of motive to an actual rectitude, a
cleanness and probity of life, determined partly by natural affection, partly
by enlightened self-interest or the feeling of honour, due in part even to the
mere fear of penalties ; no element of which, however, was distinctively moral
in the agent himself as such, and providing him, therefore, no common ground
with a really moral being like Cornelius, or even like the philosophic emperor.
Performing the same offices ; actually satisfying, even as they, the external
claims of others ; rendering to all their dues one thus circumstanced would be
wanting, nevertheless, in the secret of inward adjustment to the moral agents
around him. How tenderly more tenderly than many stricter souls he might yield
himself to kindly instinct ! what fineness of charity in passing judgment on
others ! what an exquisite conscience of other men's susceptibilities ! He
knows for how much the manner, because the heart itself, counts, in doing a
kindness. He goes beyond most people in his care for all weakly creatures ;
judging, instinctively, that to be but sentient is to possess rights. He
conceives a hundred duties, though he may not call them by that name, of the
existence of which purely duteous souls may have no suspicion. He has a kind of
pride in doing more than they, in a way of his own. Sometimes, he may think
that those men of line and rule do not really understand their own business.
How narrow, inflexible, unintelligent ! what poor guardians (he may reason) of
the inward spirit of righteousness, are some supposed careful walkers according
to its letter and form. And yet all the while he admits, as such, no moral
world at all : no theoretic equivalent to so large a proportion of the facts of
life. But, over and above such practical rectitude, thus determined by natural
affection or self-love or fear, he may notice that there is a remnant of right
conduct, what he does, still more what he abstains from doing, not so much
through his own free election, as from a deference, an " assent,"
entire, habitual, unconscious, to custom to the actual habit or fashion of
others, from whom he could not endure to break away, any more than he would
care to be out of agreement with them on questions of mere manner, or, say,
even, of dress. Yes ! there were the evils, the vices, which he avoided as,
essentially, a failure in good taste. An assent, such as this, to the
preferences of others, might seem to be the weakest of motives, and the
rectitude it could determine the least considerable element in a moral life.
Yet here, according to CORNELIO PRONTONE, is in truth the revealing example,
albeit operating upon comparative trifles, of the general principle required.
There was one great idea associated with which that determination to conform to
precedent was elevated into the clearest, the fullest, the weightiest principle
of moral action ; a principle under which one might subsume men's most
strenuous efforts after righteousness. And he proceeded to expound the idea of
Humanity of a universal commonwealth of mind, which becomes explicit, and as if
incarnate, in a select communion of just men made perfect. 'O Koo-fjios axravel
7ro\t9 <rrw the world is as it were a commonwealth, a city : and there are
observances, customs, usages, actually current in it, things our friends and
companions will expect of us, as the condition of our living there with them at
all, as really their peers or fellow-citizens. Those observances were, indeed,
the creation of a visible or invisible aristocracy in it, whose actual manners,
whose preferences from of old, become now a weighty tradition as to the way in
which things should or should not be done, are like a music, to which the
intercourse of life proceeds such a music as no one who had once caught its
harmonies would willingly jar. In this way, the becoming, as in Greek TO
irpiirov : or T^ rj#?7, mores, manners, as both Greeks and Romans said, would
indeed be a comprehensive term for duty. Righteousness would be, in the words of
GIULIO (si veda) CESARE himself, of the philosophic Aurelius, but a "
following of the reasonable will of the oldest, the most venerable, of cities,
of polities of the royal, the law-giving element, therein forasmuch as we are
citizens also in that supreme city on high, of which all other cities beside
are but as single habitations." But as the old man spoke with animation of
this supreme city, this invisible society, whose conscience was become explicit
in its inner circle of inspired souls, of whose common spirit, the trusted
leaders of human conscience had been but the mouthpiece, of whose successive
personal preferences in the conduct of life, the " old morality " was
the sum, Marius felt that his own thoughts were passing beyond the actual
intention of the speaker ; not in the direction of any clearer theoretic or
abstract definition of that ideal commonwealth, but rather as if in search of
its visible locality and abiding-place, the walls and towers of which, so to
speak, he might really trace and tell, according to his own old, natural habit
of mind. ^ It would be the fabric, the outward fabric, of a system reaching,
certainly, far beyond the great city around him, even if conceived in all the
machinery of its visible and invisible influences at their grandest as Augustus
or Trajan might have conceived of them however well the visible Rome might pass
for a figure of that new, unseen, Rome on high. At moments, Marius even asked
himself with surprise, whether it might be some vast secret society the speaker
had in view : that august community, to be an outlaw from which, to be foreign
to the manners of which, was a loss so much greater than to be excluded, into
the ends of the earth, from the sovereign Roman commonwealth. Humanity, a
universal order, the great polity, its aristocracy of elect spirits, the
mastery of their example over their successors these were the ideas,
stimulating enough in their way, by association with which the Stoic professor
had attempted to elevate, to unite under a single principle, men's moral
efforts, himself lifted up with so genuine an enthusiasm. But where might
Marius search for all this, as more than an intellectual abstraction ? Where
were those elect souls in whom the claim of Humanity became so amiable,
winning, persuasive whose footsteps through the world were so beautiful in the
actual order he saw whose faces averted from him, would be more than he could
bear ? Where was that comely order, to which as a great fact of experience he
must give its due ; to which, as to all other beautiful " phenomena "
in life, he must, for his own peace, adjust himself ? Rome did well to be
serious. The discourse ended somewhat abruptly, as the noise of a great crowd
in motion was heard below the walls ; whereupon, the audience, following the
humour of the younger element in it, poured into the colonnade, from the steps
of which the famous procession, or transvectio y of the military knights was to
be seen passing over the Forum, from their trysting-place at the temple of
Mars, to the temple of the Dioscuri. The ceremony took place this year, not on
the day accustomedanniversary of the victory of Lake Regillus, with its pair of
celestial assistants and amid the heat and roses of a Roman July, but, by
anticipation, some months earlier, the almondtrees along the way being still in
leafless flower. Through that light trellis-work, Marius watched the riders,
arrayed in all their gleaming ornaments, and wearing wreaths of olive around
their helmets, the faces below which, what with battle and the plague, were
almost all youthful. It was a flowery scene enough, but had to-day its fulness
of war-like meaning ; the return of the army to the North, where the enemy was
again upon the move, being now imminent. Cornelius had ridden along in his
place, and, on the dismissal of the company, passed below the steps where
Marius stood, with | that new song he had heard once before floating from his
lips. And MARIO, for his part, was grave enough. The discourse of Cornelius
Pronto, with its wide prospect over the human, the spiritual, horizon, had set
him on a review on a review of the isolating narrowness, in particular, of his
own theoretic scheme. Long after the very latest roses were faded, when "
the town " had departed to country villas, or the baths, or the war, he
remained behind in Rome ; anxious to try the lastingness of his own Epicurean
rosegarden ; setting to work over again, and deliberately passing from point to
point of his old argument with himself, down to its practical conclusions. That
age and our own have much in common many difficulties and hopes. Let the reader
pardon me if here and there I seem to be passing from Marius to his modern
representatives from Rome, to Paris or London. What really were its claims as a
theory of practice, of the sympathies that determine practice ? It had been a
theory, avowedly, of loss and gain (so to call it) of an economy. If,
therefore, it missed something in the commerce of life, which some other theory
of practice was able to include, if it made a needless sacrifice, then it must
be, in a manner, inconsistent with itself, and lack theoretic completeness. Did
it make such a sacrifice ? What did it lose, or cause one to lose ? And we may
note, as Marius could hardly have done, that Cyrenaicism is ever the characteristic
philosophy of youth, ardent, but narrow in its survey sincere, but apt to
become onesided, or even fanatical. It is one of those subjective and partial
ideals, based on vivid, because limited, apprehension of the truth of one
aspect of experience (in this case, of the beauty of the world and the brevity
of man's life there) which it may be said to be the special vocation of the
young to express. In the school of Cyrene, in that comparatively fresh Greek
world, we see this philosophy where it is least blase^ as we say, in its most
pleasant, its blithest and yet perhaps its wisest form, youthfully bright in
the youth of European thought. But it grows young again for a while in almost
every youthful soul. It is spoken of sometimes as the appropriate utterance of
jaded men ; but in them it can hardly be sincere, or, by the nature of the
case, an enthusiasm. " Walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight
of thine eyes," is, indeed, most often, according to the supposition of
the book from which I quote it, the counsel of the young, who feel that the
sunshine is pleasant along their veins, and wintry weather, though in a general
sense foreseen, a long way off. The youthful enthusiasm or fanaticism, the
self-abandonment to one favourite mode of thought or taste, which occurs, quite
naturally, at the outset of every really vigorous intellectual career, finds
its special opportunity in a theory such as that so carefully put together by
Marius, just because it seems to call on one to make the sacrifice, accompanied
by a vivid sensation of power and will, of what others value sacrifice of some
conviction, or doctrine, or supposed first principle for the sake of that
clear-eyed intellectual consistency, which is like spotless bodily cleanliness,
or scrupulous personal honour, and has itself for the mind of the youthful
student, when he first comes to appreciate it, the fascination of an ideal. The
Cyrenaic doctrine, then, realised as a motive of strenuousness or enthusiasm,
is not so properly the utterance of the u jaded L’ORTO," as of the strong
young man in all the freshness of thought and feeling, fascinated by the notion
of raising his life to the level of a daring theory, while, in the first genial
heat of existence, the beauty of the physical world strikes potently upon his
wide-open, unwearied senses. He discovers a great new poem every spring, with a
hundred delightful things he too has felt, but which have never been expressed,
or at least never so truly, before. The workshops of the artists, who can select
and set before us what is really most distinguished in visible life, are open
to him. He thinks that the old Platonic, or the new Baconian philosophy, has
been better explained than by the authors themselves, or with some striking
original development, this very month. In the quiet heat of early summer, on
the dusty gold morning, the music comes, louder at intervals, above the hum of
voices from some neighbouring church, among the flowering trees, valued now,
perhaps, only for the poetically rapt faces among priests or worshippers, or
the mere skill and eloquence, it may be, of its preachers of faith and
righteousness. In his scrupulous idealism, indeed, he too feels himself to be
something of a priest, and that devotion of his days to the contemplation of
what is beautiful, a sort of perpetual religious service. Afar off, how many
fair cities and delicate sea-coasts await him ! At that age, with minds of a
certain constitution, no very choice or exceptional circumstances are needed to
provoke an enthusiasm something like this. Life in modern London even, in the
heavy glow of summer, is stuff sufficient for the fresh imagination of a youth
to build its " palace of art" of; and the very sense and enjoyment of
an experience in which all is new, are but enhanced, like that glow of summer
itself, by the thought of its brevity, giving him something of a gambler's
zest, in the apprehension, by dexterous act or diligently appreciative thought,
of the highly coloured moments which are to pass away so quickly. At bottom,
perhaps, in his elaborately developed self-consciousness, his sensibilities,
his almost fierce grasp upon the things he values at all, he has, beyond all
others, an inward need of something permanent in its character, to hold by : of
which circumstance, also, he may be partly aware, and that, as with the
brilliant CLAUDIO in Measure for Measure -, it is, in truth, but darkness he
is, " encountering, like a bride." But the inevitable falling of the
curtain is probably distant ; and in the daylight, at least, it is not often
that he really shudders at the thought of the grave the weight above, the
narrow world and its company, within. When the thought of it does occur to him,
he may say to himself: Well ! and the rude monk, for instance, who has renounced
all this, on the security of some dim world beyond it, really acquiesces in
that " fifth act," amid all the consoling ministries around him, as
little as I should at this moment ; though I may hope, that, as at the real
ending of a play, however well acted, I may already have had quite enough of
it, and find a true well-being in eternal sleep. And precisely in this
circumstance, that, consistently with the function of youth in general,
Cyrenaicism will always be more or less the special philosophy, or prophecy, of
the young, when the ideal of a rich experience comes to them in the ripeness of
the receptive, if not of the reflective, powers precisely in this circumstance,
if we rightly consider it, lies the duly prescribed corrective of that
FILOSOFIA. For it is by its exclusiveness, and by negation rather than
positively, that such theories fail to satisfy us permanently ; and what they
really need for their correction, is the complementary influence of some
greater system, in which they may find their due place. That Sturm und Drang of
the spirit, as it has been called, that ardent and special apprehension of
half-truths, in the enthusiastic, and as it were " prophetic "
advocacy of which, devotion to truth, in the case of the young apprehending but
one point at a time in the great circumference most usually embodies itself, is
levelled down, safely enough, afterwards, as in history so in the individual,
by the weakness and mere weariness, as well as by the maturer wisdom, of our
nature. And though truth indeed, resides, as has been said, " in the whole
" in harmonisings and adjustments like this yet those special
apprehensions may still owe their full value, in this sense of " the
whole," to that earlier, one-sided but ardent pre-occupation with them.
Cynicism and Cyrenaicism : they are the earlier Greek forms of Roman Stoicism
and Epicureanism, and in that world of old Greek thought, we may notice with
some surprise that, in a little while, the nobler form of Cyrenaicism
-Cyrenaicism cured of its faults met the nobler form of Cynicism half-way.
Starting from opposed points, they merged, each in its most refined form, in a
single ideal of temperance or moderation. Something of the same kind may be
noticed regarding some later phases of Cyrenaic theory. If it starts with
considerations opposed to the religious temper, which the religious temper
holds it a duty to repress, it is like it, nevertheless, and very unlike any
lower development of temper, in its stress and earnestness, its serious
application to the pursuit of a very unworldly type of perfection. The saint,
and the Cyrenaic lover of beauty, it may be thought, would at least understand
each other | better than either would understand the mere 1 man of the world.
Carry their respective positions a point further, shift the terms a little, and
they might actually touch. Perhaps all theories of practice tend, as they rise
to their best, as understood by their worthiest representatives, to
identification with each other. For the variety of men's possible reflections
on their experience, as of that experience itself, is not really so great as it
seems ; and as the highest and most disinterested ethical formula, filtering
down into men's everyday existence, reach the same poor level of vulgar
egotism, so, we may fairly suppose that all the highest spirits, from whatever
contrasted points they have started, would yet be found to entertain, in the
moral consciousness realised by themselves, much the same kind of mental
company ; to hold, far more than might be thought probable, at first sight, the
same personal types of character, and even the same artistic and literary
types, in esteem or aversion ; to convey, all of them alike, the same savour of
unworldliness. And Cyrenaicism or Epicureanism too, new or old, may be noticed,
in proportion to the completeness of its development, to approach, as to the
nobler form of Cynicism, so also to the more nobly developed phases of the old,
or traditional morality. In the gravity of its conception of life, in its
pursuit after nothing less than a perfection, in its apprehension of the value
of time the passion and the seriousness which are like a consecration la
passion et le serieux qui consacrent it may be conceived, as regards its main
drift, to be not so much opposed to the old morality, as an exaggeration of one
special motive in it. Some cramping, narrowing, costly preference of one part
of his own nature, and of the nature of things, to another, Marius seemed to
have detected in himself, meantime, in himself, as also in those old masters of
the Cyrenaic philosophy. If they did realise the povoxpovo? fiSovij, as it was
called the pleasure of the " Ideal Now " if certain moments of their
lives were highpitched, passionately coloured, intent with sensation, and a
kind of knowledge which, in its vivid clearness, was like sensation if, now and
then, they apprehended the world in its fulness, and had a vision, almost
" beatific," of ideal personalities in life and art, yet these
moments were a very costly matter: they paid a great price for them, in the
sacrifice of a thousand possible sympathies, of things only to be enjoyed
through sympathy, from which they detached themselves, in intellectual pride,
in loyalty to a mere theory that would take nothing for granted, and assent to
no approximate or hypothetical truths. In their unfriendly, repellent attitude
towards the Greek religion, and the old Greek morality, surely, they had been
but faulty economists. The Greek religion is then alive : then, still more than
in its later day of dissolution, the higher view of it was possible, even for
the philosopher. Its story made little or no demand for a reasoned or formal
acceptance. A religion, which had grown through and through man's life, with so
much natural strength ; had meant so much for so many generations ; which
expressed so much of their hopes, in forms so familiar and so winning ; linked
by associations so manifold to man as he had been and was a religion like this,
one would think, might have had its uses, even for a philosophic sceptic. Yet
those beautiful gods, with the whole round of their poetic worship, the school
of Cyrene definitely renounced. The old Greek morality, again, with all its
imperfections, was certainly a comely thing. Yes ! a harmony, a music, in men's
ways, one might well hesitate to jar. The merely aesthetic sense might have had
a legitimate satisfaction in the spectacle of that fair order of choice
manners, in those attractive conventions, enveloping, so gracefully, the whole
of life, insuring some sweetness, some security at least against offence, in
the intercourse of the world. Beyond an obvious utility, it could claim, indeed
but custom use -and -wont, as we say for its sanction. But then, one of the
advantages of that liberty of spirit among the Cyrenaics (in which, through
theory, they had become dead to theory, so that all theory, as such, was really
indifferent to them, and indeed nothing valuable but in its tangible
ministration to life) was precisely this, that it gave them free play in using
as their ministers or servants, things which, to the uninitiated, must be
masters or nothing. Yet, how little the followers of Aristippus made of that
whole comely system of manners or morals, then actually in possession of life,
is shown by the bold practical consequence, which one of them maintained (with
a hard, self-opinionated adherence to his peculiar theory of values) in the not
very amiable paradox that friendship and patriotism were things one could do
without ; while another Deaths-advocate^ as he was called helped so many to
self-destruction, by his pessimistic eloquence on the evils of life, that his
lecture-room was closed. That this was in the range of their consequences that
this was a possible, if remote, deduction from the premisses of the discreet
Aristippus was surely an inconsistency in a thinker who professed above all
things an economy of the moments of life. And yet those old Cyrenaics felt
their way, as if in the dark, we may be sure, like other men in the ordinary
transactions of life, beyond the narrow limits they drew of clear and
absolutely legitimate knowledge, admitting what was not of immediate sensation,
and drawing upon that " fantastic " future which might never come. A
little more of such "walking by faith/' a little more of such not
unreasonable " assent," and they might have profited by a hundred
services to their culture, from Greek religion and Greek morality, as they
actually were. The spectacle of their fierce, exclusive, tenacious hold on
their own narrow apprehension, makes one think of a picture with no relief, no
soft shadows nor breadth of space, or of a drama without proportionate repose.
Yet it was of perfection that Marius (to return to him again from his masters,
his intellectual heirs) had been really thinking all the time: a narrow
perfection it might be objected, the perfection of but one part of his nature
his capacities of feeling, of exquisite physical impressions, of an imaginative
sympathy but still, a true perfection of those capacities, wrought out to their
utmost degree, admirable enough in its way. He too is an economist : he hopes,
by that " insight " of which the old Cyrenaics made so much, by
skilful apprehension of the conditions of spiritual success as they really are,
the special circumstances of the occasion with which he has to deal, the
special felicities of his own nature, to make the most, in no mean or vulgar
sense, of the few years of life ; few, indeed, for the attainment of anything
like general perfection ! With the brevity of that sum of years his mind is
exceptionally impressed ; and this purpose makes him no frivolous dilettante^
but graver than other men : his scheme is not that of a trifler, but rather of
one who gives a meaning of his own, yet a very real one, to those old words Let
us work while it is day ! He has a strong apprehension, also, of the beauty of
the visible things around him ; their fading, momentary, graces and
attractions. His natural susceptibility in this direction, enlarged by
experience, seems to demand of him an almost exclusive pre- occupation with the
aspects of things ; with their aesthetic character, as it is called their
revelations to the eye and the imagination : not so much because those aspects
of them yield him the largest amount of enjoyment, as because to be occupied,
in this way, with the aesthetic or imaginative side of things, is to be in real
contact with those elements of his own nature, and of theirs, which, for him at
least, are matter of the most real kind of apprehension. As other men are
concentrated upon truths of number, for instance, or on business, or it may be
on the pleasures of appetite, so he is wholly bent on living in that full
stream of refined sensation. And in the prosecution of this love of beauty, he
claims an entire personal liberty, liberty of heart and mind, liberty, above
all, from what may seem conventional answers to first questions. But, without
him there is a venerable system of sentiment and idea, widely extended in time
and place, in a kind of impregnable possession of human life a system, which,
like some other great products of the conjoint efforts of human mind through
many generations, is rich in the world's experience ; so that, in attaching
oneself to it, one lets in a great tide of that experience, and makes, as it were
with a single step, a great experience of one's own, and with great consequent
increase to one's sense of colour, variety, and relief, in the spectacle of men
and things. The mere sense that one belongs to a system an imperial system or
organisation has, in itself, the expanding power of a great experience ; as
some have felt who have been admitted from narrower sects into the communion of
the catholic church ; or as the old Roman citizen felt. It is, we might fancy,
what the coming into possession of a very widely spoken language might be, with
a great literature, which is also the speech of the people we have to live
among. A wonderful order, actually in possession of / human life ! grown
inextricably through and { 7 f through it ; penetrating into its laws, its very
language, its mere habits of decorum, in a thousand half-conscious ways ; yet
still felt to be, in part, an unfulfilled ideal ; and, as such, awakening hope,
and an aim, identical with the one only consistent aspiration of mankind ! In
the apprehension of that, just then, Marius seemed to have joined company once
more with his own old self; to have overtaken on the road the pilgrim who had
come to Rome, with absolute sincerity, on the search fo r perfection. It
defined not so much a change of practice, as of sympathy a new departure, an
expansion, of sympathy. It involves, certainly, some curtailment of his
liberty, in concession to the actual manner, the distinctions, the enactments
of that great crowd of admirable spirits, who have elected so, and not
otherwise, in their conduct of life, and are not here to give one, so to term
it, an " indulgence." But then, under the supposition of their
disapproval, no roses would ever seem worth plucking again. The authority they
exercised was like that of classic taste an influence so subtle, yet so real,
as defining the loyalty of the scholar ; or of some beautiful and venerable
ritual, in which every observance is become spontaneous and almost mechanical,
yet is found, the more carefully one considers it, to have a reasonable
significance and a natural history. And MARIO sees that he would be but an
inconsistent Cyrenaic, mistaken in his estimate of values, of loss and gain,
and untrue to the well-considered economy of life which he had brought with him
to Rome that some drops of the great cup would fall to the ground if he did not
make that concession, if he did but remain just there. " Many prophets and
kings have desired to see the things which ye see." The enemy on the
Danube was, indeed, but the vanguard of the mighty invading hosts of the fifth
century. Illusively repressed just now, those confused movements along the
northern boundary of the Empire were destined to unite triumphantly at last, in
the barbarism, which, powerless to destroy the Christian church, is yet to
suppress for a time the achieved culture of the pagan world. The kingdom of
Christ was to grow up in a somewhat false alienation from the light and beauty
of the kingdom of nature, of the natural man, with a partly mistaken tradition
concerning it, and an incapacity, as it might almost seem at times, for
eventual reconciliation thereto. Meantime Italy had armed itself once more, in
haste, and the imperial brothers set forth for the Alps. Whatever misgiving the
Roman people may have felt as to the leadership of the younger was unexpectedly
set at rest ; though with some temporary regret for the loss of what had been,
after all, a popular figure on the world's stage. Travelling fraternally in the
same litter with ANTONINO (si veda), LUCIO VERO (si veda) is struck with sudden
and mysterious disease, and died as he hastened back to Rome. His death awoke a
swarm of sinister rumours, to settle on Lucilla, jealous, it was said, of Fabia
her sister, perhaps of Faustina on Faustina herself, who had accompanied the
imperial progress, and was anxious now to hide a crime of her own even on the
elder brother, who, beforehand with the treasonable designs of his colleague,
should have helped him at supper to a favourite morsel, cut with a knife
poisoned ingeniously on one side only. ANTONINO (si veda), certainly, with
sincere distress, his long irritations, so dutifully concealed or repressed,
turning now into a single feeling of regret for the human creature, carried the
remains back to Rome, and demanded of IL SENATO a public funeral, with a decree
for the apotheosis^ or canonisation, of the dead. For three days the body lay
in state in IL FORO, enclosed in an open coffin of cedar-wood, on a bed of
ivory and gold, in the centre of a sort of temporary chapel, representing the
temple of his patroness Venus Genetrix. Armed soldiers kept watch around it,
while choirs of select voices relieved one another in the chanting of hymns or
monologues from the great tragedians. At the head of the couch were displayed
the various personal decorations which had belonged to Verus in life. Like all
the rest of Rome, Marius went to gaze on the face he had seen last scarcely
disguised under the hood of a travelling-dress, as the wearer hurried, at
nightfall, along one of the streets below the palace, to some amorous
appointment. Unfamiliar as he still was with dead faces, he was taken by
surprise, and touched far beyond what he had reckoned on, by the piteous change
there ; even the skill of Galen having been not wholly successful in the
process of embalming. It was as if a brother of his own were lying low before
him, with that meek and helpless expression it would have been a sacrilege to
treat rudely. Meantime, in the centre of the Campus Martins^ within the grove
of poplars which enclosed the space where the body of Augustus had been burnt,
the great funeral pyre, stuffed with shavings of various aromatic woods, was
built up in many stages, separated from each other by a light entablature of
woodwork, and adorned abundantly with carved and tapestried images. Upon this
pyramidal or flame-shaped structure lay the corpse, hidden now under a mountain
of flowers and incense brought by the women, who from the first had had their
fondness for the wanton graces of the deceased. The dead body was surmounted by
a waxen effigy of great size, arrayed in the triumphal ornaments. At last the
Centurions to whom that office belonged, drew near, torch in hand, to ignite
the pile at its four corners, while the soldiers, in wild excitement, flung
themselves around it, casting into the flames the decorations they had received
for acts of valour under the dead emperor's command. It had been a really
heroic order, spoiled a little, at the last moment, through the somewhat tawdry
artifice, by which an eagle not a very noble or youthful specimen of its kind
was caused to take flight amid the real or affected awe of the spectators,
above the perishing remains; a court chamberlain, according to ancient
etiquette, subsequently making official declaration before the Senate, that the
imperial " genius " had been seen in this way, escaping from the
fire. And Marius was present when the Fathers, duly certified of the fact, by
"acclamation," muttering their judgment all together, in a kind of
low, rhythmical chant, decreed Gcelum the privilege of divine rank to the
departed. The actual gathering of the ashes in a white cere-cloth by the
widowed Lucilla, when the last flicker had been extinguished by drops of wine ;
and the conveyance of them to the little cell, already populous, in the central
mass of the sepulchre of Hadrian, still in all the splendour of its statued
colonnades, were a matter of private or domestic duty ; after the due
accomplishment of which Aurelius was at liberty to retire for a time into the
privacy of his beloved apartments of the Palatine. And hither, not long
afterwards, Marius was summoned a second time, to receive from the imperial
hands the great pile of manuscripts it would be his business to revise and
arrange. One year had passed since his first visit to the palace ; and as he
climbed the stairs to-day, the great cypresses rocked against the sunless sky,
like living creatures in pain. He had to traverse a long subterranean gallery,
once a secret entrance to the imperial apartments, and in our own day, amid the
ruin of all around it, as smooth and fresh as if the carpets were but just
removed from its floor after the return of the emperor from the shows. It was
here, on such an occasion, that the emperor Caligula, at the age of twenty-nine,
had come by his end, the assassins gliding along it as he lingered a few
moments longer to watch the movements of a party of noble youths at their
exercise in the courtyard below. As Marius waited, a second time, in that
little red room in the house of the chief chamberlain, curious to look once
more upon its painted walls the very place whither the assassins were said to
have turned for refuge after the murder he could all but see the figure, which
in its surrounding light and darkness seemed to him the most melancholy in the
entire history of Rome. He called to mind the greatness of that popularity and
early promise the stupefying height of irresponsible power, from which, after
all, only men's viler side had been clearly visible the overthrow of reason the
seemingly irredeemable memory ; and still, above all, the beautiful head in
which the noble lines of the race of Augustus were united to, he knew not what
expression of sensibility and fineness, not theirs, and for the like of which
one must pass onward to the Antonines. Popular hatred had been careful to
destroy its semblance wherever it was to be found ; but one bust, in dark
bronze-like basalt of a wonderful perfection of finish, preserved in the museum
of IL CAMPIDOGLIO, may have seemed to some visitors there perhaps the finest
extant relic of Roman art. Had the very seal of empire upon those sombre brows,
reflected from his mirror, suggested his insane attempt upon the liberties, the
dignity of men ? " O humanity ! " he seems to ask, " what hast
thou done to me that I should so despise thee ? " And might not this be
indeed the true meaning of kingship, if the world would have one man to reign
over it ? The like of this : or, some incredible, surely never to be realised,
height of disinterestedness, in a king who should be the servant of all, quite
at the other extreme of the practical dilemma involved in such a position. Not
till some while after his death had the body been decently interred by the
piety of the sisters he had driven into exile. Fraternity of feeling had been
no invariable feature in the incidents of Roman story. One long Vicus
Sceleratus^ from its first dim foundation in fraternal quarrel on the morrow of
a common deliverance so touching had not almost every step in it some gloomy memory
of unnatural violence ? Romans did well to fancy the traitress Tarpeia still
" green in earth," crowned, enthroned, at the roots of the Capitoline
rock. If in truth the religion of Rome was everywhere in it, like that perfume
of the funeral incense still upon the air, so also was the memory of crime
prompted by a hypocritical cruelty, down to the erring, or not erring, Vesta
calmly buried alive there, only eighty years ago, under Domitian. It was with a
sense of relief that MARIO finds himself in the presence of Aurelius, whose
gesture of friendly intelligence, as he entered, raised a smile at the gloomy
train of his own thoughts just then, although since his first visit to the
palace a great change had passed over it. The clear daylight found its way now
into empty rooms. To raise funds for the war, ANTONINO (si veda), his luxurious
brother being no more, had determined to sell by auction the accumulated
treasures of the imperial household. The works of art, the dainty furniture,
had been removed, and were now " on view " in the Forum, to be the
delight or dismay, for many weeks to come, of the large public of those who
were curious in these things. In such wise had Aurelius come to the condition
of philosophic detachment he had affected as a boy, hardly persuaded to wear
warm clothing, or to sleep in more luxurious manner than on the bare floor.
But, in his empty house, the man of mind, who had always made so much of the
pleasures of philosophic contemplation, felt freer in thought than ever. He had
been reading, with less self-reproach than usual, in the Republic of Plato,
those passages which describe the life of the philosopher-kings like that of
hired servants in their own house who, possessed of the gold undefiled of
intellectual vision, forgo so cheerfully all other riches. It was one of his
happy days : one of those rare days, when, almost with none of the effort,
otherwise so constant with him, his thoughts came rich and full, and converged
in a mental view, as exhilarating to him as the prospect of some wide expanse
of landscape to another man's bodily eye. He seemed to lie readier than was his
wont to the imaginative influence of the philosophic reason to its suggestions
of a possible open country, commencing just where all actual experience leaves
off, but which experience, one's own and not another's, may one day occupy. In
fact, he was seeking strength for himself, in his own way, before he started
for that ambiguous earthly warfare which was to occupy the remainder of his
life. " Ever remember this," he writes, " that a happy life
depends, not on many things et o\iyi(TTot,<i tceiTai." And to-day,
committing himself with a steady effort of volition to the mere silence of the
great empty apartments, he might be said to have escaped, according to Plato's
promise to those who live closely with philosophy, from the evils of the world.
In his "conversations with himself" Marcus Aurelius speaks often of
that City on high^ of which all other cities are but single habitations. From
him in fact Cornelius Pronto, in his late discourse, had borrowed the
expression ; and he certainly meant by it more than the whole commonwealth of
Rome, in any idealisation of it, however sublime. Incorporate somehow with the
actual city whose goodly stones were lying beneath his gaze, it was also
implicate in that reasonable constitution of nature, by devout contemplation of
which it is possible for man to associate himself to the consciousness of God.
In that New Rome he had taken up his rest for awhile on this day, deliberately
feeding his thoughts on the better air of it, as another might have gone for
mental renewal to a favourite villa." Men seek retirement in
country-houses," he writes, " on the sea-coast, on the mountains ;
and you have yourself as much fondness for such places as another. But there is
little proof of culture therein ; since the privilege is yours of retiring into
yourself whensoever you please, into that little farm of one's own mind, where
a silence so profound may be enjoyed." That it could make these retreats,
was a plain consequence of the kingly prerogative of the mind, its dominion
over circumstance, its inherent liberty. " It is in thy power to think as
thou wilt : The essence of things is in thy thoughts about them : All is
opinion, conception : No man can be hindered by another : What is outside thy
circle of thought is nothing at all to it ; hold to this, and you are safe :
One thing is needful to live close to the divine genius within thee, and
minister thereto worthily." And the first point in this true ministry,
this culture, was to maintain one's soul in a condition of indifference and
calm. How continually had public claims, the claims of other persons, with
their rough angularities of character, broken in upon him, the shepherd of the
flock. But after all he had at least this privilege he could not part with, of
thinking as he would ; and it was well, now and then, by a conscious effort of
will, to indulge it for a while, under systematic direction. The duty of thus
making discreet, systematic use of the power of imaginative vision for purposes
of spiritual culture, " since the soul takes colour from its
fantasies," is a point he has frequently insisted on. The influence of
these seasonable meditations a symbol, or sacrament, because an intensified
condition, of the soul's own ordinary and natural life would remain upon it,
perhaps for many days. There were experiences he could not forget, intuitions
beyond price, he had come by in this way, which were almost like the breaking
of a physical light upon his mind ; as the great OTTAVIANO (si veda) was said
to have seen a mysterious physical splendour, yonder, upon the summit of the
Capitol, where the altar of the Sibyl now stood. With a prayer, therefore, for
inward quiet, for conformity to the divine reason, he read some select passages
of Plato, which bear upon the harmony of the reason, in all its forms, with
itself. "Could there be Cosmos, that wonderful, reasonable order, in him,
and nothing but disorder in the world without ? " It was from this question
he had passed on to the vision of a reasonable, a divine, order, not in nature,
but in the condition of human affairs that unseen Celestial City, Uranopolis,
Callipolis, Urbs Eeata in which, a consciousness of the divine will being
everywhere realised, there would be, among other felicitous differences from
this lower visible world, no more quite hopeless death, of men, or children, or
of their affections. He had tried to-day, as never before, to make the most of
this vision of a New Rome, to realise it as distinctly as he could, and, as it
were, find his way along its streets, ere he went down into a world so
irksomely different, to make his practical effort towards it, with a soul full
of compassion for men as they were. However distinct the mental image might
have been to him, with the descent of but one flight of steps into the
market-place below, it must have retreated again, as if at touch of some malign
magic wand, beyond the utmost verge of the horizon. But it had been actually,
in his clearest vision of it, a confused place, with but a recognisable entry,
a tower or fountain, here or there, and haunted by strange faces, whose novel
expression he, the great physiognomist, could by no means read. Plato, indeed,
had been able to articulate, to see, at least in thought, his ideal city. But
just because ANTONINO (si veda) had passed beyond L’ACCADEMIA, in the scope of
the gracious charities he pre-supposed there, he had been unable really to
track his way about it. Ah ! after all, according to Plato himself, all vision
was but reminiscence, and this, his heart's desire, no place his soul could
ever have visited in any region of the old world's achievements. He had but
divined, by a kind of generosity of spirit, the void place, which another
experience than his must fill. Yet Marius noted the wonderful expression of
peace, of quiet pleasure, on the countenance of ANTONINO (si veda0, as he
received from him the rolls of fine clear manuscript, fancying the thoughts of
the emperor occupied at the moment with the famous prospect towards the Alban
hills, from those lofty windows. The ideas of IL PORTICO, so precious to
ANTONINO (si veda), ideas of large generalisation, have sometimes induced, in
those over whose intellects they have had real power, a coldness of heart. It
was the distinction of Aurelius that he was able to harmonise them with the
kindness, one might almost say the amenities, of a humourist, as also with the
popular religion and its many gods. Those vasty conceptions of the later Greek
philosophy had in them, in truth, the germ of a sort of austerely opinionative
"natural theology," and how often has that led to religious dryness a
hard contempt of everything in religion, which touches the senses, or charms
the fancy, or really concerns the affections. Aurelius had made his own the
secret of passing, naturally, and with no violence to his thought, to and fro,
between the richly coloured and romantic religion of those old gods who had
still been human beings, and a very abstract speculation upon the impassive, I
universal soul that circle whose centre everywhere, the circumference nowhere
of which a series of purely logical necessities had evolved the formula. As in
many another instance, those traditional pieties of the place and the hour had
been derived by him from his mother : frapci rrfc Mrpbs TO Oeoo-eftes.
Purified, as all such religion of concrete time and place needs to be, by
frequent confronting with the ideal of godhead as revealed to that innate
religious sense in the possession of which ANTONINO (si veda) differed from the
people around him, it was the ground of many a sociability with their simpler
souls, and for himself, certainly, a consolation, whenever the wings of his own
soul flagged in the trying atmosphere of purely intellectual vision. A host of
companions, guides, helpers, about him from of old time, " the very court
and company of heaven," objects for him of personal reverence and
affection the supposed presence of the ancient popular gods determined the
character of much of his daily life, and might prove the last stay of human
nature at its weakest. " In every time and place," he had said,
" it rests with thyself to use the event of the hour religiously :, at all
seasons worship the gods." And when he said " Worship the gods !
" he did it, as strenuously as everything else. Yet here again, how often
must he have experienced disillusion, or even some revolt of feeling, at that
contact with coarser natures to which his religious conclusions exposed him. At
the beginning of the year one hundred and seventy -three public anxiety was as
great as ever ; and as before it brought people's superstition into unreserved
play. For seven days the images of the old gods, and some of the graver new
ones, lay solemnly exposed in the open air, arrayed in all their ornaments,
each in his separate resting-place, amid lights and burning incense, while the
crowd, following the imperial example, daily visited them, with offerings of
flowers to this or that particular divinity, according to the devotion of each.
But supplementing these older official observances, the very wildest gods had
their share of worship, strange creatures with strange secrets startled abroad
into open daylight. The delirious sort of religion of which MARIO is a
spectator in the streets of Rome, during the seven days of the Lectisternium,
reminded him now and again of an observation of Apuleius : it was " as if
the presence of the gods did not do men good, but disordered or weakened
them." Some jaded women of fashion, especially, found in certain oriental
devotions, at once relief for their religiously tearful souls and an
opportunity for personal display ; preferring this or that "mystery,"
chiefly because the attire required in it was suitable to their peculiar manner
of beauty. And one morning Marius encountered an extraordinary crimson object,
borne in a litter through an excited crowd -the famous courtesan Benedicta,
still fresh from the bath of blood, to which she had submitted herself, sitting
below the scaffold where the victims provided for that purpose were slaughtered
by the priests. Even on the last day of the solemnity, when the emperor himself
performed one of the oldest ceremonies of the Roman religion, this fantastic
piety had asserted itself. There were victims enough certainly, brought from
the choice pastures of the Sabine mountains, and conducted around the city they
were to die for, in almost continuous procession, covered with flowers and
well-nigh worried to death before the time by the crowds of people superstitiously
pressing to touch them. But certain old-fashioned Romans, in these exceptional
circumstances, demanded something more than this, in the way of a human
sacrifice after the ancient pattern ; as when, not so long since, some Greeks
or Gauls had been buried alive in the Forum. At least, human blood should be
shed ; and it was through a wild multitude of fanatics, cutting their flesh
with knives and whips and licking up ardently the crimson stream, that the
emperor repaired to the temple of Bellona, and in solemn symbolic act cast the
bloodstained spear, or " dart," carefully preserved there, towards
the enemy's country towards that unknown world of German homes, still warm, as
some believed under the faint northern twilight, with those innocent affections
of which Romans had lost the sense. And this at least was clear, amid all
doubts of abstract right or wrong on either side, that the ruin of those homes
was involved in what Aurelius was then preparing for, with, Yes ! the gods be
thanked for that achievement of an invigorating philosophy ! almost with a
light heart. For, in truth, that departure, really so difficult to him, for
which Marcus Aurelius had needed to brace himself so strenuously, came to test
the power of a long-studied theory of practice ; and it was the development of
this theory a theoria literally a view, an intuition, of the most important
facts, and still more important possibilities, concerning man in the world,
that Marius now discovered, almost as if by accident, below the dry surface of
the manuscripts entrusted to him. The great purple rolls contained, first of
all, statistics, a general historical account of the writer's own time, and an
exact diary ; all alike, though in three different degrees of nearness to the
writer's own personal experience, laborious, formal, selfsuppressing. This was
for the instruction of the public ; and part of it has, perhaps, found its way
into the Augustan Histories. But it was for the especial guidance of his son
COMMODO (si veda) that he had permitted himself to break out, here and there,
into reflections upon what was passing, into conversations with the reader. And
then, as though he were put off his guard in this way, there had escaped into
the heavy matter-of-fact, of which the main portion was composed, morsels of
his conversation with himself. It was the romance of a soul (to be traced only
in hints, wayside notes, quotations from older masters), as it were in
lifelong, and often baffled search after some vanished or elusive golden
fleece, or Hesperidean fruit-trees, or some mysterious light of doctrine, ever
retreating before him. A man, he had seemed to Marius from the first, of two
lives, as we say. Of what nature, he had sometimes wondered, on the day, for
instance, when he had interrupted the emperor's musings in the empty palace,
might be that placid inward guest or inhabitant, who from amid the
pre-occupations of the man of practical affairs looked out, as if surprised, at
the things and faces around. Here, then, under the tame surface of what was
meant for a life of business, Marius discovered, welcoming a brother, the
spontaneous self-revelation of a soul as delicate as his own, a soul for which
conversation with itself was a necessity of existence. MARIO, indeed, had
always suspected that the sense of such necessity was a peculiarity of his. But
here, certainly, was another, in this respect like himself; and again he seemed
to detect the advent of some new or changed spirit into the world, mystic,
inward, hardly to be satisfied with that wholly external and objective habit of
life, which had been sufficient for the old classic soul. His purely literary
curiosity was greatly stimulated by this example of a book of self-portraiture.
It was in fact the position of the modern essayist, creature of efforts rather
than of achievements, in the matter of apprehending truth, but at least
conscious of lights by the way, which he must needs record, acknowledge. What
seemed to underlie that position was the desire to make the most of every
experience that might come, outwardly or from within : to perpetuate, to
display, what was so fleeting, f in a kind of instinctive, pathetic protest
against the imperial writer's own theory that theory of the perpetual flux of
all things to MARIO himself, so plausible from of old. There was, besides, a
special moral or doctrinal significance in the making of such conversation with
one's self at all. The Logos, the reasonable spark, in man, is common to him
with the gods KOWO? at 77/309 roi>$ 0eov9 cum diis communis. That might seem
but the truism of a certain school of philosophy ; but in ANTONINO (si veda)
was clearly an original and lively apprehension. There could be no inward
conversation with one's self such as this, unless there were indeed some one
else, aware of our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at one's
disposition of one's self. Cornelius Front* too could enounce that theory of
the reasonable community between men and God, in many different ways. But then,
he was a cheerful man, and Aurelius a singularly sad one ; and what to Pronto
was but a doctrine, or a motive of mere rhetoric, was to the other a
consolation. He walks and talks, for a spiritual refreshment lacking which he
would faint by the way, with what to the learned professor is but matter of
philosophic eloquence. In performing his public religious functions Marcus
Aurelius had ever seemed like one who took part in some great process, a great
thing really done, with more than the actually visible assistants about him.
Here, in these manuscripts, in a hundred marginal flowers of thought or
language, in happy new phrases of his own like the impromptus of an actual
conversation, in quotations from other older masters of the inward life, taking
new significance from the chances of such intercourse, was the record of his
communion with that eternal reason, which was also his own proper self, with
the divine companion, whose tabernacle was in the intelligence of men the
journal of his daily commerce with that. Chance : or Providence ! Chance : or
Wisdom, one with nature and man, reaching from end to end, through all time and
all existence, orderly disposing all things, according to fixed periods, as he
describes it, in terms very like certain well-known words of the book of
Wisdom: those are the "fenced opposites " of the speculative dilemma,
the tragic embarras^ of which Aurelius cannot too often remind himself as the
summary of man's situation in the world. If there be, however, a provident soul
like this " behind the veil," truly, even to him, even in the most
intimate of those conversations, it has never yet spoken with any quite
irresistible assertion of its presence. Yet one's choice in that speculative
dilemma, as he has found it, is on the whole a matter of will. "'Tis in
thy power," here too, again, "to think as thou wilt." For his
part he has asserted his will, and has the courage of his opinion. " To
the better of two things, if thou findest that, turn with thy whole heart : eat
and drink ever of the best before thee." "Wisdom," says that
other disciple of the Sapiential philosophy, " hath mingled Her wine, she
hath also prepared Herself a table." ToO apurTov aTroXaue : "Partake
ever of Her best ! " And what Marius, peeping now very closely upon the
intimacies of that singular mind, found a thing actually * pathetic and
affecting, was the manner of the writer's bearing as in the presence of this
supposed guest ; so elusive, so jealous of any palpable manifestation of
himself, so taxing to one's faith, never allowing one to lean frankly upon him
and feel wholly at rest. Only, he would do his part, at least, in maintaining
the constant fitness, the sweetness and quiet, of the guest-chamber. Seeming to
vary with the intellectual fortune of the hour, from the plainest account of
experience, to a sheer fantasy, only "believed because it was impossible/'
that one hope was, at all events, sufficient to make men's common pleasures and
their common ambition, above all their commonest vices, seem very petty indeed,
too petty to know of. It bred in him a kind of magnificence of character, in
the old Greek sense of the term ; a temper incompatible with any merely
plausible advocacy of his convictions, or merely superficial thoughts about
anything whatever, or talk about other people, or speculation as to what was
passing in their so visibly little souls, or much talking of any kind, however
clever or graceful. A soul thus disposed had " already entered into the
better life": was indeed in some sort "a priest, a minister of the
gods." Hence his constant " recollection " ; a close watching of
his soul, of a kind almost unique in the ancient world. Before all things
examine into thyself: strive to be at home 'with thyself ! Marius, a
sympathetic witness of all this, might almost seem to have had a foresight of
monasticism itself in the prophetic future. With this mystic companion he had
gone a step onward out of the merely objective pagan existence. Here was
already a master in that craft of self-direction, which was about to So play so
large a part in the forming of human mind, under the sanction of the Christian
church. Yet it was in truth a somewhat melancholy service, a service on which
one must needs move about, solemn, serious, depressed, with the hushed
footsteps of those who move about the house where a dead body is lying. Such
was the impression which occurred to Marius again and again as he read, with a
growing sense of some profound dissidence from his author. By certain quite
traceable links of association he was reminded, in spite of the moral beauty of
the philosophic emperor's ideas, how he had sat, essentially unconcerned, at
the public shows. For, actually, his contemplations had made him of a sad
heart, inducing in him that melancholy Tristitia which even the monastic
moralists have held to be of the nature of deadly sin, akin to the sin of
Desidia or Inactivity. Resignation, a sombre resignation, a sad heart, patient
bearing of the burden of a sad heart : Yes ! this belonged doubtless to the
situation of an honest thinker upon the world. Only, in this case there seemed
to be too much of a complacent acquiescence in the world as it is. And there
could be no true Theodicee in that ; no real accommodation of the world as it
is, to the divine pattern of the Logos y the eternal reason, over against it.
It amounted to a tolerance of evil. The soul of good, though it moveth upon a
way thou canst but little understand, yet prospereth on the journey: If thou
sufferest nothing contrary to nature, there can be nought of evil with thee
therein : If thou hast done aught in harmony with that reason in which men are
communicant with the gods, there also can be nothing of evil with thee nothing
to be afraid of : Whatever is, is right ; as from the hand of one dispensing to
every man according to his desert : If reason fulfil its part in things, what
more dost thou require? Dost thou take it ill that thy stature is but of four
cubits ? That which happeneth to each of us is for the profit of the whole :
The profit of the whole, that was sufficient ! Links, in a train of thought
really generous ! of which, nevertheless, the forced and yet facile optimism,
refusing to see evil anywhere, might lack, after all, the secret of genuine
cheerfulness. It left in truth a weight upon the spirits ; and with that weight
unlifted, there could be no real justification of the ways of Heaven to man.
" Let thine air be cheerful," he had said ; and, with an effort, did
himself at times attain to that serenity of aspect, which surely ought to
accompany, as their outward flower and favour, hopeful assumptions like those.
Still, what in Aurelius was but a passing expression, was with Cornelius
(Marius could but note the contrast) nature, and a veritable physiognomy. With
Cornelius, in fact, it was nothing less than the joy which Dante apprehended in
the blessed spirits of the perfect, the outward semblance of which, like a
reflex of physical light upon human faces from " the land which is very
far off," we may trace from Giotto onward to its consummation in the work
of Raphael the serenity, the durable cheerfulness, of those who have been
indeed delivered from death, and of which the utmost degree of that famed
" blitheness " of the Greeks had been but a transitory gleam, as in
careless and wholly superficial youth. And yet, in Cornelius, it was certainly
united with the bold recognition of evil as a fact in the world ; real as an
aching in the head or heart, which one instinctively desires to have cured ; an
enemy with whom no terms could be made, visible, hatefully visible, in a
thousand forms the apparent waste of men's gifts in an early, or even in a late
grave ; the death, as such, of men, and even of animals ; the disease and pain
of the body. And there was another point of dissidence between Aurelius and his
reader. The philosophic emperor was a despiser of the body. Since it is "
the peculiar privilege of reason to move within herself, and to be proof
against corporeal impressions, suffering neither sensation nor passion to break
in upon her," it follows that the true interest of the spirit must ever be
to treat the body Well ! as a corpse attached thereto, rather than as a living
companion nay, actually to promote its dissolution. In counterpoise to the
inhumanity of this, presenting itself to the young reader as nothing less than
a sin against nature, the very person of Cornelius was nothing less than a
sanction of that reverent delight Marius had always had in the visible body of
man. Such delight indeed had been but a natural consequence of the sensuous or
materialistic character of the philosophy of his choice. } Now to Cornelius the
body of man was unmistakeably, as a later seer terms it, the one true I temple
in the world ; or rather itself the proper object of worship, of a sacred
service, in which the very finest gold might have its seemliness and due
symbolic use : Ah ! and of what awestricken pity also, in its dejection, in the
perishing gray bones of a poor man's grave! Some flaw of vision, thinks MARIO,
must be involved in the philosopher's contempt for itsome diseased point of
thought, or moral dulness, leading logically to what seemed to him the
strangest of all the emperor's inhumanities, the temper of the suicide ; for
which there was just then, indeed, a sort of mania in the world. " 'Tis
part of the business of life," he read, " to lose it
handsomely." On due occasion, " one might give life the slip."
The moral or mental powers might fail one ; and then it were a fair question,
precisely, whether the time for taking leave was not come : " Thou canst
leave this prison when thou wilt. Go forth boldly ! " Just there, in the
bare capacity to entertain such question at all, there was what Marius, with a
soul which must always leap up in loyal gratitude for mere physical sunshine,
touching him as it touched the flies in the air, could not away with. There,
surely, was a sign of some crookedness in the natural power of apprehension. It
was the attitude, the melancholy intellectual attitude, of one who might be
greatly mistaken in things who might make the greatest of mistakes. A heart
that could forget itself in the misfortune, or even in the weakness of others :
of this Marius had certainly found the trace, as a confidant of the emperor's
conversations with himself, in spite of those jarring inhumanities, of that
pretension to a stoical indifference, and the many difficulties of his manner
of writing. He found it again not long afterwards, in still stronger evidence,
in this way. As he read one morning early, there slipped from the rolls of
manuscript a sealed letter with the emperor's superscription, which might well
be of importance, and he felt bound to deliver it at once in person ; Aurelius
being then absent from Rome in one of his favourite retreats, at Praeneste,
taking a few days of quiet with his young children, before his departure for
the war. A whole day passed as Marius crossed the Gampagna on horseback,
pleased by the random autumn lights bringing out in the distance the sheep at
pasture, the shepherds in their picturesque dress, the golden elms, tower and
villa ; and it was after dark that he mounted the steep street of the little
hill-town to the imperial residence. He was struck by an odd mixture of
stillness and excitement about the place. Lights burned at the windows. It
seemed that numerous visitors were within, for the courtyard was crowded with
litters and horses in waiting. For the moment, indeed, all larger cares, even
the cares of war, of late so heavy a pressure, had been forgotten in what was
passing with the little Annius Verus ; who for his part had forgotten his toys,
lying all day across the knees of his mother, as a mere child's ear-ache grew
rapidly to alarming sickness with great and manifest agony, only suspended a
little, from time to time, when from very weariness he passed into a few
moments of unconsciousness. The country surgeon called in, had removed the
imposthume with the knife. There had been a great effort to bear this
operation, for the terrified child, hardly persuaded to submit himself, when
his pain was at its worst, and even more for the parents. At length, amid a
company of pupils pressing in with him, as the custom was, to watch the
proceedings in the sick-room, the eminent Galen had arrived, only to pronounce
the thing done visibly useless, the patient falling now into longer intervals
of delirium. And thus, thrust on one side by the crowd of departing visitors,
Marius was forced into the privacy of a grief, the desolate face of which went
deep into his memory, as he saw the emperor carry the child away quite
conscious at last, but with a touching expression upon it of weakness and
defeat pressed close to his bosom, as if he yearned just then for one thing
only, to be united, to be absolutely one with it, in its obscure distress.
Paratum cor meum deus ! paratum cor meum ! THE emperor demanded a senatorial
decree for the erection of images in memory of the dead prince ; that a golden
one should be carried, together with the other images, in the great procession
of the Circus, and the addition of the child's name to the Hymn of the Salian Priests
: and so, stifling private grief, without further delay set forth for the war.
True kingship, as Plato, the old master of Aurelius, had understood it, was
essentially of the nature of a service. If so be, you can discover a mode of
life more desirable than the being a king, for those who shall be kings ; then,
the true Ideal of the State will become a possibility; but not otherwise. And
if the life of Beatific Vision be indeed possible, if philosophy really "
concludes in an ecstasy/' affording full fruition to the entire nature of man ;
then, for certain elect souls at least, a mode of life will have been
discovered more desirable than to be a king. By love or fear you might induce
such persons to forgo their privilege ; to take upon them the distasteful task
of governing other men, or even of leading them to victory in battle. But, by
the very conditions of its tenure, their dominion would be wholly a ministry to
others : they would have taken upon them " the form of a servant ":
they would be reigning for the wellbeing of others rather than their own. The
true king, the righteous king, would be Saint Lewis, exiling himself from the
better land and its perfected company so real a thing to him, definite and real
as the pictured scenes of his psalter to take part in or to arbitrate men's
quarrels, about the transitory appearances of things. In a lower degree (lower,
in proportion as the highest Platonic dream is lower than any Christian vision)
the true king would be Marcus Aurelius, drawn from the meditation of books, to
be the ruler of the Roman people in peace, and still more, in war. To Aurelius,
certainly, the philosophic mood, the visions, however dim, which this mood
brought with it, were sufficiently pleasant to him, together with the endearments
of his home, to make public rule nothing less than a sacrifice of himself
according to Plato's requirement, now consummated in his setting forth for the
campaign on the Danube. That it was such a sacrifice was to Marius visible
fact, as he saw hirn ceremoniously lifted into the saddle amid all the
pageantry of an imperial departure, yet with the air less of a sanguine and
self-reliant leader than of one in some way or other already defeated. Through
the fortune of the subsequent years, passing and repassing so inexplicably from
side to side, the rumour of which reached him amid his own quiet studies,
Marius seemed always to see that central figure, with its habitually dejected
hue grown now to an expression of positive suffering, all the stranger from its
contrast with the magnificent armour worn by the emperor on this occasion, as
it had been worn by his predecessor Hadrian. Totus et argento contextus et auro
: clothed in its gold and silver, dainty as that old divinely constructed
armour of which OMERO tells, but without its miraculous lightsomeness he looked
out baffled, labouring, moribund ; a mere comfortless shadow taking part in
some shadowy reproduction of the labours of Hercules, through those northern,
mist-laden confines of the civilised world. It was as if the familiar soul
which had been so friendly disposed towards him were actually departed to Hades
; and when he read the Conversations afterwards, though his judgment of them
underwent no material change, it was nevertheless with the allowance we make
for the dead. The memory of that suffering image, while it certainly
strengthened his adhesion to what he could accept at all in the philosophy of
Aurelius, added a strange pathos to what must seem the writer's mistakes. What,
after all, had been the meaning of that incident, observed as so fortunate an
omen long since, when the prince, then a little child much younger than was
usual, had stood in ceremony among the priests of Mars and flung his crown of
flowers with the rest at the sacred image reclining on the Pulvinar ? The other
crowns lodged themselves here or there ; when, Lo ! the crown thrown by
ANTONINO (si veda), alighted upon the very brows of the god, as if placed there
by a careful hand ! He was still young, also, when on the day of his adoption
by Antoninus Pius he saw himself in a dream, with as it were shoulders of
ivory, like the images of the gods, and found them more capable than shoulders
of flesh. Yet he was now well-nigh fifty years of age, setting out with
two-thirds of life behind him, upon a labour which would fill the remainder of
it with anxious cares a labour for which he had perhaps no capacity, and
certainly no taste. That ancient suit of armour was almost the only object
Aurelius now possessed from all those much cherished articles of vertu
collected by the Caesars, making the imperial residence like a magnificent
museum. Not men alone were needed for the war, so that it became necessary, to
the great disgust alike of timid persons and of thelovers of sport, to arm the
gladiators, but money also was lacking. Accordingly, at the sole motion of
Aurelius himself, unwilling that the public burden should be further increased,
especially on the part of the poor, the whole of the imperial ornaments and
furniture, a sumptuous collection of gems formed by Hadrian, with many works of
the most famous painters and sculptors, even the precious ornaments of the
emperor's chapel or Lararium, and the wardrobe of the empress Faustina, who
seems to have borne the loss without a murmur, were exposed for public auction.
u These treasures," says ANTONINO (si veda), " like all else that I
possess, belong by right to the Senate and People." Was it not a
characteristic of the true kings in Plato that they had in their houses nothing
they could call their own ? Connoisseurs had a keen delight in the mere reading
of the Prtetor's list of the property for sale. For two months the learned in
these matters were daily occupied in the appraising of the embroidered
hangings, the choice articles of personal use selected for preservation by each
succeeding age, the great outlandish pearls from Hadrian's favourite cabinet,
the marvellous plate lying safe behind the pretty iron wicker-work of the shops
in the goldsmiths' quarter. Meantime ordinary persons might have an interest in
the inspection of objects which had been as daily companions to people so far
above and remote from them things so fine also in workmanship and material as
to seem, with their antique and delicate air, a worthy survival of the grand
bygone eras, like select thoughts or utterances embodying the very spirit of
the vanished past. The town became more pensive than ever over old fashions.
The welcome amusement of this last act of preparation for the great war being
now over, all Rome seemed to settle down into a singular quiet, likely to last
long, as though bent only on watching from afar the languid, somewhat
uneventful course of the contest itself. MARIO takes advantage of it as an
opportunity for still closer study than of old, only now and then going out to
one of his favourite spots on the Sabine or Alban hills for a quiet even
greater than that of Rome in the country air. On one of these occasions, as if
by favour of an invisible power withdrawing some unknown cause of dejection
from around him, he enjoyed a quite unusual sense of self-possession the
possession of his own best and happiest self. After some gloomy thoughts
over-night, he awoke under the full tide of the rising sun, himself full, in
his entire refreshment, of that almost religious appreciation of sleep, the
graciousness of its influence on men's spirits, which had made the old Greeks
conceive of it as a god. It was like one of those old joyful wakings of
childhood, now becoming rarer and rarer with him, and looked back upon with
much regret as a measure of advancing age. In fact, the last bequest of this
serene sleep had been a dream, in which, as once before, he overheard those he
loved best pronouncing his name very pleasantly, as they passed through the
rich light and shadow of a summer morning, along the pavement of a city Ah !
fairer far than Rome ! In a moment, as he arose, a certain oppression of late
setting very heavily upon him was lifted away, as though by some physical
motion in the air. That flawless serenity, better than the most pleasurable
excitement, yet so easily ruffled by chance collision even with the things and
persons he had come to value as the greatest treasure in life, was to be wholly
his to-day, he thought, as he rode towards Tibur, under the early sunshine ;
the marble of its villas glistening all the way before him on the hillside. And
why could he not hold such serenity of spirit ever at command ? he asked,
expert as he was at last become in the art of setting the house of his thoughts
in order. " 'Tis in thy power to think as thou wilt : " he repeated
to himself : it was the most serviceable of all the lessons enforced on him by
those imperial conversations. " 'Tis in thy power to think as thou
wilt." And were the cheerful, sociable, restorative beliefs, of which he
had there read so much, that bold adhesion, for instance, to the hypothesis of
an eternal friend to man, just hidden behind the veil of a mechanical and
material order, but only just behind it, ready perhaps even now to break
through : were they, after all, really a matter of choice, dependent on some
deliberate act of volition on his part ? Were they doctrines one might take for
granted, generously take for granted, and led on by them, at first as but
well-defined objects of hope, come at last into the region of a corresponding
certitude of the intellect ? " It is the truth I seek," he had read,
" the truth, by which no one," gray and depressing though it might
seem, "was ever really injured." And yet, on the other hand, the
imperial wayfarer, he had been able to go along with so far on his intellectual
pilgrimage, let fall many things concerning the practicability of a methodical
and self-forced assent to certain principles or presuppositions " one
could not do without." Were there, as the expression " one could not
do 'without " seemed to hint, beliefs, without which life itself must be
almost impossible, principles which had their sufficient ground of evidence in
that very fact? Experience certainly taught that, as regarding the sensible world
he could attend or not, almost at will, to this or that colour, this or that
train of sounds, in the whole tumultuous concourse of colour and sound, so it
was also, for the well-trained intelligence, in regard to that hum of voices
which besiege the inward no less than the outward ear. Might it be not
otherwise with those various and competing hypotheses, the permissible
hypotheses, which, in that open field for hypothesis one's own actual ignorance
of the origin and tendency of our being present themselves so importunately,
some of them with so emphatic a reiteration, through all the mental changes of
successive ages ? Might the will itself be an org an of knowledge, of vision ?
On this day truly no mysterious light, no irresistibly leading hand from afar
reached him ; only the peculiarly tranquil influence of its first hour
increased steadily upon him, in a manner with which, as he conceived, the
aspects of the place he was then visiting hadsomething to do. The air there,
air supposed to possess the singular property of restoring the whiteness of
ivory, was pure and thin. An even veil of lawn-like white cloud had now drawn
over the sky; and under its broad, shadowless light every hue and tone of time
came out upon the yellow old temples, the elegant pillared circle of the shrine
of the patronal Sibyl, the houses seemingly of a piece with the ancient
fundamental rock. Some half- conscious motive of poetic grace would appear to
have determined their grouping ; in part resisting, partly going along with the
natural wildness and harshness of the place, its floods and precipices. An air
of immense age possessed, above all, the vegetation around a world of evergreen
trees the olives especially, older than how many generations of men's lives !
fretted and twisted by the combining forces of life and death, intoevery
conceivable caprice of form. In the windless weather all seemed to be listening
to the roar of the immemorial waterfall, plunging down so unassociably among
these human habitations, and with a motion so unchanging from age to age as to
count, even in this time-worn place, as an image of unalterable rest. Yet the
clear sky all but broke to let through the ray which was silently quickening
everything in the late February afternoon, and the unseen violet refined itself
through the air. / It was as if the spirit of life in nature were but
withholding any too precipitate revelation of itself, in its slow, wise,
maturing work. Through some accident to the trappings of his horse at the inn
where he rested, Marius had an unexpected delay. He sat down in an olivegarden,
and, all around him and within still turning to reverie, the course of his own
life hitherto seemed to withdraw itself into some other world, disparted from
this spectacular point where he was now placed to survey it, like that distant
road below, along which he had travelled this morning across the Campagna.
Through a dreamy land he could see himself moving, as if in another life, and
like another person, through all his fortunes and misfortunes, passing from
point to point, weeping, delighted, escaping from various dangers. That
prospect brought him, first of all, an impulse of lively gratitude : it was as
if he must look round for some one else to share his joy with : for some one to
whom he might tell the thing, for his own relief. Companionship, indeed,
familiarity with others, gifted in this way or that, or at least pleasant to
him, had been, through one or another long span of it, the chief delight of the
journey. And was it only the resultant general sense of such familiarity,
diffused through his memory, that in a while suggested the question whether
there had not been besides Flavian, besides Cornelius even, and amid the
solitude which in spite of ardent friendship he had perhaps loved best of all
things some other companion, an unfailing companion, ever at his side
throughout ; doubling his pleasure in the roses by the way, patient of his
peevishness or depression, sympathetic above all with his grateful recognition,
onward from his earliest days, of the fact that he was there at all ? Must not
the whole world around have faded away for him altogether, had he been left for
one moment really alone in it f In his deepest apparent solitude there had been
rich entertainment. It was as if there were not one only, but two wayfarers,
side by side, visible there across the plain, as he indulged his fancy. A bird
came and sang among the wattled hedge-roses : an animal feeding crept nearer :
the child who kept it was gazing quietly : and the scene and the hours still
conspiring, he passed from that mere fantasy of a self not himself, beside him
in his coming and going, to those divinations of a living and companionable
spirit at work in all things, of which he had become aware from time to time in
his old philosophic readings in Plato and others, last but not least, in
ANTONINO (si veda). Through one reflection upon another, he passed from such
instinctive divinations, to the thoughts which give them logical consistency,
formulating at last, as the necessary exponent of our own and the world's life,
that reasonable Ideal to which the Old Testament gives the name of Creator,
which for the philosophers of Greece is the Eternal Reason, and in the New
Testament the Father of Men even as one builds up from act and word and
expression of the friend actually visible at one's side, an ideal of the spirit
within him. In this peculiar and privileged hour, his bodily frame, as he could
recognise, although just then, in the whole sum of its capacities, so entirely
possessed by him Nay ! actually his very self was yet determined by a
far-reaching system of material forces external to it, a thousand combining
currents from earth and sky. Its seemingly active powers of apprehension were,
in fact, but susceptibilities to, influence. The perfection of its capacity
might be said to depend on its passive surrender, as of a leaf on the wind, to
the motions of the great stream of physical energy without it. And might not
the intellectual frame also, still more intimately himself as in truth it was,
after the analogy of the bodily life, be a moment only, an impulse or series of
impulses, a single process, in an intellectual or spiritual system external to
it, diffused through all time and place that great stream of spiritual energy,
of which his own imperfect thoughts, yesterday or to-day, would be but the
remote, and therefore imperfect pulsations ? It was the hypothesis (boldest,
though in reality the most conceivable of all hypotheses) which had dawned on
the contemplations of the two opposed great masters of the old Greek thought,
alike: the "World of Ideas," existent only because, and in so far as,
they are known, as L’ACCADEMIA conceived ; the " creative, incorruptible,
informing mind, " supposed by il LIZIO, so sober-minded, yet as regards
this matter left something of a mystic after all. Might not this entire
material world," the very scene around him, the immemorial rocks, the firm
marble, the olive-gardens, the falling water, be themselves but reflections in,
or a creation of, that one indefectible mind, wherein he too became conscious,
for an hour, a day, for so many years? Upon what other hypothesis could he so
well understand the persistency of all these things for his own intermittent
consciousness of them, for the intermittent consciousness of so many
generations, fleeting away one after another ? It was easier to conceive of the
material fabric of things as but an element in a world of thought as a thought
in a mind, than of mind as an element, or accident, or passing condition in a
world of matter, because mind was really nearer to himself : it was an
explanation of what was less known by what was known better. The purely
material world, that close, impassable prisonwall, seemed just then the unreal
thing, to be actually dissolving away all around him : and he felt a quiet
hope, a quiet joy dawning faintly, in the dawning of this doctrine upon him as
a really credible opinion. It was like the break of day over some vast prospect
with the " new city," as it were some celestial New Rome, in the
midst of it. That divine companion figured no longer as but an occasional
wayfarer beside him ; but rather as the unfailing " assistant,"
without whose inspiration and concurrence he could not breathe or see,
instrumenting his bodily senses, rounding, supporting his imperfect thoughts.
How often had the thought of their brevity spoiled for him the most natural
pleasures of life, confusing even his present sense of them by the suggestion
of disease, of death, of a coming end, in everything ! How had he longed,
sometimes, that there were indeed one to whose boundless power of memory he
could commit his own most fortunate moments, his admiration, his love, Ay ! the
very sorrows of which he could not bear quite to lose the sense : one strong to
retain them even though he forgot, in whose more vigorous consciousness they
might subsist for ever, beyond that mere quickening of capacity which was all
that remained of them in himself ! " Oh ! that they might live before Thee
To-day at least, in the peculiar clearness of one privileged hour, he seemed to
have apprehended that in which the experiences he valued most might find, one
by one, an abiding-place. And again, the resultant sense of companionship, of a
person beside him, evoked the faculty of conscience of conscience, as of old
and when he had been at his best, in the form, not of fear, nor of ]
self-reproach even, but of a certain lively gratitude. Himself his sensations
and ideas never fell again precisely into focus as on that day, | yet he was
the richer by its experience. But for once only to have come under the power of
that peculiar mood, to have felt the train of reflections which belong to it
really forcible and conclusive, to have been led by them to a conclusion, to
have apprehended the Great Ideal) so palpably that it defined personal
gratitude and the sense of a friendly hand laid upon him amid the shadows of
the world, left this one particular hour a marked point in life never to be
forgotten. It gave him a definitely ascertained measure of his moral or
intellectual need, of the demand his soul must make upon the powers, whatsoever
they might be, which had brought him, as he was, into the world at all. And
again, would he be faithful to himself, to his own habits of mind, his leading
suppositions, if he did but remain just there ? Must not all that remained of
life be but a search for the equivalent of that Ideal, among so-called actual
things a gathering together of every trace or token of it, which his actual
experience might present ? Your men shall dream dreams. A nature like that of
Marius, composed, in about equal parts, of instincts almost physical, and of
slowly accumulated intellectual judgments, was perhaps even less susceptible
than other men's characters of essential change. And yet the experience of that
fortunate hour, seeming to gather into one central act of vision ; all the
deeper impressions his mind had ever, received, did not leave him quite as he
had been. For his mental view, at least, it changed measurably the world about
him, of which he was still indeed a curious spectator, but which looked further
off, was weaker in its hold, and, in a sense, less real to him than ever. It
was as if he viewed it through a diminishing glass. And the permanency of this
change he could note, some years later, when it happened that he was a guest at
a feast, in which the various exciting elements of Roman life, its physical and
intellectual accomplishments, its frivolity and far-fetched elegances, its
strange, mystic essays after the unseen, were elaborately combined. The great
Apuleius> the literary ideal of his boyhood, had arrived in Rome, was now
visiting Tusculum, at the house of their common friend, a certain aristocratic
poet who loved every sort of superiorities ; and MARIO is favoured with an
invitation to a supper given in his honour. It was with a feeling of
half-humorous concession to his own early boyish hero-worship, yet with some
sense of superiority in himself, seeing his old curiosity grown now almost to
indifference when on the point of satisfaction at last, and upon a juster
estimate of its object, that he mounted to the little town on the hillside, the
foot -ways of which were so many flights of easy-going steps gathered round a
single great house under shadow of the "haunted" ruins of Cicero's
villa on the wooded heights. He found a touch of weirdness in the circumstance
that in so romantic a place he had been bidden to meet the writer who was come
to seem almost like one of the personages in his own fiction. As he turned now
and then to gaze at the evening scene through the tall narrow openings of the
street, up which the cattle were going home slowly from the pastures below, the
Alban mountains, stretched between the great walls of the ancient houses,
seemed close at hand a screen of vaporous dun purple against the setting sun
with those waves of surpassing softness in the boundary lines which indicate
volcanic formation. The coolness of the little brown market-place, for profit
of which even the working-people, in long file through the olive- gardens, were
leaving the plain for the night, was grateful, after the heats of Rome. Those
wild country figures, clad in every kind of fantastic patchwork, stained by
wind and weather fortunately enough for the eye, under that significant light
inclined him to poetry. And it was a very delicate poetry of its kind that
seemed to enfold him, \ as passing into the poet's house he paused for; a
moment to glance back towards the heights above ; whereupon, the numerous
cascades of the precipitous garden of the villa, framed in the doorway of the
hall, fell into a harmless picture, in its place among the pictures within, and
scarcely more real than they a landscapepiece, in which the power of water
(plunging into what unseen depths !) done to the life, was pleasant, and
without its natural terrors. At the further end of this bland apartment,
fragrant with the rare woods of the old inlaid panelling, the falling of
aromatic oil from the ready-lighted lamps, the iris-root clinging to the dresses
of the guests, as with odours from the altars of the gods, the supper-table was
spread, in all the daintiness characteristic of the agreeable petit-maitrC) who
entertained. He was already most carefully dressed, but, like Martial's Stella,
perhaps consciously, meant to change his attire once and again during the
banquet ; in the last instance, for an ancient vesture (object of much rivalry
among the young men of fashion, at that great sale of the imperial wardrobes) a
toga, of altogether lost hue and texture. He wore it with a grace which became
the leader of a thrilling movement then on foot for the restoration of that
disused garment, in which, laying aside the customary evening dress, all the
visitors were requested to appear, setting off the delicate sinuosities and
well-disposed " golden ways" of its folds, with harmoniously tinted
flowers. The opulent sunset, blending pleasan tly with artificial light, fell
across the quiet ancestral effigies of old consular dignitaries, along the wide
floor strewn with sawdust of sandal -wood, and lost itself in the heap of cool
coronals, lying ready for the foreheads of the guests on a sideboard of old
citron. The crystal vessels darkened with old wine, the hues of the early
autumn fruit mulberries, pomegranates, and grapes that had long been hanging
under careful protection upon the vines, were almost as much a feast for the
eye, as the dusky fires of the rare twelve-petalled roses. A favourite animal,
white as snow, brought by one of the visitors, purred its way gracefully among
the wine-cups, coaxed onward from place to place by those at table, as they
reclined easily on their cushions of German eider-down, spread over the
long-legged, carved couches. A highly refined modification of the acroama a
musical performance during supper for the diversion of the guests was presently
heard hovering round the place, soothingly, and so unobtrusively that the
company could not guess, and did not like to ask, whether or not it had been
designed by their entertainer. They inclined on the whole to think it some
wonderful peasantmusic peculiar to that wild neighbourhood, turning, as it did
now and then, to a solitary reednote, like a bird's, while it wandered into the
distance. It wandered quite away at last, as darkness with a bolder lamplight
came on, and made way for another sort of entertainment. An odd, rapid,
phantasmal glitter, advancing from the garden by torchlight, defined itself, as
it came nearer, into a dance of young men in armour. Arrived at length in a
portico, open to the supper-chamber, they contrived that their mechanical
march-movement should fall out into a kind of highly expressive dramatic action
; and with the utmost possible emphasis of dumb motion, their long swords
weaving a silvery network in the air, they danced the Death of Paris. COMMODO
(si veda), already an adept in these matters, who had condescended to welcome
the eminent Apuleius at the banquet, had mysteriously dropped from his place to
take his share in the performance ; and at its conclusion reappeared, still
wearing the dainty accoutrements of Paris, including a breastplate, composed
entirely of overlapping tigers' claws, skilfully gilt. The youthful prince had
lately assumed the dress of manhood, on the return of the emperor for a brief
visit from the North ; putting up his hair, in imitation of Nero, in a golden
box dedicated to Capitoline Jupiter. His likeness to Aurelius, his father, was
become, in consequence, more striking than ever ; and he had one source of
genuine interest in the great literary guest of the occasion, in that the
latter was the fortunate possessor of a monopoly for the exhibition of wild
beasts and gladiatorial shows in the province of Carthage, where he resided.
Still, after all complaisance to the perhaps somewhat crude tastes of the
emperor's son, it was felt that with a guest like Apuleius whom they had come
prepared to entertain as veritable connoisseurs, the conversation should be
learned and superior, and the host at last deftly led his company round to
literature, by the way of bindings. Elegant rolls of manuscript from his fine
library of ancient Greek books passed from hand to hand about the table. It was
a sign for the visitors themselves to draw their own choicest literary
curiosities from their bags, as their contribution to the banquet ; and one of
them, a famous reader, choosing his lucky moment, delivered in tenor voice the
piece which follows, with a preliminary query as to whether it could indeed be
the composition of Lucian of Samosata, understood to be the great mocker of
that day : " What sound was that, Socrates ? " asked Chaerephon.
" It came from the beach under the cliff yonder, and seemed a long way
off. And how melodious it was ! Was it a bird, I wonder. I thought all
sea-birds were songless. Aye! a sea-bird," answered Socrates, "a bird
called the Halcyon, and has a note full of plaining and tears. There is an old
story people tell of it. It was a mortal woman once, daughter of ^Eolus, god of
the winds. Ceyx, the son of the morning-star, wedded her in her early
maidenhood. The son was not less fair than the father; and when it came to pass
that he died, the crying of the girl as she lamented his sweet usage, was, Just
that ! And some while after, as Heaven willed, she was changed into a bird.
Floating now on bird's wings over the sea she seeks her lost Ceyx there ; since
she was not able to find him after long wandering over the land. That then is
the Halcyon the kingfisher," say Chaerephon. " I never heard a bird
like it before. It has truly a plaintive note. What kind of a bird is it,
Socrates f " " Not a large bird, though she has received large honour
from the gods on account of her singular conjugal affection. For whensoever she
makes her nest, a law of nature brings round what is called Halcyon's weather,
days distinguishable among all others for their serenity, though they come
sometimes amid the storms of winter days like to-day ! See how transparent is
the sky above us, and how motionless the sea ! like a smooth mirror." "
True ! A Halcyon day, indeed ! and yesterday was the same. But tell me,
Socrates, what is one to think of those stories which have been told from the
beginning, of birds changed into mortals and mortals into birds ? To me nothing
seems more incredible." "Dear Chaerephon," said Socrates,
"methinks we are but half-blind judges of the impossible and the possible.
We try the question by the standard of our human faculty, which avails neither
for true knowledge, nor for faith, nor vision. Therefore many things seem to us
impossible which are really easy, many things unattainable which are within our
reach ; partly through inexperience, partly through the childishness of our
minds. For in truth, every man, even the oldest of us, is like a little child,
so brief and babyish are the years of our life in comparison of eternity. Then,
how can we, who comprehend not the faculties of gods and of the heavenly host,
tell whether aught of that kind be possible or no f What a tempest you saw
three days ago ! One trembles but to think of the lightning, the thunderclaps,
the violence of the wind ! You might have thought the whole world was going to
ruin. And then, after a little, came this wonderful serenity of weather, which
has continued till to-day. Which do you think the greater and more difficult
thing to do : to exchange the disorder of that irresistible whirlwind to a
clarity like this, and becalm the whole world again, or to refashion the form
of a woman into that of a bird ? We can teach even little children to do
something of that sort, to take wax or clay, and mould out of the same material
many kinds of form, one after another, without difficulty. And it may be that
to the Deity, whose power is too vast for comparison with ours, all processes
of that kind are manageable and easy. How much wider is the whole circle of
heaven than thyself? Wider than thou canst express. "Among ourselves also,
how vast the difference we may observe in men's degrees of power ! To you and
me, and many another like us, many things are impossible which are quite easy
to others. For those who are unmusical, to play on the flute ; to read or
write, for those who have not yet learned ; is no easier than to make birds of
women, or women of birds. From the dumb and lifeless egg Nature moulds her
swarms of winged creatures, aided, as some will have it, by a divine and secret
art in the wide air around us. She takes from the honeycomb a little memberless
live thing ; she brings it wings and feet, brightens and beautifies it with
quaint variety of colour: and Lo ! the bee in her wisdom, making honey worthy
of the gods. "It follows, that we mortals, being altogether of little
account, able wholly to discern no great matter, sometimes not even a little
one, for the most part at a loss regarding what happens even with ourselves,
may hardly speak with security as to what may be the powers of the immortal
gods concerning Kingfisher, or Nightingale. Yet the glory of thy mythus, as my
fathers bequeathed it to me, O tearful songstress ! that will I too hand on to
my children, and tell it often to my wives, Xanthippe and Myrto : the story of
thy pious love to Ceyx, and of thy melodious hymns ; and, above all, of the
honour thou hast with the gods ! " The reader's well-turned periods seemed
to stimulate, almost uncontrollably, the eloquent stirrings of the eminent man
of letters then present. The impulse to speak masterfully was visible, before
the recital was well over, in the moving lines about his mouth, by no means
designed, as detractors were wont to say, simply to display the beauty of his
teeth. One of the company, expert in his humours, made ready to transcribe what
he would say, the sort of things of which a collection was then forming, the
" Florida " or Flowers, so to call them, he was apt to let fall by
the way no impromptu ventures at random ; but rather elaborate, carved ivories
of speech, drawn, at length, out of the rich treasure-house of a memory stored
with such, and as with a fine savour of old musk about them. Certainly in this
case, as MARIO thought, it was worth while to hear a charming writer speak.
Discussing, quite in our modern way, the peculiarities of those suburban views,
especially the sea-views, of which he was a professed lover, he was also every
inch a priest of Aesculapius, patronal god of Carthage. There was a piquancy in
his rococo^ very African, and as it were perfumed personality, though he was
now well-nigh sixty years old, a mixture there of that sort of Platonic
spiritualism which can speak of the soul of man as but a sojourner in the
prison of the body a blending of that with such a relish for merely bodily
graces as availed to set the fashion in matters of dress, deportment, accent,
and the like, nay ! with something also which reminded Marius of the vein of
coarseness he had found in the "Golden Book/' All this made the total
impression he conveyed a very uncommon one. Marius did not wonder, as he
watched him speaking, that people freely attributed to him many of the
marvellous adventures he had recounted in that famous romance, over and above
the wildest version of his own actual story his extraordinary marriage, his
religious initiations, his acts of mad generosity, his trial as a sorcerer. But
a sign came from the imperial prince that it was time for the company to
separate. He was entertaining his immediate neighbours at the table with a
trick from the streets ; tossing his olives in rapid succession into the air,
and catching them, as they fell, between his lips. His dexterity in this
performance made the mirth around him noisy, disturbing the sleep of the furry
visitor : the learned party broke up ; and Marius withdrew, glad to escape into
the open air. The courtesans in their large wigs of false blond hair, were
lurking for the guests, with groups of curious idlers. A great conflagration
was visible in the distance. Was it in Rome ; or in one of the villages of the
country ? Pausing for a few minutes on the terrace to watch it, Marius was for
the first time able to converse intimately with Apuleius ; and in this moment
of confidence the " illuminist," himself with locks so carefully
arranged, and seemingly so full of affectations, almost like one of those light
women there, dropped a veil as it were, and appeared, though still permitting
the play of a certain element of theatrical interest in hi s bizarre tenets, to
be ready to explain and defend his position reasonably. For a moment his
fantastic foppishness and his pretensions to ideal vision seemed to fall into
some intelligible congruity with each other. In truth, it was the Platonic Idealism,
as he conceived it, which for him literally animated, and gave him so livelyan
interest in, this world of the purely outward aspects of men and things. Did
material things, such things as they had had around them all that evening,
really need apology for being there, to interest one, at all ? Were not all
visible objects the whole material world indeed, according to the consistent
testimony of philosophy in many forms "full of souls"? embarrassed
perhaps, partly imprisoned, but still eloquent souls ? Certainly, the
contemplative philosophy of Plato, with its figurative imagery and apologue,
its manifold aesthetic colouring, its measured eloquence, its music for the
outward ear, had been, like Plato's old master himself, a two-sided or
two-coloured thing. Apuleius was a Platonist : only, for him, the Ideas of
Plato were no creatures of logical abstraction, but in very truth informing
souls, in every type and variety of sensible things. Those noises in the house
all supper-time, sounding through the tables and along the walls : were they
only startings in the old rafters, at the impact of the music and laughter ; or
rather importunities of the secondary selves, the true unseen selves, of the
persons, nay ! of the very things around, essaying to break through their
frivolous, merely transitory surfaces, to remind one of abiding essentials
beyond them, which might have their say, their judgment to give, by and by,
when the shifting of the meats and drinks at life's table would be over ? And
was not this the true significance of the Platonic doctrine ? a hierarchy of
divine beings, associating themselves with particular things and places, for
the purpose of mediating between God and man man, who does but need due
attention on his part to become aware of his celestial company, filling the air
about him, thick as motes in the sunbeam, for the glance of sympathetic
intelligence he casts through it. Two kinds there are, of animated
beings," he exclaimed : " Gods, entirely differing from men in the
infinite distance of their abode, since one part of them only is seen by our
blunted vision those mysterious stars! in the eternity of their existence, in
the perfection of their nature, infected by no contact with ourselves : and
men, dwelling on the earth, with frivolous and anxious minds, with infirm and
mortal members, with variable fortunes ; labouring in vain ; taken altogether
and in their whole species perhaps, eternal ; but, severally, quitting the
scene in irresistible succession. " What then ? Has nature connected itself
together by no bond, allowed itself to be thus crippled, and split into the
divine and human elements ? And you will say to me : If so it be, that man is
thus entirely exiled from the immortal gods, that all communication is denied
him, that not one of them occasionally visits us, as a shepherd his sheep to
whom shall I address my prayers ? Whom, shall I invoke as the helper of the
unfortunate, the protector of the good? Well ! there are certain divine powers
of a middle nature, through whom our aspirations are conveyed to the gods, and
theirs to us. Passing between the inhabitants of earth and heaven, they carry
from one to the other prayers and bounties, supplication and assistance, being
a kind of interpreters. This interval of the air is full of them! Through them,
all revelations, miracles, magic processes, are effected. For, specially
appointed members of this order have their special provinces, with a ministry
according to the disposition of each. They go to and fro without fixed
habitation : or dwell in men's houses " Just then a companion's hand laid
in the darkness on the shoulder of the speaker carried him away, and the
discourse broke off suddenly. Its singular intimations, however, were
sufficient to throw back on this strange evening, in all its detail the dance,
the readings, the distant fire a kind of allegoric expression : gave it the
character of one of those famous Platonic figures or apologues which had then
been in fact under discussion. When Marius recalled its circumstances he seemed
to hear once more that voice of genuine conviction, pleading, from amidst a
scene at best of elegant frivolity, for so boldly mystical a view of man and
his position in the world. For a moment, but only for a moment, as he listened,
the trees had seemed, as of old, to be growing " close against the
sky." Yes ! the reception of theory, of hypothesis, of beliefs, did depend
a great deal on temperament. They were, so to speak, mere equivalents of
temperament. A celestial ladder, a ladder from heaven to earth: that was the
assumption which the experience of Apuleius had suggested to him : it was what,
in different forms, certain persons in every age had instinctively supposed :
they would be glad to find their supposition accredited by the authority of a
grave philosophy. Marius, however, yearning not less than they, in that hard
world of Rome, and below its unpeopled sky, for the trace of some celestial
wing across it, must still object that they assumed the thing with too much
facility, too much of self-complacency. And his second thought was, that to
indulge but for an hour fantasies, fantastic visions of that sort, only left
the actual world more lonely than ever. For him certainly, and for his solace,
the little godship for whom the rude countryman, an unconscious Platonist,
trimmed his twinkling lamp, would never slip from the bark of these immemorial
olive-trees. No ! not even in the wildest moonlight. For himself, it was clear,
he must still hold by what his eyes really saw. Only, he had to concede also, that
the very boldness of such theory bore witness, at least, to a variety of human
disposition and a consequent variety of mental view, which might who can tell ?
be correspondent to, be defined by and define, varieties of facts, of truths,
just " behind the veil," regarding the world all alike had actually
before them as their original premiss or starting-point ; a world, wider,
perhaps, in its possibilities than all possible fancies concernng it. Your old
men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions." Cornelius
had certain friends in or near Rome, whose household, to MARIO, as he pondered
now and again what might be the determining influences of that peculiar
character, presented itself as possibly its main secret the hidden source from
which the beauty and strength of a nature, so persistently fresh in the midst
of a somewhat jaded world, might be derived. But Marius had never yet seen
these friends; and it was almost by accident that the veil of reserve was at
last lifted, and, with strange contrast to his visit to the poet's villa at
Tusculum, he entered another curious house. "The house in which she
lives," says that mystical German writer quoted once before, " is for
the orderly soul, which does not live on blindly before her, but is ever, out
of her passing experiences, building and adorning the parts of a many-roomed
abode for herself, only an expansion of the body ; as the body, according to
the philosophy of Swedenborg, is but a process, an expansion, of the soul. For such
an orderly soul, as life proceeds, all sorts of delicate affinities establish
themselves, between herself and the doors and passage-ways, the lights and
shadows, of her outward dwelling-place, until she may seem incorporate with it
until at last, in the entire expressiveness of what is outward, there is for
her, to speak properly, between outward and inward, no longer any distinction
at all ; and the light which creeps at a particular hour on a particular
picture or space upon the wall, the scent of flowers in the air at a particular
window, become to her, not so much apprehended objects, as themselves powers of
apprehension and doorways to things beyond the germ or rudiment of certain new
faculties, by which she, dimly yet surely, apprehends a matter lying beyond her
actually attained capacities of spirit and sense." So it must needs be in
a world which is itself, we may think, together with that bodily tent or "
tabernacle," only one of many vestures for the clothing of the pilgrim
soul, to be left by her, surely, as if on the wayside, worn-out one by one, as
it was from her, indeed, they borrowed what momentary value or significance
they had. The two friends were returning to Rome from a visit to a
country-house, where again a mixed company of guests had been assembled ;
Marius, for his part, a little weary of gossip, and those sparks of
ill-tempered rivalry, which would seem sometimes to be the only sort of fire
the intercourse of people in general society can strike out of them. A mere
reaction upon this, as they started in the clear morning, made their
companionship, at least for one of them, hardly less tranquillising than the
solitude he so much valued. Something in the south-west wind, combining with
their own intention, favoured increasingly, as the hours wore on, a serenity
like that Marius had felt once before in journeying over the great plain
towards Tibur a serenity that was to-day brotherly amity also, and seemed to
draw into its own charmed circle whatever was then present to eye or ear, while
they talked or were silent together, and all petty irritations, and the like,
shrank out of existence, or kept certainly beyond its limits. The natural
fatigue of the long journey overcame them quite suddenly at last, when they
were still about two miles distant from Rome. The seemingly endless line of
tombs and cypresses had been visible for hours against the sky towards the west
; and it was just where a cross-road from the Latin Way fell into the Appian,
that Cornelius halted at a doorway in a long, low wall the outer wall of some
villa courtyard, it might be supposed as if at liberty to enter, and rest there
awhile. He held the door open for his companion to enter also, if he would ;
with an expression, as he lifted the latch, which seemed to ask Marius,
apparently shrinking from a possible intrusion: Would you like to see it ?
" Was he willing to look upon that, the seeing of which might define yes !
define the critical turning-point in his days ? The little doorway in this
long, low wall admitted them, in fact, into the court or garden of a villa,
disposed in one of those abrupt natural hollows, which give its character to
the country in this place ; the house itself, with all its dependent buildings,
the spaciousness of which surprised Marius as he entered, being thus wholly
concealed from passengers along the road. All around, in those well-ordered
precincts, were the quiet signs of wealth, and of a noble taste a taste,
indeed, chiefly evidenced in the selection and juxtaposition of the material it
had to deal with, consisting almost exclusively of the remains of older art,
here arranged and harmonised, with effects, both as regards colour and form, so
delicate as to seem really derivative from some finer intelligence in these
matters than lay within the resources of the ancient world. It was the old way
of true Renaissance being indeed the way of nature with her roses, the divine
way with the body of man, perhaps with his soul conceiving the new organism by
no sudden and abrupt creation, but rather by the action of a new I principle
upon elements, all of which had in truth already lived and died many times. The
fragments of older architecture, the mosaics, the spiral columns, the precious
corner-stones of immemorial building, had put on, by such juxtaposition, a new
and singular expressiveness, an air of grave thought, of an intellectual
purpose, in itself, aesthetically, very seductive. Lastly, herb and tree had
taken possession, spreading their seed-bells and light branches, just astir in
the trembling air, above the ancient garden-wall, against the wide realms of
sunset. And from the first they could hear singing, the singing of children
mainly, it would seem, and of a new kind ; so novel indeed in its effect, as to
bring suddenly to the recollection of MARIO, FLAVIANO's early essays towards a
new world of poetic sound. It was the expression not altogether of mirth, yet
of some wonderful sort of happiness the blithe self-expansion of a joyful soul
in people upon whom some all-subduing experience had wrought heroically, and
who still remembered, on this bland afternoon, the hour of a great deliverance.
His old native susceptibility to the spirit, the special sympathies, of places,
above all, to any hieratic or religious significance they might have, was at
its liveliest, as Marius, still encompassed by that peculiar singing, and still
amid the evidences of a grave discretion all around him, passed into the house.
That intelligent seriousness about life, the absence of which had ever seemed
to remove those who lacked it into some strange species wholly alien from
himself, accumulating all the lessons of his experience since those first days
at White-nights, was as it were translated here, as if in designed congruity
with his favourite precepts of the power of physical vision, into an actual
picture. If the true value of souls is in proportion to what they can admire,
Marius was just then an acceptable soul. As he passed through the various
chambers, great and small, one dominant thought increased upon him, the thought
of chaste women and their children of all the various affections of family life
under its most natural conditions, yet developed, as if in devout imitation of
some sublime new type of it, into large controlling passions. There reigned
throughout, an order and purity, an orderly disposition, as if by way of making
ready for some gracious spousals. The place itself was like a bride adorned for
her husband ; and its singular cheerfulness, the abundant light everywhere, the
sense of peaceful industry, of which he received a deep impression though
without precisely reckoning wherein it resided, as he moved on rapidly, were in
forcible contrast just at first to the place to which he was next conducted by
Cornelius still with a sort of eager, hurried, halftroubled reluctance, and as
if he forbore the explanation which might well be looked for by his companion.
An old flower-garden in the rear of the house, set here and there with a
venerable olive-tree a picture in pensive shade and fiery blossom, as
transparent, under that afternoon light, as the old miniature-painters' work on
the walls of the chambers within was bounded towards the west by a low,
grass-grown hill. A narrow opening cut in its steep side, like a solid
blackness there, admitted Marius and his gleaming leader into a hollow cavern
or crypt, neither more nor less in fact than the family burialplace of the
Cecilii, to whom this residence belonged, brought thus, after an arrangement
then becoming not unusual, into immediate connexion with the abode of the living,
in bold assertion of that instinct of family life, which the sanction of the
Holy Family was, hereafter, more and more to reinforce. Here, in truth, was the
centre of the peculiar religious expressiveness, of the sanctity, of the entire
scene. That "any person may, at his own election, constitute the place
which belongs to him a religious place, by the carrying of his dead into
it": had been a maxim of old Roman law, which it was reserved for the
early Christian societies, like that established here by the piety of a wealthy
Roman matron, to realise in all its consequences. Yet this was certainly unlike
any cemetery Marius had ever before seen ; most obviously in this, that these
people had returned to the older fashion of disposing of their dead by burial
instead of burning. Originally a family sepulchre, it was growing to a vast
necropolis^ a whole township of the deceased, by means of some free expansion
of the family interest beyond its amplest natural limits. That air of venerable
beauty which characterised the house and its precincts above, was maintained
also here. It was certainly with a great outlay of labour that these long,
apparently endless, yet elaborately designed galleries, were increasing so
rapidly, with their layers of beds or berths, one above another, cut, on either
side the pathway, in the porous tufa^ through which all the moisture filters
downwards, leaving the parts above dry and wholesome. All alike were carefully
closed, and with all the delicate costliness at command ; some with simple
tiles of baked clay, many with slabs of marble, enriched by fair inscriptions :
marble taken, in some cases, from older pagan tombs the inscription sometimes a
palimpsest^ the new epitaph being woven into the faded letters of an earlier
one. As in an ordinary Roman cemetery, an abundance of utensils for the worship
or com memoration of the departed was disposed around incense, lights, flowers,
their flame or their freshness being relieved to the utmost by contrast with
the coal-like blackness of the soil itself, a volcanic sandstone, cinder of
burntout fires. Would they ever kindle again ? possess, transform, the place ?
Turning to an ashen pallor where, at regular intervals, an air-hole or luminare
let in a hard beam of clear but sunless light, with the heavy sleepers, row
upon row within, leaving a passage so narrow that only one visitor at a time
could move along, cheek to cheek with them, the high walls seemed to shut one
in into the great company of the dead. Only the long straight pathway lay before
him ; opening, however, here and there, into a small chamber, around a broad,
table-like coffin or " altar-tomb," adorned even more profusely than
the rest as if for some anniversary observance. Clearly, these people,
concurring in this with the special sympathies of Marius himself, had adopted
the practice of burial from some peculiar feeling of hope they entertained
concerning the body ; a feeling which, in no irreverent curiosity, he would
fain have penetrated. The complete and irreparable disappearance of the dead in
the funeral fire, so crushing to the spirits, as he for one had found it, had
long since induced in him a preference for that other mode of settlement to the
last sleep, as having something about it more homelike and hopeful, at least in
outward seeming. But whence the strange confidence that these "handfuls of
white dust" would hereafter recompose themselves once more into exulting
human creatures ? By what heavenly alchemy, what reviving dew from above, such
as is certainly never again to reach the dead violets ? Januarius, Agapetus
Felicitas ; Martyrs !refresh, I pray you, the soul of CECILIO, of CORNELIO
! said an inscription, one of many, scratched, like a passing sigh, when it was
still fresh in the mortar that had closed up the prison-door. All critical
estimate of this bold hope, as sincere apparently as it was audacious in its
claim, being set aside, here at least, carried further than ever before, was
that pious, systematic commemoration of the dead, which, in its chivalrous
refusal to forget or finally desert the helpless, had ever counted with Marius
as the central exponent or symbol of all natural duty. The stern soul of the
excellent Jonathan Edwards, applying the faulty theology of John Calvin,
afforded him, we know, the vision of infants not a span long, on the floor of
hell. Every visitor to the Catacombs must have observed, in a very different
theological connexion, the numerous children's graves there beds of infants,
but a span long indeed, lowly "prisoners of hope," on these sacred
floors. It was with great curiosity, certainly, that Marius considered them,
decked in some instances with the favourite toys of their tiny occupants
toy-soldiers, little chariot-wheels, the entire paraphernalia of a baby-house ;
and when he saw afterwards the living children, who sang and were busy above
sang their psalm Laudate Pueri Dominumf their very faces caught for him a sort
of quaint unreality from the memory of those others, the children of the
Catacombs, but a little way below them. Here and there, mingling with the
record of merely natural decease, and sometimes even at these children's
graves, were the signs of violent death or " martyrdom," proofs that
some " had loved not their lives unto the death " in the little red
phial of blood, the palm-branch, the red flowers for their heavenly "
birthday." About one sepulchre in particular, distinguished in this way,
and devoutly arrayed for what, by a bold paradox, was thus treated as,
natalitia a birthday, the peculiar arrangements of the whole place visibly
centered. And it was with a singular novelty of feeling, like the dawning of a
fresh order of experiences upon him, that, standing beside those mournful
relics, snatched in haste from the common place of execution not many years
before, Marius became, as by some gleam of foresight, aware of the whole force
of evidence for a certain strange, new hope, defining in its turn some new and
weighty motive of action, which lay in deaths so tragic for the "
Christian superstition." Something of them he had heard indeed already.
They had seemed to him but one savagery the more, savagery self- provoked, in a
cruel and stupid world. And yet these poignant memorials seemed also to draw
him onwards to-day, as if towards an image of some still more pathetic
suffering, in the remote background. Yes ! the interest, the expression, of the
entire neighbourhood was instinct with it, as with the savour of some priceless
incense. Penetrating the whole atmosphere, touching everything around with its
peculiar sentiment, it seemed to make all this visible mortality, death's very
self Ah ! lovelier than any fable of old mythology had ever thought to render
it, in the utmost limits i of fantasy ; and this, in simple candour of feeling
about a supposed fact. Peace! Pax! Pax tecuml the word, the thought was put
forth everywhere, with images of hope, snatched sometimes from that jaded pagan
world which had really afforded men so little of it from first to last ; the
various consoling images it had thrown off, of succour, of regeneration, of
escape from the grave Hercules wrestling with Death for possession of Alcestis,
Orpheus taming the wild beasts, the Shepherd with his sheep, the Shepherd
carrying the sick lamb upon his shoulders. Yet these imageries after all, it
must be confessed, formed but a slight contribution to the dominant effect of
tranquil hope there a kind of heroic cheerfulness and grateful ex- i pansion of
heart, as with the sense, again, of some real deliverance, which seemed to
deepen the longer one lingered through these strange and awful passages. A
figure, partly pagan in character, yet most frequently repeated of all these
visible parables the figure of one just escaped from the sea, still clinging as
for life to the shore in surprised joy, together with the inscription beneath
it, seemed best to express the prevailing sentiment of the place. And it was
just as he had puzzled out this inscription / went down to the bottom of the
mountains. The earth with her bars was about me for ever : Yet hast Thou brought
up my life from corruption ! that with no feeling of suddenness or change
Marius found himself emerging again, like a later mystic traveller through
similar dark places " quieted by hope," into the daylight. They were
still within the precincts of the house, still in possession of that wonderful
singing, although almost in the open country, with a great view of the Campagna
before them, and the hills beyond. The orchard or meadow, through which their
path lay, was already gray with twilight, though the western sky, where the
greater stars were visible, was still afloat in crimson splendour. The colour
of all earthly things seemed repressed by the contrast, yet with a sense of
great richness lingering in their shadows. At that moment the voice of the
singers, a " voice of joy and health," concentrated itself with
solemn antistrophic movement, into an evening, or " candle " hymn.
" Hail ! Heavenly Light, from his pure glory poured, Who is the Almighty
Father, heavenly, blest : Worthiest art Thou, at all times to be sung With
undefiled tongue." It was like the evening itself made audible, its hopes
and fears, with the stars shining in the midst of it. Half above, half below
the level white mist, dividing the light from the darkness, came now the
mistress of this place, the wealthy Roman matron, left early a widow a,i few
years before, by CECILIO " Confessor and [ Saint." With a certain
antique severity in the I gathering of the long mantle, and with coif or veil
folded decorously below the chin, " gray within gray," to the mind of
Marius her temperate beauty brought reminiscences of the serious and virile
character of the best female statuary of Greece. Quite foreign, however, to any
Greek statuary was the expression of pathetic care, with which she carried a
little child at rest in her arms. Another, a year or two older, walked beside,
the fingers of one hand within her girdle. She paused for a moment with a
greeting for Cornelius. That visionary scene was the close, the fitting close,
of the afternoon's strange experiences. A few minutes later, passing forward on
his way along the public road, he could have fancied it a dream. The house of
Cecilia grouped itself beside that other curious house he had lately visited at
Tusculum. And what a contrast was presented by the former, in its suggestions
of hopeful industry, of immaculate cleanness, of responsive affection ! all
alike determined by that transporting discovery of some fact, or series of
facts, in which the old puzzle of life had found its solution. In truth, one of
his most characteristic and constant traits had ever been a certain longing for
escape for some sudden, relieving interchange, across the very spaces of life,
it might be, along which he had lingered most pleasantly for a lifting, from
time to time, of the actual horizon. It was like the necessity under which the
painter finds himself, to set a window or open doorway in the background of his
picture ; or like a sick man's longing for northern coolness, and the
whispering willow-trees, amid the breathless evergreen forests of the south. To
some such effect had this visit occurred to him, and through so slight an
accident. Rome and Roman life, just then, were come to seem like some stifling
forest of bronze -work, transformed, as if by malign enchantment, out of the
generations of living trees, yet with roots in a deep, down-trodden soil of
poignant human susceptibilities. In the midst of its suffocation, that old
longing for escape had been satisfied by this vision of the church in Cecilia's
house, as never before. It was still, indeed, according to the unchangeable law
of his temperament, to the eye, to the visual faculty of mind, that those
experiences appealed the peaceful light and shade, the boys whose very faces
seemed to sing, the virginal beauty of the mother and her children. But, in his
case, what was thus visible constituted a moral or spiritual influence, of a
somewhat exigent and controlling character, added anew to life, a new element
therein, with which, consistently with his own chosen maxim, he must make
terms. The thirst for every kind of experience, encouraged by a philosophy
which taught that nothing was intrinsically great or small, good or evil, had
ever been at strife in him with a hieratic refinement, in which the boy -priest
survived, prompting always the selection of what was perfect of its kind, with
subsequent loyal adherence of his soul thereto. This had carried him along in a
continuous communion with ideals, certainly realised in part, either in the
conditions of his own being, or in the actual company about him, above all, in
Cornelius. Surely, in this strange new society he had touched upon for the
first time to-day in this strange family, like "a garden enclosed "
was the fulfilment of all trie preferences, the judgments, of that
half-understood friend, which of late years had been his protection so often
amid the perplexities of life. Here, it might be, was, if not the cure, yet the
solace or anodyne of his great sorrows of that constitutional sorrowfulness, not
peculiar to himself perhaps, but which had made his life certainly like one
long disease of the spirit. Merciful intention made itself known remedially
here, in the mere contact of the air, like a soft touch upon aching flesh. On
the other hand, he was aware that new responsibilities also might be awakened
new and untried responsibilities a demand for something from him in return.
Might this new vision, like the malignant beauty of pagan Medusa, be exclusive
of any admiring gaze upon anything but itself? At least he suspected that,
after the beholding of it, he could never again be altogether as he had been
before. Faithful to the spirit of his early Epicurean philosophy and the
impulse to surrender himself, in perfectly liberal inquiry about it, to
anything that, as a matter of fact, attracted or impressed him strongly, Marius
informed himself with much pains concerning the church in Cecilia's house ;
inclining at first to explain the peculiarities of that place by the
establishment there of the schola or common hall of one of those burialguilds,
which then covered so much of the unofficial, and, as it might be called,
subterranean enterprise of Roman society. And what he found, thus looking,
literally, for the dead among the living, was the vision of a natural, a scrupulously
natural, love, transforming, by some new gift of insight into the truth of
human relationships, and under the urgency of some new motive by him so far
unfathomable, all the conditions of life. He saw, in all its primitive
freshness and amid the lively facts of its! actual coming into the world, as a
reality of experience, that regenerate type of humanity, which, centuries
later, Giotto and his successors, down to the best and purest days of the young
Raphael, working under conditions very friendly to the imagination, were to
conceive as an artistic ideal. He felt there, felt amid the stirring of some
wonderful new hope within himself, the genius, the unique power of
Christianity; in exercise then, as it has been exercised ever since, in spite
of many hindrances, and under the most inopportune circumstances. Chastity, as
he seemed to understand the chastity of men and women, amid all the conditions,
and with the results, proper to such chastity, is the most beautiful thing in
the world and the truest conservation of that creative energy by which men and
women were first brought into it. The nature of the family, for which the
better genius of old Rome itself had sincerely cared, of the family and its
appropriate affections all that love of one's kindred by which obviously one
does triumph in some degree over death had never been so felt before. Here,
surely! in its genial warmth, its jealous exclusion of all that was opposed to
it, to its own immaculate naturalness, in the hedge set around the sacred thing
on every side, this development of the family did but carry forward, and give
effect to, the purposes, the kindness, of nature itself, friendly to man. As if
by way of a due recognition of some immeasurable divine condescension manifest
in a certain historic fact, its influence was felt more especially at those
points which demanded some sacrifice of one's self, for the weak, for the aged,
for little children, and even for the dead. And % then, for its constant
outward token, its significant manner or index, it issued in a certain debonair
grace, and a certain mystic attractiveness, a courtesy, which made Marius doubt
whether that famed Greek " blitheness," or gaiety, or grace, in the
handling of life, had been, after all, an unrivalled success. Contrasting with
the incurable insipidity even of what was most exquisite in the higher Roman
life, of what was still truest to the primitive soul of goodness amid its evil,
the new creation he now looked on as it were a picture beyond the craft of any
master of old pagan beauty had indeed all the appropriate freshness of a "
bride adorned for her husband. Things new and old seemed to be coming as if out
of some goodly treasure-house, the brain full of science, the heart rich with
various sentiment, possessing withal this surprising healthfulness, this
reality of heart. You would hardly believe," writes Pliny to his own wife
! "what a longing for you possesses me. Habit that we have not been used
to be apart adds herein to the primary force of affection. It is this keeps me
awake at night fancying I see you beside me. That is why my feet take me
unconsciously to your sitting-room at those hours when I was wont to visit you
there. That is why I turn from the door of the empty chamber, sad and
ill-at-ease, like an excluded lover." There, is a real idyll from that
family life, the protection of which had been the motive of so large a part of
the religion of the Romans, still surviving among them ; as it survived also in
Aurelius, his disposition and aims, and, spite of slanderous tongues, in the
attained sweetness of his interior life. What Marius had been permitted to see
was a realisation of such life higher still : and with Yes ! with a more
effective sanction and motive than it had ever possessed before, in that fact,
or series of facts, to be ascertained by those who would. The central glory of
the reign of the Antonines was that society had attained in it, though very
imperfectly, and for the most part by cumbrous effort of law, many of those
ends to which Christianity went straight, with the sufficiency, the success, of
a direct and appropriate instinct. Pagan Rome, too, had its touching
charity-sermons on occasions of great public distress ; its charity-children in
long file, in memory of the elder empress Faustina ; its prototype, under
patronage of Aesculapius, of the modern hospital for the sick on the island of
Saint Bartholomew. But what pagan charity was doing tardily, and as if with the
painful calculation of old age, the church was doing, almost without thinking
about it, with all the liberal enterprise of youth, because it was her very
being thus to do. " You fail to realise your own good intentions,"
she seems to say, to pagan virtue, pagan kindness. She identified herself with
those intentions and advanced them with an unparalleled freedom and largeness.
The gentle Seneca would have reverent burial provided even for the dead body of
a criminal. Yet when a certain woman collected for interment the insulted
remains of Nero, the pagan world surmised that she must be a Christian: only a
Christian would have been likely to conceive so chivalrous a devotion towards
mere wretchedness. "We refuse to be witnesses even of a homicide commanded
by the law," boasts the dainty consciena of a Christian apologist, "
we take no part ii your cruel sports nor in the spectacles of the amphitheatre,
and we hold that to witness a murder is the same thing as to commit one."
And there was another duty almost forgotten, the sense of which Rousseau
brought back to the degenerate society of a later age. In an impassioned
discourse the sophist Favorinus counsels mothers to suckle their own infants ;
and there are Roman epitaphs erected to mothers, which gratefully record this
proof of natural affection as a thing then unusual. In this matter too, what a
sanction, what a provocative to natural duty, lay in that image discovered to
Augustus by the Tiburtine Sibyl, amid the aurora of a new age, the image of the
Divine Mother and the Child, just then rising upon the world like the dawn!
Christian belief, again, had presented itself as a great inspirer of chastity.
Chastity, in turn, realised in the whole scope of its conditions, fortified
that rehabilitation of peaceful labour, after the mind, the pattern, of the
workman of Galilee, which was another of the natural instincts of the catholic
church, as being indeed the long-desired initiator of a religion of
cheerfulness, as a true lover of the industry so to term it the labour, the
creation, of God. And this severe yet genial assertion of the ideal of woman,
of the family, of industry, of man's work in life, so close to the truth of
nature, was also, in that charmed hour of the minor " Peace of the
church," realised as an influence tending to beauty, to the adornment of
life and the world. The sword in the world, the right eye plucked out, the
right hand cut off*, the spirit of reproach which those images express, and of
which monasticism is the fulfilment, reflect one side only of the nature of the
divine missionary of the New Testament. Opposed to, yet blent with, this
ascetic or militant character, is the function of the Good Shepherd, serene,
blithe and debonair, beyond the gentlest shepherd of Greek mythology; of a king
under whom the beatific vision is realised of a reign of peace-peace of heart
among men. Such aspect of the divine character of Christ, rightly understood,
is indeed the final consummation of that bold and brilliant hopefulness in
man's nature, which had sustained him so far through his immense labours, his
immense sorrows, and of which pagan gaiety in the handling of life, is but a
minor achievement. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, of those two contrasted
aspects of its Founder, have, in different ages and under the urgency of
different human needs, been at work also in the Christian Church. Certainly, in
that brief " Peace of the church " under the Antonines, the spirit of
a pastoral security and happiness seems to have been largely expanded. There,
in the early church of ROMA, was to be seen, and on sufficiently reasonable
grounds, that satisfaction and serenity on a dispassionate survey of the facts
of life, which all hearts had desired, though for the most part in vain,
contrasting itself for Marius, in particular, very forcibly, with the imperial
philosopher's so heavy burden of unrelieved melancholy. It was Christianity in
its humanity, or even its humanism, in its generous hopes for man, its common
sense and alacrity of cheerful service, its sympathy with all creatures, its
appreciation of beauty and daylight. The angel of righteousness," says the
Shepherd of Hermas, the most characteristic religious book of that age, its
Pilgrim's Progress [cited by H. P. GRICE] "the angel of righteousness is
modest and delicate and meek and quiet. Take from thyself grief, for (as Hamlet
will one day discover) 'tis the sister of doubt and ill-temper. Grief is more
evil than any other spirit of evil, and is most dreadful to the servants of
God, and beyond all spirits destroyeth man. For, as when good news is come to
one in grief, straightway he forgetteth his former grief, and no longer
attendeth to anything except the good news which he hath heard, so do ye, also
! having received a renewal of your soul through the beholding of these good
things. Put on therefore gladness that hath always favour before God, and is
acceptable unto Him, and delight thyself in it ; for every man that is glad
doeth the things that are good, and thinketh good thoughts, despising
grief." Such were the commonplaces of this new people, among whom so much
of what Marius had valued most in the old world seemed to be under renewal and
further promotion. Some transforming spirit was at work to harmonise contrasts,
to deepen expression a spirit which, in its dealing with the elements of
ancient life, was guided by a wonderful tact of selection, exclusion,
juxtaposition, begetting thereby a unique effect of freshness, a grave yet
wholesome beauty, because the world of sense, the whole outward world was
understood to set forth the veritable unction and royalty of a certain priesthood
and kingship of the soul within, among the prerogatives of which was a
delightful sense of freedom. The reader may think perhaps, that Marius, who,
Epicurean as he was, had his visionary aptitudes, by an inversion of one of
Plato's peculiarities with which he was of course familiar, must have
descended, \>j foresight, upon a later age than his own, and anticipated
Christian poetry and art as they came to be under the influence of Saint
Francis of Assisi. But if he dreamed on one of those nights of the beautiful
house of Cecilia, its lights and flowers, of Cecilia herself moving among the
lilies, with an enhanced grace as happens sometimes in healthy dreams, it was
indeed hardly an anticipation. He had lighted, by one of the peculiar in- ) tellectual
good-fortunes of his life, upon a period when, even more than in the days of
austere ascesis which had preceded and were to follow it, the church was true
for a moment, truer perhaps than she would ever be again, to that element of
profound serenity in the soul of her Founder, which reflected the eternal
goodwill of God to man, " in whom," according to the oldest version
of the angelic message, " He is wellpleased." For what Christianity
did many centuries afterwards in the way of informing an art, a poetry, of
graver and higher beauty, we may think, than that of Greek art and poetry at
their best, was in truth conformable to the original tendency of its genius.
The genuine capacity of the catholic church in this direction, discoverable
from the first in the New Testament, was also really at work, in that earlier
" Peace," under the Antonines the minor "Peace of the
church," as we might call it, in distinction from the final " Peace
of the church," commonly so called, under Constantine. Saint Francis, with
his following in the sphere of poetry and of the arts the voice of Dante, the
hand of Giotto giving visible feature and colour, and a palpable place among
men, to the regenerate race, did but re-establish a continuity, only suspended
in part by those troublous intervening centuries the "dark ages,"
properly thus named with the gracious spirit of the primitive church, as
manifested in that first early springtide of her success. The greater "
Peace " of Constantine, on the other hand, in many ways, does but establish
the exclusiveness, the puritanism, the ascetic gloom which, in the period
between Aurelius and the first Christian emperor, characterised a church under
misunderstanding or oppression, driven back, in a world of tasteless
controversy, inwards upon herself. Already, in the reign of ANTONINO PIO, the
time was gone by when men became Christians under some sudden and overpowering
impression, and with all the disturbing results of such a crisis. At this
period the larger number, perhaps, had been born Christians, had been ever with
peaceful hearts in their " Father's house." That earlier belief in
the speedy coming of judgment and of the end of the world, with the
consequences it so naturally involved in the temper of men's minds, was dying
out. Every day the contrast between the church and the world was becoming less
pronounced. And now also, as the church rested awhile from opposition, that
rapid self-development outward from within, proper to times of peace, was in
progress. Antoninus Pius, it might seem, more truly even than Marcus Aurelius
himself, was of that group of pagan saints for whom Dante, like Augustine, has
provided in his scheme of the house with many mansions. A sincere old Roman
piety had urged his fortunately constituted nature to no mistakes, no offences
against humanity. And of his entire freedom from guile one reward had been this
singular happiness, that under his rule there was no shedding of Christian
blood. To him belonged that half-humorous placidity of soul, of a kind illustrated
later very effectively by Montaigne, which, starting with an instinct of mere
fairness towards human nature and the world, seems at last actually to qualify
its possessor to be almost the friend of the people of Christ. Amiable, in its
own nature, and full of a reasonable gaiety, Christianity has often had its
advantage of characters such as that. The geniality of Antoninus Pius, like the
geniality of the earth itself, had permitted the church, as being in truth no
alien from that old mother earth, to expand and thrive for a season as by
natural process. And that charmed period under the Antonines, extending to the
later years of the reign of ANTONINO (si veda) (beautiful, brief, chapter of
ecclesiastical history !), contains, as one of its motives of interest, the
earliest development of Christian ritual under the presidence of the church of
Rome. Again as in one of those mystical, quaint visions of the Shepherd of
Hernias, "the aged woman was become by degrees more and more youthful. And
in the third vision she was quite young, and radiant with beauty : only her
hair was that of an aged woman. And at the last she was joyous, and seated upon
a throne seated upon a throne, because her position is a strong one." The
subterranean worship of the church belonged properly to those years of her
early history in which it was illegal for her to worship at all. But, hiding
herself for awhile as conflict grew violent, she resumed, when there was felt
to be no more than ordinary risk, her natural freedom. And the kind of outward
prosperity she was enjoying in those moments of her first " Peace,"
her modes of worship now blossoming freely above-ground, was re-inforced by the
decision at this point of a crisis in her internal history. In the history of
the church, as throughout the moral history of mankind, there are two distinct
ideals, either of which it is possible to maintain two conceptions, under one
or the other of which we may represent to ourselves men's efforts towards a
better life corresponding to those two contrasted aspects, noted above, as
discernible in the picture afforded by the New Testament itself of the
character of Christ. The ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as
essentially a sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another,
that it may live the more completely in what survives of it ; while the ideal
of culture represents it as a harmonious development of all the parts of human
nature, in just proportion to each other. It was to the latter order of ideas
that the church, and' especially the church of Rome in the age of the
Antonines, freely lent herself. In that earlier " Peace " she had set
up for herself the ideal of spiritual development, under the guidance of an
instinct by which, in those serene moments, she was absolutely true to the
peaceful soul of her Founder. " Goodwill to men," she said, " in
whom God Himself is well -pleased ! " For a little while, at least, there
was no forced opposition between the soul and the body, the world and the
spirit, and the grace of graciousness itself was pre-eminently with the people
of Christ. Tact, good sense, ever the note of a true orthodoxy, the merciful
compromises of the church, indicative of her imperial vocation in regard to all
the varieties of human kind, with a universality of which the old Roman
pastorship she was superseding is but a prototype, was already become
conspicuous, in spite of a discredited, irritating, vindictive society, all
around her. Against that divine urbanity and moderation the old error of
Montanus we read of dimly, was a fanatical revolt sour, falsely anti-mundane,
ever with an air of ascetic affectation, and a bigoted distaste in particular
for all the peculiar graces of womanhood. By it the desire to please was
understood to come of the author of evil. In this interval of quietness, it was
perhaps inevitable, by the law of reaction, that some such extravagances of the
religious temper should arise. But again the church of Rome, now becoming every
day more and more completely the capital of the Christian world, checked the
nascent Montanism, or puritanism of the moment, vindicating for all Christian
people a cheerful liberty of heart, against many a narrow group of sectaries,
all alike, in their different ways, accusers of the genial creation of God.
With her full, fresh faith in the Evange/e in a veritable regeneration of the
earth and the body, in the dignity of man's entire personal being for a season,
at least, at that critical period in the development of Christianity, she was
for reason, for common sense, for fairness to human nature, and generally for
what may be called the naturalness of Christianity. As also for its comely
order: she would be "brought to her king in raiment of needlework."
It was by the bishops of Rome, diligently transforming themselves, in the true
catholic sense, into universal pastors, that the path of what we must call
humanism was thus defined. And then, in this hour of expansion, as if now at
last the catholic church might venture to show her outward lineaments as they
really were, worship "the beauty of holiness," nay! the elegance of
sanctity was developed, with a bold and confident gladness, the like of which
has hardly been the ideal of worship in any later age. The tables in fact were
turned : the prize of a cheerful temper on a candid survey of life was no
longer with the pagan world. The aesthetic charm of the catholic church, her
evocative power over all that is eloquent and expressive in the better mind of
man, her outward comeliness, her dignifying convictions about human nature :
all this, as abundantly realised centuries later by ALIGHIERI (s veda) and
Giotto, by the great medieval church-builders, by the great ritualists like
Saint Gregory, and the masters of sacred music in the middle age we may see
already, in dim anticipation, in those charmed moments towards the end of the
second century. Dissipated or turned aside, partly through the fatal mistake of
Marcus Aurelius himself, for a brief space of time we may discern that
influence clearly predominant there. What might seem harsh as dogma was already
justifying itself as worship ; according to the sound rule : Lex orandi^ lex
credendi Our Creeds are but the brief abstract of our prayer and song. The
wonderful liturgical spirit of the church, her wholly unparalleled genius for
worship, being thus awake, she was rapidly re-organising both pagan and Jewish
elements of ritual, for the expanding therein of her own new heart of devotion.
Like the institutions of monasticism, like the Gothic style of architecture,
the ritual system of the church, as we see it in historic retrospect, ranks as
one of the great, conjoint, and (so to term them) necessary, products of human
mind. Destined for ages to come, to direct with so deep a fascination men's
religious instincts, it was then already recognisable as a new and precious
fact in the sum of things. What has been on the whole the method of the church,
as " a power of sweetness and patience, in dealing with matters like pagan
art, pagan literature was even then manifest ; and has the character of the
moderation, the divine moderation of Christ himself. It was only among the
ignorant, indeed, only in the " villages," that Christianity, even in
conscious triumph over paganism, was really betrayed into iconoclasm. In the
final " Peace " of the Church under COSTANTINO, while there was
plenty of destructive fanaticism in the country, the revolution was
accomplished in the larger towns, in a manner more orderly and discreet in the
Roman manner. The faithful were bent less on the destruction of the old pagan
temples than on their conversion to a new and higher use ; and, with much
beautiful furniture ready to hand, they became Christian sanctuaries. Already,
in accordance with such maturer wisdom, the church of the " Minor Peace
" had adopted many of the graces of pagan feeling and pagan custom ; as
being indeed a living creature, taking up, transforming, accommodating still
more closely to the human heart what of right belonged to it. In this way an
obscure synagogue was expanded into the catholic church. Gathering, from a
richer and more varied field of sound than had remained for him, those old
Roman harmonies, some notes of which Gregory the Great, centuries later, and
after generations of interrupted development, formed into the Gregorian music,
she was already, as we have heard, the house of song of a wonderful new music
and poesy. As if in anticipation of the sixteenth century, the church was
becoming! "humanistic," in an earlier, and unimpeachable/
Renaissance. Singing there had been in abund-j ance from the first ; though
often it dared only be of the heart. And it burst forth, when it might, into
the beginnings of a true ecclesiastical music; the Jewish psalter, inherited
from the synagogue, turning now, gradually, from Greek into Latin BROKEN LATIN,
into ITALIANO, as the ritual use of the rich, fresh, expressive vernacular
superseded the earlier authorised language of the Church. Through certain
surviving remnants of Greek in the later Latin liturgies, we may still discern
a highly interesting intermediate phase of ritual development, when the Greek
and the Latin were in combination; the poor, surely ! the poor and the children
of that liberal Roman church responding already in their own " vulgar
tongue," to an office said in the original, liturgical Greek. That hymn
sung in the early morning, of which Pliny had heard, was kindling into the
service of the Mass. The Mass, indeed, would appear to have been said
continuously from the Apostolic age. Its details, as one by one they become
visible in later history, have already the character of what is ancient and
venerable. "We are very old, and ye are young ! " they seem to
protest, to those who fail to understand them. Ritual, in fact, like all other
elements of religion, must grow and cannot be made grow by the same law of
development which prevails everywhere else, in the moral as in the physical
world. As regards this special phase of the religious life, however, such
development seems to have been unusually rapid in the subterranean age which
preceded Constantine ; and in the very first days j of the final triumph of the
church the Mass emerges to general view already substantially complete. "
Wisdom " was dealing, as with the dust of creeds and philosophies, so also
with the dust of outworn religious usage, like the very spirit of life itself,
organising soul and body out of the lime and clay of the earth. In a generous
eclecticism, within the bounds of her liberty, and as by some providential
power within her, she gathers and serviceably adopts, as in other matters so in
ritual, one thing here, another there, from various sources Gnostic, Jewish,
Pagan to adorn and beautify the greatest act of worship the world has seen. It
was thus the liturgy of the church came to be full of consolations for the
human soul, and destined, surely ! one day, under the sanction of so many ages
of human experience, to take exclusive possession of the religious
consciousness. TANTUM
ERGO SACRAMENTUM VENEREMUR CERNUI: ET ANTIQUUM DOCUMENTUM NOVO CEDAT RITUI. Wisdom
hath builded herselt a house : she hath mingled hex wine : she hath also
prepared for herself a table." The more highly favoured ages of
imaginative art present instances of the summing up of an entire world of
complex associations under some single form, like the Zeus of Olympia, or the
series of frescoes which commemorate The Acts of Saint Francis, at Assisi, or
like the play of Hamlet or Faust. It was not in an image, or series of images,
yet still in a sort of dramatic action, and with the unity of a single appeal
to eye and ear, that Marius about this time found all his new impressions set
forth, regarding what he had already recognised, intellectually, as for him at
least the most beautiful thing in the world. To understand the influence upon
him of what follows the reader must remember that it was an experience which
came amid a deep sense of vacuity in life. The fairest products of the earth
seemed to be dropping to pieces, as if in men's very hands, around him. How
real was their sorrow, and his ! " His observation of life " had come
to be like the constant telling of a sorrowful rosary, day after day ; till, as
if taking infection from the cloudy sorrow of the mind, the eye also, the very
senses, were grown faint and sick. And now it happened as with the actual
morning on which he found himself a spectator of this new thing. The long
winter had been a season of unvarying sullenness. At last, on this day he awoke
with a sharp flash of lightning in the earliest twilight : in a little while
the heavy rain had filtered the air: the clear light was abroad ; and, as
though the spring had set in with a sudden leap in the heart of things, the
whole scene around him lay like some untarnished picture beneath a sky of
delicate blue. Under the spell of his late depression, Marius had suddenly
determined to leave Rome for a while. But desiring first to advertise CORNELIO
of his movements, and failing to find him in his lodgings, he had ventured,
still early in the day, to seek him in the Cecilian villa. Passing through its
silent and empty court-yard he loitered for a moment, to admire. Under the
clear but immature light of winter morning after a storm, all the details of
form and colour in the old marbles were distinctly visible, and with a kind of
severity or sadness so it struck him amid their beauty : in them, and in all
other details of the scene the cypresses, the bunches of pale daffodils in the
grass, the curves of the purple hills of Tusculum, with the drifts of virgin
snow still lying in their hollows. The little open door, through which he
passed from the court-yard, admitted him into what was plainly the vast
Lararium^ or domestic sanctuary, of the Cecilian family, transformed in many
particulars, but still richly decorated, and retaining much of its ancient
furniture in metalwork and costly stone. The peculiar half-light of dawn seemed
to be lingering beyond its hour upon the solemn marble walls ; and here, though
at that moment in absolute silence, a great company of people was assembled. In
that brief period of peace, during which the church emerged for awhile from her
jealouslyguarded subterranean life, the rigour of an earlier rule of exclusion
had been relaxed. And so it came to pass that, on this morning Marius saw for
the first time the wonderful spectacle wonderful, especially, in its evidential
power over himself, over his own thoughts of those who believe. There were
noticeable, among those present, great varieties of rank, of age, of personal
type. The Roman ingenuus^ with the white toga and gold ring, stood side by side
with his slave ; and the air of the whole company was, above all, a grave one,
an air of recollection. Coming thus unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so
entirely united, in a silence so profound, for purposes unknown to him, MARIO
feels for a moment as if he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy.
Yet that could scarcely be, for the peoplehere collected might have figured as
the earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the very face of which
discontent had passed away. Corresponding to the variety of human type there
present, was the various expression of every form of human sorrow assuaged.
What desire, what fulfilment of desire, had wrought so pathetically on the
features of these ranks of aged men and women of humble condition ? Those young
men, bent down so j discreetly on the details of their sacred service, had
faced life and were glad, by some science, or light of knowledge they had, to
which there had certainly been no parallel in the older world. Was some
credible message from beyond " the flaming rampart of the world " a
message of hope, regarding the place of men's souls and theirinterest in the
sum of things already moulding anew their very bodies, and looks, and voices,
now and here ? At least, there was a cleansing and kindling flame at work in
them, which seemed to make everything else Marius had ever known look
comparatively vulgar and mean. There were the children, above all troops of
children reminding him of those pathetic children's graves, like cradles or
garden-beds, he had noticed in his first visit to these places; and they more
than satisfied the odd curiosity he had then conceived about them, wondering in
what quaintly expressive forms they might come forth into the daylight, if
awakened from sleep. Children of the Catacombs, some but "a span
long," with features not so much beautiful as heroic (that world of new,
refining sentiment having set its seal even on phildhood), they retained
certainly no stain or trace of anything subterranean this morning, in the
alacrity of their worship as ready as if they had been at play stretching forth
their hands, crying, chanting in a resonant voice, and with boldly upturned
faces, Christe Eleison ! For the silence silence, amid those lights of early morning
to which Marius had always been constitutionally impressible, as having in them
a certain reproachful austerity was broken suddenly by resounding cries of
Kyrie Eleison ! Christe Eleison! repeated alternately, again and again, until
the bishop, rising from his chair, made sign that this prayer should cease. But
the voices burst out once more presently, in richer and more varied melody,
though still of an antiphonal character ; the men, the women and children, the
deacons, the people, answering one another, somewhat after the manner of a
Greek chorus. But again with what a novelty of poetic accent ; what a genuine
expansion of heart ; what profound intimations for the intellect, as the
meaning of the words grew upon him! Cum grandi affectu et compunctione dicatur
says an ancient eucharistic order ; and certainly, the mystic tone of this
praying and singing was one with the expression of deliverance, of grateful
assurance and sincerity, upon the faces of those assembled. As if some
searching correction, a regeneration of the body by the spirit, \ had begun,
and was already gone a great way, the countenances of men, women, and children
alike had a brightness on them which he could fancy reflected upon himself an
amenity, a mystic amiability and unction, which found its way most readily of
all to the hearts of children themselves. The religious poetry of those Hebrew
psalms Benedixisti Domine terram tuam: Dixit Dominus Domino meo^ sede a dextris
meis was certainly in marvellous accord with the lyrical instinct of his own
character. Those august hymns, he thought, must thereafter ever remain by him
as among the well-tested powers in things to soothe and fortify the soul. One
could never grow tired of them ! In the old pagan worship there had been little
to call the understanding into play. Here, on the other hand, the utterance,
the eloquence, the music of worship conveyed, as Marius readily understood, a
fact or series of facts, for intellectual reception. That became evident, more
especially, in those lessons, or sacred readings, which, like the singing, in
broken vernacular Latin, occurred at certain intervals, amid the silence of the
assembly. There were readings, again with bursts of chanted invocation between
for fuller light on a difficult path, in which many a vagrant voice of human
philosophy, haunting men's minds from of old, recurred with clearer accent than
had ever belonged to it before, as if lifted, above its first intention, into
the harmonies of some supreme system of knowledge or doctrine, at length
complete. And last of all came a narrative which, with a thousand tender
memories, every one appeared to know by heart, displaying, in all the vividness
of a picture for the eye, the mournful figure of him towards whom this whole
act of worship still consistently turned a figure which seemed to have
absorbed, like some rich tincture in his garment, all that was deep-felt and
impassioned in the experiences of the past. It was the anniversary of his birth
as a little child they celebrated to-day. Astiterunt reges terra : so the
Gradual, the " Song of Degrees," proceeded, the young men on the
steps of the altar responding in deep, clear, antiphon or chorus Astiterunt
reges terrae Adversus sanctum puerum tuum, Jesum : Nunc, Domine, da servis tuis
loqui verbum tuum Et signa fieri, per nomen sancti pueri Jesu. And the proper
action of the rite itself, like a half-opened book to be read by the duly
initiated mind took up those suggestions, and carried them forward into the
present, as having reference to a power still efficacious, still after some
mystic sense even now in action among the people there assembled. The entire
office, indeed, with its interchange of lessons, hymns, prayer, silence, was
itself like a single piece j of highly composite, dramatic music ; a "
song j of degrees," rising steadily to a climax. Not- | withstanding the
absence of any central image visible to the eye, the entire ceremonial process,
/ like the place in which it was enacted, was weighty with symbolic
significance, seemed to express a single leading motive. The mystery, if such
in fact it was, centered indeed in the actions of one visible person,
distinguished among the assistants, who stood ranged in semicircle around him,
by the extreme fineness of his white vestments, and the pointed cap with the
golden ornaments upon his head. Nor had Marius ever seen the pontifical
character, as he conceived it sicut unguentum in capite^ descendens in oram
vestimenti so fully realised, as in the expression, the manner and voice, of
this novel pontiff, as he took his seat on the white chair placed for him by
the young men, and received his long staff into his hand, or moved his hands
hands which seemed endowed in very deed with some mysterious power at the
Lavabo, or at the various benedictions, or to bless certain objects on the
table before him, chanting in cadence of a grave sweetness the leading parts of
the rite. What profound unction and mysticity ! The solemn character of the
singing was at its height when he opened his lips. Like some new sort of
rhapsodos, it was for the moment as if he alone possessed the words of the
office, and they flowed anew from some permanent source of inspiration within
him. The table or altar at which he presided, below a canopy on delicate spiral
columns, was in fact the tomb of a youthful " witness," of the family
of the Cecilii, who had shed his blood not many years before, and whose relics
were still in this place. It was for his sake the bishop put his lips so often
to the surface before him ; the regretful memory of that death entwining
itself, though not without certain notes of triumph, as a matter of special
inward significance, throughout a service, which was, before all else, from
first to last, a commemoration of the dead. A sacrifice also, a sacrifice, it
might seem, like the most primitive, the most natural and enduringly
significant of old pagan sacrifices, of the simplest fruits of the earth. And
in connexion with this circumstance again, as in the actual stones of the
building so in the rite itself, what Marius observed was not so much new matter
as a new spirit, moulding, informing, with a new intention, many observances
not witnessed for the first time to-day. Men and women came to the altar
successively, in perfect order, and deposited below the lattice-work 01 pierced
white marble, their baskets of wheat and grapes, incense, oil for the sanctuary
lamps ; bread and wine especially pure wheaten bread, the pure white wine of
the Tusculan vineyards. There was here a veritable consecration, hopeful and
animating, of the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, now in
some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch or see, in the midst of a
jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things, and in strong contrast
to the wise emperor's renunciant and impassive attitude towards them. Certain
portions of that bread and wine were taken into the bishop's hands ; and
thereafter, with an increasing mysticity and effusion the rite proceeded. Still
in a strain of inspired supplication, the antiphonal singing developed, from
this point, into a kind of dialogue between the chief minister and the whole
assisting company SURSUM CORDA! HABEMUS AD DOMINUM. GRATIAS AGAMUS DOMINO DEO
NOSTRO! It might have been thought the business, the duty or service of young
men more particularly, as they stood there in long ranks, and in severe and
simple vesture of the purest white a service in which they would seem to be
flying for refuge, as with their precious, their treacherous and critical youth
in their hands, to oneYes ! one like themselves, who yet claimed their worship,
a worship, above all, in the way of ANTONINO (si veda), in the way of
imitation. Adoramus te Christe^ quia per crucem tuam redemisti mundum ! they
cry together. So deep is the emotion that at moments it seems to Marius as if
some there present apprehend that prayer prevails, that the very object of this
pathetic crying himself draws near. From the first there had been the sense, an
increasing assurance, of one coming : actually with them now, according to the
oftrepeated affirmation or petition, e Dominus vobiscum ! Some at least were
quite sure of it ; and the confidence of this remnant fired the hearts, and
gave meaning to the bold, ecstatic worship, of all the rest about them.
Prompted especially by the suggestions of that mysterious old Jewish psalmody,
so new to him lesson and hymn and catching therewith a portion of the
enthusiasm of those beside him, Marius could discern dimly, behind the solemn
recitation which now followed, at once a narrative and a prayer, the most
touching image truly that had ever come within the scope of his mental or
physical gaze. It was the image of a young man giving up voluntarily, one by
one, for the greatest of ends, the greatest gifts ; actually parting with himself,
above all, with the serenity, the divine serenity, of his own soul ; yet from
the midst of his desolation crying out upon the greatness of his success, as if
foreseeing this very worship. 1 As centre of the supposed facts which for these
people were become so constraining a motive of hopefulness, of activity, that
image seemed to display itself with an overwhelming claim on human gratitude.
What Saint Lewis of France discerned, and found so irresistibly touching,
across the dimness of many centuries, as a painful thing done for love of him
by one he had never seen, was to them almost as a thing of yesterday ; and
their hearts were whole with it. It had the force, among their interests, of an
almost recent event in the career of one whom their fathers' fathers might have
known. From memories so sublime, yet so close at hand, had the narrative
descended in which these acts of worship centered ; though again the names of
some more recently dead were mingled in it. And it seemed as if the very dead
were aware; to be stirring beneath the slabs of the sepulchres which lay so
near, that they might associate themselves to this enthusiasm to this exalted
worship of Jesus. One by one, at last, the faithful approach to receive from
the chief minister morsels of the great, white, wheaten cake, he had taken into
his hands Perducat vos ad vitarn ceternam ! he prays, half-silently, as they
depart again, after 1 Psalm xxii. 22-31. discreet embraces. The Eucharist of
those early days was, even more entirely than at any later or happier time, an
act of thanksgiving ; and while the remnants of the feast are borne away for
the reception of the sick, the sustained gladness of the rite reaches its
highest point in the singing of a hymn : a hymn like the spontaneous product of
two opposed militant companies, contending accordantly together, heightening,
accumulating, their witness, provoking one another's worship, in a kind of
sacred rivalry. Ite ! Missa esf ! cried the young deacons : and MARIO departs
from that strange scene along with the rest. What was it ? Was it this made the
way of Cornelius so pleasant through the world ? As for Marius himself, the
natural soul of worship in him had at last been satisfied as never before. He
felt, as he left that place, that he must hereafter experience often a longing
memory, a kind of thirst, for all this, over again. And it seemed moreover to
define what he must require of the powers, whatsoever they might be, that had
brought him into the world at all, to make him not unhappy in it. In
cheerfulness is the success of our studies, says Pliny studia hilaritate
proveniunt. It was still the habit of MARIO, encouraged by his experience that
sleep is not only a sedative but the best of stimulants, to seize the morning
hours for creation, making profit when he might of the wholesome serenity which
followed a dreamless night. The morning for creation," he would say;
"the afternoon for the perfecting labour of the file ; the evening for
reception the reception of matter from without one, of other men's words and
thoughts matter for our own dreams, or the merely mechanic exercise of the
brain, brooding thereon silently, in its dark chambers." To leave home
early in the day was therefore a rare thing for him. He was induced so to do on
the occasion of a visit to ROMA of the famous writer LUCIANO, whom he had been
bidden to meet. The breakfast over, he walked away with the learned guest,
having offered to be his guide to the lecture-room of a well-known Greek
rhetorician and expositor of the Stoic philosophy, a teacher then much in
fashion among the studious youth of Rome. On reaching the place, however, they
found the doors closed, with a slip of writing attached, which proclaimed
" a holiday " ; and the morning being a fine one, they walked
further, along the Appian Way. Mortality, with which the Queen of Ways in
reality the favourite cemetery of Rome was so closely crowded, in every
imaginable form of sepulchre, from the tiniest baby-house, to the massive
monument out of which the Middle Age would adapt a fortress-tower, might seem,
on a morning like this, to be " smiling through tears." The
flower-stalls just beyond the city gates presented to view an array of posies
and garlands, fresh enough for a wedding. At one and another of them groups of
persons, gravely clad, were making their bargains before starting for some
perhaps distant spot on the highway, to keep a dies rosationis, this being the
time of roses, at the grave of a deceased relation. Here and there, a funeral
procession was slowly on its way, in weird contrast to the gaiety of the hour.
The two companions, of course, read the epitaphs as they strolled along. In
one, reminding them of the poet's Si lacrima prosunt, visis te ostende videri !
a woman prayed that her lost husband might visit her dreams. Their
characteristic note, indeed, was an imploring cry, still to be sought after by
the living. "While I live," such was the promise of a lover to his
dead mistress, " you will receive this homage : after my death, who can tell
? " post mortem nescio. " If ghosts, my sons, do feel anything after
death, my sorrow will be lessened by your frequent coming to me here ! "
" This is a privileged tomb ; to my family and descendants has been
conceded the right of visiting this place as often as they please."
-"This is an eternal habitation ; here lie I ; here I shall lie for
ever." " Reader ! if you doubt that the soul survives, make your
oblation and a prayer for me; and you shall understand ! " The elder of the
two readers, certainly, was little affected by those pathetic suggestions. It
was long ago that after visiting the banks of the Padus, where he had sought in
vain for the poplars (sisters of Phaethon erewhile) whose tears became amber,
he had once for all arranged for himself a view of the world exclusive of all
reference to what might lie beyond its " flaming barriers." And at
the age of sixty he had no misgivings. His elegant and self-complacent but far
fromunamiable scepticism, long since brought to perfection, never failed him. It
surrounded him, as some are surrounded by a magic ring of fine aristocratic
manners, with " a rampart," through which he himself never broke, nor
permitted any thing or person to break upon him. Gay, animated, content with
his old age as it was, the aged student still took a lively interest in
studious youth. Could Marius inform him of any such, now known to him in Rome ?
What did the young men learn, just then? and how? In answer, Marius became
fluent concerning the promise of one young student, the son, as it presently
appeared, of parents of whom Lucian himself knew something: and soon afterwards
the lad was seen coming along briskly a lad with gait and figure well enough
expressive of the sane mind in the healthy body, though a little slim and worn
of feature, and with a pair of eyes expressly designed, it might seem, for fine
glancings at the stars. At the sight of Marius he paused suddenly, and with a
modest blush on recognising his companion, who straightway took with the youth,
so prettily enthusiastic, the freedom of an old friend. In a few moments the
three were seated together, immediately above the fragrant borders of a
rose-farm, on the marble bench of one of the exhedra for the use of
foot-passengers at the roadside, from which they could overlook the grand,
earnest prospect of the Campagna^ and enjoy the air. Fancying that the lad's
plainly written enthusiasm had induced in the elder speaker somewhat more
fervour than was usual with him, Marius listened to the conversation which
follows. Ah ! ERMOTIMO! Hurrying to lecture ! if I may judge by your pace, and
that volume in your hand. You were thinking hard as you came along, moving your
lips and waving your arms. Some fine speech you were pondering, some knotty
question, some viewy doctrine not to be idle for a moment, to be making
progress in philosophy, even on your way to the schools. To-day, however, you
need go no further. We read a notice at the schools that there would be no
lecture. Stay therefore, and talk awhile with us. -With pleasure, Lucian. Yes !
I was ruminating yesterday's conference. One must not lose a moment. Life is
short and art is long ! And it was of the art of medicine, that was first said
a thing so much easier than divine philosophy, to which one can hardly attain
in a lifetime, unless one be ever wakeful, ever on the watch. And here the
hazard is no little one : By the attainment of a true philosophy to attain
happiness ; or, having missed both, to perish, as one of the vulgar herd. The
prize is a great one, Hermotimus ! and you must needs be near it, after these
months of toil, and with that scholarly pallor of yours. Unless, indeed, you
have already laid hold upon it, and kept us in the dark. How could that be,
LUCIANO? Happiness, as ESIODO says, abides very far hence; and the way to it is
long and steep and rough. I see myself still at the beginning of my journey ;
still but at the mountain's foot. I am trying with all my might to get forward.
What I need is a hand, stretched out to help me. And is not the master
sufficient for that ? Could he not, like GIONE in OMERO, let down to you, from
that high place, a golden cord, to draw you up thither, to himself and to that
Happiness, to which he ascended so long ago ? The very point, Lucian ! Had it
depended on him I should long ago have been caught up. 'Tis I, am wanting. Well
! keep your eye fixed on the journey's end, and that happiness there above,
with confidence in his goodwill. Ah ! there are many who start cheerfully on
the journey and proceed a certain distance, but lose heart when they light on
the obstacles of the way. Only, those who endure to the end do come to the
mountain's top, and thereafter live in Happiness : live a wonderful manner of
life, seeing all other people from that great height no bigger than tiny ants.
What little fellows you make of us less than the pygmies down in the dust here.
Well ! we, * the vulgar herd,' as we creep along, will not forget you in our
prayers, when you are seated up there above the clouds, whither you have been
so long hastening. But tell me, Hermotimus ! when do you expect to arrive there
? Ah ! that I know not. In twenty years, perhaps, I shall be really on the
summit. A great while ! you think. But then, again, the prize I contend for is
a great one. Perhaps ! But as to those twenty years that you will live so long.
Has the master assured you of that ? Is he a prophet as well as a philosopher?
For I suppose you would not endure all this, upon a mere chance toiling day and
night, though it might happen that just ere the last step, Destiny seized you
by the foot and plucked you thence, with your hope still unfulfilled. Hence,
with these ill-omened words, Lucian ! Were I to survive but for a day, I should
be happy, having once attained wisdom. Howf Satisfied with a single day, after
all those labours ? Yes ! one blessed moment were enough ! But again, as you
have never been, how know you that happiness is to be had up there, at all the
happiness that is to make all this worth while ? I believe what the master
tells me. Of a certainty he knows, being now far above all others. And what was
it he told you about it ? Is it riches, or glory, or some indescribable
pleasure ? Hush ! my friend ! All those are nothing in comparison of the life
there. What, then, shall those who come to the end of this discipline what
excellent thing shall they receive, if not these ? Wisdom, the absolute
goodness and the absolute beauty, with the sure and certain knowledge of all
things how they are. Riches and glory and pleasure whatsoever belongs to the
body they have cast from them : stripped bare of all that, they mount up, even
as Hercules, consumed in the fire, became a god. He too cast aside all that he
had of his earthly mother, and bearing with him the divine element, pure and
undefiled, winged his way to heaven from the discerning flame. Even so do they,
detached from all that others prize, by the burning fire of a true philosophy,
ascend to the highest degree of happiness. Strange ! And do they never come
down again from the heights to help those whom they left below ? Must they,
when they be once come thither, there remain for ever, laughing, as you say, at
what other men prize ? More than that ! They whose initiation is entire are
subject no longer to anger, fear, desire, regret. Nay ! They scarcely feel at
all. -Well ! as you have leisure to-day, why not tell an old friend in what way
you first started on your philosophic journey ? For, if I might, I should like
to join company with you from this very day. If you be really willing, Lucian !
you will learn in no long time your advantage over all other people. They will
seem but as children, so far above them will be your thoughts. Well ! Be you my
guide ! It is but fair. But tell me Do you allow learners to contradict, if
anything is said which they don't think right ? No, indeed ! Still, if you
wish, oppose your questions. In that way you will learn more easily. Let me
know, then Is there one only way which leads to a true philosophy your own way
the way of the Stoics : or is it true, as I have heard, that there are many
ways of approaching it ? -Yes ! Many ways ! There are the Stoics, and the
Peripatetics, and those who call themselves after Plato : there are the
enthusiasts for Diogenes, and Antisthenes, and the followers of Pythagoras,
besides others. It was true, then. But again, is what they say the same or
different ? Very different. Yet the truth, I conceive, would be one and the
same, from all of them. Answer me then In what, or in whom, did you confide
when you first betook yourself to philosophy, and seeing so many doors open to
you, passed them all by and went in to the Stoics, as if there alone lay the
way of truth ? What token had you ? Forget, please, all you are to-dayhalf-way,
or more, on the philosophic journey : answer me as you would have done then, a
mere outsider as I am now. Willingly ! It was there the great majority went !
'Twas by that I judged it to be the better way. A majority how much greater
than L’ORTO, the ACCADEMIA, the LIZIO f You, doubtless, counted them
respectively, as with the votes in a scrutiny. No ! But this was not my only
motive. I heard it said by every one that the L’ORTO are soft and voluptuous,
il LIZIO avaricious and quarrelsome, and ACCADEMIA’s followers puffed up with
pride. But of IL PORTICO, not a few pronounced that they are true men, that
they knew everything, that theirs was the royal road, the one road, to wealth,
to wisdom, to all that can be desired. Of course those who said this were not
themselves Stoics : you would not have believed them still less their opponents.
They were the vulgar, therefore. True ! But you must know that I did not trust
to others exclusively. I trusted also to myself to what I saw. I saw the Stoics
going through the world after a seemly manner, neatly clad, never in excess,
always collected, ever faithful to the mean which all pronounce ' golden. You
are trying an experiment on me. You would fain see how far you can mislead me
as to your real ground. The kind of probation you describe is applicable,
indeed, to works of art, which are rightly judged by their appearance to the
eye. There is something in the comely form, the graceful drapery, which tells
surely of the hand of Pheidias or Alcamenes. But if LA FILOSOFIA is to be
judged by outward appearances, what would become of the blind man, for
instance, unable to observe the attire and gait of your friends the Stoics ? It
was not of the blind I was thinking. Yet there must needs be some common
criterion in a matter so important to all. Put the blind, if you will, beyond
the privileges of philosophy ; though they perhaps need that inward vision more
than all others. But can those who are not blind, be they as keen-sighted as
you will, collect a single fact of mind from a man's attire, from anything
outward ? Understand me ! You attached yourself to these men did you not ?
because of a certain love you had for the mind in them, the thoughts they
possessed desiring the mind in you to be improved thereby ? Assuredly ! How,
then, did you find it possible, by the sort of signs you just now spoke of, to distinguish
the true philosopher from the false ? Matters of that kind are not wont so to
reveal themselves. They are but hidden mysteries, hardly to be guessed at
through the words and acts which may in some sort be conformable to them. You,
however, it would seem, can look straight into the heart in men's bosoms, and
acquaint yourself with what really passes there. You are making sport of me,
Lucian ! In truth, it was with God's help I made my choice, and I don't repent
it. And still you refuse to tell me, to save me from perishing in that ' vulgar
herd.' Because nothing I can tell you would satisfy you. You are mistaken, my
friend ! But since you deliberately conceal the thing, grudging me, as I
suppose, that true philosophy which would make me equal to you, I will try, if
it may be, to find out for myself the exact criterion in these matters how to
make a perfectly safe choice. And, do you listen. I will ; there may be
something worth knowing in what you will say. Well ! only don't laugh if I seem
a little fumbling in my efforts. The fault is yours, in refusing to share your
lights with me. Let Philosophy, then, be like a city --a city whose citizens
within it are a happy people, as your master would tell you, having lately come
thence, as we suppose. All the virtues are theirs, and they are little less
than gods. Those acts of violence which happen among us are not to be seen in
their streets. They live together in one mind, very seemly ; the things which
beyond everything else cause men to contend against each other, having no place
upon them. Gold and silver, pleasure, vainglory, they have long since banished,
as being unprofitable to the commonwealth ; and their life is an unbroken calm,
in liberty, equality, an equal happiness. And is it not reasonable that all men
should desire to be of a city such as that, and take no account of the length
and difficulty of the way thither, so only they may one day become its freemen
? It might well be the business of life: leaving all else, forgetting one's
native country here, unmoved by the tears, the restraining hands, of parents or
children, if one had them only bidding them follow the same road; and if they
would not or could not, shaking them off, leaving one's very garment in their
hands if they took hold on us, to start off straightway for that happy place !
For there is no fear, I suppose, of being shut out if one came thither naked. I
remember, indeed, long ago an aged man related to me how things passed there,
offering himself to be my leader, and enrol me on my arrival in the number of
the citizens. I was but fifteen certainly very foolish: and it may be that I
was then actually within the suburbs, or at the very gates, of the city. Well,
this aged man told me, among other things, that all the citizens were wayfarers
from afar. Among them were barbarians and slaves, poor men aye ! and cripples
all indeed who truly desired that citizenship. For the only legal conditions of
enrolment were not wealth, nor bodily beauty, nor noble ancestry things not
named among them but intelligence, and the desire for moral beauty, and earnest
labour. The last comer, thus qualified, was made equal to the rest : master and
slave, patrician, plebeian, were words they had not in that blissful place. And
believe me, if that blissful, that beautiful place, were set on a hill visible
to all the world, I should long ago have journeyed thither. But, as you say, it
is far off: and one must needs find out for oneself the road to it, and the
best possible guide. And I find a multitude of guides, who press on me their
services, and protest, all alike, that they have themselves come thence. Only,
the roads they propose are many, and towards adverse quarters. And one of them
is steep and stony, and through the beating sun ; and the other is through
green meadows, and under grateful shade, and by many a fountain of water. But
howsoever the road may be, at each one of them stands a credible guide ; he
puts out his hand and would have you come his way. All other ways are wrong,
all other guides false. Hence my difficulty ! The number and variety of the
ways ! For you know, There is but one road that leads to Corinth. Well ! If you
go the whole round, you will find no better guides than those. If you wish to
get to Corinth, you will follow the traces of Zeno and Chrysippus. It is
impossible otherwise. Yes ! The old, familiar language ! Were one of Plato's
fellow-pilgrims here, or a follower of Epicurus or fifty others each would tell
me that I should never get to Corinth except in his company. One must therefore
credit all alike, which would be absurd ; or, what is far safer, distrust all
alike, until one has discovered the truth. Suppose now, that, being as I am,
ignorant which of all philosophers is really in possession of truth, I choose
your sect, relying on yourself my friend, indeed, yet still acquainted only
with the way of the Stoics ; and that then some divine power brought Plato, and
Aristotle, and Pythagoras, and the others, back to life again. Well ! They
would come round about me, and put me on my trial for my presumption, and say :
c In whom was it you confided when you preferred Zeno and Chrysippus to me? and
me? masters of far more venerable age than those, who are but of yesterday ;
and though you have never held any discussion with us, nor made trial of our
doctrine ? It is not thus that the law would have judges do listen to one party
and refuse to let the other speak for himself. If judges act thus, there may be
an appeal to another tribunal.' What should I answer? Would it be enough to say
: ' I trusted my friend Hermotimus ? ' c We know not Hermotimus, nor he us/
they would tell me ; adding, with a smile, 'your friend thinks he may believe
all our adversaries say of us whether in ignorance or in malice. Yet if he were
umpire in the games, and if he happened to see one of our wrestlers, by way of
a preliminary exercise, knock to pieces an antagonist of mere empty air, he
would not thereupon pronounce him a victor. Well ! don't let your friend
Hermotimus suppose, in like manner, that his teachers have really prevailed
over us in those battles of theirs, fought with our mere shadows. That, again,
were to be like children, lightly overthrowing their own card-castles ; or like
boy-archers, who cry out when they hit the target of straw. The Persian and
Scythian bowmen, as they speed along, can pierce a bird on the wing.' Let us
leave Plato and the others at rest. It is not for me to contend against them.
Let us rather search out together if the truth of LA FILOSOFIA be as I say. Why
summon the athletes, and archers from Persia ? Yes ! let them go, if you think
them in the way. And now do you speak ! You really look as if you had something
wonderful to deliver. -Well then, Lucian ! to me it seems quite possible for
one who has learned the doctrines of the Stoics only, to attain from those a
knowledge of the truth, without proceeding to inquire into all the various
tenets of the others. Look at the question in this way. If one told you that
twice two make four, would it be necessary for you to go the whole round of the
arithmeticians, to see whether any one of them will say that twice two make
five, or seven ? Would you not see at once that the man tells the truth? At
once. Why then do you find it impossible that one who has fallen in with the
Stoics only, in their enunciation of what is true, should adhere to them, and
seek after no others ; assured that four could never be five, even if fifty
Platos, fifty Aristotles said so ? f-You are beside the point, Hermotimus ! You
are likening open questions to principles universally received. Have you ever
met any one who said that twice two make five, or seven ? No ! only a madman
would say that. And have you ever met, on the other hand, a Stoic and an
Epicurean who were agreed upon the beginning and the end, the principle and the
final cause, of things ? Never ! Then your parallel is false. We are inquiring
to which of the sects philosophic truth belongs, and you seize on it by
anticipation, and assign it to IL PORTICO, alleging, what is by no means clear,
that itis they for whom twice two make four. But the Epicureans, or the
Platonists, might say that it is they, in truth, who make two and two equal
four, while you make them five or seven. Is it not so, when you think virtue
the only good, and the Epicureans pleasure; when you hold all things to be
material^ while the Platonists admit something immaterial? As I said, you
resolve offhand, in favour of the Stoics, the very point which needs a critical
decision. If it is clear beforehand that the Stoics alone make two and two
equal four, then the others must hold their peace. But so long as that is the
very point of debate, we must listen to all sects alike, or be well- assured
that we shall seem but partial in our judgment. I think, Lucian ! that you do
not altogether understand my meaning. To make it clear, then, let us suppose
that two men had entered a temple, of Aesculapius, say ! or Bacchus : and that
afterwards one of the sacred vessels is found to be missing. And the two men
must be searched to see which of them has hidden it under his garment. For it
is certainly in the possession of one or the other of them. Well ! if it be
found on the first there will be no need to search the second ; if it is not
found on the first, then the other must have it ; and again, there will be no
need to search him. Yes ! So let it be. And we too, Lucian ! if we have found
the holy vessel in possession of the Stoics, shall no longer have need to
search other philosophers, having attained that we were seeking. Why trouble
ourselves further ? No need, if something had indeed been found, and you knew
it to be that lost thing : if, at the least, you could recognise the sacred
object when you saw it. But truly, as the matter now stands, not two persons
only have entered the temple, one or the other of whom must needs have taken
the golden cup, but a whole crowd of persons. And then, it is not clear what
the lost object really is cup, or flagon, or diadem ; for one of the priests
avers this, another that ; they are not even in agreement as to its material :
some will have it to be of brass, others of silver, or gold. It thus becomes
necessary to search the garments of all persons who have entered the temple, if
the lost vessel is to be recovered. And if you find a golden cup on the first
of them, it will still be necessary to proceed in searching the garments of the
others ; for it is not certain that this cup really belonged to the temple.
Might there not be many such golden vessels ? No ! we must go on to every one
of them, placing all that we find in the midst together, and then make our
guess which of all those things may fairly be supposed to be the property of
the god. For, again, this circumstance adds greatly to our difficulty, that
without exception every one searched is found to have something upon him cup,
or flagon, or diadem, of brass, of silver, of gold : and still, all the while,
it is not ascertained which of all these is the sacred thing. And you must
still hesitate to pronounce any one of them guilty of the sacrilege those
objects may be their own lawful property: one cause of all this obscurity
being, as I think, that there was no inscription on the lost cup, if cup it
was. Had the name of the god, or even that of the donor, been upon it, at least
we should have had less trouble, and having detected the inscription, should
have ceased to trouble any one else by our search. I have nothing to reply to
that. Hardly anything plausible. So that if we wish to find who it is has the
sacred vessel, or who will be our best guide to Corinth, we must needs proceed
to every one and examinehim with the utmost care, stripping off his garment and
considering him closely. Scarcely, even so, shall we come at the truth. And if
we are to have a credible adviser regarding this question of philosophy which
of all philosophies one ought to follow he alone who is acquainted with the
dicta of every one of them can be such a guide : all others must be inadequate.
I would give no credence to them if they lacked information as to one only. If
somebody introduced a fair person and told us he was the fairest of all men, we
should not believe that, unless we knew that he had seen all the people in the
world. Fair he might be; but, fairest of all none could know, unless he had
seen all. And we too desire, not a fair one, but the fairest of all. Unless we
find him, we shall think we have failed. It is no casual beauty that will
content us; what we are seeking after is that supreme beauty which must of
necessity be unique. -What then is one to do, if the matter be really thus ?
Perhaps you know better than I. All I see is that very few of us would have
time to examine all the various sects of philosophy in turn, even if we began
in early life. I know not how it is ; but though you seem to me to speak reasonably,
yet (I must confess it) you have distressed me not a little by this exact
exposition of yours. I was unlucky in coming out to-day, and in my falling in
with you, who have thrown me into utter perplexity by your proof that the
discovery of truth is impossible, just as I seemed to be on the point of
attaining my hope. Blame your parents, my child, not me ! Or rather, blame
mother Nature herself, for giving us but seventy or eighty years instead of
making us as long-lived as Tithonus. For my part, I have but led you from
premise to conclusion. Nay ! you are a mocker ! I know not wherefore, but you
have a grudge against philosophy ; and it is your entertainment to make a jest
of her lovers. Ah ! ERMOTIMO! what the Truth may be, you philosophers may be able
to tell better than I. But so much at least I know of her, that she is one by
no means pleasant to those who hear her speak : in the matter of pleasantness,
she is far surpassed by Falsehood : and Falsehood has the pleasanter
countenance. She, nevertheless, being conscious of no alloy within, discourses
with boldness to all men, who therefore have little love for her. See how angry
you are now because I have stated the truth about certain things of which we
are both alike enamoured that they are hard to come by. It is as if you had
fallen in love with a statue and hoped to win its favour, thinking it a human
creature; and I, understanding it to be but an image of brass or stone, had
shown you, as a friend, that your love was impossible, and thereupon you had
conceived that I bore you some ill-will. But still, does it not follow from
what you said, that we must renounce philosophy and pass our days in idleness?
When did you hear me say that? I did but assert that if we are to seek after LA
FILOSOFIA, whereas there are many ways professing to lead thereto, we must with
much exactness distinguish them. Well, LUCIANO! that we must go to all the
schools in turn, and test what they say, if we are to choose the right one, is
perhaps reasonable; but surely ridiculous, unless we are to live as many years
as the Phoenix, to be so lengthy in the trial of each ; as if it were not
possible to learn the whole by the part! They say that Pheidias, when he was
shown one of the talons of a lion, computed the stature and age of the animal
it belonged to, modelling a complete lion upon the standard of a single part of
it. You too would recognise a human hand were the rest of the body concealed.
Even so with the schools of philosophy : the leading doctrines of each might be
learned in an afternoon. That over-exactness of yours, which required so long a
time, is by no means necessary for making the better choice. -You are forcible,
Hermotimus ! with this theory of The Whole by the Part. Yet, methinks, I heard
you but now propound the contrary. But tell me; would Pheidias when he saw the
lion's talon have known that it was a lion's, if he had never seen the animal ?
Surely, the cause of his recognising the part was his knowledge of the whole.
There is a way of choosing one's philosophy even less troublesome than yours.
Put the names of all the philosophers into an urn. Then call a little child,
and let him draw the name of the philosopher you shall follow all the rest of
your days. Nay! be serious with me. Tell me ; did you ever buy wine? Surely.
And did you first go the whole round of the wine-merchants, tasting and
comparing their wines ? By no means. No ! You were contented to order the first
good wine you found at your price. By tasting a little you were ascertained of
the quality of the whole cask. How if you had gone to each of the merchants in
turn, and said, ' I wish to buy a cotyle of wine. Let me drink out the whole
cask. Then I shall be able to tell which is best, and where I ought to buy.'
Yet this is what you would do with the philosophies. Why drain the cask when
you might taste, and see ? How slippery you are; how you escape from one's
fingers ! Still, you have given me an advantage, and are in your own trap. How
so ? Thus ! You take a common object known to every one, and make wine the
figure of a thing which presents the greatest variety in itself, and about
which all men are at variance, because it is an unseen and difficult thing. I
hardly know wherein philosophy and wine are alike unless it be in this, that
the philosophers exchange their ware for money, like the winemerchants; some of
them with a mixture of water or worse, or giving short measure. However, let us
consider your parallel. The wine in the cask, you say, is of one kind
throughout. But have the philosophers has your own master even but one and the
same thing only to tell you, every day and all days, on a subject so manifold?
Otherwise, how can you know the whole by the tasting of one part? The whole is
not the same Ah ! and it may be that God has hidden the good wine of philosophy
at the bottom of the cask. You must drain it to the end if you are to find
those drops of divine sweetness you seem so much to thirst for ! Yourself,
after drinking so deeply, are still but at the beginning, as you said. But is
not philosophy rather like this? Keep the figure of the merchant and the cask :
but let it be filled, not with wine, but with every sort of grain. You come to
buy. The merchant hands you a little of the wheat which lies at the top. Could
you tell by looking at that, whether the chick-peas were clean, the lentils
tender, the beans full ? And then, whereas in selecting our wine we risk only
our money ; in selecting our philosophy we risk ourselves, as you told me might
ourselves sink into the dregs of the vulgar herd.' Moreover, while you may not
drain the whole cask of wine by way of tasting, Wisdom grows no less by the
depth of your drinking. Nay ! if you take of her, she is increased thereby. And
then I have another similitude to propose, as regards this tasting of
philosophy. Don't think I blaspheme her if I say that it may be with her as
with some deadly poison, hemlock or aconite. These too, though they cause
death, yet kill not if one tastes but a minute portion. You would suppose that
the tiniest particle must be sufficient. Be it as you will, Lucian! One must
live a hundred years : one must sustain all this labour ; otherwise philosophy
is unattainable. Not so ! Though there were nothing strange in that, if it be
true, as you said at first, that Life is short and art is long. But now you
take it hard that we are not to see you this very day, before the sun goes
down, a Chrysippus, a Pythagoras, an ACCADEMIA. You overtake me, Lucian ! and
drive me into a corner; in jealousy of heart, I believe, because I have made
some progress in doctrine whereas you have neglected yourself. Well ! Don't
attend to me ! Treat me as a Corybant, a fanatic : and do you go forward on
this road of yours. Finish the journey in accordance with the view you had of
these matters at the beginning of it. Only, be assured that my judgment on it
will remain unchanged. Reason still says, that without criticism, without a
clear, exact, unbiassed intelligence to try them, all those theories all things
will have been seen but in vain. c To that end,' she tells us, 'much time is
necessary, many delays of judgment, a cautious gait; repeated inspection.' And
we are not to regard the outward appearance, or the reputation of wisdom, in
any of the speakers; but like the judges of Areopagus, who try their causes in
the darkness of the night, look only to what they say. LA FILOSOFIA, then, is
impossible, or possible only in another life ! ERMOTIMO! I grieve to tell you
that all this even, may be in truth insufficient. After all, we may deceive
ourselves in the belief that we have found something : like the fishermen !
Again and again they let down the net. At last they feel something heavy, and
with vast labour draw up, not a load of fish, but only a pot full of sand, or a
great stone. I don't understand what you mean by the net. It is plain that you
have caught me in it. Try to get out ! You can swim as well as another. We may
go to all philosophers in turn and make trial of them. Still, I, for my part,
hold it by no mean certain that any one of them really possesses what we seek.
The truth may be a thing that not one of them has yet found. You have twenty
beans in your hand, and you bid ten persons guess how many : one says five,
another fifteen ; it is possible that one of them may tell the true number ; but
it is not impossible that all may be wrong. So it is with the philosophers. All
alike are in search of Happiness what kind of thing it is. One says one thing,
one another : it is pleasure ; it is virtue ; what not ? And Happiness may
indeed be one of those things. But it is possible also that it may be still
something else, different and distinct from them all. What is this? There is
something, I know not how, very sad and disheartening in what you say. We seem
to have come round in a circle to the spot whence we started, and to our first
incertitude. Ah ! Lucian, what have you done to me ? You have proved my
priceless pearl to be but ashes, and all my past labour to have been in vain.
Reflect, my friend, that you are not the first person who has thus failed of
the good thing he hoped for. All philosophers, so to speak, are but fighting
about the c ass's shadow.' To me you seem like one who should weep, and
reproach fortune because he is not able to climb up into heaven, or go down
into the sea by Sicily and come up at Cyprus, or sail on wings in one day from
Greece to India. And the true cause of his trouble is that he has based his
hope on what he has seen in a dream, or his own fancy has put together ;
without previous thought whether what he desires is in itself attainable and
within the compass of human nature. Even so, methinks, has it happened with
you. As you dreamed, so largely, of those wonderful things, came Reason, and
woke you up from sleep, a little roughly : and then you are angry with Reason,
your eyes being still but half open, and find it hard to shake off sleep for
the pleasure of what you saw therein. Only, don't be angry with me, because, as
a friend, I would not suffer you to pass your life in a dream, pleasant
perhaps, but still only a dream because I wake you up and demand that you
should busy yourself with the proper business of life, and send you to it
possessed of common sense. What your soul was full of just now is not very
different from those Gorgons and Chimaeras and the like, which the poets and
the painters construct for us, fancy-free: things which never were, and never
will be, though many believe in them, and all like to see and hear of them,
just because they are so strange and odd. And you too, methinks, having heard
from some such maker of marvels of a certain woman of a fairness beyond nature
beyond the Graces, beyond Venus Urania herself asked not if he spoke truth, and
whether this woman be really alive in the world, but straightway fell in love
with her ; as they say that Medea was enamoured of Jason in a dream. And what
more than anything else seduced you, and others like you, into that passion,
for a vain idol of the fancy, is, that he who told you about that fair woman,
from the very moment when you first believed that what he said was true,
brought forward all the rest in consequent order. Upon her alone your eyes were
fixed ; by her he led you along, when once you had given him a hold upon you
led you along the straight road, as he said, to the beloved one. All was easy
after that. None of you asked again whether it was the true way ; following one
after another, like sheep led by the green bough in the hand of the shepherd.
He moved you hither and thither with his finger, as easily as water spilt on a
table! My friend ! Be not so lengthy in preparing the banquet, lest you die of
hunger ! I saw one who poured water into a mortar, and ground it with all his
might with a pestle of iron, fancying he did a thing useful and necessary; but
it remained water only, none the less. Just there the conversation broke off
suddenly, and the disputants parted. The horses were come for Lucian. The boy
went on his way, and Marius onward, to visit a friend whose abode lay further.
As he returned to Rome towards evening the melancholy aspect, natural to a city
of the dead, had triumphed over the superficial gaudiness of the early day. He
could almost have fancied Canidia there, picking her way among the rickety
lamps, to rifle some neglected or ruined tomb ; for these tombs were not all equally
well cared for (Post mortem nescio /) and it had been one of the pieties of
Aurelius to frame a severe law to prevent the defacing of such monuments. To
Marius there seemed to be some new meaning in that terror of isolation, of
being left alone in these places, of which the sepulchral inscriptions were so
full. A bloodred sunset was dying angrily, and its wild glare upon the shadowy
objects around helped to combine the associations of this famous way, its
deeply graven marks of immemorial travel, together with the earnest questions
of the morning as to the true way of that other sort of travelling, around an
image, almost ghastly in the traces of its great sorrows bearing along for
ever, on bleeding feet, the instrument of its punishment which was all Marius
could recall distinctly of a certain Christian legend he had heard. The legend
told of an encounter at this very spot, of two wayfarers on the Appian Way, as
also upon some very dimly discerned mental journey, altogether different from
himself and his late companions an encounter between Love, literally fainting
by the road, and Love "travelling in the greatness of his strength,"
Love itself, suddenly appearing to sustain that other. A strange contrast to
anything actually presented in that morning's conversation, it seemed
nevertheless to echo its very words " Do they never come down again,"
he heard once more the wellmodulated voice : " Do they never come down
again from the heights, to help those whom they left here below?"
"And we too desire, not a fair one, but the fairest of all. Unless we find
him, we shall think we have failed." It was become a habit with Marius one
of his modernisms developed by his assistance at the Emperor's
"conversations with himself," to keep a register of the movements of
his own private thoughts and humours ; not continuously indeed, yet sometimes
for lengthy intervals, during which it was no idle self-indulgence, but a
necessity of his intellectual life, to " confess himself," with an
intimacy, seemingly rare among the ancients ; ancient writers, at all evtiits,
having been jealous, for the most part, of affording us so much as a glimpse of
that interior self, which in many cases would have actually doubled the
interest of their objective informations. " If a particular tutelary or
genius" writes Marius, " according to old belief, walks through life
beside each one of us, mine is very certainly a capricious creature. He fills
one with wayward, unaccountable, yet quite irresistible humours, and seems always
to be in collusion with some outward circumstance, often trivial enough in
itself the condition of the weather, forsooth ! the people one meets by chance
the things one happens to overhear them say, veritable evofaoi, o-vfjL@o\oi 9
or omens by the wayside, as the old Greeks fancied to push on the unreasonable
prepossessions of the moment into weighty motives. It was doubtless a quite
explicable, physical fatigue that presented me to myself, on awaking this
morning, so lack-lustre and trite. But I must needs take my petulance,
contrasting it with my accustomed morning hopefulness, as a sign of the ageing
of appetite, of a decay in the very capacity of enjoyment. We need some
imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope,
and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without
disgust, through the routine-work which is so large a part of life."Then,
how if appetite, be it for real or
ideal, should itself fail one after awhile ? /^h, yes ! is it of cold always that men die ; and
on some of us it creeps very gradually.
In truth, I can remember just such a
lack-lustre condition of feeling once or
twice before. But I note, that it was
accompanied then by an odd indifference, as
the thought of them occurred to me, in regard to the sufferings of others a kind of
callousness, so unusual with me, as at
once to mark the humour it accompanied
as a palpably morbid one that could not last. Were those sufferings, great or little, I asked myself then, of more real
consequence to them than mine to me, as I remind myself that 'nothing that will end is
really long '--long enough to be thought
of importance f But to-day, my own sense of fatigue, the pity I conceive for myself, disposed me
strongly to a tenderness for others. For
a moment the whole world seemed to
present itself as a hospital of sick
persons ; many of them sick in mind; all
of whom it would be a brutality not to
humour, not to indulge. Why, when I went out to walk off my wayward fancies, did I confront the very sort
of incident (my unfortunate genius had
surely beckoned it from afar to vex me)
likely to irritate them further ? A
party of men were coming down the
street. They were leading a fine
race-horse; a handsome beast, but badly
hurt somewhere, in the circus, and useless. They were taking him to slaughter ; and I
think the animal knew it : he cast such
looks, as if of mad appeal, to those who
passed him, as he went among the
strangers to whom his former owner had
committed him, to die, in his beauty and
pride, for just that one mischance or fault ;
although the morning air was still so animating, and pleasant to snuff. I could have fancied
a human soul in the creature, swelling
against its luck. And I had come across
the incident just when it would figure
to me as the very symbol of our poor humanity, in its capacities for pain, its wretched accidents, and those imperfect
sympathies, which can never quite identify us with one another ; the very power of utterance
and appeal to others seeming to fail us,
in proportion as our sorrows come home to ourselves, are really our own. We are constructed for
suffering ! What proofs of it does but one day afford, if we care to note them, as we go a whole
long chaplet of sorrowful mysteries !
Sunt lacrimtf rerum et mentem mortalia
tangunt. " Men's fortunes touch us
! The little children of one of those institutions for the support of orphans, now become fashionable among
us by way of memorial of eminent persons
deceased, are going, in long file, along
the street, on their way to a holiday in
the country. They halt, and count
themselves with an air of triumph, to
show that they are all there. Their gay chatter has disturbed a little group of peasants ; a
young woman and her husband, who have
brought the old mother, now past work
and witless, to place her in a house
provided for such afflicted people. They are fairly affectionate, but anxious
how the thing they have to do may go
hope only she may permit them to leave
her there behind quietly. And the poor
old soul is excited by the noise made by
the children, and partly aware of what
is going to happen with her. She too
begins to count one, two, three, five on her trembling fingers, misshapen by a life of
toil. ' Yes ! yes ! and twice five make
ten ' they say, to pacify her. It is her
last appeal to be taken home again ; her
proof that all is not yet up with her ;
that she is, at all events, still as
capable as those joyous children. At the baths, a party of labourers are
at work upon one of the great brick furnaces, in a cloud of black dust. A frail young child
has brought food for one of them, and
sits apart, waiting till his father
comes watching the labour, but with a
sorrowful distaste for the din and dirt.
He is regarding wistfully his own place in
the world, there before him. His mind,
as he watches, is grown up for a moment ; and he foresees, as it were, in that moment, all
the long tale of days, of early
awakings, of his own coming life of
drudgery at work like this. A man comes along carrying a boy whose rough work has already begun the only
child whose presence beside him
sweetened the father's toil a little.
The boy has been badly injured by a fall of brick-work, yet, with an effort, he rides boldly on his father's
shoulders. It will be the way of natural
affection to keep him alive as long as
possible, though with that miserably
shattered body ' Ah ! with us still, and
feeling our care beside him ! ' and yet
surely not without a heartbreaking sigh of relief, alike from him and them, when the end comes.
On the alert for incidents like these, yet of
necessity passing them by on the other side, I find it hard to get rid
of a sense that I, for one, have failed
in love. I could yield to the humour till
I seemed to have had my share in those great public cruelties, the shocking legal crimes
which are on record, like that
cold-blooded slaughter, according to
law, of the four hundred slaves in the
reign of Nero, because one of their number
was thought to have murdered his master. The reproach of that, together with the kind of
facile apologies those who had no share
in the deed may have made for it, as
they went about quietly on their own
affairs that day, seems to come very
close to me, as I think upon it. And to how many of those now actually around me,
whose life is a sore one, must I be
indifferent, if I ever become aware of
their soreness at all ? To some,
perhaps, the necessary conditions of my own life may cause me to be opposed, in a kind of natural conflict, regarding those interests
which actually determine the happiness
of theirs. I \ would that a stronger
love might arise in my heart ! Yet there is plenty of charity in the
world. My patron, the Stoic emperor, has
made it even fashionable. To celebrate
one of his brief returns to Rome lately
from the war, over and above a largess
of gold pieces to all who would, the
public debts were forgiven. He made a
nice show of it : for once, the Romans entertained themselves with a
good-natured spectacle, and the whole
town came to see the great bonfire in the Forum, into which all bonds and evidence of debt were thrown on delivery, by the emperor himself; many private
creditors following his example. That
was done well enough ! But still the
feeling returns to me, that no charity
of ours can get at a certain natural
unkindness which I find in things themselves. When I first came to Rome, eager
to observe its religion, especially its
antiquities of religious usage, I
assisted at the most curious, perhaps,
of them all, the most distinctly marked
with that immobility which is a sort of ideal in the Roman religion. The ceremony took
place at a singular spot some miles
distant from the city, among the low
hills on the bank of the Tiber, beyond
the Aurelian Gate. There, in a little
wood of venerable trees, piously allowed
their own way, age after age ilex and cypress remaining where they fell at last, one over
the other, and all caught, in that early
May-time, under a riotous tangle of wild
clematis was to be found a magnificent
sanctuary, in which the members of the
Arval College assembled themselves on certain days. The axe never touched those trees Nay ! it was forbidden to
introduce any iron thing whatsoever
within the precincts ; not only because
the deities of these quiet places hate
to be disturbed by the harsh noise of metal,
but also in memory of that better age the lost Golden Age the homely age of the potters, of
which the central act of the festival was a commemoration. The preliminary
ceremonies were long and fe complicated,
but of a character familiar enough.
Peculiar to the time and place was the solemn exposition, after lavation of hands,
processions backwards and forwards, and
certain changes of vestments, of the
identical earthen vessels veritable
relics of the old religion of NUMA (si veda)!
the vessels from which the holy Numa himself had eaten and drunk, set forth above a kind
of altar, amid a cloud of flowers and
incense, and many lights, for the
veneration of the credulous or the
faithful. They were, in fact, cups or vases of burnt clay, rude in form : and the religious
veneration thus offered to them
expressed men's desire to give honour to
a simpler age, before iron had found
place in human life : the persuasion that
that age was worth remembering : a hope that it might come again. That a NUMA (si veda),
and his age of gold, would return, has
been the hope or the dream of some, in
every period. Yet if he did come back, or
any equivalent of his presence, he could but weaken, and by no means smite through,
that root of evil, certainly of sorrow,
of outraged human sense, in things,
which one must carefully distinguish from all preventible accidents. Death, and the little perpetual daily
dyings, which have something of its
sting, he must necessarily leave untouched. And, methinks, that were all the rest of man's life
framed entirely to his liking, he would
straightway begin to sadden himself,
over the fate say, of the flowers ! For there
is, there has come to be since Numa
lived perhaps, a capacity for sorrow in
his heart, which grows with all the growth,
alike of the individual and of the race, in intellectual delicacy and
power, and which 'will find its aliment.
Of that sort of golden age, indeed, one
discerns even now a trace, here and there. Often have I maintained that, in this
generous southern country at least,
Epicureanism is the special philosophy
of the poor. How little I myself really
need, when people leave me alone, with
the intellectual powers at work serenely.
The drops of falling water, a few wild flowers with their priceless fragrance, a few tufts
even of half-dead leaves, changing
colour in the quiet of a room that has
but light and shadow in it; these, for a
susceptible mind, might well do duty for
all the glory of Augustus. I notice sometimes what I conceive to be the precise
character of the fondness of the
roughest working-people for their young
children, a fine appreciation, not only
of their serviceable affection, but of their
visible graces : and indeed, in this country, the children are almost always worth looking at.
I see daily, in fine weather, a child
like a delicate nosegay, running to meet
the rudest of brick-makers as he comes from work. She is not at all afraid to hang upon his rough hand : and through her, he reaches out to, he makes
his own, something from that strange
region, so distant from him yet so real, of the world's refinement. What is of
finer soul, or of finer stuff in things,
and demands delicate touching to him the
delicacy of the little child represents that :
it initiates him into that. There, surely, is a touch of the secular gold, of a perpetual
age of gold. But then again, think for a
moment, with what a hard humour at the
nature of things, his struggle for bare
life will go on, if the child should
happen to die. I observed to-day, under
one of the archways of the baths, two
children at play, a little seriously a fair
girl and her crippled younger brother. Two toy chairs and a little table, and sprigs of
fir set upright in the sand for a garden
! They played at housekeeping. Well !
the girl thinks her life a perfectly
good thing in the service of this
crippled brother. But she will have a jealous lover in time: and the boy, though his face
is not altogether unpleasant, is after
all a hopeless cripple. " For there is a certain grief in
things as they are, in man as he has
come to be, as he certainly is, over and
above those griefs of circumstance which
are in a measure removable some inexplicable shortcoming, or misadventure, on
the part of nature itself death, and old
age as it must needs be, and that watching for their approach, which makes
every stage of life like a dying over
and over again. Almost all death is
painful, and in every thing that comes to an end a touch of death, and therefore of
wretched coldness struck home to one, of
remorse, of loss and parting, of
outraged attachments. Given faultless
men and women, given a perfect state of
society which should have no need to practise
on men's susceptibilities for its own selfish ends, adding one turn more to the wheel of the
great rack for its own interest or
amusement, there would still be this
evil in the world, of a certain
necessary sorrow and desolation, felt, just in proportion to the moral,
or nervous perfection men have attained
to. And what we need in the world, over
against that, is a certain permanent and
general power of compassion humanity's
standing force of self-pity as an elementary ingredient of our social atmosphere, if we
are to live in it at all. I wonder,
sometimes, in what way man has cajoled
himself into the bearing of his burden
thus far, seeing how every step in the
capacity of apprehension his labour has won
for him, from age to age, must needs increase his dejection. It is as if the increase of
knowledge were but an increasing revelation of the radical hopelessness of his position : and I
would that there were one even as I,
behind this vain show of things ! At all
events, the actual conditions of our life being as they are, and the capacity
for suffering so large a principle in
things since the only principle,
perhaps, to which we may always safely
trust is a ready sympathy with the pain
one actually sees it follows that the '
practical and effective difference between men will lie in their power of insight into those
conditions, their power of sympathy. The future 1 will be with those who have most of it ;
while for the present, as I persuade
myself, those who have much of it, have
something to hold by, even in the
dissolution of a world, or in that
dissolution of self, which is, for every one, no less than the dissolution of the world it
represents for him. Nearly all of us, I suppose, have had our moments, in which any effective sympathy
for us on the part of others has seemed
impossible ; in which our pain has seemed a stupid outrage upon us, like some
overwhelming physical violence, from
which we could take refuge, at best,
only in some mere general sense of
goodwill somewhere in the world perhaps.
And then, to one's surprise, the discovery of that goodwill, if it were only in a not
unfriendly animal, may seem to have
explained, to have actually justified to
us, the fact of our pain. There have
been occasions, certainly, when I have
felt that if others cared for me as I cared
for them, it would be, not so much a consolation, as an equivalent, for
what one has lost or suffered : a
realised profit on the summing up of
one's accounts : a touching of that absolute
ground amid all the changes of phenomena, such as our philosophers have of late confessed
themselves quite unable to discover. In the mere clinging of human creatures to each other,
nay ! in one's own solitary self-pity,
amid the effects even of what might
appear irredeemable loss, I seem to
touch the eternal. Something in that
pitiful contact, something new and true, fact or apprehension of fact, is educed, which, on
a review of all the perplexities of
life, satisfies our moral sense, and
removes that appearance of unkindness in
the soul of things themselves, and
assures us that not everything has been in
vain. And I know not how, but in the thought thus suggested, I seem to take up, and
re-knit 'myself to, a well-remembered
hour, when by some gracious accident it
was on a journeyall things about me fell into a more perfect harmony than is
their wont. Everything seemed to be, for
a moment, after all, almost for the
best. Through the train of my thoughts, one against another, it was as if I became aware
of the dominant power of another person
in controversy, wrestling with me. I seem to be come round to the point at which I left off
then. The antagonist has closed with me
again. A protest comes, out of the very
depths of man's radically hopeless
condition in the world, with the energy
of one of those suffering yet prevailing deities, of which old poetry tells.
Dared one hope that there is a heart, even as ours, in that divine e Assistant of one's thoughts
a heart even as mine, behind this vain
show of things! Ah!
voila les ames qu'il falloit a la miennc! Rousseau. The
charm of its poetry, a poetry of the affections, wonderfully fresh in the midst
of a threadbare world, would have led MARIO, if nothing else had done so, again and again, to
Cecilia's house. He found a range of
intellectual pleasures, altogether new to him, in the sympathy of that pure and elevated soul. Elevation
of soul, generosity, humanity little by
little it came to seem to him as if
these existed nowhere else. The
sentiment of maternity, above all, as it
might be understood there, its claims, with
the claims of all natural feeling everywhere, down to the sheep bleating on the hills, nay
! even to the mother-wolf, in her hungry
cave seemed to have been vindicated, to
have been enforced anew, by the sanction
of some divine pattern thereof. He saw
its legitimate place in the world given
at last to the bare capacity for suffering in any creature, however feeble
or apparently useless. In this chivalry,
seeming to leave the world's heroism a
mere property of the stage, in this so
scrupulous fidelity to what could not
help itself, could scarcely claim not to
be forgotten, what a contrast to the
hard contempt of one's own or other's pain, of death, of glory even, in those discourses
of Aurelius ! But if Marius thought at times that some long - cherished desires were now about
to blossom for him, in the sort of home
he had sometimes pictured to himself,
the very charm of which would lie in its
contrast to any random affections : that
in this woman, to whom children
instinctively clung, he might find such
a sister, at least, as he had always longed for ; there were also circumstances which
reminded him that a certain rule
forbidding second marriages, was among
these people still in force ; ominous
incidents, moreover, warning a susceptible conscience not to mix together the
spirit and the flesh, nor make the
matter of a heavenly banquet serve for
earthly meat and drink. One day he
found Cecilia occupied with the burial
of one of the children of her household.
It was from the tiny brow of such a child, as he now heard, that the new light had first
shone forth upon them through the light
of mere physical life, glowing there
again, when the child was dead, or
supposed to be dead. The aged servant of Christ had arrived in the midst of their noisy grief; and mounting to the
little chamber where it lay, had
returned, not long afterwards, with the
child stirring in his arms as he
descended the stair rapidly ; bursting open
the closely-wound folds of the shroud and scattering the funeral flowers from them, as
the soul kindled once more through its
limbs. Old Roman common-sense had
taught people to occupy their thoughts
as little as might be with children who
died young. Here, to-day, however, in
this curious house, all thoughts were
tenderly bent on the little waxen figure,
yet with a kind of exultation and joy, notwithstanding the loud weeping
of the mother. The other children, its
late companions, broke with it,
suddenly, into the place where the deep black
bed lay open to receive it. Pushing away the grim fossores, the grave-diggers, they
ranged themselves around it in order,
and chanted that old psalm of theirs
LAVDATE PVERI DOMINVM! Dead children, children's graves Marius had been always half aware of an old
superstitious fancy in his mind
concerning them; as if in coming near
them he came near the failure of some
lately-born hope or purpose of his own.
And now, perusing intently the expression with which Cecilia assisted, directed, returned
afterwards to her house, he felt that he too had had to-day his funeral of a little child. But it
had always been his policy, through all
his pursuit of " experience/' to take flight in time from any too disturbing passion, from any sort of
affection likely to quicken his pulses
beyond the point at which the quiet work
of life was practicable. Had he, after
all, been taken unawares, so that it was
no longer possible for him to fly ? At
least, during the journey he took, by way of testing the existence of
any chain about him, he found a certain
disappointment at his heart, greater
than he could have anticipated; and as
he passed over the crisp leaves, nipped off in multitudes by the first sudden cold of
winter, he felt that the mental
atmosphere within himself was
perceptibly colder. Yet it was, finally, a quite successful resignation which
he achieved, on a review, after his
manner, during that absence, of loss or gain. The image of Cecilia, it
would seem, was already become for him
like some matter of poetry, or of
another man's story, or a picture on the
wall. And on his return to Rome there had been a rumour in that singular company,
of things which spoke certainly not of
any merely tranquil loving : hinted
rather that he had come across a world,
the lightest contact with which might
make appropriate to himself also the
precept that " They which have wives be as they that have none." This was brought home to him, when, in early spring, he ventured once more to listen
to the sweet singing of the Eucharist.
It breathed more than ever the spirit of a wonderful hop* of hopes more daring than poor,
labouring humanity had ever seriously
entertained before, though it was plain
that a great calamity was befallen. Amid
stifled sobbing, even as the pathetic
words of the psalter relieved the tension
of their hearts, the people around him still wore upon their faces their habitual gleam of joy,
of placid satisfaction. They were still
under the influence of an immense
gratitude in thinking. even amid their
present distress, of the hour or a great
deliverance. As he followed again that
mystical dialogue, he felt also again, like a mighty spirit about him, the potency, the
halfrealised presence, of a great multitude, as if thronging along those awful passages, to hear
the sentence of its release from prison;
a company which represented nothing less
than orbis terrarum the whole company of mankind. And the special note of the day expressed that
relief a sound new to him, drawn deep
from some old Hebrew source, as he
conjectured, Alleluia! repeated over and over again, Alleluia! Alleluia! at every pause and movement of the long
Easter ceremonies. And then, in its
place, by way of sacred lection,
although in shocking contrast with the
peaceful dignity of all around, came the Epistle of the churches of Lyons and Vienne to "
their sister,'' the church of Rome. For
the "Peace" of the church had been broken broken, as Marius could not
but acknowledge, on the responsibility
of the emperor ANTONINO (si veda) himself,
following tamely, and as a matter of course, the traces of his
predecessors, gratuitously enlisting,
against the good as well as the evil of that great pagan world, the strange new heroism of
which this singular message was full.
The greatness of it certainly lifted
away all merely private regret,
inclining one, at last, actually to draw
sword for the oppressed, as if in some new order of knighthood. The pains which our
brethren have endured we have no power
fully to tell, for the enemy came upon
us with his whole strength. But the
grace of God fought for us, set free the weak, and made ready those who, like pillars, were able to bear the weight. These, coming
now into close strife with the foe, bore
every kind of pang and shame. At the
time of the fair which is held here with
a great crowd, the governor led forth
the Martyrs as a show. Holding what was
thought great but little, and that the pains
of to-day are not deserving to be measured against the glory that shall be made
known, these worthy wrestlers went
joyfully on their way; their delight and
the sweet favour of God mingling in
their faces, so that their bonds seemed
but a goodly array, or like the golden
bracelets of a bride. Filled with the fragrance of Christ, to some they seemed to have
been touched with earthly perfumes.
VETTIO EPAGATO, though he is very young,
because he would not endure to see
unjust judgment given against us, vented his anger, and sought to be heard for the
brethren, for he was a youth of high
place. Whereupon the governor asked him
whether he also were a Christian. He
confessed in a clear voice, and was
added to the number of the Martyrs. But
he had the Paraclete within him ; as, in truth, he showed by the fulness of his love;
glorying in the defence of his brethren,
and to give his life for theirs. Then
was fulfilled the saying of the Lord
that the day should come, When he that slayeth you 'will think that he doeth God service.
Most madly did the mob, the governor and
the soldiers, rage against the
handmaiden Blandina, in whom Christ
showed that what seems mean among men is
of price with Him. For whilst we all,
and her earthly mistress, who was herself
one of the contending Martyrs, were fearful lest through the weakness of the flesh she should
be unable to profess the faith, Blandina
was filled with such power that her
tormentors, following upon each other
from morning until night, owned that
they were overcome, and had no more that
they could do to her ; admiring that she
still breathed after her whole body was torn
asunder. " But this blessed
one, in the very midst of her c
witness,' renewed her strength ; and to repeat, / am Christ's ! was to her
rest, refreshment, and relief from pain. As for Alexander, he neither uttered a groan nor any sound at
all, but in his heart talked with God.
Sanctus, the deacon, also, having borne
beyond all measure pains devised by
them, hoping that they would get
something from him, did not so much as tell
his name ; but to all questions answered only, / am Chrises ! For this he confessed instead
of his name, his race, and everything
beside. Whence also a strife in
torturing him arose between the governor
and those tormentors, so that when they
had nothing else they could do they set
red-hot plates of brass to the most
tender parts of his body. But he stood firm in his profession, cooled and fortified by
that stream of living water which flows
from Christ. His corpse, a single wound,
having wholly lost the form of man, was
the measure of his pain. But Christ,
paining in him, set forth an ensample to the rest that there is nothing
fearful, nothing painful, where the love
of the Father overcomes. And as all
those cruelties were made null through
the patience of the Martyrs, they
bethought them of other things ; among
which was their imprisonment in a dark and most sorrowful place, where many were
privily strangled. But destitute of
man's aid, they were filled with power
from the Lord, both in body and mind,
and strengthened their brethren. Also,
much joy was in our virgin mother, the Church ; for, by means of these, such as
were fallen away retraced their steps
were again conceived, were filled again with lively heat, and hastened to make the profession of their
faith. "The holy bishop Pothinus,
who was now past ninety years old and
weak in body, yet in his heat of soul
and longing for martyrdom, roused what
strength he had, and was also cruelly
dragged to judgment, and gave witness.
Thereupon he suffered many stripes, all thinking it would be a wickedness if they fell short
in cruelty towards him, for that thus
their own gods would be avenged. Hardly
drawing breath, he was thrown into
prison, and after two days there
died. "After these things their
martyrdom was parted into divers
manners. Plaiting as it were one crown
of many colours and every sort of
flowers, they offered it to God. MATURO, therefore, Sanctus and
Blandina, were led to the wild beasts.
And Maturus and Sanctus passed through
all the pains of the amphitheatre, as if they had suffered nothing before : or rather, as
having in many trials overcome, and now
contending for the prize itself, were at
last dismissed. " But Blandina was
bound and hung upon a stake, and set
forth as food for the assault of the
wild beasts. And as she thus seemed to be hung upon the Cross, by her fiery prayers she
imparted much alacrity to those
contending Witnesses. For as they looked upon her with the eye of flesh,
through her, they saw Him that was crucified. But as none of the beasts would
then touch her, she was taken down from
the Cross, and sent back to prison for
another day : that, though weak and
mean, yet clothed with the mighty
wrestler, Christ Jesus, she might by many conquests give heart to her
brethren. On the last day, therefore, of the shows, she was brought forth again, together with
Ponticus, a lad of about fifteen years
old. They were brought in day by day to
behold the pains of the rest. And when
they wavered not, the mob was full of
rage ; pitying neither the youth of the
lad, nor the sex of the maiden. Hence, they
drave them through the whole round of pain. And Ponticus, taking heart from Blandina,
having borne well the whole of those torments, gave up his life. Last of all, the blessed
Blandina herself, as a mother that had
given life to her children, and sent
them like conquerors to the great King,
hastened to them, with joy at the end,
as to a marriage-feast; the enemy himself
confessing that no woman had ever borne pain so manifold and great as hers. " Nor even so was their anger appeased
; some among them seeking for us pains,
if it might be, yet greater; that the
saying might be fulfilled, He that is
unjust, let him be unjust still. And
their rage against the Martyrs took a new form, insomuch that we were in great sorrow for
lack of freedom to entrust their bodies
to the earth, Neither did the night-time, nor the offer of money, avail us for this matter; but they
set watch with much carefulness, as
though it were a great gain to hinder
their burial. Therefore, after the
bodies had been displayed to view for
many days, they were at last burned to ashes, and cast into the river Rhone, which flows
by this place, that not a vestige of
them might be left upon the earth. For
they said, Now shall we see whether they
will rise again, and whether their God
can save them out of our hands" Not many months after the date of that
epistle, Marius, then expecting to leave
Rome for a long time, and in fact about
to leave it for ever, stood to witness
the triumphal entry of Marcus Aurelius,
almost at the exact spot from which he
had watched the emperor's solemn return to
the capital on his own first coming thither. His triumph was now a " full " one
Justus Triumphus justified, by far more
than the due amount of bloodshed in
those Northern wars, at length, it might
seem, happily at an end. Among the
captives, amid the laughter of the
crowds at his blowsy upper garment, his trousered legs and conical wolf-skin cap, walked our
own ancestor, representative of subject
Germany, under a figure very familiar in
later Roman sculpture; and, though
certainly with none of the grace of the
Dying Gaul, yet with plenty of uncouth
pathos in his misshapen features, and
the pale, servile, yet angry eyes. His children, white-skinned and
golden-haired " as angels," trudged
beside him. His brothers, of the animal
world, the ibex, the wild-cat, and the reindeer, stalking and trumpeting grandly, found
their due place in the procession; and
among the spoil, set forth on a portable
frame that it might be distinctly seen
(no mere model, but the very house he
had lived in), a wattled cottage, in all
the simplicity of its snug contrivances against the cold, and well-calculated to give a
moment's delight to his new,
sophisticated masters. Mantegna, working at the end of the fifteenth century, for a society full of
antiquarian fervour at the sight of the
earthy relics of the old Roman people,
day by day returning to light out of the
clay childish still, moreover, and with
no more suspicion of pasteboard than the
old Romans themselves, in its unabashed love of open-air pageantries, has invested this, the
greatest, and alas ! the most characteristic, of the splendours of imperial ROMA, with a reality livelier than any description. The homely
sentiments for which he has found place in his
learned paintings are hardly more lifelike than the great public incidents of the show,
there depicted. And then, with all that
vivid realism, how refined, how
dignified, how select in type, is this
reflection of the old Roman world ! now
especially, in its time-mellowed red and
gold, for the modern visitor to the old English palace. It was under no such selected types
that the great procession presented
itself to MARIO; though, in effect, he
found something there prophetic, so to speak, and evocative of ghosts, as susceptible minds will do, upon a repetition
after long interval of some notable
incident, which may yet perhaps have no
direct concern for themselves. In truth,
he had been so closely bent of late on
certain very personal interests that the
broad current of the world's doings
seemed to have withdrawn into the distance, but now, as he witnessed this procession, to
return once more into evidence for him.
The world, certainly, had been holding
on its old way, and was all its old
self, as it thus passed by dramatically, accentuating, in this favourite
spectacle, its mode of viewing things.
And even apart from the contrast of a
very different scene, he would have
found it, just now, a somewhat vulgar
spectacle. The temples, wide open, with their ropes of roses flapping in the wind against
the rich, reflecting marble, their
startling draperies and heavy cloud of
incense, were but the centres of a great
banquet spread through all the gaudily
coloured streets of ROMA, for which the carnivorous appetite of those
who thronged them in the glare of the
mid -day sun was frankly enough
asserted. At best, they were but calling their gods to share with them the cooked,
sacrificial, and other meats, reeking to
the sky. The child, who was concerned
for the sorrows of one of those Northern captives as he passed by, and explained to his comrade "There's
feeling in that hand, you know ! "
benumbed and lifeless as it looked in
the chain, seemed, in a moment, to
transform the entire show into its own proper tinsel. Yes ! these Romans are a coarse,
a vulgar people; and their vulgarities
of soul in full evidence here. And
Aurelius himself seemed to have
undergone the world's coinage, and fallen to the level of his reward, in a
mediocrity no longer golden. Yet if, as he passed by, almost filling the quaint old circular chariot with his
magnificent golden-flowered attire, he
presented himself to MARIO, chiefly as one who had made the great mistake ; to the multitude he came as a
more than magnanimous conqueror. That he
had " forgiven " the innocent
wife and children of the dashing and
almost successful rebel AVIDIO CASSIO, now no more, was a recent
circumstance still in memory. As the
children went past not among those who,
ere the emperor ascended the steps of
the CAMPIDOGLIO, would be detached from
the great progress for execution, happy rather, and radiant, as adopted members of the
imperial family the crowd actually
enjoyed an exhibition of the moral order, such as might become perhaps the fashion. And it was in
consideration of some possible touch of a heroism herein that might really have cost him something,
that MARIO resolves to seek the emperor once more, with an appeal for
common-sense, for reason and
justice. He had set out at last
to revisit his old home; and knowing
that Aurelius was then in retreat at a
favourite villa, which lay almost on his way
thither, determined there to present himself. Although the great plain was dying steadily,
a new race of wild birds establishing
itself there, as he knew enough of their
habits to understand, and the idle
contadino^ with his never-ending ditty
of decay and death, replacing the lusty
Roman labourer, never had that poetic region between Rome and the sea more deeply
impressed him than on this sunless day of early
autumn, under which all that fell within the immense horizon was presented in one
uniform tone of a clear, penitential
blue. Stimulating to the fancy as was
that range of low hills to the
northwards, already troubled with the upbreaking of the Apennines, yet a
want of quiet in their outline, the
record of wild fracture there, of sudden
upheaval and depression, marked them as
but the ruins of nature ; while at every little
descent and ascent of the road might be noted traces of the abandoned work of man.
From time to time, the way was still
redolent of the floral relics of summer,
daphne and myrtle-blossom, sheltered in the little hollows and ravines. At last, amid rocks here and
there piercing the soil, as those
descents became steeper, and the main
line of the Apennines, now visible, gave a higher accent to the scene, he espied over the plateau^ almost like one
of those broken hills, cutting the
horizon towards the sea, the old brown
villa itself, rich in memories of one
after another of the family of the
Antonines. As he approached it, such reminiscences crowded upon him, above all
of the life there of the aged ANTONINO
PIO, in its wonderful mansuetude and calm.
Death had overtaken him here at the
precise moment when the tribune of the
watch had received from his lips the
word Aequanimitas! as the watchword of
the night. To see their emperor living there
like one of his simplest subjects, his hands red at vintage-time with the juice of the grapes,
hunting, teaching his children, starting betimes, with all who cared to join him, for long days of
antiquarian research in the country around : this, and the like of this, had seemed to mean
the peace of mankind. Upon that had come
like a stain ! it seemed to MARIO just
then the more intimate life of Faustina,
the life of Faustina at home. Surely,
that marvellous but malign beauty must still haunt those rooms, like an unquiet, dead
goddess, who might have perhaps, after
all, something reassuring to tell
surviving mortals about her ambiguous
self. When, two years since, the news
had reached Rome that those eyes, always
so persistently turned to vanity, had suddenly closed for ever, a strong desire to pray had
come over Marius, as he followed in fancy on its wild way the soul of one he had spoken with now
and again, and whose presence in it for
a time the world of art could so ill
have spared. Certainly, the honours
freely accorded to embalm her memory
were poetic enough the rich temple left
among those wild villagers at the spot, now
it was hoped sacred for ever, where she had breathed her last ; the golden image, in her
old place at the amphitheatre ; the
altar at which the newly married might make
their sacrifice ; above all, the great
foundation for orphan girls, to be
called after her name. The latter,
precisely, was the cause why Marius
failed in fact to see Aurelius again, and
make the chivalrous effort at enlightenment he had proposed to himself. Entering the
villa, he learned from an usher, at the
door of the long gallery, famous still
for its grand prospect in the memory of
many a visitor, and then leading to the imperial apartments, that the
emperor was already in audience : Marius
must wait his turn he knew not how long
it might be. An odd audience it seemed ; for at that moment, through the closed door, came shouts of
laughter, the laughter of a great crowd
of children the Faustinian Children themselves, as he afterwards learned happy
and at their ease, in the imperial
presence. Uncertain, then, of the time
for which so pleasant a reception might last, so pleasant that he would hardly have wished to
shorten it, Marius finally determined to proceed, as it was necessary that he should
accomplish the first stage of his
journey on this day. The thing was not
to be Vale ! anima infelicissima! He
might at least carry away that sound of
the laughing orphan children, as a not unamiable last impression of kings and their
houses. The place he was now about to
visit, especially as the resting-place of his dead, had never been forgotten. Only, the first eager period
of his life in Rome had slipped on
rapidly ; and, almost on a sudden, that
old time had come to seem very long ago.
An almost burdensome solemnity had grown
about his memory of the place, so that
to revisit it seemed a thing that needed
preparation : it was what he could not
have done hastily. He half feared to lessen, or disturb, its value for himself. And then, as
he travelled leisurely towards it, and
so far with quite tranquil mind,
interested also in many another place by
the way, he discovered a shorter road to
the end of his journey, and found
himself indeed approaching the spot that was to him like no other. Dreaming now only of
the dead before him, he journeyed on
rapidly through the night ; the thought
of them increasing on him, in the
darkness. It was as if they had been
waiting for him there through all those
years, and felt his footsteps approaching now, and understood his devotion, quite
gratefully, in that lowliness of theirs, in spite of its tardy fulfilment. As
morning came, his late tranquillity of mind had given way to a grief which surprised him by its freshness. He was
moved more than he could have thought
possible by so distant a sorrow. "
To-day ! " they seemed to be saying
as the hard dawn broke, To-day, he will
come ! " At last, amid all his distractions, they were become the main purpose of what
he was then doing. The world around it,
when he actually reached the place later
in the day, was in a mood very different
from his : so worka-day, it seemed, on that fine afternoon, and the villages he passed through so silent ;
the inhabitants being, for the most
part, at their labour in the country.
Then, at length, above the tiled
outbuildings, were the walls of the old
villa itself, with the tower for the pigeons ; and, not among cypresses, but half-hidden by
aged poplar-trees, their leaves like
golden fruit, the birds floating around
it, the conical roof of the tomb itself.
In the presence of an old servant who
remembered him, the great seals were
broken, the rusty key turned at last in the lock, the door was forced out among the weeds
grown thickly about it, and Marius was
actually in the place which had been so
often in his thoughts. He was struck,
not however without a touch of remorse
thereupon, chiefly by an odd air of
neglect, the neglect of a place allowed to remain as when it was last used, and left in a
hurry, till long years had covered all
alike with thick dust the faded flowers, the burnt-out lamps, the tools and hardened mortar of the workmen
who had had something to do there. A
heavy fragment of woodwork had fallen
and chipped open one of the oldest of
the mortuary urns, many hundreds in
number ranged around the walls. It was
not properly an urn, but a minute coffin
of stone, and the fracture had revealed a
piteous spectacle of the mouldering, unburned remains within ; the bones of a child, as
he understood, which might have died, in
ripe age, three times over, since it
slipped away from among his
great-grandfathers, so far up in the
line. Yet the protruding baby hand seemed to stir up in him feelings vivid enough,
bringing him intimately within the scope
of dead people's grievances. He noticed,
side by side with the urn of his mother,
that of a boy of about his own age one
of the serving-boys of the household who
had descended hither, from the lightsome
world of childhood, almost at the same time with her. It seemed as if this boy of his
own age had taken filial place beside
her there, in his stead. That hard
feeling, again, which had always
lingered in his mind with the thought of
the father he had scarcely known, melted
wholly away, as he read the precise number of his years, and reflected suddenly He was
of my own present age ; no hard old man,
but with interests, as he looked round
him on the world for the last time, even
as mine to-day! And with that came a
blinding rush of kindness, as if two
alienated friends had come to understand each other at last. There was weakness
in all this ; as there is in all care
for dead persons, to which nevertheless
people will always yield in proportion
as they really care for one another.
With a vain yearning, as he stood there, still to be able to do something for them, he
reflected that such doing must be, after
all, in the nature of things, mainly for
himself. His own epitaph might be that
old one "Eo-^aTo? TOV ISlov yevov?
He was the last of his race ! Of those who might come hither after himself probably
no one would ever again come quite as he
had done to-day ; and it was under the
influence of this thought that he
determined to bury all that, deep below
the surface, to be remembered only by
him, and in a way which would claim no
sentiment from the indifferent. That took many days was like a renewal of lengthy old
burial rites as he himself watched the
work, early and late ; coming on the
last day very early, and anticipating,
by stealth, the last touches, while the
workmen were absent ; one young lad only,
finally smoothing down the earthy bed, greatly surprised at the seriousness with which
Marius flung in his flowers, one by one,
to mingle with the dark mould. Those
eight days at his old home, so mournfully
occupied, had been for Marius in some sort a forcible disruption from the world and the
roots of his life in it. He had been
carried out of himself as never before ;
and when the time was over, it was as if
the claim over him of the earth below
had been vindicated, over against the
interests of that living world around. Dead,
yet sentient and caressing hands seemed to reach out of the ground and to be clinging about
him. Looking back sometimes now, from
about the midway of life the age, as he
conceived, at which one begins to
re-descend one's life though antedating
it a little, in his sad humour, he would
note, almost with surprise, the unbroken placidity of the contemplation in
which it had been passed. His own
temper, his early theoretic scheme of
things, would have pushed him on to
movement and adventure. Actually, as
circumstances had determined, all its movement had been inward ; movement of
observation only, or even of pure meditation ; in part, perhaps, because throughout it had been
something of a meditatio mortis^ ever facing towards the act of final detachment. Death, however, as he reflected, must be for every one
nothing (less than the fifth or last act of a drama, and, as 1 such, was likely to have something of the
stirring ! character of a denouement.
And, in fact, it was in form tragic
enough that his end not long after- '
wards came to him. In the midst of the extreme weariness and depression which had followed those last
days, CORNELIO, then, as it happened, on a journey and travelling near the place, finding traces of
him, had become his guest at
Whitenights. It was just then that
Marius felt, as he had never done
before, the value to himself, the overpowering charm, of his friendship. More than brother!
he felt " like a son also ! " contrasting the fatigue of soul which made himself in effect
an older man, with the irrepressible
youth of his companion. For it was still
the marvellous hopefulness of CORNELIO,
his seeming prerogative over the future,
that determined, and kept alive, all
other sentiment concerning him. A new
hope had sprung up in the world of which he, Cornelius, was a depositary, which he was
to bear onward in it. Identifying
himself with Cornelius in so dear a
friendship, through him, MARIO seems to touch, to ally himself to, actually to
become a possessor of the coming world ;
even as happy parents reach out, and
take possession of it, in and through the survival of their children. For in these days
their intimacy had grown very close, as
they moved hither and thither,
leisurely, among the country-places thereabout, CORNELIO being on his way back to Rome, till they came one evening to
a little town (Marius remembered that he
had been there on his first journey to
Rome) which had even then its church and
legend the legend and holy relics of the
martyr Hyacinthus, a young Roman
soldier, whose blood had stained the
soil of this place in the reign of the emperor TRAIANO. The thought of that so
recent death, haunted Marius through the
night, as if with audible crying and
sighs above the restless wind, which
came and went around their lodging. But
towards dawn he slept heavily ; and awaking in broad daylight, and finding CORNELIO absent,
set forth to seek him. The plague was
still in the place had indeed just
broken out afresh ; with an outbreak
also of cruel superstition among its
wild and miserable inhabitants. Surely, the old gods were wroth at the presence of this
new enemy among them ! And it was no
ordinary morning into which Marius
stepped forth. There was a menace in the dark masses of hill, and motionless wood, against the gray,
although apparently unclouded sky. Under
this sunless heaven the earth itself seemed to fret and fume with a heat of its own, in spite of the
strong night-wind. And now the wind had
fallen. Marius felt that he breathed
some strange heavy fluid, denser than
any common air. He could have fancied
that the world had sunken in the night,
far below its proper level, into some
close, thick abysm of its own atmosphere. The Christian people of the town, hardly less terrified and overwrought by the haunting
sickness about them than their pagan neighbours, were at prayer before the tomb of the martyr
; and even as Marius pressed among them
to a place beside Cornelius, on a sudden
the hills seemed to roll like a sea in
motion, around the whole compass of the
horizon. For a moment Marius supposed
himself attacked with some sudden
sickness of brain, till the fall of a
great mass of building convinced him that
not himself but the earth under his feet was giddy. A few moments later the little
marketplace was alive with the rush of the distracted inhabitants from their tottering houses ; and
as they waited anxiously for the second
shock of earthquake, a long -smouldering
suspicion leapt precipitately into
well-defined purpose, and the whole body
of people was carried forward towards
the band of worshippers below. An hour
later, in the wild tumult which followed,
the earth had been stained afresh with the blood of the martyrs Felix and Faustinus F lores
apparuerunt in terra nostra ! and their brethren, together with CORNELIO and MARIO, thus, as
it had happened, taken among them, were
prisoners, reserved for the action of
the law. Marius and his friend, with
certain others, exercising the privilege
of their rank, made claim to be tried in
Rome, or at least in the chief town of the
district; where, indeed, in the troublous days that had now begun, a
legal process had been already
instituted. Under the care of a military
guard the captives were removed on the same day, one stage of their journey ; sleeping,
for security, during the night, side by
side with their keepers, in the rooms of
a shepherd's deserted house by the wayside. It was surmised that one of the
prisoners was not a Christian : the
guards were forward to make the utmost
pecuniary profit of this circumstance, and in the night, MARIO, taking
advantage of the loose charge kept over them, and by means partly of a large bribe, had contrived
that Cornelius, as the really innocent
person, should be dismissed in safety on
his way, to procure, as Marius
explained, the proper means of defence
for himself, when the time of trial came. And in the morning Cornelius in
fact set forth alone, from their
miserable place of detention. MARIO believed that CORNELIO was to be the husband of Cecilia; and that, perhaps
strangely, had but added to the desire to get him away safely. We wait for the great crisis
which is to try what is in us : we can hardly bear the pressure of our hearts, as we think of it :
the lonely wrestler, or victim, which
imagination foreshadows to us, can
hardly be one's self; it seems an
outrage of our destiny that we should be
led along so gently and imperceptibly, to so
terrible a leaping-place in the dark, for more perhaps than life or death. At last, the
great act, the critical moment itself
comes, easily, almost unconsciously.
Another motion of the clock, and our
fatal line the " great climacteric
point " has been passed, which changes ourselves or our lives. In
one quarter of an hour, under a sudden,
uncontrollable impulse, hardly weighing
what he did, almost as a matter of
course and as lightly as one hires a bed for one's ; night's rest on a journey, Marius had taken
upon himself all the heavy risk of the
position in which Cornelius had then
been the long and wearisome delays of
judgment, which were possible ; the danger and wretchedness of a long journey in this manner ; possibly the danger
of death. He had delivered his brother,
after the manner he had sometimes vaguely anticipated as a kind of distinction in his destiny;
though indeed always with wistful
calculation as to what it might cost him
: and in the first moment after the
thing was actually done, he felt only satisfaction at his courage, at the
discovery of his possession of "
nerve." Yet he was, as we know, no hero, no heroic martyr had indeed no
right to be ; and when he had seen
Cornelius depart, on his blithe and
hopeful way, as he believed, to become the husband of Cecilia; actually, as it had
happened, without a word of farewell, supposing MARIO is almost immediately
afterwards to follow (Marius indeed
having avoided the moment of
leave-taking with its possible call for
an explanation of the circumstances), the reaction came. He could only guess,
of course, at what might really happen.
So far, he had but taken upon himself,
in the stead of CORNELIO, a certain
amount of personal risk; though he
hardly supposed himself to be facing the danger of death. Still, especially for one such as
he, with all the sensibilities of which
his whole manner of life had been but a
promotion, the situation of a person
under trial on a criminal charge was
actually full of distress. To him, in
truth, a death such as the recent death of those saintly brothers, seemed no glorious end. In
his case, at least, the Martyrdom, as it
was called the overpowering act of
testimony that Heaven had come down
among men would be but a common
execution: from the drops of his blood
there would spring no miraculous, poetic flowers; no eternal aroma would
indicate the place of his burial ; no
plenary grace, overflowing for ever upon
those who might stand around it. Had
there been one to listen just then, there would have come, from the very depth of his
desolation, an eloquent utterance at last, on the irony of men's fates, on the singular accidents of life and
death. The guards, now safely in possession of whatever money and other
valuables the prisoners had had on them,
pressed them forward, over the rough
mountain paths, altogether careless of their
sufferings. The great autumn rains were falling. At night the soldiers
light a fire; but it was impossible to
keep warm. From time to time they
stopped to roast portions of the meat they
carried with them, making their captives sit round the fire, and pressing it upon them. But weariness and depression of spirits had deprived Marius of appetite, even if the food had
been more attractive, and for some days
he partook of nothing but bad bread and
water. All through the dark mornings
they dragged over boggy plains, up and
down hills, wet through sometimes with the heavy rain. Even in those deplorable
circumstances, he could but notice the
wild, dark beauty of those regions the stormy sunrise, and placid spaces of evening. One
of the keepers, a very young soldier,
won him at times, by his simple
kindness, to talk a little, with wonder
at the lad's half-conscious, poetic
delight in the adventures of the journey. At times, the whole company would lie down
for rest at the roadside, hardly
sheltered from the storm ; and in the
deep fatigue of his spirit, his old
longing for inopportune sleep overpowered
him. Sleep anywhere, and under any conditions, seemed just then a thing
one might well exchange the remnants of one's life for. It must have been about
the fifth night, as he afterwards
conjectured, that the soldiers, believing
him likely to die, had finally left him unable to proceed further, under the care of some
country people, who to the extent of
their power certainly treated him kindly
in his sickness. He awoke to
consciousness after a severe attack of fever,
lying alone on a rough bed, in a kind of hut. It seemed a remote, mysterious place, as he
looked around in the silence ; but so
fresh lying, in fact, in a high
pasture-land among the mountains that he
felt he should recover, if he might but
just lie there in quiet long enough. Even during those nights of delirium he had felt the
scent of the new-mown hay pleasantly,
with a dim sense for a moment that he
was lying safe in his old home. The
sunlight lay clear beyond the open door
; and the sounds of the cattle reached him
softly from the green places around. Recalling confusedly the torturing hurry of his
late journeys, he dreaded, as his
consciousness of the whole situation
returned, the coming of the guards. But
the place remained in absolute
stillness. He was, in fact, at liberty, but for his own disabled condition. And it was certainly
a genuine clinging to life that he felt
just then, at the very bottom of his
mind. So it had been, obscurely, even through all the wild fancies of his delirium, from the moment which followed
his decision against himself, in favour of
Cornelius. The occupants of the
place were to be heard presently, coming and going about him on their business : and it was as if the approach of
death brought out in all their force the
merely human sentiments. There is that
in death which certainly makes
indifferent persons anxious to forget
the dead : to put them those aliens away
out of their thoughts altogether, as soon as
may be. Conversely, in the deep isolation of spirit which was now creeping upon MARIO,
the faces of these people, casually
visible, took a strange hold on his
affections ; the link of general brotherhood,
the feeling of human kinship, asserting itself most strongly when it was about to be severed for ever. At nights
he would find this face or that
impressed deeply on his fancy ; and, in
a troubled sort of manner, his mind
would follow them onwards, on the ways
of their simple, humdrum, everyday life, with a peculiar yearning to share it with them,
envying the calm, earthy cheerfulness of
all their days to be, still under the
sun, though so indifferent, of course,
to him ! as if these rude people had
been suddenly lifted into some height of earthly good-fortune, which must needs isolate
them from himself. Tristem neminem fecit
he repeated to himself; his old prayer
shaping itself now almost as his
epitaph. Yes ! so much the very hardest judge must concede to him. And
the sense of satisfaction which that thought left with him disposed him to a
conscious effort of recollection, while
he lay there, unable now even to raise his
head, as he discovered on attempting to reach a .pitcher of water which stood near.
Revelation, vision, the discovery of a
vision, the seeing of a perfect
humanity, in a perfect world through all
his alternations of mind, by some dominant
instinct, determined by the original necessities of his own nature and character, he had always
set that above the having, or even the
doing, of anything. For, such vision, if received with due attitude on his part, was, in reality, the
being something, and as such was surely
a pleasant offering or sacrifice to
whatever gods there might be, observant
of him. And how goodly had the vision
been ! one long unfolding of beauty and
energy in things, upon the closing of
which he might gratefully utter his "Vixi!' Even then, just ere his
eyes were to be shut for ever, the
things they had seen seemed a veritable
possession in hand ; the persons, the places, above all, the touching image of Jesus, apprehended dimly through the expressive faces, the
crying of the children, in that
mysterious drama, with a sudden sense of
peace and satisfaction now, which he
could not explain to himself. Surely, he
had prospered in life ! And again, as of old,
the sense of gratitude seemed to bring with it the sense also of a living person at his
side. For still, in a shadowy world, his deeper
wisdom had ever been, with a sense of economy, with a jealous estimate
of gain and loss, to use life, not as
the means to some problematic end, but,
as far as might be, from dying hour to dying
hour, an end in itself a kind of music, allsufficing to the duly trained
ear, even as it died out on the air. Yet
now, aware still in that suffering body
of such vivid powers of mind and sense,
as he anticipated from time to time how
his sickness, practically without aid as he must be in this rude place, was likely to end, and
that the moment of taking final account
was drawing very near, a consciousness
of waste would come, with half-angry tears of self-pity, in his great weakness a blind, outraged, angry feeling
of wasted power, such as he might have
experienced himself standing by the
deathbed of another, in condition like
his own. And yet it was the fact, again, that the vision of men and things, actually revealed to him
on his way through the world, had
developed, with a wonderful largeness,
the faculties to which it addressed
itself, his general capacity of vision;
and in that too was a success, in the view of certain, very definite, well-considered,
undeniable possibilities. Throughout that elaborate and lifelong education of his receptive
powers, he had ever kept in view the
purpose of preparing himself towards possible further revelation some day towards some ampler vision, which
should take up into itself and explain this
world's delightful shows, as the scattered fragments of a poetry, till then
but half-understood, might be taken up
into the text of a lost epic, recovered
at last. At this moment, his unclouded receptivity of soul, grown so steadily through all those years, from experience to
experience, was at its height ; the house ready for the possible guest ; the tablet of the mind
white and smooth, for whatsoever divine
fingers might choose to write there. And
was not this precisely the condition, the attitude of mind, to which something higher than he, yet akin to him, would be likely to reveal itself ; to
which that influence he had felt now and
again like a friendly hand upon his
shoulder, amid the actual obscurities of
the world, would be likely to make a
further explanation ? Surely, the aim of a
true philosophy must lie, not in futile efforts towards the complete accommodation of man
to the circumstances in which he chances
to find himself, but in the maintenance
of a kind of candid discontent, in the
face of the very highest achievement;
the unclouded and receptive soul
quitting the world finally, with the same fresh wonder with which it had entered the
world still unimpaired, and going on its
blind way at last with the consciousness
of some profound enigma in things, as
but a pledge of something further to
come. MARIO seems to understand how one
might look back upon life here, and its excellent visions, as but the portion
of a race-course left behind him by a runner still swift of foot : for a moment he experienced a
singular curiosity, almost an ardent
desire to enter upon a future, the
possibilities of which seemed so large.
And just then, again amid the memory of certain touching actual words and
images, came the thought of the great
hope, that hope against hope, which, as
he conceived, had arisen Lux sedentibus in tenebris upon the aged world;
the hope CORNELIO had seemed to bear
away upon him in his strength, with a
buoyancy which had caused MARIO to feel,
not so much that by a caprice of
destiny, he had been left to die in his
place, as that CORNELIO was gone on a mission to deliver him also from death. There had been
a permanent protest established in the
world, a plea, a perpetual
after-thought, which humanity henceforth
would ever possess in reserve, against
any wholly mechanical and disheartening theory of itself and its conditions. That was a
thought which relieved for him the iron
outline of the horizon about him,
touching it as if with soft light from
beyond ; filling the shadowy, hollow
places to which he was on his way with the warmth of definite affections; confirming
also certain considerations by which he
seemed to link himself to the generations to come in the world he was leaving. Yes ! through the
survival of their children, happy parents are able to think calmly, and with a
very practical affection, of a world in
which they are to have no direct share;
planting with a cheerful good-humour,
the acorns they carry about with them, that their grand-children may be shaded from the sun
by the broad oak-trees of the future.
That is nature's way of easing death to
us. It was thus too, surprised,
delighted, that MARIO, under the power
of that new hope among men, could think
of the generations to come after him. Without it, dim in truth as it was, he could hardly
have dared to ponder the world which
limited all he really knew, as it would
be when he should have departed from it.
A strange lonesomeness, like physical
darkness, seemed to settle upon the
thought of it; as if its business hereafter must be, as far as he was concerned, carried on in
some inhabited, but distant and alien,
star. Contrariwise, with the sense of that hope warm about him, he seemed to anticipate some kindly
care for himself, never to fail even on
earth, a care for his very body that
dear sister and companion of his soul,
outworn, suffering, and in the very
article of death, as it was now. For the weariness came back tenfold ;
and he had finally to abstain from
thoughts like these, as from what caused
physical pain. And then, as before in
the wretched, sleepless nights of those
forced marches, he would try to fix his mind, as it were impassively, and like a child
thinking over the toys it loves, one
after another, that it may fall asleep
thus, and forget all about them the
sooner, on all the persons he had loved in
life on his love for them, dead or living, grateful for his love or not,
rather than on theirs for him letting
their images pass away again, or rest
with him, as they would. In the bare
sense of having loved he seemed to find, even amid this foundering of the ship, that on
which his soul might "assuredly
rest and depend." One after
another, he suffered those faces and
voices to come and go, as in some mechanical exercise, as he might have
repeated all the verses he knew by
heart, or like the telling of beads one
by one, with many a sleepy nod between-whiles. For there remained also, for the
old earthy creature still within him,
that great blessedness of physical
slumber. To sleep, to lose one's self in
sleep that, as he had always recognised, was
a good thing. And it was after a space of deep sleep that he awoke amid the murmuring voices of the people who had kept and tended him
so carefully through his sickness, now
kneeling around his bed : and what he
heard confirmed, in the then perfect
clearness of his soul, the inevitable suggestion of his own bodily feelings. He
had often dreamt he was condemned to die,
that the hour, with wild thoughts of escape, was arrived; and waking, with the sun all around him, in complete liberty of life, had been
full of gratitude for his place there,
alive still, in the land of the living. He read surely, now, in the manner, the doings, of these people, some
of whom were passing out through the
doorway, where the heavy sunlight in
very deed lay, that his last morning was
come, and turned to think once more of
the beloved. Often had he fancied of old
that not to die on a dark or rainy day
might itself have a little alleviating grace or favour about it. The people around his
bed were praying fervently Abi! Abi!
Anima Christiana! In the moments of his extreme
helplessness their mystic bread had been placed, had descended like a snow-flake from the
sky, between his lips. Gentle fingers
had applied to hands and feet, to all
those old passage-ways of the senses,
through which the world had come and
gone for him, now so dim and obstructed, a
medicinable oil. It was the same people who, in the gray, austere evening of that day, took
up his remains, and buried them
secretly, with their accustomed prayers
; but with joy also, holding his death,
according to their generous view in this
matter, to have been of the nature of a
martyrdom ; and martyrdom, as the church had always said, a kind of sacrament with plenary
grace. Nome
compiuto: Corrado Curcio. Curcio. Keywords: esistenti -- Lucrezio, Foscolo,
Leopardi, Alighieri, Gentile, Diano, Sicilian philosophy. Refs.: Luigi
Speranza, “Grice e Curcio” – The Swimming-Pool Library.
Luigi Speranza – GRICE ITALO!;
ossia, Grice e Curi: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dei figli di
Marte -- passione e compassione, senso e consenso – scuola di Verona –
filosofia veronese – filosofia veneta -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Verona). Filosofo veronese. Filosofo veneto. Filosofo italiano. Verona, Veneto. Grice:
“I like Curi; unlike me, we would call him a prolific philosopher; my favourite
are his reflections on ‘eros’, ‘amore’ and bello, but he has also written on
various topics related to maleness -Si laurea a Padova. Insegna a Padova. Membro
dell’Istituto Gramsci Veneto. Formatosi alla scuola di Diano, Gentile e Bozzi, incontra
Cacciari. A partire da quel topos, si avvia un sodalizio estremamente solido e
fecondo, all'insegna di una comune ricerca del nuovo, e di un impegno
teoretico rigoroso, che va oltre il piano strettamente della speculazione, in direzione
di una pratica civile. Filosofa sul nesso politica-civilita e guerra e sul
concetto di ‘polemos’ – cf. Grice epagoge/diagoge “”War is war” – Eirene --,
lungo la linea che congiunge Eraclito a Heidegger. Valorizza la narrazione, sia
intesa come mythos, sia concepita come opera cinematografica. Medita su alcuni
temi fondamentali dell'interrogazione filosofica, quali l'amore e la morte, il
dolore e il destino. Altre opere: “Endiadi: figure della dualità”
(Feltrinelli, Milano); “La filosofia come ‘bellum’” (Bollati Boringhieri,
Torino); “La forza dello sguardo” – Lat. vereor – warten: to see --; “Meglio
non essere nati: la condizione umana” – cf. la condition humaine”, Malraux);
“Lo schermo” (Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano); “Un filosofo al cinema,
Bompiani, Milano).Quello che non e filosofo, ma ha soltanto una verniciatura di
casi umani, come il maschio abbronzato dal sole, vedendo quante cose si devono
imparare, quante fatiche bisogna sopportare, come si convenga, a seguire tale
studio, la vita regolata di ogni giorno, giudica che sia una cosa difficile e impossibile
per lui. A questo maschio bisogna mostrare che cos'è davvero la filosofia, e
quante difficoltà presenta, e quanta fatica comporta.” (Platone, Lettera
settima). La libertà non è soltanto l'essere-liberati DA lle catene né soltanto
l'esser-divenuti-liberi PER la luce, ma l'autentico essere-liberi è essere-liberatori
DA il buio. La ridiscesa nella caverna non è un divertimento aggiuntivo che il
presunto "libero" possa concedersi così per svago, magari per
curiosita. E esser-ci dentro tutto, essa soltanto, il compimento autentico del
divenire liberi. Heidegger, L'essenza della verità, Franco Volpi, Milano).Ne “La
brama dell'avere” si ha un attento e puntuale riesame sia storico-filosofico
che critico-filologico della fondamentale categoria esistenziale dell'”avere” –
“the have and have-nots” -alla luce dell'odierno assetto socio-comunitario. Cf. Grice on “H” for “Hazzes” “x H y” Curi focuses on ‘ekhein’ which would then
correspond to Grice’s “H” --. Altre opere: “Il coraggio di pensare,
manualistica di filosofia, Loescher editore, Torino); “Il problema dell'unità
del sapere nel comportamentismo” (MILANI, Padova); “Analisi operazionale e operazionismo”
(MILANI, Padova); “L'analisi operazionale della psicologia” (Franco Angeli,
Milano); “Dagli Jonici alla crisi della fisica” (MILANI, Padova); “Anti-conformismo
e libertà intellettuale: per una dialettica tra pensiero e politica” (Padova) –
cfr. Grice on non-conformismo – “Psicologia e critica dell'ideologia” (Bertani,
Roma); “La ricerca” (Marsilio, Venezia); “Katastrophé. Sulle forme del
mutamento scientifico” (Arsenale Cooperativa, Venezia); “La linea divisa.
Modelli di razionalita' e pratiche scientifiche nel pensiero occidentale” (De
Donato, Bari); “Pensare la guerra. Per una cultura della pace” (Dedalo, Bari) –
cf. Grice on ‘eirenic effect’ – pax et bellum – si vis pacem para bellum. ex
bello pace. “Dimensioni del tempo” (Franco Angeli, Milano); “Einstein”
(Gabriele Corbo, Ferrara); “La cosmologia filosofica” (Gabriele Corbo,
Ferrara); “La politica sommersa. Per un'analisi del sistema politico italiano,
Franco Angeli, Milan); “Lo scudo di Achille. Il PCI nella grande crisi” (Franco
Angeli, Milano); “L'albero e la foresta. Il Partito Democratico della Sinistra
nel sistema politico italiano, con Paolo Flores d'Arcais, Franco Angeli,
Milano); “Metamorfosi del tragico tra classico e moderno, Bari); “La repubblica
che non c'è” (Milano); “Poròs. Dialogo in una società che rifiuta la bellezza,
Milano); L'orto di Zenone. Coltivare per osmosi” (Milano); “Amore duale”
(Feltrinelli, Milano); “Platone: Il mantello e la scarpa” (Il Poligrafo,
Padova); “Pensare la guerra. L'Europa e il destino della politica, Dedalo,
Bari); “Pólemos. Filosofia come guerra, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino); Ombra
della’ idea. Filosofia del cinema fra «American beauty» e «Parla con lei»,
Pendragon, Bologna); “Filosofia del Don Giovanni. Alle origini di un mito
moderno, Bruno Mondadori, Milano); “Il farmaco della democrazia. Alle radici
della politica, Marinotti, Milano); “La forza dello sguardo, Bollati
Boringhieri, Torino); “Skenos. Il Don Giovanni nella società dello spettacolo”
(Milano); “Libidine” (Milano). Un filosofo al cinema, Bompiani, Milano); Meglio
non essere nati. La condizione umana tra Eschilo e Nietzsche, Bollati
Boringhieri, Torino); Miti d'amore. Filosofia dell'eros, Bompiani, Milano); Pensare
con la propria testa” (Mimesis, Milano); “Straniero, Raffaello Cortina Editore,
Milano); “Passione” (Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano. La porta stretta. Come
diventare maggiorenni” (Bollati Boringhieri, Torino); “I figli di Ares. Guerra
infinita e terrorismo, Castelvecchi, Roma. La brama dell'avere; Il Margine,
Trento); “Il mito di Narciso sul Wikipedia
Ricerca Marte (divinità) dio romano della guerra e dei duelli Lingua Segui
Modifica Marte (in latino: Mars[1]) è, nella religione romana e italica, il dio
della guerra e dei duelli e, secondo la mitologia più arcaica, anche del tuono,
della pioggia e della fertilità. Simile alla divinità greca Ares, col tempo ne
ha assorbito tutti gli attributi, fino a venire completamente identificato con
esso. Statua colossale di Marte: "Pirro" nei Musei
capitolini a Roma. Fine del I secolo d.C. Culto. Venere e Marte, affresco
romano da Pompei. È una divinità sia etrusca[4] che italica (Mamers nei
dialetti sabellici); nella religione romana (dove era considerato padre del
primo re Romolo) era il dio guerriero per eccellenza, in parte associato a
fenomeni atmosferici come la tempesta e il fulmine. Assieme a Quirino e Giove,
faceva parte della cosiddetta "Triade arcaica", che in seguito, su
influsso della cultura etrusca, sarà invece costituita da Giove, Giunone e
Minerva. Più tardi, identificandolo con il greco Ares, venne detto figlio di
Giunone e Giove e inserito in un contesto mitologico ellenizzato. Alcuni
studiosi del passato (Wilhelm Roscher, Hermann Usner, e soprattutto Alfred von
Domaszewski) hanno parlato di Marte anche nei termini di divinità
"agraria", legata all'agricoltura, soprattutto sulla scorta del testo
di una preghiera rimastaci nel De agri cultura di Catone, che lo invoca per
proteggere i campi da ogni tipo di sciagura e malattia. Secondo Georges Dumézil
tuttavia il collegamento fra Marte e l'ambito campestre non farebbe di lui una
divinità legata alla terra, in quanto il suo ruolo sarebbe esclusivamente di difensore
armato dei campi da mali umani e soprannaturali, senza diversificazione dalla
sua natura intrinsecamente guerresca. Il dio, inoltre, rappresentava la
virtù e la forza della natura e della gioventù, che nei tempi antichi era
dedita alla pratica militare. In questo senso era posto in relazione con
l'antica pratica italica del uer sacrum, la Primavera Sacra: in una situazione
difficile, i cittadini prendevano la decisione sacra di allontanare dal
territorio la nuova generazione, non appena fosse divenuta adulta. Giunto il
momento, Marte prendeva sotto la sua tutela i giovani espulsi, che formavano
solo una banda, e li proteggeva finché non avessero fondato una nuova comunità
sedentaria espellendo o sottomettendo altri occupanti; accadeva talvolta che
gli animali consacrati a Marte guidassero i sacrani e divenissero loro eponimi:
un lupo (hirpus) aveva guidato gli Irpini, un picchio (picus) i Piceni, mentre
i Mamertini derivavano il loro nome direttamente da quello del dio. Sempre a
Marte era dedicata la legio sacrata, cioè la legione Sannita, detta anche
linteata, poiché era bianca.[senza fonte] Marte, nella società romana,
assunse un ruolo molto più importante della sua controparte greca (Ares),
probabilmente perché considerato il padre del popolo romano e di tutti gli
Italici in generale: Marte, accoppiatosi con la vestale Rea Silvia generò
Romolo e Remo, che fondarono Roma.[6] Di conseguenza Marte era considerato il
padre del popolo romano e i romani si chiamavano tra loro Figli di Marte. I suoi
più importanti discendenti, oltre a Romolo e Remo, furono Pico e Fauno.
Marte comparve spesso sulla monetazione romana, sia repubblicana che imperiale,
con vari titoli: Marti conservatori (protettore), Marti patri (padre), Mars
ultor (vendicatore), Marti pacifero (portatore di pace), Marti propugnatori
(difensore), Mars victor (vincitore). Il mese di marzo, il giorno di
martedì, i nomi Marco, Marcello, Martino, il pianeta Marte, il popolo dei
Marsie il loro territorio Martia Antica (la contemporanea Marsica) devono a lui
il loro nome. Leggenda sulla nascita di MarteModifica Secondo il mito,
Giunone era invidiosa del fatto che Giove avesse concepito da solo Minerva
senza la sua partecipazione. Chiese quindi aiuto a Flora che le indicò un fiore
che cresceva nelle campagne in Etoliache permetteva di concepire al solo
contatto. Così diventò madre di Marte, che fece allevare da Priapo, il quale
gli insegnò l'arte della guerra. La leggenda è di tradizione tarda come
dimostra la discendenza di Minerva da Giove, che ricalca il mito greco. Flora,
al contrario, testimonia una tradizione più antica: l'equivalente norreno Thor
nasce dalla terra, Jǫrð e così le molte divinità elleniche.
NomiModifica Statua di Marte nudo in un affrescodi Pompei. Marte era
venerato con numerosi nomi dagli stessi latini, dagli Etruschi e da altri
popoli italici: Maris, nome Etrusco da cui deriva il nome del Dio Romano;
Mars, nome Romano; Marmar; Marmor; Mamers, nome con cui era venerato dai popoli
italicidi stirpe osca; Marpiter; Marspiter; Mavors. EpitetiModifica Diuum deus:
'dio degli dei', nome con cui viene designato nel Carmen Saliare. Gradivus:
'colui che va', con valore spesso di 'colui che va in battaglia', ma può essere
collegato anche al ver sacrum, quindi 'colui che guida, che va'. Leucesios:
epiteto del Carmen Saliare che significa 'lucente', 'dio della luce', questo
epiteto può essere anche legato alla sua caratteristica di dio del tuono e del
lampo. Silvanus: in Catone, nel libro De agri cultura, 83 Marte viene
soprannominato Silvanus in riferimento ai suoi aspetti legati alla natura e
collegandolo con Fauno. Ultor: epiteto tardo, dato da Augusto in onore della
vendetta per i cesaricidi (da ultor, -oris: vendicatore).
RappresentazioniModifica Gli antichi monumenti rappresentano il dio Marte in
maniera piuttosto uniforme; quasi sempre Marte è raffigurato con indosso
l'elmo, la lancia o la spada e lo scudo, raramente con uno scettro talvolta è
ritratto nudo, altre volte con l'armatura e spesso ha un mantello sulle spalle.
A volte è rappresentato con la barba ma, nella maggior parte dei casi, è
sbarbato. È raffigurato a piedi o su un carro trainato da due cavalli
imbizzarriti, ma ha sempre un aspetto combattivo. Gli antichi Sabini lo
adoravano sotto l'effigie di una lancia chiamata "Quiris" da cui si
racconta derivi il nome del dio Quirino, spesso identificato con Romolo.
Bisogna dire che il nome Quirinus, come il nome Quirites, deriva da *co-uiria,
cioè assemblea del popolo e indicava il popolo in quanto corpus di cittadini,
da distinguere con Populus (dal verbo populari = devastare), che indica il
popolo in armi. Il ruolo di Marte a RomaModifica Venere e Marte,
affresco romano da Pompei. A Roma Marte era onorato in modo particolare. A
partire dal regno di Numa Pompilio, venne istituito un consiglio di sacerdoti,
scelti tra i patrizi, chiamati Salii, chiamati a vigilare su dodici scudi
sacri, gli Ancilia, di cui si dice che uno sia caduto dal cielo. Questi
sacerdoti erano riconoscibili dal resto del popolo per la loro tunica purpurea.
I sacerdoti Salii, in realtà erano un'istituzione ben più antica di Numa
Pompilio, risalivano addirittura al re-dio Fauno, che li creò in onore di
Marte, costituendo così i primi culti iniziatici latini. Nella capitale
dell'impero, vi era anche una fontana consacrata al dio Marte e venerata dai
cittadini. L'imperatore Nerone, una volta, si bagnò in quella fontana, gesto
che fu interpretato dal popolo come un sacrilegio e che gli alienò la simpatia
popolare. A partire da quel giorno, l'imperatore iniziò ad avere problemi di
salute, secondo la gente dovuta alla vendetta del dio. FestivitàModifica
Era venerato fastosamente in marzo, il primo mese dell'anno nel calendario
romano, che segnava la ripresa delle attività militari dopo l'inverno e che
portava il suo nome, con le feriae Martis, Equirria, agonium martiale,
Quinquatrus e tubilustrum. Altre cerimonie importanti avvenivano in febbraio e
in ottobre. Gli Equirria si tenevano. Erano giorni sacri con significato
religioso e militare; i romani vi mettevano molta enfasi per sostenere
l'esercito e rafforzare la morale pubblica. I sacerdoti tenevano riti di
purificazione dell'esercito. Si tenevano corse di cavalli nel Campo
Marzio. Le feriæ Martis si tenevano. Durante le feriæ Martis i dodici
Salii Palatinipercorrevano la città in processione, portando ciascuno un
Ancile, uno dei dodici scudi sacri, e fermandosi ogni notte ad una stazione
diversa (mansio). Nel percorso i Salii eseguivano una danza con un ritmo di tre
tempi (tripudium) e cantavano l'antico e misterioso Carmen Saliare. Si tienne
il Quinquatrus, durante il quale gli scudi venivano ripuliti. Si tienne il
Tubilustrium, dedicato alla purificazione delle trombe usate dai Saliie alla
preparazione delle armi dopo la pausa invernale. Gl’ancilia venivano riposti
nel sacrario della Regia. L'October Equus si teneva alle idi di ottobre.
Si svolgeva una corsa di bighe e veniva sacrificato a Marte il cavallo di
destra del trio vincente tramite un colpo di lancia del Flamine marziale. La
coda veniva tagliata e il suo sangue sparso nel cortile della Regia. C'era una
battaglia tradizionale tra gli abitanti della Suburra che volevano la coda per
portarla alla Turris Mamilia e quelli della Via Sacra che la volevano per la
Regia. Si tienne l'Armilustrium, dedicato alla purificazione delle armi e
alla loro conservazione per l'inverno. Ogni cinque anni si tenevano in
Campo Marzio le Suovetaurilia, dove davanti all'altare di Marte (Ara Martis) il
censo veniva accompagnato da un rito di purificazione tramite il sacrificio di
un bue, un maiale e una pecora. Luoghi di culto Marte e Venere, copia
settecentesca da I Modi di Marcantonio Raimondi Tra le popolazioni italiche, si
sa di un antico tempio dedicato al dio Marte a Suna,[8] antica città degli
Aborigeni, e di un oracolo del dio, nella città aborigena di Tiora.[9] Animali
e oggetti sacriModifica Lupo: si ricorda il nipote Fauno, il lupo per
eccellenza è la lupa che ha allattato Romolo e Remo Picchio: il picchio è
l'uccello del tuono e della pioggia oracolare, ha nutrito Romolo e Remo insieme
alla lupa Cavallo: simbolo della guerra (si ricorda Nettuno e gli Equirria)
Toro: altro animale molto importante per il ver sacrum e per tutti i popoli
italici Hastae Martiae: sono le lance di Marte che si scuotevano in caso di
gravi pericoli, tenute nel sacrario della Regia Lapis manalis: la pietra della
pioggia, in quanto dio della pioggia OfferteModifica A Marte si offrivano come
vittime sacrificali vari tipi di animali: dei tori, dei maiali, delle pecore e,
più raramente, cavalli, galli, lupi e picchi verdi, molti dei quali gli erano
consacrati. Le matrone romane gli sacrificavano un gallo il primo giorno del
mese a lui dedicato che, fino al tempo di Gaio Giulio Cesare, era anche il
primo dell'anno. Identificazioni con dei celticiModifica Mars Alator:
Fusione con il dio celtico Alator Mars Albiorix, Mars Caturix o Mars Teutates:
Fusione con il dio celtico Toutatis Mars Barrex: Fusione con il dio celtico
Barrex, di cui si ha notizia solo da un'iscrizione a Carlisle Mars Belatucadrus:
Fusione con il dio celtico Belatu-Cadros. Questo epiteto è stato trovato in
cinque iscrizioni nell'area del Vallo di Adriano Mars Braciaca: Fusione con il
dio celtico Braciaca, trovato in un'iscrizione a Bakewell Mars Camulos: Fusione
con il dio della guerra celtico Camulo Mars Capriociegus: Fusione con il dio
celtico gallaico Capriociegus, trovato in due iscrizioni a Pontevedra Mars
Cocidius: Fusione con il dio celtico Cocidio Mars Condatis: Fusione con il dio
celtico Condatis Mars Lenus: Fusione con il dio celtico Leno Mars Loucetius:
Fusione con il dio celtico Leucezio Mars Mullo: Fusione con il dio celtico
Mullo Mars Nodens: Fusione con il dio celtico Nodens Mars Ocelus: Fusione con
il dio celtico Ocelus Mars Olloudius: Fusione con il dio celtico Olloudio Mars
Segomo: Fusione con il dio celtico Segomo Mars Visucius: Fusione con il dio
celtico Visucio Marte nell'arteModifica PitturaModifica Marte, di Velázquez
Marte che spoglia Venere con amorino e cane, di Paolo Veronese Marte e Venere
sorpresi da Vulcano, di Boucher Minerva protegge la Pace da Marte, di Rubens
Venere e Marte, di Sandro Botticelli
MARTE su Treccani, enciclopedia ^ MARTE su Treccani, enciclopedia MARTE
su Treccani, enciclopedia; Pallotino; Wagenvoort, "The Origin of the Ludi
Saeculares," in Studies in Roman Literature, Culture and Religion (Brill; Hall
III, "The Saeculum Novum of Augustus and its Etruscan Antecedents,"
Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. MARTE su Treccani, enciclopedia Strabone,
Geografia Nota sul dio Mamerte (o Mamers), in Treccani – Enciclopedie on line,
Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ^ Dionigi di Alicarnasso, Antichità
romane, Dionigi di Alicarnasso, Antichità romane, Carandini, La nascita di
Roma, Torino, Einaudi. (L'archeologo Andrea Carandini dà la definitiva
rivalutazione del dio Marte). Renato Del Ponte, Dei e miti italici, Genova,
ECIG, Dumézil, La religione romana arcaica, Milano, Rizzoli, Libro del grande
storico delle religioni, che per primo rivalutò Marte da feroce dio emulo di
Ares a divinità più originale e importante). James Hillman, Un terribile amore
per la guerra, Milano, Adelphi, Un libro che dimostra come questo dio sia
presente nelle guerre contemporanee). Jacqueline Champeux, La religione dei
romani, Bologna, Il Mulino, Ares Divinità della guerra Flamine marziale Fauno
Marte (astronomia) Mamerte Pico (mitologia) Hachiman; Fano di Marmar
[collegamento interrotto], su latinae.altervista.org. Portale Antica Roma
Portale Mitologia Salii collegio sacerdotale romano per il culto di
Marte Mamuralia festività Triade arcaica. Nome compiuto: Umberto
Curi. Keywords: passione, have, habere, habitus, comportamentismo,
behaviourism. La brama dell’avere, anticonformismo, guerra e pace – Eirene – cosmologia
anthropologia – l’orto di Zenone – lo scudo d’Achille – I figli di Marte -- il mantello e la scarpa libido -- Refs.: Luigi
Speranza, “Grice e Curi” – The Swimming-Pool Library.
Luigi Speranza – GRICE ITALO!;
ossia, Grice e Cusani: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del primo
hegelista – lo stato italiano – scuola di Solopaca – filosofia beneventina –
filosofia campanese -- filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Solopaca).
Filosofo beneventino. Filosofo campanese. Filosofo italiano. Solopaca,
Benevento, Campania. Grice: “I love Cusani; for one, I was born at Harborne,
but nobody cares; Cuasani was born in Solopaca, and there’s a ‘corso Cusani’,
and a ‘Biblioteca Cusani’.” Grice: “Cusani would have been
friend with Bosanquet; both are Hegelians – Italians, after SOME Germans, were
the first to endorse the philosophy of the absolute spirit inmanent to
dialectic – Cusani does attempt to respond to a criticism on the ‘assoluto’
brought up by Hamilton (of all people), and consdtantly refers to the
‘metafisica dell’assoluto’ – a ‘progetto,’ he humply titles it!” Figlio di
Filippo e Caterina Cardillo, nacque al capoluogo distrettuale e di comprensorio
del Regno delle Due Sicilie. Membro dei Pontaniani. Frequenta il circolo del
marchese Basilio Puoti, insieme a Sanctis e Gatti. Punto di partenza della sua filosofia, comune
a buona parte del circolo del’hegelismo di stanza a Napoli, dei quali e un
esponente, fu Cousin, il fondatore della “storiografia filosofica”. Insegna a
Montecassino, e al collegio Tulliano di Arpino, dove fu affiancato da Spaventa,
chiamato poi a sostituirlo. Si stabilisce a Napoli nel proprio studio privato.
I saggi di Cusani furono pubblicati su “Il progresso delle scienze, delle lettere
e delle arti” e “Museo di filosofia”. La seconda fu da lui stesso fondata. Molti
dei saggi di filosofia più impegnati furono pubblicati in L’Antologia, di
Firenze. Scrisse inoltre note e recensioni nel periodico l'Omnibus e nella
Rivista napolitana. Molte delle sue
opere sono archiviate presso la Biblioteca "Stefano Cusani" di
Solopaca. Idealista hegeliano ed
esponente dell’ecletticismo filosofico di Cousin. Opere: “Della fenomenologia,
il fatto di coscienza intersoggetiva”; “Del metodo filosofico”; “Storia dei
sistemi filosofici”; “Della materia della filosofia e del solo procedimento a
poterlo raggiungere”; “Il romanzo filosofico”; “La poesia drammatica”; “L’assoluto
– l’obbjezione d’Hamilton”; “Logica immanente e logica trascendentale”;
“Compendio di storia di filosofia”; “Della lirica considerata nel suo
svolgimento storico e del suo predominio sugli' altri generi di poesia”; “Economia
politica e sua relazione colla morale”; “L’essere e gli esseri: disegno di una
metafisica”; “Percezione dell’esistenza”. Nel comune di Solapaca è stato
indetto nel un anno di celebrazione in
occasione del centenario della nascita nel comune di Solopaca. Il corso Stefano
Cusani gli è stato intitolato a Solopaca. Sanctis lo cita nella autobiografia.
Cusani dato alla stessa filosofia, ha maggiore ingegno del superbissimo Gatti,
ed e mitissima natura d'uomo. Sale al tavolo degli oratori con tale fervore
dialettico che a tutta la persona grondava onorato sudore» (G. Giucci, Degli
scienziati italiani formanti parte del VII congresso in Napoli nell'autunno del
1845: notizie biografiche, Napoli. L'amico coetaneo Cesare Correnti, patriota
milanese legato ai circoli Napoli, insegnante nella Scuola di lingua italiana
da lui fondata, gli dedicò un necrologio. Ecco un altro amico, un'altra fiorita
speranza di questa nostra Napoli sparire a un tratto a noi d'intorno. Ben dissi
a un tratto, poiché la sua non lunga malattia parve un momento agli amici. La
filosofia specialmente nol sedussero, in modo che a più severi studi non
volgesse l'acuto e fervidissimo spirito, e a bella armonìa si composero
nell'anima sua. Rivista europea», ripr. in Scritti scelti, T. Massarani, Forzani,
Roma). «Rivista europea», ripubblicato in Scritti scelti, T. Massarani,
Forzani, Roma, Dizionario biobibliografico del Sannio, Napoli, "Il Progresso",
"Il Lucifero","Omnibus"; "Rivista napolitana", Sanctis,
La letteratura ital. nel sec. XIX, II, La scuola liberale e la scuola
democratica N. Cortese, Napoli; G. Oldrini, Gli hegeliani di Napoli. A. Vera e
la corrente "ortodossa" (Milano); F. Zerella, Filosofia italiana meridionale”;
“Dall'eclettismo all'hegelismo in Italia”. Cusani e la filosofia italiana:
Vico, Galluppi, Mamiami, Colecchi, Rosmini. Nasceva in Solopaca, una volta
Distretto di Caserta, oggi Circondario di Cerreto Sannite (Benevento) il 23
dicembre 1816, Stefano Cusani da Filippo e Caterina Cardillo. Suo padre,
insigne avvocato, fu sollecito della educazione di questo come di altri quattro
suoi figliuoli, che, affidati alle cure di un suo fratello germano a nome
Matteo, sacerdote, mandolli in tenera età a imcominciare e compiere i loro
studî in Napoli. Ivi Stefano, ch'era il secondogenito di cinque fratelli, frequentava
i più rinomati Istituti privati di quel tempo (che allora l'insegnamento
pubblico esisteva sol di nome), si distingueva fra gli altri condiscepoli
in ognuno di questi, così che in breve, compiuti gli studi letterarî fu
giocoforza mettersi a studiare le scienze della facoltà che doveva seguire. Fu
questo il solo brutto periodo di sua vita. Suo padre voleva fare di lui un
Avvocato civile, come suol dirsi, e quindi fu obbligato a studiare leggi e
pandette, per le quali discipline non si sentiva la benchè minima inclinazione,
anzi, a dir vero, sentiva per esse la più marcata avversiono; ma buon figlio e
docile essendo, per non dispiacere al padre, che tanti sacrifizî avea fatti e
faceva per lui, come per gli altri fratelli, a malincuore sempre, ma sempre tacendo,
giunse fino ad esser Avvocato, ed a fare la pratica presso uno de'luminari del
Foro Napoletano. Da questo momento incomincia il suo grande sviluppo
intellettuale. Non potendone più, la rompe col padre, dicendosi avverso ai
processi, ed allo studio di essi, e ad ogni altro artifizio da causidico. La
rompe con quella pratica noiosa, che tralascia ed abbandona; ed ottiene dal
padre stesso, che ragionevole e savio uomo era, di poter attendere a quegli
studi che più alla sua indole si affacevano. Fioriva in quel tempo, a Napoli,
la scuola del Marchese Basilio Puoti, ed egli, incontratosi con Stanislao Gatti
che fu poi indivisibile amico e compagno, vi si getto a capofitto, e fu in poco
tempo il più caro e pregiato discepolo del Marchese, come l'amico e compagno
del De Sanctis, del Mirabelli, e di tutta quella pleiade che in quel tempo
arricchirono Napoli di filosofi insigni. Ma a quell'ingegno che s'andava
ogni giorno più sviluppando e fortificando di sani e severi studî, parve
angusto oramai quest'orizzonte, o volse l'ala, e la di instese con intensità ed
ardore allo studio della filosofia. Ben cinque anni decorsero di
volontaria prigionia nel suo studiolo, ovo ridottosi, o giorno e notte
indefessa mente attendeva a' prediletti studî, e si beava di leggere Platone
nel testo, chè familiare la lingua gli era; come pure si fece a studiare la
lingua alemanna per mettersi al corrente dei progressi della filosofia, e
per meditare e studiare le dottrine e teorie dell'Hegel, ultimo filosofo
tedesco di quella epoca. Uscito dopo questa epoca a nuova vita incominciò
a scrivere sul Progresso, una Rivista di scienze e letteratura, diretta dal
Baldacchini, articoli su questioni filosofiche; e, dopo un anno, era già
conosciuto in tutta la Napoli pensante. In questo torno di tempo si apri un
concorso per la Cattedra di filosofia e matematica, nel Collegio Tulliano di
Arpino, e lui fu prescelto per titoli ad occuparla. Vi andò e vi trovò il suo
amico Emmanuele Rocco, che v'insegnava letteratura. Vi stette un anno e vedendosi
in una cerchia troppo angusta alla sua attività, si dimise, e fece ritorno in
Napoli, conducendo con sè anche l'amico Rocco. Quivi apri studio privato
unitamente al Gatti di filosofia, e dal bel principio quello studio fioriva per
numerosa gioventù, che accorreva a udire le sue lezioni. In breve fu lo studio
più affollato di Napoli. Le ore che aveva libere dallo insegnamento le occupava
a scrivere articoli di filosofia che si pubblicavano sulle Riviste Napoletane
di quel tempo, il Progresso che usciva in fascicoli voluminosi, la Rivista
Napoletana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, il Museo di Scienza e Letteratura, ove
collaboravano per la lor parte Antonio Tari, Francesco Trinchera, ed altri; e
sul Progresso il Colecchi ed altri. Non andò guari e s'incontrò col
Mamiani in quistioni di alta Metafisica, o ne usci onorato dell'amicizia e
della riverenza dell'insigno filosofo. Il suo intelletto altamente speculativo
destava ammirazione perchè si elevava ad altezze tali filosofiche che non gli
si potevano contrastare. In quel tempo si agitò una polemica tra V.
Cousin, filosofo francese, ed un insigne filosofo inglese, il cui nome ora non
mi sovviene; dopo varî articoli scambiatisi parea che l'inglese avesse preso il
di sopra, ed il Cousin, che lui credeva più dell'altro stare nel vero, avesse
dovuto soccomberé. Allora senza frapporre tempo in mezzo egli entrò terzo nella
quistione e scrisse epubblico una serie di articoli che costrinse l'inglese a
desistere dalla polemica, ed il Cousin a scrivergli una lettera di ringraziamenti
e di felicitazioni, e con la quale lo chiamava, e si firmava suo cugino.
Si radunava il Congresso dei Filosofi in Napoli nell'ottobre del 1845, o lui ne
dovea far parte; ma non sapendosi se il Borbone lo avesse permesso, o meno,
erasi ridotto in patria a villeggiare con la moglie e due piccini, l'uno
lattante e l'altro di due anni. Il Congresso fu permesso, i filosofi si
riunirono in Napoli, e lui fu invitato espressamente a farvi ritorno; che anzi
il Presidente della Sezione “Filosofia speculativa” a cui egli apparteneva, non
volle aprire la sessione s'egli non fosse arrivato. Cosi corse in Napoli solo,
lasciando in patria la famiglia, che poi sarebbe andato a rilevare, dopo finito
e sciolto il Congresso. È questa la causa della sua morte! Arrivato in Napoli
vede gl’amici - con essi si intrattiene passeggiando -- suda; è l'ora già che
s'apre la sessione -- essi ve lo accompagnano a piedi per goderselo di più --
vi si arriva. Egli è sudatissimo -- entra e n'esce dopo quattro lunghe ore di
discussione; quel sudore lo ha già colpito a morte. Si riduce a casa, si
ricambia le mutande - la camicia è troppo tardi! Incomincia dopo poco
tempo una tosse secca, stizzosa, ch'egli non cura, perchè forte e robusto è; e
questo è il peggiore dei divisamenti. Ritorna in patria per ripigliare la
famiglia e ridursi in Napoli, poiché si è alla vigilia del novembre. Si riapre
lo studio, si riprendono le lezioni; il maggior numero degli alunni affluito
gli rinfocola l'ardore, ch'ei mette in esse, e parla dalla cattedra per lunghe
ore, e poi agl’alunni più provetti che gli propongono dubbi o problemi a
risolvere, parla pure ad alta voce, e quella tosse insidiosa non lo lascia,
anzi invida della sua noncuranza lo avverte spesso del suo malefico potere,
interrompendogli il discorso, e forzandolo per poco a tacere. Le cose durarono
ancora così per altri giorni, e finalmente la emottisi tenne dietro a quella
tosse funesta, e è giuoco forza sottomettersi a quanto l'arte salutare puo e sa
consigliare, ma invano tutto! Chè una tisi florida si svolge, ed si spense la
robusta complessione di C.! Tale è quest'uomo, che la morte rapiva a'suoi, alla
scienza, alla patria. Dissi rapito alla patria, e giustamente, poichè egli
appartenne alla Giovine Italia, e in Napoli è sempre il più ardente fra i
patrioti. Egli con altri prepara e coopera con ardore al movimento che poi non
potė vedere! La sua casa è il convegno di Poerio, Settembrini, Spaventa,
Mancini, e di tutti gl’altri illustri compromessi politici di quel tempo, con i
quali si congiura, si fa propaganda, e si organizza la rivoluzione. È
cosi caro a questi tutti che se un giorno solo nol vedeano, si tienne por certo
la visita loro in sua casa; ed Poerio, addoloratissimo della sua malattia, vuole
ed ottienne che è medicato, curato ed assistito infino all'ultimo istante di
sua vita dal fido o dotto medico Piccolo. L'esequie sono imponenti pel concorso
d’amici, che formano tutte le notabilità scientifiche, patriottiche
e letterarie. Il lutto per la sua perdita è sentito generalmente per Napoli,
che in lui saluta la giovine scienza, e che per lui si mette a paro di altre
città d'Italia, che fiorisceno per altissimi ingegni ed insigni filosofi, come
ROVERE (si veda), SERBATI (si veda), il scomunicato GIOBERTI (si veda), ed
altri, se quella vita non si è spenta nel mezzo del cammino! La cura della
filosofia di C. d’Ottonello ha il merito di riproporre all’attenzione una
figura di rilievo della cultura filosofica napoletana dell'Ottocento. C. lascia
di sé traccia profonda, testimoniata dalla considerazione in cui e tenuto, per
tacer d’altri, da SANCTIS (si veda), o dalla valutazione che di lui dette GENTILE
(si veda). Con GATTI (si veda) ed altri può essere inserito - come nota il
curatore nella nitida e puntuale introduzione nell'ambito dell'hegelismo
napoletano, oltrecché in quello piú generale dell'eclettismo alla CICERONE (si
veda). Opportunamente si avverte però che Hegel costituisce per C. un potente
polo d'attrazione, ma non il filosofo fondamentale. In realtà si può forse con
fondamento aggiungere, pur senza ricorrere ad una indagine falsamente sottile,
che resta in ombra, nellepur autorevoli e acute analisi dedicate alle
ascendenze cousiniane ed hegeliane di C., un filosofo fondamentale che
sicuramente ispira la filosofia piú significativa di C.: VICO (si veda). La
costruzione del sistema eclettico cui C. dichiara di dedicarsi segna una fase
già tarda dell'eclettismo napoletano e giunge al termine di un periodo assai
ricco di suggestioni in questa direzione negl’ambienti culturali napoletani. È
sicuramente da condividere l'affermazione del curatore secondo il quale il
sincretismo avvertibile in C. non impedisce però l'emergere di un nucleo
speculativo che deborda dalla semplice trama delle affermazioni altrui. In
questo senso il problema del metodo filosofico e il connesso problema della
storia italiana segnano sin dall’inizio lo sforzo speculativo di C., la cui
originalità trova subito sulla sua strada VICO (si veda). Collaboratore della
Temi napoletana, dell'Omnibus letterario, scrive prevalentemente sul Progresso.
Sin dal primo saggio, FILOSOFIA IN ITALIA, il tema della storia italiana appare
questione teorica centrale. Non a caso una ricerca storica da l'occasione a C.
di porre il problema che gli sta a cuore, sin dalla citazione tratta da Guizot
che apre la nota. I fatti sono meme affermazioni al problema della storia trova
subito sumanibus letterario ma are i grandiuti al fatto che risguardato, en per
il pensiero, ciò che le regole della morale sono per la volontà. Egli è tenuto
di conoscerli, e di portarne il peso, ed è solo allorché ha sodisfatto a questo
dovere, e ne ha misurato e percorso tutta l’estensione, che gliè permesso di
montare verso i risultamenti razional. Il rinnovato interesse per la storia
italiana che si registra -- che né l'antichità, né i tempi di poco anteriori a
questi che viviamo avevano mai risguardato -- non sembrano a C. casuali, ma
dovuti al fatto che l'intendimento si rivolge a indagare i grandi ordini di
fenomeni per scoprire e prendere inconsiderazione i fatti e le ragioni, una
storia ed una filosofia. Il bisogno di comprendere e giudicare il fatto,
piuttosto che esserne solo spettatore (e dunque di verificare una diversa
attitudine della storia italiana), esalta questa parte immortale della storia,
cioè il conoscere il legamento fatalista della causa e dell’effetto, le
ragioni, i fatti generali, le idee da ultimo ch'essi celano sotto il manto
della loro esteriorità. Onde ch’egli è d'uopo sceverar con chiarezza e con
precisione la differenza di queste due parti della storia italiana che sono per
cosí dire il corpo e l'anima, la parte materiale, e la parte spirituale di
tutti gl’avvenimenti esterni e visibili, che compongono LA NAZIONE ITALIANA,
secondo che dice VICO (si veda). Il rifiuto, che C. trae dalla lezione
vichiana, di affidarsi a pre-mature generalità, e con formole metafisiche per
soddisfare il mero bisogno intellettivo, è una traccia decisiva per comprendere
il suo pensiero. L'annotazione di Gentile, secondo il quale l'osservazione storica
non è piú l'integrazione della psicologia, bensí la costruzione stessa della
filosofia, può commentare l'intero itinerario filosofico di C. Il discorso sul
metodo che C. compie si basas in dall'inizio su una acquisizione precisa: un
sistema o una filosofia consistono nel loro stesso metodo. Nel primo saggio
veramente organico, Del metodo filosofico e d'una sua storia infino agli ultimi
sistemi di filosofia che sono si veduri uscir fuori in Germania – Hegel -- e in
Francia – Cousin, C. parla addirittura di un metodo generale, il quale presiede
all'investigazione dell'unica e universal verità. La filosofia è dunque la
regina scientiarum che consente di ricondurre ad unità il sapere, e a tal
pro-posito l'assimilazione dei termini è dichiarata apertamente, a proposito
dell’analisi psicologica, la quale segna il punto di partenza della
riflessione, ed è la base unica dell'immenso edificio filosofico, il solo
solido fondamento, il suo atrio e il suo vestibolo. E nel saggio, Del reale
obbietto di ogni filosofia, Il Progresso, ribadisce e chiarisce che lo studio
de’ atti della natura umana, o de’fenomeni psicologici, vuoto del tutto
riuscirebbe, se invece di tenerlo come base d'ogni ulteriore investigazione, si
volesse considerare come il termine stesso della filosofia. Il secolo
decimottavo si è trovato dunque di fronte al centrale problema del metodo
filosofico. Se è vero che nella storia italiana è tutta quanta la filosofia
italiana, occorre riconoscere il merito insuperabile di quella mente
divinatrice e profonda che avea posta nel mondo la nazione italiana. VICO (si
veda), definito – nella nota sul nuovo dizionario de sinonimi della lingua
italiana di Tommaseo, quell'altissimo lume d'Italia, con una locuzione che
introduce un discorso, ingiustamente trascurato, sulla tradizione filosofica
meridionale, piú volte ripreso da C. Lo studio di VICO (si veda) qui esaminato
è appunto il DE ANTIQVISSIMA ITALORVM SAPIENTIA; nel quale potentemente
convinto della relazione che stà tra il pensiero (l’animus, il segnato) e la
parola (il segno), si fa ad investigar quello degl’antichi romani e italici
nostri maggiori, cavandolo per avventura da quella lingua italiana ch'è nelle
bocche volgari degl’uomini. Il rapporto tra spontaneità e riflessione, che
tanta parte ha in C., è dunque introdotto sotto il segno di VICO (si veda). Si
ponga mente alle affermazioni che seguono il passo già citato, allorché C.
insiste sul fattoche veramente VICO (si veda) porta opinione che tutto l'antico
(antichissimo) pensiero o sapienza italiana era in quella lingua italiana
ch'egli disamina, e dalla quale intende rimetterlo in luce, e che se la lingua
italiana non e opera di un filosofo, ma sibbene il prodotto spontaneo delle
facoltà nell'uomo italiano, se innanzi che venissero adoperate nella
costruzione e nel concepimento del sistema di un filosofo, di cui pur e il
necessario strumento espressivo e communicativo, esiste nella massa de’ popolo
italiano. Insomma, quella che è stata chiamata la svolta hegeliana di C., va
valutata alla luce di una ispirazione legittimamente riferibile a VICO (si
veda). Si veda il Saggio su la realtà della humanitas di GRAZIA (si veda) (Il
Progresso), già sul crinale della svolta hegeliana. L'epigrafe di Cousin posta
all'inizio ritorna sul problema che sta a cuore a C., e che ne determina
l'originale ricerca. Ci ha due spezie di filosofie. La prima spezie di
filosofia studia il fatto, lo disamina, e lo descrive, riordinandoli secondo le
loro differenze o somiglianze, e potrebbesi però denominare filosofia
elementare o immanente. L’altra spezie di filosofia comincia ove si ferma la
prima, investigando la *natura* de’ fatti, e intendendo di penetrare la loro
ragione, la loro origine, il lor fine, e potrebbesi denominare filosofia
trascendente, o filosofia prima. La citazione dai Frammenti filosofici serve in
realtà a Cusani pergiungere alla fondamentale affermazione secondo cui,
esaurita nel secolo precedente la filosofia elementare, e necessario che si
cominciasse asentire il bisogno di nuovi problemi, e che l'ontologia
ricomparisse nel dominio della speculazione filosofica. Insomma la disamina del
fatto immanente elementare (il segno) deve servire a rintracciarne la natura,
le origini, le relazioni, che è il vero fine supremo della filosofia prima. Ma
questo è possibile (e l'eclettismo di C. si dimostra non mero sincretismo, ma
sapiente innesto di elementi concorrenti a rafforzare le personali ipotesi
speculative) soprattutto all’italiano, chi può vantare una tradizione
filosofica ininterrotta che ha in Vico il suo vate supremo. Il bisogno dell’ontologia
ha ulteriori ragioni in Italia, dove la filosofia trova terreno fecondo emotivo
di continuità. Ed è la tradizione ontologica de’ filosofi italiani, e il
predominio costante della filosofia prima o trascendente in Italia sulla
elementare o immanente, non solo in tempi che era cagione universale nel mondo
della scienza, ma eziandio allorché fortemente altrove ponevasi la base d'ogni
filosofia ed all'apo genere a nostri e quell'indole elementare, e molto
studiavasi in essa. Di qui nacque quell'indole speculativa che si è sempre
accordata in genere al filosofo italiano, anche quando discendevano alla
pratica ed all'applicazione de’ principi. É di vero se si pon mente alla
Storia, e si consideri che dalla scuola ITALA di CROTONE o da Pittagora suo fondatore,
passando per i filosofi di VELIA (si veda) (Senone), arrivando fino
all’apparizione di quella meraviglia del Vico, si troverà che la verità da noi
accennata apparisce luminosa e in tutta la sua pienezza. Dunque continuità
della tradizione, rivendicazione della propria originalità speculativa, e soprattutto
applicazione esemplare del metodo storico come proprio della storia della
filosofia. Già affrontando il problema della fenomenologia semiotica, C. non
manca di annotare, con una affermazione che resta sostanzialmente immutata
nella sua produzione, a riprova del vichismo naturale della sua ispirazione,
che l’italiano è cosí fortemente incluso intutta la morale che ne forma il
subbietto perenne, e non si può farne astrazione senza far crollare tutto
l'edificato da quelle. Del resto nel saggio Del reale obbietto d'ogni
filosofia, posto sotto il segno di Vico – la cui “De constantia Philosophiae”
fornisce l’epigrafe, C. ha chiarito che la umana intelligenza, di cui si
ricerca e scopre una storia naturale, una volta esaurita l’investigazione della
natura, ripiega progressivamente verso il subbietto stesso di quelle
investigazioni, e rientrando dall'esterno nell'interno, fa se stessa obbietto
della sua conoscenza. La morale nasconode questo percorso, allorché il filosofo
ritorna sopra se stesso dopo indagare il mondo esterno. La svolta hegeliana può
a questo punto arrivare, ma a sua volta innestandosi su questa ricerca di una
legge onde si regge il mondo. Il dilemma su un oggetto immutabile della conoscenza,
e della mutabilità al tempo stesso del fatto che il pensiero trascendente va
indagando, diventatra la questione centrale. Spesso Cusani torna nella sua
opera, che riesce difficile in questa sede indagare in dettaglio, sulle
permanenze della storia italiana e sulle variazioni. Nel Saggio analitico sul
diritto e sulla scienza ed istruzione politico-legale d’Albini,
significativamente impostato il tema, e sempre ricorrendo a Vico. In Italia fu
primo tra tutti Vico che intende ala ricerca d'un principio universale ed
immutabile del diritto e che questo ponesse nella ragione, unica fonte
dell'assoluta giustizia, distinguendo esattamente il diritto universale, o
filosofico, dal diritto storico. Anzi, la debolezza della cultura filosofica
italiana può essere addebitata al mancato studio di Vico il cui esempio non
frutto gran bene, ch'io mi sappia all'Italia,non essendo le sue teorie
accettate da'suoi contemporanei, perché forse troppo superiori all'intelligenza
comune, fino al punto che l’italiano perde, com'a dire, la sua particolare
fisionomia, rivestendo un'indole forestiera – come i fanatici di Hegel con la
sua lingua foresteriera! -- Se non che questo che al presente diciamo fu molto
piú pronunciato in Beccaria e Verri non furono che perfettissimi seguitatori
dell'Helvelvinitius e del Rousseau, quanto all'ipotesi del Contratto sociale,
che in il vichismo dunque, se accolto, avrebbe garantito la continuità e
originalità della filosofia italiana. Infatti la cultura napoletana da in
questo senso testimonianza della continuità speculativa della filosofia proprio
attraverso la tradizione vichiana. FILANGIERI (si veda), ma soprattutto PAGANO
(si veda), ritennero l'elemento tradizionale italiano, che li riannodava a
tutta l'erudizione. Anche quando nel Museo di letteratura e filosofia
soprattutto, e la Rivista napoletana, piú evidente si coglie la lettura di
Hegel, C. testimonia la persistenza sicura della lezione vichiana. Senza
rotture, ma sviluppando le tematiche e gli interessi, nel saggio Della lirica
considerata nel suo svolgimento storico, ove – come ha notato Oldrinisi
incontra un esplicito richiamo alle lezioni hegeliane di filosofia della
storia, C. riprende con vigore la questione fondamentale. Ora poiché l'uomo è
il subbietto storico per eccellenza a volere istabilire lal egge che governa
tutte le accidentalità variabili delle vicende umane, la filosofia non puo che
cercarla nelle modificazioni della stessa umanita. Questo punto di partenza,
che il Vico, per il primo, prescrisse alla filosofia della storia, facendo che
le sue ricerche rientrassero nella coscienza psicologica dell’italiano, e si
cercasse di spiegar questo per mezzo della sua propria natura, ma eziandio
tutti i fatti di cui egli è causa, ingenera tanto vantaggio, che da un lato
tolse la specie umana dall'esser considerata come mezzo da servire ad altri
fini, e dall'altro la rialza sopra la natura, di cui vuole sene fare prodotto o
artificio. In che misura l'hegelismo, rintracciabile nella preoccupazione di
garantire l'unità del sistema attraverso l'unità della filosofia, deve tener
con toda un lato della matrice vichiana del pensiero di Cusani e dall'altro
dello sforzo di costruire l'edificio eclettico della filosofia in modo
originale? Andrebbe qui indagato, con cura e minuziosità che questa sede non
consente, il tema del senso comune in piú luoghi richiamato da C. Sipensi al
saggio apparso sul Museo, Idea d'una storia compendiata della filosofia,
proprio dove il tema della filosofia assume intonazioni sicuramente hegeliane.
Purtuttavia, sebbene l'uomo sia conscio nell'intimo della sua coscienza della
sua libertà, e riconosca in sé stesso il potere di cominciare una serie di
atti, di cui egli è causa; ciò nondimeno non può non iscorgere eziandio, che la
sua volontà è posta sotto il dominio e la soggezione d'una legge, che
diversamente vien denominata secondo che diverse sono le occasioni, alle quali
essa si applica, contrassegnandosi ora come legge morale, ora come ragione, ed
ora comesenso comune. L'indipendenza speculativa che Cusani manifesta nel
rimeditare tutti i contributi all'interno della sua riflessione è evidente, e
su questo tema operante nei confronti dello stesso Vico. Esaminando la
questione del fatalism e della libertà (giustamente si ricorda come sia questa
la questione piú importante che si possa scontrare nella filosofia della
storia, dai primi agli ultimi scritti presente inche di sua volone causar in C.),
nell'Idea d'una storia compendiata della filosofia, C. ha qualcosa da
rimproverare a Vico stesso, da altri peraltro erroneamente collocate tra gli
storici fatalisti -- cosí Livio si distingue da MACHIAVELLO MACHIAVELLI (si
veda) e da Vico; e sebbene LIVIO (si veda) da maggiore influenza alla parte
passiva e fatale dell’italiano nella storia; ciò nondimeno non si è data che ai
secondi, a cominciar da Machiavello, la nota del storico fatalista. Se è vero
infatti che Vico cerca nell'italiano il principio e la legge dello svolgimento
dell'umanità, egli ebbe però il torto di essere esclusivo, in quanto non ha
riconosciuto l'influenza della natura italiana sull'italiano. Si annota come a
C. fin dai primi studi si affacci il dilemma tra pensiero come condizione e
pensiero come condizionato: se una legge governa lo svolgimento
dell'intelligenza, la storia è da intendersi fatalisticamente costretta entro i
termini di una legge fissa del pensiero? Del resto in un saggio nel Progresso
(e non compresa nei due volumi degli Scritti, forse perché firmata come
del resto altre note raccolte da Ottonello con la
sola sigla S. C.), Elementi di Fisica sperimentale e di meteorologia di Pouillet,
C. ritorna sul metodo delle scienze e sulla accostabilità tra scienze morali e
scienze fisiche. Dappoiché la scienza della natura e sottoposta nella sua
ricerca a metodi certi e sicuri, e l'umana intelligenza punto da quelli non
dipartendosi, seguitò attesamente le sue investigazioni, i progressi rapidi e
continuati succedettero ai lenti e quasi invisibili dell'antichità. Il successo
di queste scienze come di ogni scienza è nel metodo, cosi che da meglio che tre
secoli lo spirito umano procede, in questa special branca delle sue conoscenze
con tanta fidanza, e direi quasi, contanta certezza de' suoi risultamenti, che
nissun'altra scienza per avventurapuò con questa venire al paragone. Si badi,
le scienze fisiche non costituiscono altro che una special branca delle
conoscenze dello spirito umano. Dunque occorre applicare anche alle altre
branche metodi certie sicuri, come è possibile dal momento che la storia
universale dell'Umanità, che pone la storia al centro dell'investigazione,
racchiude,com'a dire, in un corpo tutto lo svolgimento intellettivo della
spezie. Ecco perché nel saggio Della lirica, a proposito della legge della
evoluzione ideale dell'umanità nel progresso storico, C. nota che questo è di
proprio particolar dominio di quella scienza, che sorta gigante in ITALIA per
opera di quella maraviglia di VICO (si veda), costituisce ora il centro intorno
a cui si svolgono tutti gli sforzi del secolo. Simili le espressioni usate
nella recensione agli Elementi di Fisica sperimentale, allorché della storia
universale dell'Umanità nota che forma a questi nostri tempi il punto di mezzo,
intorno di cui si volge e gravita tutto il processo del lavori del secolo. Il
ricco saggio “Idea d'una storia compendiata della filosofia” è a questo punto
da considerare fondamentale. La connessione che la storia ci rivelatra libertà
e necessità, ci consente di rintracciare la legge necessaria del progresso
storico. Noi sappiamo che la filosofia del popolo italiano non è altra cosa se non
lo spirito del popolo italianom non già come
si manifesta nella sua religione spontanea, nelle sue arti, nella sua
costi-in se stesso aveva, artea, un concertelli avvenimee metafisica. cipale
delle sourcetuzione politica, nelle sue leggi e costumi, ma come si rivela
nell'esilio inviolabile del pensiero puro, che riferma il piú alto grado al
quale possada sé stesso elevarsi. C. ha, a tal proposito, filosofato nel saggio
“Della poesia drammatica” un concetto che poi si ritrova in seguito. Egli è il
vero che sotto la varietà degli avvenimenti del fatto e della vita stessa della
società italiana è nascosa la legge suprema e metafisica che li governa,e che
il filosofo tenta di scoprire, e ne fa l'obbietto principale delle sue
ricerche, ma all’italiano, ch'é, come dice quell'altissimo ingegno di VICO (si
veda), il senso della NAZIONE ITALIANA e dato tutto al piú di sentirla, ma non
deve essere suo scopo di manifestarla, dove all'ispirazione vichiana pare già
si aggiunga, insinuandosi, una suggestione hegeliana. Nello saggio Della
lirica, Cusani ribadisce l'argomento. Se la filosofia non deve fat suo scopo,
come altrove dicemmo, parlando della poesia drammatica, la rivelazione di essa
legge secondo la quale l'umanità si svolge nello spazio e nel tempo, puf tuttavia
non potrà certo cansarla nella sua manifestazione storica, cioè nel suo
progresso attraverso delle nazio ultima recension Romani son sottoposti alla
legge storica in generale, la quale le impronta quasi una seconda indole, ed è
questa poi, che fa che i filosofi sieno, come diceVico, il senso della nazione
italiana. Sorprendentemente, nell'ultima recensione pubblicata sulla Rivista
napolitana, Liriche di Romani, quasi ad emblematica chiusura, C. ripete. VICO
(si veda) innanzi tuttia veva formolata questa solenne verità, proclamando che
il filosofo e ilblematica sblata questa
sojeni filosofi ne sinnestare Hegedea d'uneinnanzi Qui l'eclettismo cusaniano
ha voluto innestare Hegel sulla tradizione italiana custodita e proclamata,
specie allorché, nella idea d'una storia, riprende il tema di una ragione
fondamentale, di una idea filosofica fondante le manifestazioni della vita
umana, per cui la religione e soprattutto la filosofia già ricordata sono
riconducibili ad una legge razionale. Un'altra citazione, non giustificata in
questa sede, si rende necessaria per la sintesi che riesce a conseguire, in
specie sul tema del senso comune. Allorché il movimento filosofico o riflessivo
passa dalla fede alla scienza,e dalle credenze popolari alle idee della ragione,
e si trova d'essere giunto a scoprire il pensiero celato dapprima sotto FORMA
SIMBOLICA, e che si traduce nell’istituzione, nella costume, nella filosofia e
e nelle industria, egli fatto quasi banditore della verità scoperta, l'annunzia
per farla conoscere alle masse, le quali non avrebbero potuto pervenire sino a
quel segno che tardi e lentamente. È in questo senso che il filosofo accelera
il movimento delle masse, e da qui nasce ancora che egli stesso e indugiato nel
movimento che è loro proprio. Dappoiché se le masse accettano la nuova luce che
loro arreca il filosofo, sono d'altra parte lente e ritenute nell'abbandonare
le vecchie opinioni, che il tempo ha rese abituali, e bisogna innanzitutto che
esse comprendano ciò che loro viene rivelato, e lo comprendanoa loro modo, cioè
facendo che discenda in certa guisa dalle forme astratte della scienza alle
forme pratiche del senso comune. Dunque il filosofo comprende e spiega
nient'altro che ciò che l’intelligenza spontanea dei popoli crede
istintivamente, e pertanto, lafilosofia non è che la spiegazione del senso
comune. Possiamo a questo punto scoprire l'errore di chi ha collocato Vico e
Machiavelli tra un storico fatalista como Livio, dappoiché, se a tuttaprima
poteva parere, che l’italiano appo costoro fosse schiavo dell’istituzione, in
quanto che queste venivano considerate come cose non procedenti dall’italiano
stesso, pure, allorché si vide che l’istituzione none che la manifestazione
esterna, il segno, e la realizzazione delle idee del popolo italiano, libertà
umana nella creazione degli avvenimenti del mondo. Come si risolve pertanto il
problema della libertà? Si pone inquesti termini l'interrogativo. La ragione è
dunque il fondamento della libertà; ma ragione e libertà sono da intendersi
esclusivamente riferitisare appunto che il problema della libertà investa
soltanto l'azione soggettiva (non intersoggetiva o collettiva) che ha per
teatro la storia. In realtà però, proprio per l'ampia visuale che egli propone
della storia globalmente intesa, la libertà non è solo quella dell'individuo o
soggetto italiano che si affranca dai condizionamenti dell'istinti -- vità, ma
anche quella che costituisce la linea intelligibile di tutto lohere nelle pella
sciente quella con il. La soluzione che si può intravedere in C., concorde ed
omogenea allo sviluppo della questione della scienza e del metodo nell'intera, intensa elaborazione culturale
di C. è forse quella contenuta nella Idea d'una storia. Resta certo il
rammarico del mancato approfondimento delle tante tematiche che a questa
risposta devono riferirsi, in particolare sulla politica e sulla estetica. Ma
la sintesi che C. propone rimane oltremodo significativa. L'ordine adunque
degli avvenimenti, la provvidenza, o legge dell'intelligenza umana, è quella
legge che Iddio stesso ha imposta al
mondo morale, e che non differisce dalle leggi della natura, se non per questo,
cioè che la legge imposta al mondo morale non distrugge punto la libertà
individuale, essendo ché è permezzo della libertà che si compiono i destini
della intelligenza, laddovele legge della natura e compita senza il concorso
della libera volontà. SCIENZA MORALE E FILOSOFIA CIVILE. “Quando gia la
stagione eclettica andava verso il tramonto”. 1. Cusani si volgeva al metodo
storico per tracciare la via sicura che consentisse, come scrisse, all’idea
filosofica di “elevarsi al grado di scienza che si dimostri per se stessa.
Giacche se evero che “la decomposizione, o l’analisi psicologica del fatto
primitivo della coscienza e la condizione necessaria d’ogni riflessione, che
ritorna sul proprio pensiero; il che e dire ch’e la condizione necessaria
d’ogni filosofia”, ancor piu essenziale e comprendere che “se l’osservazione
minuta, e l’analisi profonda di tutte le singole parti di quella sintesi
primitiva della coscienza e il punto donde bisogna muovere, perche si possa
riuscire a bene nelle speculazioni filosofiche, essa non e certo al termine;
perocche dopo aver esattamente analizzato tutte quelle parti, ed osservatele da
tutti i lati, egli e mestiere procedere alla cognizione de’ riferimenti che
l’une hanno colle altre, perche si possa risalire a quella ricomposizione del
tutto primitivo, che e lo scopo ultimo della filosofia. E questo il contributo
essenziale che la storia fornisce e senza il quale ogni itinerario verso la
conoscenza e condannato a restare monco, e la scienza filosofica e
destinata ar estare preclusa. Infatti Tessitore, Da CUOCO (si veda) a SANCTIS
(si veda), Studi sulla filosofia napoletana nel primo Ottocento, Napoli. Della
scienza assoluta (Discorso), Museo di letteratura e filosofia. Al Discorso I
non seguirono altre parti. Del metodo filosofico ed'una sua storia infino agli
ultimi sistemi di filosofia che sonosi veduti uscir fuori in Germania ed in
Francia, Progresso. Sul pensiero filosofico di C. cfr.
G. G, Storia della filosofia italiana,
Firenze, Mastellone, Cousin e IL RISORGIMENTO italiano, Firenze;
Landucci, Cultura e ideologia in
Sanctis, Milano, Oldrini, Gli hegeliani di Napoli, Milano,
Il primo hegelismo italiano, Firenze, (della Introduzione); Ottonello,
Introduzione a C., Scritti, Genova; Tessitore ne e a dire che la psicologia
potrebbe far da se, e proseguire il suo lavoro senza punto brigarsi della
storia; perciocche oltre i danni che potrebbero scaturirne eche noi piu sopra
dicemmo, si eviterebbero i vantaggi che a lei verrebbero dalla storia,
sarebbero infiniti Proprio in relazione a questa fase del pensiero del giovane
napoletano, Giovanni Gentile annota che pel C., l’osservazione psicologica
diventa la riflessione che rifa la storia dello spirito, una fenomenologia;
el’osservazione storica non e piu l’integrazione della psicologia, bensi la costruzione stessa della filosofia
L’eclettismo non poteva piu, a questo punto, rispondere
all’orizzonte intravisto, cosicche “il C., staccatosi dall’eclettismo si
diede allo studio della filosofia hegeiiana”. Del metodo filosofico e d'una sua
storia, cit., p.183. Poche righe piu sopra Cusani aveva annotato che
“dare una ripruova e un confronto all’osservazione psicologica, che sia
capace di ritrarla dall’errore, allorche per manco d’esperimento essa cada
nell’incompleto, sarebbe per avventura il regalo piu sicuro, e una norma
certissima del metodo per ben filosofare. E questa ripruova adunque che ci
viene insegnata dal metodo storico, la cui importanza non e certo minore
dell’altro, e l’esito altrettanto giusto e sicuro. Certo che dall’aver
dimenticala Storia ne son proceduti due
ordini di mali: il primo, perche si e rotta quella
legge di continuita nel progresso de’ lavori dell’intelligenza, e si e
terminato donde si sarebbe dovuto cominciare; l’altro perche lo Spirito non si
e potuto correggere delle sue deviazioni nello svolgimento intellettivo,
mancandogli la cognizione de’ suoi passati travisamenti. Nella storia adunque e
tutta quanta la filosofia, e riconoscerla nella storia econdizione non
evitabile d’ogni filosofia. Gentile. Lo sforzo di costruire l’edificio
eclettico della scienza e condotto da C. nei saggi. In particolare, oltre che
nel citato Del metodo filosofico, nei saggi Del reale obbietto di ogni
filosofia e del solo procedimento a poterlo raggiungere, iProgresso; Della
scienza fenomenologica e dello studio dei
fatti di coscienza, Progresso; D'un'obbiezione d’Hamilton intorno
alla filosofia dell’Assoluto, Progresso; Della logica trascendentale, Progresso;
Mastellone. Sulla cosiddetta “svolta hegeiiana”, oltre alle valutazioni degli
autori le cui opere sono state in precedenza indicate, cfr. ancora S.
Mastellone, C., che pure è un divulgatore di Cousin, in un articolo apparso
nella Rivista napolitana dal titolo Del modo da trattare la scienza degl’esseri
(ontologia), disegno di una metafisica, alludendo ai rapporti tra l’eclettismo
francese e l’ontologismo tedesco, ossia alla polemica tra Cousin e Schelling,
poneva alcune limitazioni al suo eclettismo Si prepara quel fermento spirituale
che prendera forma coll’hegelismo, il quale, se trasse la prima radice dal
pensieroco usiniano, si rivolgera poi contro di questo”. Infine mi permetto di
rinviare a G. Acocella, Vico e la storia in Cusani, in “Bollettino
del Centro di studi vichiani. In pieno periodo eclettico, C. sottolinea
il ruoio unificante della filosofia, e conclude che la storia della filosofia,
la quale disegna come in una tela tutto lo svolgimento progressivo dello spirito,
non e che la manifestazione di quel potentissimo bisogno che ha l’uomo di
conoscere e di sapere. In questa direzione, dopo che lo spirito rivolge il
primo scopo della sua investigazione nel mondo degl’obbietti, ed una volta
esaurita l’investigazione della natura lo spirito si viene gradatamente
ripiegando inverso il subbietto stesso di quelle investigazioni, erientrando
dall’esterno nell’interno, fa se stesso obbietto della sua conoscenza. – cf.
Grice on self-constructing pirots. E cosi di qui nascono, come da una comune
radice, tutte le scienze morali. La conclusione eclettica di C. si arricchisce
di motivi che preparano l’accoglimento della lezione hegeliana, la quale di
sicuro influenza i suoi saggi, senza liquidare gl’altr’elementi che
costituiscono l’originalita del filosofo. L’immenso bisogno di conoscere che
tormenta e percorre la storia naturale dell’intelligenza anela alla
ricomposizione unitaria che costituisce la scienza. Questi due grandi obbietti
adunque, l’Universo e l’Umanita; il non me e il me, che racchiudono tutto il
campo delle speculazioni, costituiscono l’obietto di tutta la scienza umana. E
si puo da’tentativi diversi, e da’ diversi risultamenti ottenuti intorno a
questo problema, cercar di fare un ordinamento compiuto di tutte le scuole
filosofiche che dall’antichita insino a’giorni nostri sonosi succedute nella storia
dello svolgimento naturale dell’intelligenza. Rispetto a questo proponimento la
lettura di Hegel - del quale pur si dove denunciare che è partito da cio che ci
ha di piu astratto nella ragione, e di piu indeterminato, cioe
dal pensiero dispogliato di tutte le cose, e ridotto a pensiero puro, a
idea - offre contributi rispetto ai quali C. dichiara il suo esplicito interesse.
Ponendo come base del suo edificio filosofico l’identita dell’idea e
dell’essere, del pensiero e della realta, del subbiettivo e dell’obbiettivo ne
procede che cio che evero del pensiero, evero eziandio della realta, e
che le leggi della logica sono le leggi ontologiche, ed essa stessa si
converte in una vera ontologia. Del reale obbietto di ogni filosofia e del solo
procedimento a poterlo raggiungere. Giunto a quest’altezza, lo spirito tenta
d’impadronirsi quasi dell’infinito, cacciarsi nel seno stesso dell’assoluto,
e discoprire nella loro sorgente le leggi onde si regge il mondo. Del metodo
filosofico. In queste pagine C. fornisce una II principio di una idea
filosofica capace di fondare le manifestazioni della vita umana, dunque una ragione
non dispogliata delle cose, diviene per C. l’efficace punto di equilibrio del
suo itinerario tra eclettismo ed hegelismo, in grado di assicurare gli
orientamenti etici di ciascuna eta della storia. Nel saggio sulle relazioni tra
economia e morale, C. scrive significativamente che ora non ci ha e non puo
esserci scienza morale senza un principio assoluto e necessario, perche
l’assoluto e il necessario e lo scopo ultimo e il termine degli sforzi del
pensiero, e1’ideale della scienza. Nella stessa prospettiva spiega, in un
corposo saggio, il valore filosofico che assume la ricerca dei fondamenti etici
della societa, asserendo che di fatto non si puo concepire una societa che non
abbia un pensro generale, cioe a dire un insieme d’idee acquistate senza ricercare
senza scopo, e che informino tutta la sua vita; perciocche bisogna allora
supporre che puo esserci una societa senza istituzioni politiche, senza costumi
e senza industria, non essendo altra cosa le istituzioni, l’industria e i
costumi, che effetti naturali delle idee e delle credenze comuni. La filosofia
del popolo italiano, pertanto, e il pensiero di quello stesso popolo, non nelle
semplici forme nelle quali si manifesta nelle istituzioni o nelle stesse arti,
o nel diritto e nei costumi, ma con quei caratteri interpretazione della
filosofia, in sintonia con il tentativo di rintracciare l’unita del pensiero
perseguita dall’eclettismo. E un’interpretazione che, nata in terra
di Francia, trova piu generosa fortuna nell’hegelismo napoletano da SPAVENTA
(si veda). Ecco la pagina di C. Dappoicche la filosofia di Fichte, che non è
che la filosofia stessa di Kant, risguardata dal punto di vista subbiettivo, e
quella di Schelling, che nelle sue conseguenze non è che il criticismo
risguardato dal punto di vista obbiettivo, doveno essere entrambe porzioni di
quel medesimo tutto, che Hegel abbraccia nella sua filosofia dell’idealismo ASSOLUTO.
Egli parti dalla ragione, e dal pensiero, ma da cio che ci ha di piu
astratto nella ragione, e di piu indeterminato, cioe dal pensiero
dispogliato di tutte le cose, e ridotto a pensiero puro, a idea. Dell'economia
politica considerata nel suo principio, e nelle sue relazioni colle scienze
morale, Museo di letteratura e filosofia. Cfr. Oldrini, ll
primo hegelismo italiano. In nota scrive Oldrini che il saggio
parafrasa e riadatta, per molta parte, concetti delle lezioni sull’economia
smithiana di Cousin. Idea d’una storia compendiata della filosofia, Museo di
letteratura e filosofia”, lo svolgimento adunque spontaneo e istintivo; e
l’altro filosofico riflesso, che entrambi non si effettuano che sotto le leggi
del pensiero umano, costituiscono il meccanismo, se possiamo cost dire, della
vita sociale del popolo italiano. general del pensiero che di quelle forme
costituiscono la fonte. Eppure il progresso e reso possibile solo dall’incontro
tra due diverse componenti Allorche il movimento filosofico o riflessivo passa
alla scienza, ed alle credenze popolari alle idee della ragione, e si trova
d’essere giunto a scoprire il pensiero celato dapprima sotto FORMA SIMBOLICA, e
che si traduce nell’istituzioni, nei costumi, nell’arti e nell’industrie, egli
fatto quasi banditore della verita scoperta, l’annunzia per farla conoscere
alle masse [cf. GELLNER ON GRICE], le quali non avrebbero potuto pervenire a
quel segno che tardi e lentamente. Il debito nei confronti di VICO (si veda)
appare evidente, tanto piu che - indirizzandosi l’interesse di C. verso le
esperienze umane del diritto e dell’economia - le influenze hegeliane si rivelano
in realta filtrate dalla tradizione della filosofia meridionale, da VICO (si
veda) a FILANGIERI (si veda) a PAGANO (si veda). La filosofia e la scienza
compongono insieme la trama che segna l'itinerario travagliato e non lineare
della storia verso il vero. I filosofi accelerano il movimento delle masse
[GELLNER ON GRICE, GRICE ON THE MANY VERSUS THE WISE], ed a qui nasce ancora
che essi stessi sono indugiati nel movimento che e loro proprio. Dappoicche se
le masse [GELLNER ON GRICE, GRICE ON THE MANY VERSUS THE WISE] accettano la
nuova luce che loro arrecano i filosofi, sono d’altra parte lente e ritenute
nell’abbandonare le vecchie opinioni, che il tempo ha reso abituali, e bisogna
innanzi tutto che esse comprendano cio che loro vien rivelato, e lo comprendano
a loro modo, cioe facendo che discenda in certa guisa dalle forme astratte
della scienza, alle forme pratiche del senso comune. Il tema del senso comune -
cosi tipicamente vichiano e tanto frequentemente richiamato in piu punti
dell’opera cusaniana - costituisce un elemento fondamentale dell’itinerario che
il filosofo napoletano svolge, rivelandosi capace di svelare la trama della
ragione nella storia. Cosi come nella vita sociale le branche dell’attivita
umana precedono la filosofia e la storia Cfr. Acocella Idea d’una storia
compendiata. Insomma non eche dalla combinazione di questi due movimenti che
progrediscono le idee umane, ed al progresso delle idee umane nasce la
trasformazione e il miglioramento successivo delle leggi, dei
costumi e dell’istituzioni, che sono altrettanti elementi costitutivi
della condizione umana. Sul senso comune cfr. Purtuttavia, sebbene 1’uomo sia
conscio nell’intimo della sua coscienza della sua liberta, e riconosca in se
stesso il potere di cominciare una serie di atti, di cui egli e CAUSA; cio
nondimeno non puo non iscorgere eziandio, che la sua volonta e posta sotto il
dominio e la soggezione d’una legge, che diversamente vien denominata secondo
che diverse sono le occasioni, alle quali essa si applica, contrassegnandosi
ora come legge morale, ora come ragione, ed ora come senso comune” ria di
quelle precede la storia di questa, cosi l’istoria non si realizza che dopo un
lungo proceder della scienza; perocche se prima non si sono osservate molte
variabilita successive, non si sente il bisogno di una storia qualunque; ma
quando non si vuol considerar altro che l’essenza stessa, o la materia di che
componesi la storia della filosofia, si puo dire che essa comincia colla
scienza. Cosl per esempio, rivolgendosi l’attenzione alle esperienze umane piu
rilevanti, per quel che riguarda l’economia politica occorre indagare la legge oggettiva
dell’AGIRE economico, giacche le azioni umane - pur tenendo conto della
liberta che le generano ricondotte sempre alla ragione, o si voglia dire legge
morale o senso comune. Massimamente con l’economia la questione centrale di
come si compongano liberta dell’AGIRE INDIVIDUALE e conseguimento della legge oggettiva
dell’economia si pone come un nodo centrale della scienza morale, nel quale e
coinvolto lo stesso tema della relazione tra natura e ragione. Infatti,
primieramente, e noto che il combattimento, che l’uomo, forza libera e
intelligente, sostiene contro la natura per dominarla e trasformarla ai suoi
bisogni, costituisce un ordine distinto di fenomeni e d’idee, che rientrano nel
dominio dell’economia politica, la quale deve pur pervenire a individuare la legge
necessaria, che sta a capo della produzione, consumazione e
distribuzione delle ricchezze. L’interesse mostrato da C. verso
Smith e motivate proprio dal legame tra la liberta umana - che si esplica
nel lavoro - e la legge necessaria dell’economia, giacche il fondamento del
valore Smith ha posto nel lavoro. Ma sbaglierebbe chi si ferma al lavoro,
perche quantunque il Perciocche a quella stessa guisa che nella vita sociale del
popolo italiano lo stato italiano, l’industrie, e l’arti precedono la
filosofia, eziandio la storia di tutte queste branche dell’attivita umana
precede quella della filosofia, ultima per avventura a prender corpo nello
svolgimento intellettuale dell’uomo. Dell’economia politica. Mentre
Quesnay, con la sua scuola, tenne che i prodotti del suolo sono la sola fonte,
e il vero principio del valore, invece Smith eleva il principio del
valore, partendo da questo, che cio& il lavoro della nazione italiana costituisce
la sorgente di tutte lc sue ricchezze, e quindi che i bisogni dell’uomo non
sono considerati da Smith che subordinatamente al lavoro; il che e molto piu
ragionevole che subordinare il lavoro ai bisogni, come e intervenuto a Say e a
Tracy, i quali cio non di meno hanno comune con esso lo stesso principio del
lavoro. Nell’esaminare la formazione dela scienza economica C. riafferma il
principio della tradizione italiana, come per la scienza della legislazione
ricorda in particolare FILANGIERI (si veda), PAGANO (si veda), e ROMAGNOSI (si
veda) asserendo. L’economia politica nata adunque IN ITALIA, lavoro nel
suo lento o accelerato esercizio sia quello che ingeneri la ricchezza delle
nazioni, e misuri in un certo modo, esi no a un certo segno, il valore delle
cose in ragione delle difficolta e degli ostacoli che incontra nella sua
effettuazione. Purtuttavia esso non deve essere considerato, che come l’effetto
della liberta umana, ultimo principio a cui devesi ricondurre la scienza.
Attraverso questo principio C. ricostruisce il percorso che dalla liberta,
attraverso la proprieta, giunge alla formulazione di una scienza morale la
quale, proprio perche scienza, e la cognizione dell’assoluto invariabile,
ultima ragione delle cose. Se infatti l’osservazione si conferma indispensabile
all’investigazione scientifica, pure resta essenziale ribadire la ricerca di un
principio morale assoluto perche si possa dare scienza in questo ambito. Le
considerazioni che C. - partendo dall’apprezzamento del principio secondo il
quale senza un’obbligazione assoluta non è ammessa la possibilita d’una scienza
morale e quindi dell’imperativo categorico - riferisce all’opera di Kant,
mettono a fuoco appunto il significato della liberta per la ragione, ed i criteri
per la individuazione del principio morale assoluto. Egli e percio,
che rifermossi che il fatto della liberta, che 1’osservazione ci rivela nel
fondo della coscienza come distinto dalla fatalita delle nostre passioni e
delle nostre SENSAZIONI, e che eguaglia in certez- massime per opera di SERRA
(si veda), non si svolge dappoi che in Francia nella celebrata setta degl’economisti,
dai quali attinse gran parte delle sue idee Smith. Sull’interesse della cultura
napoletana per il ruolo svolto da SERRA (si veda), considerato precursor dello
Smith, mi permetto di rinviare ad Acocella, LA STORIA DEI FILOSOFI POLITICI
ITALIANI DOPO LA SVOLTA A NAPOLI, Archivio di storia della cultura. Togliete la
liberta nell’uomo, e voi avrete esaurito nella sua sorgente ogni
lavoro possibile, essendone essa sola la causa, e la causa vera, reale, e non
immaginaria. Fare adunque l’analisi della liberta, come produttiva del valore
delle cose, è veramente farla psicologia dell’economia politica. Questa
verita conosciuta dagl’antichi, i quali teneno non potersi dare scienza del
fenomenico variabile, perciocche il fatto non e il principio e la ragione di se
stesso, e stata chiaramente riprodotta dai moderni, quando hanno sostenuto che
la scienza non e che la cognizione dell’assoluto invariabile, ultima ragione
delle cose. Pure, se il fatto non e la scienza, ecertamente prima condizione e
quasi materia della scienza, potendo solo cadere sotto l’occhio
dell’osservazione, e l’osservazione e la vita d’ogni investigazione scientifica.
Tutto cio essendo or amai stato messo fuor di dubbio nel campo
dell’intelligenza, ha fatto, si che nella scienza morale si e cercato il
principio morale assoluto, ed il fatto proprio che n’e la condizione. Primamente
non si puo non vedere che senza un’obbligazione assoluta non è ammessa la
possibilita d’una scienza morale, e che senza la ragione, che sola puo
comandare con un imperativo catagorico, non puo darsi obbligazione di
sorta. za tutti gl’altri fatti, non rimanendo punto una semplice
credenza, come vuole Kant, dove esser solo la condizione del principio morale,
trasformato in legge dalla ragione. Puo C., in virtu di questa acquisizione,
rintracciare finalmente nella liberta gl’orientamenti dell’AGIRE MORALE e
scoprire il principio morale della stessa economia. Di qui il principio: essere
libero, conservati libero, cioe resta fedele alla natura, ch’e la liberta; è la
sorgente d’ogni obbligazione e d’ogni moralita; identificandosi colla massima
degli stoici: SEQVERE NATVRAM. Questo principio della morale generale
stabilito, si vede apertamente che una delle prime relazioni dell’economia
colla morale, sta nell’identita del principio stesso, o meglio, nel fatto della
liberta; solo diversificando, perche l’una lo stabilisce come trasformato dalla
ragione in legge, e 1’altra lo accetta come dato nelle applicazioni della
vita. L’unita [EINHEIT] della scienza, che il fatto della liberta -
svelatosi principio unificante dell’azione umana - realizza, e stata resa
possibile dal superamento della direzione scettica nella quale Cartesio getta
la filosofia, rendendola incapace di fondare l’oggettivita, partendo dal
soggetto, e dunque la comprensione del mondo esterno. Ora, finalmente, la
filosofia, rivelatasi scienza, verifica che lo Spirito e uno, identico a se
stesso in tutti i tempi, in tutti i luoghi, appo tutti gl’italiani; puo
esservi varieta nelle sue determinazioni, ma l’essenza resta immutabile
attraverso di tutte queste apparenti mutazioni. La scienza non rappresenta che
l’essenza, ed e percio che l’idea filosofica, o lo spirito filosofico non e che
uno e sempre identico a se stesso. Come per l’economia anche per il diritto la
liberta dell’individuo si afferma per C. quale principio capace di fondare
L’AGIRE MORALE, confermando l’unitarieta della scienza . Dedicando una
lunga nota in tre parti, benche incompiuta, all’opera di Manna, e dopo aver
Dappoichenon potendosi dalla sensazione trar niente che avesse forza
d’obbligazione, e vice versa la ragione scorgendo nel fatto della liberta una
superiorita di principio che proced dalla stessa personalita
umana, puo scorgervi il dovere assluto di mantenere la dignita della persona
sulla materia, e della liberta sulla fatalita. Sicche, da questo lato
risguardata, l’Economia potrebbe esser considerata come una derivazione della
morale nelle sue piu minute conseguenze. Cfr. Della scienza
assoluta (Discorso), Sul punto cfr. Oldrini,
Gli hegeliani di Napoli. Del diritto amministrativo del Regno
delle Due Sicilie. Saggio teoretico storico e positivo, in “Museo di
letteratura e filosofia”, Scienzci affrontato la questione della
individualita nella prima parte, dichiarando il proprio interesse per le
“partizioni teoriche del diritto amministrativo”, Cusani decisamente ritorna sul
problema della scienza avvertendo pero che “nissun problema che tocchi la
scienza sociale pud risolversi, senza aver prima risoluto l’altro della
destinazione dell’individuo, che li contiene e gl’implica, abbracciandoli tutti
nel suo seno. Cosicche si puo considerare che “se la scienza divide eperche
questa e la sua condizione di esistenza, e perche l’umano intelletto ha bisogno
di successiva osservazione, e di notomia, direi quasi, della cosa che vuol
conoscere e sapere. Ma in sostanza ci ha unita fondamentale qui, come in tutto,
e la scienza umana non tende che continuamente verso questa unita, che la sola
ontologia pud promettersi” 30. II richiamo, costante in tutta la sua opera,
all’ontologia consente a Cusani di riaffermare il principio assoluto e generale
da cui discende coerentemente l’ordine morale che la scienza pud infine
conoscere. La visione unitaria perseguita - che, tanto nella fase eclettica
quanto in quella segnata dalla lettura di Hegel, pone in primo piano la
questione dei fini razionali della storia e dell’azione umana - rivela pero con
evidenza il debito comunque contratto nei confronti, oltre che di Herder,
soprattutto di Vico, rimeditato autonomamente ea contatto con le suggestioni
presenti nell’eclettismo napoletano. Recensendo la STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA di GALLUPPI
(si veda), C. chiarisce in apertura che s’egli e vero che LA STORIA DELLA
FILOSOFIA, come noi abbiamo affermato in uno de’ fascicoli precedenti non ese
non l’idea stessa, e lo spirito dell’umanita, non quale si rivela nelle sue
isti-. L’ultima parte pubblicata conclude con le parole “sara continuato”. Non
vi è alcun seguito. Gia concludendo la prima parte, pero, C. avverte che per
fame un’analisi compiuta si è ripromesso di venir discorrendo di ciascuna parte
in particolare, ma si perche il saggio non evenuto fuori ancor tutta per le
stampe, e si perche la parte positiva del diritto amministrativo non e in
relazione coi nostri studi, cosi ci terremo contend solo ad esaminar per ora la
sola quistione che risguarda la scienza della pubblica amministrazione, riserbandoci
di parlare della parte storica quando l’autore ne fa dono al pubblico. Su Manna
e sulla sua opera cfr. Tessitore, Della tradizione vichiana e dello storicismo
giuridico nell’Ottocento napoletano, Aspetti del pensiero guelfo napoletano,
Napoli; Rebuffa, L'opera di Manna nella formazione del diritto amministrativo
italiano, in La formazione del diritto amministrativo in Italia, Bologna. Del
diritto amministrativo. Cfr. Tessitore, Momenti del vichismo giuridico-politico
nella cultura meridionale, in “Bollettino del Centro di studi vichiani. Sul
vichismo del Manna. tuzioni, nelle arti, nelle legislazioni, ma sibbene
nell’asiio inviolabile del pensiero puro, del pensiero in se; deve esser vero
eziandio che essa non e una raccolta vana di opinioni, nata per soddisfare la
curiosita di alcuni uomini, ma viceversa, secondo che diceva l'Herder, la
catena sacra della tradizione, che opera in massa, con leggi necessarie, e non
a caso ne isolatamente” 32. Si pud pertanto comprendere anche la radicale
nettezza con la quale nella nota su Manna C. afferma che l’ontologia adunque e
la scienza prima, che facendoci conoscere la determinata essenza degl’esseri,
ci conduce a discernere IL FINE – cf. H. P. GRICE, TELEOLOGY -- a cui essi sono
destinati (che e pure un problema ontologico) e che diventa problema MORALE –
il regno dei fini di Kant -- se trattasi della destinazione dell’UOMO sopra la
terra, problema religioso se trattasi di questa stessa destinazione innanzi e
dopo la vita terrena; problema di filosofia di DIRITTO o POLITICA, che
abbraccia il diritto individuale, e il diritto PUBBLICO pubblico, se trattasi
della giustizia reciproca che l’individuo, e lo stato deveno somministrarsi per
raggiungere la loro destinazione. Questa e l’UNITA DELLA SCIENZA [GRICE EINSCHAT],
la quale non e che un pallido riflesso dell’unita stessa della causa prima.
Dove VICO (si veda) e Herder servono al disegno hegelia- [Recensione a
Galluppi, Storia della filosofia, Prefazione, Museo di letteratura e
filosofia. Su Herder e VICO (si veda). cfr. Idea d’una STORIA COMPENDIATA
DELLA FILOSOFIA. Ora questa legge che governa lo svolgimento dell’umanita, e
che costituisce la filosofia della storia, non puo che cercarsi successivamente
nell’uomo e nel mondo, essendo questi i due obbietti che si appalesano
all’ntelligenza. Di qui nasce che Bossuet è stato il primo filosofo della
storia, trovando nell’antica filosofia romana la soluzione del problema. A
questi succede VICO (si veda), che cerco nell’UOMO ITALO il principio e la
legge dello svolgimento dell’umanita. E da ultimo Herder che voile trovarlo nel
mondo fisico, e nella combinazione speciale d’influenze esterne. Noi diciamo,
che ognuno di essi e stato esclusivo, in quanto che Herder non ha riconosciuta
la parte che rappresenta l’UOMO ITALO nella evoluzione storica dell’umanita, e
VICO (si veda), in quanto che non ha riconosciuto l’nfluenza della natura
esteriore; ed entrambi poi non disconoscendo la parte che rappresentala
Provvidenza, l’hanno subordinata all’uomo e alla natura, mentre Bossuet
impadronendosi di questa, ha tutto subordinate ad essa”. Del dritto
amministrativo. Sul problema dello stato cfr.: “io non so concepire, come
l’arte, la scienza, e LA MORALE, debbano
esser fine a loro stesse, e lo stato deve esser considerate come MEZZO per la
societa umana, quando il suo scopo non e che UNO SCOPO RAZIONALE, come quello
che tocca in dominio alle altre sfere dell’attivita sociale. Ne solo io dico
che lo scopo e RAZIONALE ed ha gli stessi caratteri di quelli che spettano alle
altre sfere dell’attivita sociale, ma che e identico con tutti nel fondo, e che
se uno e il bene assoluto, o l’ordine assoluto, che riferma lo scopo e la
destinazione dell’UOMO, non si puo far dello stato un semplice MEZZO ed una via
per la conservazione dell’umanita perfettibile”. no della scienza
del’essere. Vale, pero, sottolineare come, nel confronto con GALLUPPI (si veda),
istituito nella nota sopra ricordata, il tema del vero costituisca un
interessante nodo che chiarisce il modo con il quale C. interpreta VICO (si
veda) ed il problema della storicita dell’esperienza. A GALLUPPI (siveda) che
afferma che la storia della filosofia non puo trattarsi a priori, ma deve
dedursi dall’osservazione dei fatti, perche altrimenti avremmo dovuto trovar
prima i problemi relativi alla scienza del pensiero, e poi quelii relativi
all’universo, C. obietta che la storia della filosofia e identica colla
scienza, e pertanto troveremo che il primo mezzo di trattar la storia
della filosofia e il METODO A PRIORI, il quale non deve ch’esser verificato
dall’esperienza. A C., naturalmente, sono chiare le novita apportate dalla
modernita e le conseguenze che ne sono scaturite, dal momento che la
filosofia ha nell’antichita la definizione di scienza dell’universale,
contrapposta a quella ricevuta presso i moderni della filosofia come scienza
del pensiero per cui la definizione degl’antichi si fa per mezzo
dell’ontologia, quella de’moderni viceversa si fa per mezzo della PSICOLOGIA
- ma resta pur sempre certo che in realta l’ontologia e la psicologia non sono che
due determinazioni, o aspetti diversi dell’idea filosofica, in quanto che l’una
considera l’obbietto in se, e per se, l’altra questo obbietto che divien
subbietto. La scienza morale che C. intende definire, dunque, verifica
nell’esperienza - nelle diverse branche di attivita nelle quali si manifesta
l’azione umana - il principio assoluto e invariabile che da unita e senso alla
scienza moderna. Cosi l’economia politica non dove rappresentare che quella
stessa parte che rappresenta la politica, quanto alla filosofia del diritto.
Perciocche laddove questa ci rivela l’ideale a cui possono pervenire la
societa umana, e la politica determina le relazioni che passano tra l’attuale
esistenza di essa, e l’ideale, poggiando sopra queste relazioni i cangiamenti
che possono patire le istituzioni sociali. L’economia, rispetto ai monopoli ed
agli ostacoli che si frappongono al libero esercizio del commercio, deve far
ragione, prima di effettuare il suo principio, di tutti gl’interessi attuali
della societa dove questi sistemi proibitivi sono introdotti D’altro canto la
natura di scienza morale dell’economia (come del diritto o della politica) risulta
evidente nella concezione cusaniana di una filosofia civile moderna. Come il
principio morale riferma la destinazione dell’uomo che precede sempre dalla sua
natura, e questa natura non essendo che. Recensione a Galluppi. Dell’economia
politica. doppia, coesistendo in lui lo spirito e la materia, l’ANIMA e il
corpo, la liberta e la fatalita (sebbene la materia e il corpo non siano che
l’inviluppo esterno della natura umana, stando la sua essenza tutta nella
personalita nella liberta e nell’anima); ne seguita che l’economia, anche
ristretta nel senso di coloro che non vogliono fame che una scienza del
benessere corporate e dell’agiatezza sociale, dovrebbe serbare alcuna relazione
verso la morale. La difficile relazione tra il fatto ed il principio, cioe tra
l’obiettivo immediato dell’azione e LO SCOPO RAZIONALE che ne costituisce il
fondamento, e verificata da C. nello sviluppo del pensiero moderno.
L’itinerario che dalla fase dell’utilita deve condurre a quella dei FINI viene
percorso analizzando il mito [GRICE] del CONTRATTO sociale in Kant e Rousseau,
in riferimento al quale C. puo criticamente concludere. Ma l’obbligazione
morale e giuridica non puo mai procedere da un atto volontario, quale e quello
che riferma il contratto e il CONSENSO (con-senso) universale, perche nessuna
cosa arbitraria e volontaria puo costituire un diritto, ed una convenzione non e
che la semplice manifestazione della volonta mutabile degli uomini. Colui che
ha colto piu precisamente - ad avviso di C. - il significato profondo del
rapporto tra il fatto ed il FONDAMENTO RAZIONALE [GRICE, RATIONAL GROUNDS] dell’ordinamento
estato, a proposito della questione della proprietya fondamentale per l’ordine
sociale, Fichte: “Piu ragionevolmente adunque Fichte, che è il Ma e
perche essa abbraccia tutto il problema della destinazione dell’uomo nelle
conseguenze, che serba per avventura assai piu intime relazioni colla morale
generale. Scrive anzi C. La sola relazione che passa tra il lavoro destinato
per il mantenimento della vita fisica, e il riposo destinato per il compimento
della vita morale, puo esser la misura de’ differenti gradi della ricchezza
nazionale, la quale aumenta in proporzione che cresce il riposo per le
occupazioni intellettuali. Insomma, produrre nel minor tempo possibile cio ch’e
necessario per la satisfazione de’bisogni materiali della vita, e crescere in
ricchezza e moralita. Questo fatto, che l’obbligazione è inclusa nella
proprieta è ben vista da Kant, il quale stabili, che sebbene la
specificazione e il lavoro è gli atti preparativi della proprieta cio non di
meno perche questa è riconosciuta e rispettata da tutti, bisogna una
spezie di contratto sociale, con che si da la proprieta definitiva. Vero e che
questa IDEA del contratto sociale, considerato come base giuridica necessaria
del diritto di proprieta, non è da lui risguardata quale base della societa
stessa, come è addivenuto appo parecchi pubblicisti, e specialmente appo il
Rousseau, che l’ha come un precedente storico; solo voile dire ch’è necessario,
accennando ad UN FINE RAZIONALE avvenire, per cio che egli significa col titolo
di proprieta o possesso intellettuale seguitore del Kant e il suo discepolo
filosofico, voile rifermare, nel suo manuale e nelle sue lezioni di diritto
naturale, la proprieta esser costituita sulla nozione stessa di diritto.
Conciossiache la sua teorica del diritto, procedente dal suo sistema
filosofico, nel quale stabilisce che l’attivita infinita dell’io [DAS ICH] che
si svolge come per una retta, pone, nell’urto che incontra, il mondo degli
oggetti esterni, dovecontenere tutta la ragione filosofica della proprieta. In
un’opera segnatamente influenzata dall’eclettismo del Cousin, sottolinea la
rilevanza dell’osservazione del mondo storico per la definizione del principio
morale. Rispetto al sistema di Locke, infine, la scuola scozzese di Reid fa
compiere un decisivo passo avanti al metodo della psicologica osservazione,
consentendo infine d’osservar la societa e di distinguerne e sceverare la parte
sostanziale dall’accidentale, cio che ne costituisce l’esistenza, la vita, il
principio, da cio che non e che una semplice forma contingente e variabile,
secondo la diversita de’tempi e de’ luoghi. Ma la questione della legittimita,
trascurata di fatto, siccome la personalita umana e dotata, secondo lui, d’una
liberta infinita, cosi e che il diritto non ista che nella limitazione della
liberta di ciascuno, perche possa co-esistere la liberta di tutti. Posto cio il
diritto deve garantire a ciascuno il dominio particolare nel quale deve
svolgere la sua liberta. Nello stesso saggio C. torna su Fichte riguardo
alla relazione tra lavoro e riposo e sul tema della moralita resa possibile dal
produrre nel minor tempo possibile cio che e necessario alla soddisfazione dei
bisogni umani. Primo tra i filosofi moderni che rifermasse questa verita
semplice per se stessa, ma troppo spesso disconosciuta, è Fichte, uno de’piu
nobili ingegni di Germania: e cio perche vide che la destinazione dell'uomo non
edi essere assorbito dal lavoro destinato alia vita fisica, ma sibbene d’avere
a restargli assai tempo per lo svolgimento della sua moralita. Del reale
obbietto di ogni filosofia e del solo procedimento a poterlo raggiungere,
Progresso. Scrive Mastellone, dichiarazione di fede eclettica puo considerarsi
l’articolo di C. Del reale obbietto d'ogni filosofia e del solo procedimento a
poterlo raggiungere, Progresso. La lunga dissertazione sulla necessita di porre
a fondamento della filosofia la psicologia per poi passare all’ontologia,
e la definizione dei due obbietti della filosofia (il mondo e l’anima) e dei
tre ordini di fenomeni nell’interiore della coscienza (i sensitivi, i volontari,
e gli intellettivi) sono tratte dall’opera di Cousin. Cfr. Del reale obbietto:
“seguitando lo stesso principio in morale, i suoi seguitatori non fannosi punto
a ricercar quale e la moralita nello stato attuale dell’uomo, ma invece
quali sono state le prime idee di bene e di male nell’uomo ridotto allo stato
selvaggio innanzi ogni civil comunanza. Cosi questa scuola modesta e timida
pone la quistione fondamentale di tutta la scienza psicologica; e
quantunque non fa che circoscrivere l’osservazione, e fermarsi laddove essa
cessa, purtuttavia frutto gran bene alle scienze politiche, e morali,
sollevando, per cosi dire, l’umana natura in una piu pura ragione dalle scuole
menzionate, richiede una terza scuola, che se ne è occupata specialmente, e
questa venne su a Konigsberg promossa da un ingegno meraviglioso. Se certamente
il formalismo kantiano presenta nella interpretazione cusaniana aspetti che
attiravano le riserve del lettore di Cousin e di Hegel, pure esso rappresenta
un termine di confronto essenziale alla definizione dell’obbligazione morale, e
di conseguenza della scienza morale e delle parti in cui questa si articola.
Piuttosto il limite di Kant, come si e poco prima ricordato, consiste nell’aver
posto il contratto a base dell’obbligazione sociale. Se si cerca nella ragione,
che ci comanda con un imperativo categorico, si deve per necessita ammettere
una societa a priori del genere umano, e si sarebbe conchiuso
che ci ha un diritto, che a noi vien da natura,
indipendententemente da ogni contratto e da ogni diritto positivo. La relazione
che si istituisce tra l’ideale ed il reale, tra principio ed esperienza (ed
anche tra l’apriori e l’aposteriori) comporta finalmente la possibilita di
definire una scienza sociale coerente con i principi della scienza morale,
giacche nell’unita della filosofia tutte le parti vengono ricomposte. Se
lasciamo la morale generale, e ci facciamo a risguardare l’economia nelle sue
relazioni colla filosofia del diritto, colla legislazione, e colla politica,
siccome queste non sono che parti della filosofia morale in generale, cosi non
potremo che scorgervi le stesse relazioni. somigliantemente in politica, le
indagini intorno allo stato primitivo delle societa, de’governi, delle leggi, e
la varieta de’sistemi che se ne ingenerano (perocche dove ha luogo la
congettura nissuno ha il potere di limitarla) cessano del tutto, e cominciossi
a osservar la Societa, cosi com’essa ci si presentano dinanzi. Dell’economia
politica: Ne sappiamo vedere come Kant,
che ha cosi bene stabilito l’obbligazione morale, ha poi dovuto ripeterla,
quanto alla proprieta, da un contratto e da una convenzione. Certo e vero, che
il non aver esaminato punto donde vienne l’obbligazione attaccata aquest’atto,
ha fatto si che siasi incorso in due errori, il primo di negare che la
proprieta sia di diritto di NATURA (non convenzionale, non arbitrario, non
consensuale), el’altro di ammettere uno stato primitivo e selvaggio dell’uomo
innanzi della societa; perciocche se si ècercata nella ragione, che ci comanda
con un imperativo categorico, si avrebbe per necessita dovuto ammettere
una societa a priori nel genere umano, esi è conchiuso che ci ha un
diritto, che a noi vien da NATURA, indipendentemente da ogni contratto e da
ogni diritto positivo. Ne vale ammetter questo contratto come FATTO nel
passato, o come da farsi nell’avvenire, non procedendo da cio nessun’illazione,
quando si tiene esser esso la base e il fondamento della proprieta. Sull’hegelismo
italiano (ed i specie napoletano) cfr. P. Piovani, Il pensiero idealistico,
in Storia d’ltalia, Torino, I documenti. C. puo cosi concludere il suo
tentativo - non dimentico di Fichte, ma sicuramente sensibile alla filosofia
vichiana - di delineare una scienza morale rivelatrice della missione civile
della filosofia. Ma la scienza sociale non e costituita che dalla filosofia del
diritto, la quale accenna all’ideale che devesi raggiungere nella societa umana,
e dalla politica che appoggiandosi sui precedenti storici della societa medesima,
ne osserva lo stato attuale e giudica di quale avanzamento progressivo possono
esser capaci. Ne sono lontani gl’anni nei quali, su altri testi d’una diversa
tradizione, e in cospetto d’una diversa realta socio-economica d’una diversa
regione d’ltalia, Minghetti propone la sua economia pubblica. coloritura
hegeliana o hegelianeggiante, l’ammirazione professata verso lo (piu o meno) studiato
filosofo individua come connotato essenziale questo idealismo, pur se, in senso
tecnico, iconfini effettivi delle conoscenze hegelistiche dei nostril hegeliani
risultano imprecisi, elastici, quasi sempre vicini a uno Hegel letto
prevalentemente in chiave fichtiana o kant-fichtiana. E di vero, nella
filosofia del diritto non si puo far astrazione dallo scopo che ha l’uomo a
raggiungere, se si deve poter determinare le condizioni esterne di cui
abbisogna, procedenti dalla volonta de’ suoi simili, nel cui insieme sta la
scienza del diritto. Ma lo scopo o la destinazione dell’uomo ingenera delle
relazioni tra la morale e l’economia; deve quindi di necessita ingenerarne
eziandio tra il diritto e l’economia”. Nome compiuto: Stefano Cusani. Cusani.
Keywords: l’assoluto, il relativo, spirito soggetivo, spiriti soggetivi,
spirito oggetivo, storiografia filosofica di Cousin, unita latitudinale della
filosofia, l’assoluto di Bradley, Hamilton, l’obbjezione all’assoluto, l’essere
e la metafisica, gl’esseri e la metafisica, economia e morale, la
fenomenologia, il fatto di coscienza intersoggetiva, hegelismo, Vico, Galluppi,
Mamiami, Colecchi, Rosmini. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice e Cusani” – The
Swimming-Pool Library.
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