WICKED
We are told that human nature is essentially perverse; that man is born a child of the devil, and wicked. Nothing can be more injudicious; for thou, my friend, who preachest to me that all the world is born perverse, warnest me that thou art born such also, and that I must mistrust thee as I would a fox or a crocodile. Oh, no! sayest thou; I am regenerated; I am neither a heretic nor an infidel; you may trust in me. But the rest of mankind, which are either heretic, or what thou callest infidel, will be an assemblage of monsters, and every time that thou speakest to a Lutheran or a Turk, thou mayest be sure that they will rob and murder thee, for they are children of the devil, they are born wicked; the one is not regenerated, the other is degenerated. It would be much more reasonable, much more noble, to say to men: "You are all born good; see how dreadful it is to corrupt the purity of your being. All mankind should be dealt with as are all men individually." If a canon leads a scandalous life, we say to him: "Is it possible that you would dishonor the dignity of canon?" We remind a lawyer that he has the honor of being a counsellor to the king, and that he should set an example. We say to a soldier to encourage him: "Remember that thou art of the regiment of Champagne." We should say to every individual: "Remember thy dignity as a man."
And indeed, notwithstanding the contrary theory, we always return to that; for what else signifies the expression, so frequently used in all nations: "Be yourself again?" If we are born of the devil, if our origin was criminal, if our blood was formed of an infernal liquor, this expression: "Be yourself again," would signify: "Consult, follow your diabolical nature; be an impostor, thief, and assassin; it is the law of your nature."
Man is not born wicked; he becomes so, as he becomes sick. Physicians present themselves and say to him: "You are born sick." It is very certain these doctors, whatever they may say or do, will not cure him, if the malady is inherent in his nature; besides, these reasoners are often very ailing themselves.
Assemble all the children of the universe; you will see in them only innocence, mildness, and fear; if they were born wicked, mischievous, and cruel, they would show some signs of it, as little serpents try to bite, and little tigers to tear. But nature not having given to men more offensive arms than to pigeons and rabbits, she cannot have given them an instinct leading them to destroy.
Man, therefore, is not born bad; why, therefore, are several infected with the plague of wickedness? It is, that those who are at their head being taken with the malady, communicate it to the rest of men: as a woman attacked with the distemper which Christopher Columbus brought from America, spreads the venom from one end of Europe to the other.
The first ambitious man corrupted the earth. You will tell me that this first monster has sowed the seed of pride, rapine, fraud, and cruelty, which is in all men. I confess, that in general most of our brethren can acquire these qualities; but has everybody the putrid fever, the stone and gravel, because everybody is exposed to it?
There are whole nations which are not wicked: the Philadelphians, the Banians, have never killed any one. The Chinese, the people of Tonquin, Lao, Siam, and even Japan, for more than a hundred years have not been acquainted with war. In ten years we scarcely see one of those great crimes which astonish human nature in the cities of Rome, Venice, Paris, London, and Amsterdam; towns in which cupidity, the mother of all crimes, is extreme.
If men were essentially wicked – if they were all born submissive to a being as mischievous as unfortunate, who, to revenge himself for his punishment, inspired them with all his passions – we should every morning see husbands assassinated by their wives, and fathers by their children; as at break of day we see fowls strangled by a weasel who comes to suck their blood.
If there be a thousand millions of men on the earth, that is much; that gives about five hundred millions of women, who sew, spin, nourish their little ones, keep their houses or cabins in order, and slander their neighbors a little. I see not what great harm these poor innocents do on earth. Of this number of inhabitants of the globe, there are at least two hundred millions of children, who certainly neither kill nor steal, and about as many old people and invalids, who have not the power of doing so. There will remain, at most, a hundred millions of robust young people capable of crime. Of this hundred millions, there are ninety continually occupied in forcing the earth, by prodigious labor, to furnish them with food and clothing; these have scarcely time. In the ten remaining millions will be comprised idle people and good company, who would enjoy themselves at their ease; men of talent occupied in their professions; magistrates, priests, visibly interested in leading a pure life, at least in appearance. Therefore, of truly wicked people, there will only remain a few politicians, either secular or regular, who will always trouble the world, and some thousand vagabonds who hire their services to these politicians. Now, there is never a million of these ferocious beasts employed at once, and in this number I reckon highwaymen. You have therefore on the earth, in the most stormy times, only one man in a thousand whom we can call wicked, and he is not always so.
There is, therefore infinitely less wickedness on the earth than we are told and believe there is. There is still too much, no doubt; we see misfortunes and horrible crimes; but the pleasure of complaining of and exaggerating them is so great, that at the least scratch we say that the earth flows with blood. Have you been deceived? – all men are perjured. A melancholy mind which has suffered injustice, sees the earth covered with damned people: as a young rake, supping with his lady, on coming from the opera, imagines that there are no unfortunates.
WILL
Some very subtle Greeks formerly consulted Pope Honorius I., to know whether Jesus, when He was in the world, had one will or two, when He would sleep or watch, eat or repair to the water-closet, walk or sit.
"What signifies it to you?" answered the very wise bishop of Rome, Honorius. "He has certainly at present the will for you to be well-disposed people – that should satisfy you; He has no will for you to be babbling sophists, to fight continually for the bishop's mitre and the ass's shadow. I advise you to live in peace, and not to lose in useless disputes the time which you might employ in good works."
"Holy father, you have said well; this is the most important affair in the world. We have already set Europe, Asia, and Africa on fire, to know whether Jesus had two persons and one nature, or one nature and two persons, or rather two persons and two natures, or rather one person and one nature."
"My dear brethren, you have acted wrongly; we should give broth to the sick and bread to the poor. It is doubtless right to help the poor! but is not the patriarch Sergius about to decide in a council at Constantinople, that Jesus had two natures and one will? And the emperor, who knows nothing about it, is of this opinion."
"Well, be it so! but above all defend yourself from the Mahometans, who box your ears every day, and who have a very bad will towards you. It is well said! But behold the bishops of Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, and Morocco, all declare firmly for the two wills. We must have an opinion; what is yours?"
"My opinion is, that you are madmen, who will lose the Christian religion which we have established with so much trouble. You will do so much mischief with your folly, that Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, and Morocco, of which you speak to me, will become Mahometan, and there will not be a Christian chapel in Africa. Meantime, I am for the emperor and the council, until you have another council and another emperor."
"This does not satisfy us. Do you believe in two wills or one?"
"Listen: if these two wills are alike, it is as if there was but one; if they are contrary, he who has two wills at once will do two contrary things at once, which is absurd: consequently, I am for a single will."
"Ah, holy father, you are a monothelite! Heresy! the devil! Excommunicate him! depose him! A council, quick! another council! another emperor! another bishop of Rome! another patriarch!"
"My God! how mad these poor Greeks are with all their vain and interminable disputes! My successor will do well to dream of being powerful and rich."
Scarcely had Honorius uttered these words when he learned that the emperor Heraclius was dead, after having been beaten by the Mahometans. His widow, Martina, poisoned her son-in-law; the senate caused Martina's tongue to be cut out, and the nose of another son of the emperor to be slit: all the Greek Empire flowed in blood. Would it not be better not to have disputed on the two wills? And this Pope Honorius, against whom the Jansenists have written so much – was he not a very sensible man?
WIT, SPIRIT, INTELLECT
A man who had some knowledge of the human heart, was consulted upon a tragedy which was to be represented; and he answered, there was so much wit in the piece, that he doubted of its success. What! you will exclaim, is that a fault, at a time when every one is in search of wit – when each one writes but to show that he has it – when the public even applaud the falsest thoughts, if they are brilliant? – Yes, doubtless, they will applaud the first day, and be wearied the second.
What is called wit, is sometimes a new comparison, sometimes a subtle allusion; here, it is the abuse of a word, which is presented in one sense, and left to be understood in another; there, a delicate relation between two ideas not very common. It is a singular metaphor; it is the discovery of something in an object which does not at first strike the observation, but which is really in it; it is the art either of bringing together two things apparently remote, or of dividing two things which seem to be united, or of opposing them to each other. It is that of expressing only one-half of what you think, and leaving the other to be guessed. In short, I would tell you of all the different ways of showing wit, if I had more; but all these gems – and I do not here include the counterfeits – are very rarely suited to a serious work – to one which is to interest the reader. The reason is, that then the author appears, and the public desire to see only the hero; for the hero is constantly either in passion or in danger. Danger and the passions do not go in search of wit. Priam and Hecuba do not compose epigrams while their children are butchered in flaming Troy; Dido does not sigh out her soul in madrigals, while rushing to the pile on which she is about to immolate herself; Demosthenes makes no display of pretty thoughts while he is inciting the Athenians to war. If he had, he would be a rhetorician; whereas he is a statesman.
The art of the admirable Racine is far above what is called wit; but if Pyrrhus had always expressed himself in this style:
Vaincu, chargé de fers, de regrets consumé,
Brûlé de plus de feux que je n'en allumai…
Hélas! fus-je jamais si cruel que vous l'êtes?
Conquered and chained, worn out by vain desire,
Scorched by more flames than I have ever lighted…
Alas! my cruelty ne'er equalled yours!
– if Orestes had been continually saying that the "Scythians are less cruel than Hermione," these two personages would excite no emotion at all; it would be perceived that true passion rarely occupies itself with such comparisons; and that there is some disproportion between the real flames by which Troy was consumed and the flames of Pyrrhus' love – between the Scythians immolating men, and Hermione not loving Orestes. Cinna says, speaking of Pompey:
Le ciel choisit sa mort, pour servir dignement
D'une marque éternelle à ce grand changement;
Et devait cette gloire aux manes d'un tel homme,
D'emporter avec eux la liberté de Rome.
Heaven chose the death of such a man, to be
Th' eternal landmark of this mighty change.
His manes called for no less offering
Than Roman liberty.
This thought is very brilliant; there is much wit in it, as also an air of imposing grandeur. I am sure that these lines, pronounced with all the enthusiasm and art of a great actor, will be applauded; but I am also sure that the play of "Cinna," had it been written entirely in this taste, would never have been long played. Why, indeed, was heaven bound to do Pompey the honor of making the Romans slaves after his death? The contrary would be truer: the manes of Pompey should rather have obtained from heaven the everlasting maintenance of that liberty for which he is supposed to have fought and died.
What, then, would any work be which should be full of such far-fetched and questionable thoughts? How much superior to all these brilliant ideas are those simple and natural lines:
Cinna, tu t'en souviens, et veux m'assassiner!
– CINNA, act v, scene i.
Thou dost remember, Cinna, yet wouldst kill me!
Soyons amis, Cinna; c'est moi qui t'en convie.
– ID., act v, scene iii.
Let us be friends, Cinna; 'tis I who ask it.
True beauty consists, not in what is called wit, but in sublimity and simplicity. Let Antiochus, in "Rodogune," say of his mistress, who quits him, after disgracefully proposing to him to kill his mother:
Elle fuit, mais en Parthe, en nous perçant le cœur.
She flies, but, like the Parthian, flying, wounds.
Antiochus has wit; he makes an epigram against Rodogune; he ingeniously likens her last words in going away, to the arrows which the Parthians used to discharge in their flight. But it is not because his mistress goes away, that the proposal to kill his mother is revolting: whether she goes or stays, the heart of Antiochus is equally wounded. The epigram, therefore, is false; and if Rodogune did not go away, this bad epigram could not be retained.
I select these examples expressly from the best authors, in order that they may be the more striking. I do not lay hold of those puns which play upon words, the false taste of which is felt by all. There is no one that does not laugh when, in the tragedy of the "Golden Fleece," Hypsipyle says to Medea, alluding to her sorceries:
Je n'ai que des attraits, et vous avez des charmes.
I have attractions only, you have charms.
Corneille found the stage and every other department of literature infested with these puerilities, into which he rarely fell.
I wish here to speak only of such strokes of wit as would be admitted elsewhere, and as the serious style rejects. To their authors might be applied the sentence of Plutarch, translated with the happy naivete of Amiot: "Tu tiens sans propos beaucoup de bons propos."
There occurs to my recollection one of those brilliant passages, which I have seen quoted as a model in many works of taste, and even in the treatise on studies by the late M. Rollin. This piece is taken from the fine funeral oration on the great Turenne, composed by Fléchier. It is true, that in this oration Fléchier almost equalled the sublime Bossuet, whom I have called and still call the only eloquent man among so many elegant writers; but it appears to me that the passage of which I am speaking would not have been employed by the bishop of Meaux. Here it is:
"Ye powers hostile to France, you live; and the spirit of Christian charity forbids me to wish your death… but you live; and I mourn in this pulpit over a virtuous leader, whose intentions were pure…"
An apostrophe in this taste would have been suitable to Rome in the civil war, after the assassination of Pompey; or to London, after the murder of Charles I.; because the interests of Pompey and Charles I. were really in question. But is it decent to insinuate in the pulpit a wish for the death of the emperor, the king of Spain, and the electors, and put in the balance against them the commander-in-chief employed by a king who was their enemy? Should the intentions of a leader – which can only be to serve his prince – be compared with the political interests of the crowned heads against whom he served? What would be said of a German who should have wished for the death of the king of France, on the occasion of the death of General Merci, "whose intentions were pure"? Why, then, has this passage always been praised by the rhetoricians? Because the figure is in itself beautiful and pathetic; but they do not thoroughly investigate the fitness of the thought.
I now return to my paradox; that none of those glittering ornaments, to which we give the name of wit, should find a place in great works designed to instruct or to move the passions. I will even say that they ought to be banished from the opera. Music expresses passions, sentiments, images; but where are the notes that can render an epigram? Quinault was sometimes negligent, but he was always natural.
Of all our operas, that which is the most ornamented, or rather the most overloaded, with this epigrammatic spirit, is the ballet of the "Triumph of the Arts," composed by an amiable man, who always thought with subtlety, and expressed himself with delicacy; but who, by the abuse of this talent, contributed a little to the decline of letters after the glorious era of Louis XIV. In this ballet, in which Pygmalion animates his statue, he says to it:
Vos premiers mouvemens ont été de m'aimer.
And love for me your earliest movements showed.
I remember to have heard this line admired by some persons in my youth. But who does not perceive that the movements of the body of the statue are here confounded with the movements of the heart, and that in any sense the phrase is not French – that it is, in fact, a pun, a jest? How could it be that a man who had so much wit, had not enough to retrench these egregious faults? This same man – who, despising Homer, translated him; who, in translating him, thought to correct him, and by abridging him, thought to make him read – had a mind to make Homer a wit. It is he who, when Achilles reappears, reconciled to the Greeks who are ready to avenge him, makes the whole camp exclaim:
Que ne vaincra-t-il point? Il s'est vaincu lui-même.
What shall oppose him, conqueror of himself?
A man must indeed be fond of witticisms, when he makes fifty thousand men pun all at once upon the same word.
This play of the imagination, these quips, these cranks, these random shafts, these gayeties, these little broken sentences, these ingenious familiarities, which it is now the fashion to lavish so profusely, are befitting no works but those of pure amusement. The front of the Louvre, by Perrault, is simple and majestic; minute ornaments may appear with grace in a cabinet. Have as much wit as you will, or as you can, in a madrigal, in light verses, in a scene of a comedy, when it is to be neither impassioned nor simple, in a compliment, in a "novellette," or in a letter, where you assume gayety yourself in order to communicate it to your friends.
Far from having reproached Voiture with having wit in his letters, I found, on the contrary, that he had not enough, although he was constantly seeking it. It is said that dancing-masters make their bow ill, because they are anxious to make it too well. I thought this was often the case with Voiture; his best letters are studied; you feel that he is fatiguing himself to find that which presents itself so naturally to Count Anthony Hamilton, to Madame de Sévigné, and to so many other women, who write these trifles without an effort, better than Voiture wrote them with labor. Despréaux, who in his first satires had ventured to compare Voiture to Horace, changed his opinion when his taste was ripened by age. I know that it matters very little, in the affairs of this world, whether Voiture was or was not a great genius; whether he wrote only a few pretty letters, or that all his pieces of pleasantry were models. But we, who cultivate and love the liberal arts, cast an attentive eye on what is quite indifferent to the rest of the world. Good taste is to us in literature what it is to women in dress; and provided that one's opinions shall not be made a party matter, it appears to me that one may boldly say, that there are but few excellent things in Voiture, and that Marot might easily be reduced to a few pages.
Not that we wish to take from them their reputation; on the contrary, we wish to ascertain precisely what that reputation cost them, and what are the real beauties for which their defects have been tolerated. We must know what we are to follow, and what we are to avoid; this is the real fruit of the profound study of the belles-lettres; this is what Horace did when he examined Lucilius critically. Horace made himself enemies thereby; but he enlightened his enemies themselves.
This desire of shining and of saying in a novel manner what has been said by others, is a source of new expressions as well as far-fetched thoughts. He who cannot shine by thought, seeks to bring himself into notice by a word. Hence it has at last been thought proper to substitute "amabilités," for "agrémens"; "négligemment" for "avec négligence"; "badiner les amours," for "badiner avec les amours." There are numberless other affectations of this kind; and if this be continued, the language of Bossuet, of Racine, of Corneille, of Boileau, of Fénelon, will soon be obsolete. Why avoid an expression which is in use, to introduce another which says precisely the same thing? A new word is pardonable only when it is absolutely necessary, intelligible, and sonorous. In physical science, we are obliged to make them; a new discovery, a new machine, requires a new word. But do we make any new discoveries in the human heart? Is there any other greatness than that of Corneille and Bossuet? Are there any other passions than those which have been delineated by Racine, and sketched by Quinault? Is there any other gospel morality than that of Bourdaloue?
They who charge our language with not being sufficiently copious, must indeed have found sterility somewhere, but it is in themselves. "Rem verba sequuntur." When an idea is forcibly impressed on the mind – when a clear and vigorous head is in full possession of its thought – it issues from the brain, arrayed in suitable expressions, as Minerva came forth in full armor to wait upon Jupiter. In fine, the conclusion from this is that neither thoughts nor expressions should be far-fetched; and that the art, in all great works, is to reason well, without entering into too many arguments; to paint well, without striving to paint everything; and to be affecting, without striving constantly to excite passions. Certes, I am here giving fine counsel. Have I taken it myself? Alas! no!
Pauci quos œquus amavit
Jupiter, aut ardens evexit ad œthera virtus,
Dis geniti potuere. – ÆNEID, b. vi, v. 129.
To few great Jupiter imparts this grace,
And those of shining worth and heavenly race.
– DRYDEN.
SECTION II
Spirit – Wit
The word "spirit," when it signifies "a quality of the mind," is one of those vague terms to which almost every one who pronounces it attaches a different sense; it expresses some other thing than judgment, genius, taste, talent, penetration, comprehensiveness, grace, or subtlety, yet is akin to all these merits; it might be defined to be "ingenious reason."
It is a generic word, which always needs another word to determine it; and when we hear it said: "This is a work of spirit," or "He is a man of spirit," we have very good reason to ask: "Spirit of what?" The sublime spirit of Corneille is neither the exact spirit of Boileau, nor the simple spirit of La Fontaine; and the spirit of La Bruyère, which is the art of portraying singularity, is not that of Malebranche, which is imaginative and profound.
When a man is said to have "a judicious spirit," the meaning is, not so much that he has what is called spirit, as that he has an enlightened reason. A spirit firm, masculine, courageous, great, little, weak, light, mild, hasty, etc., signifies the character and temper of the mind, and has no relation to what is understood in society by the expression "spirited."
Spirit, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, is much akin to wit; yet does not signify precisely the same thing; for the term, "man of spirit," can never be taken in a bad sense; but that of "a wit," is sometimes pronounced ironically.
Whence this difference? It is that "a man of spirit" does not signify "superior wit," "marked talent"; and "a wit" does. This expression, "man of spirit," announces no pretensions; but "wit" is a sort of advertisement; it is an art which requires cultivation; it is a sort of profession; and thereby exposes to envy and ridicule.
In this sense, Father Bouhours would have been right in giving us to understand that the Germans had no pretensions to wit; for at that time their learned men occupied themselves in scarcely any works but those of labor and painful research, which did not admit of their scattering flowers, of their striving to shine, and mixing up wit with learning.
They who despise the genius of Aristotle should, instead of contenting themselves with condemning his physics – which could not be good, inasmuch as they wanted experiments – be much astonished to find that Aristotle, in his rhetoric, taught perfectly the art of saying things with spirit. He states that this art consists in not merely using the proper word, which says nothing new; but that a metaphor must be employed – a figure, the sense of which is clear, and its expression energetic. Of this, he adduces several instances; and, among others, what Pericles said of a battle in which the flower of the Athenian youth had perished: "The year has been stripped of its spring."
Aristotle is very right in saying that novelty is necessary. The first person who, to express that pleasures are mingled with bitterness, likened them to roses accompanied by thorns, had wit; they who repeated it had none.
Spirited expression does not always consist in a metaphor; but also in a new term – in leaving one half of one's thoughts to be easily divined; this is called "subtleness," "delicacy"; and this manner is the more pleasing, as it exercises and gives scope for the wit of others.
Allusions, allegories, and comparisons, open a vast field for ingenious thoughts. The effects of nature, fable, history, presented to the memory, furnish a happy imagination with materials of which it makes a suitable use.
It will not be useless to give examples in these different kinds. The following is a madrigal by M. de la Sablière, which has always been held in high estimation by people of taste:
Églé tremble que, dans ce jour,
L'Hymen, plus puissant que l'Amour,
N'enlève ses trésors, sans quelle ose s'en plaindre
Elle a négligé mes avis;
Si la belle les eût suivis,
Elle n'aurait plus rien à craindre.
Weeping, murmuring, complaining,
Lost to every gay delight,
Mira, too sincere for feigning,
Fears th' approaching bridal night.
Yet why impair thy bright perfection,
Or dim thy beauty with a tear?
Had Mira followed my direction,
She long had wanted cause of fear. – GOLDSMITH.
It does not appear that the author could either better have masked, or better have conveyed, the meaning which he was afraid to express. The following madrigal seems more brilliant and more pleasing; it is an allusion to fable:
Vous êtes belle, et votre sœur est belle;
Entre vous deux tout choix serait bien doux
L'Amour était blonde comme vous,
Mais il amait une brune comme elle.
You are a beauty, and your sister, too;
In choosing 'twixt you, then, we cannot err;
Love, to be sure, was fair like you;
But, then, he courted a brunette like her.
There is another, and a very old one. It is by Bertaut, bishop of Séez, and seems superior to the two former; it unites wit and feeling:
Quand je revis ce que j'ai tant aimé,
Pen s'en fallut que mon coeur rallumé
N'en fît le charme en mon âme renaître;
Et que mon cœur, autrefois son captif,
Ne ressemblât l'esclave fugitif,
À qui le sort fit recontrer son maître.
When I beheld again the once-loved form,
Again within my heart the rising storm
Had nearly cast the spell around my soul,
Which erst had bound me captive at her feet,
As some poor slave, escaped from rude control,
His master's dreaded face may haply meet.
Strokes like these please every one, and characterize the delicate spirit of an ingenious nation. The great point is to know how far this spirit is admissible. It is clear that, in great works, it should be employed with moderation, for this very reason, that it is an ornament. The great art consists in propriety.
A subtle, ingenious thought, a just and flowery comparison, is a defect when only reason or passion should speak, or when great interests are to be discussed. This is not false wit, but misplaced; and every beauty, when out of its place, is a beauty no longer.
This is a fault of which Virgil was never guilty, and with which Tasso may now and then be charged, admirable as he otherwise is. The cause of it is that the author, too full of his own ideas, wishes to show himself, when he should only show his personages.
The best way of learning the use that should be made of wit, is to read the few good works of genius which are to be found in the learned languages and in our own. False wit is not the same as misplaced wit. It is not merely a false thought, for a thought might be false without being ingenious; it is a thought at once false and elaborate.
It has already been remarked that a man of great wit, who translated, or rather abridged Homer into French verse, thought to embellish that poet, whose simplicity forms his character, by loading him with ornaments. On the subject of the reconciliation of Achilles, he says:
Tout le camp s'écria dans une joie extrême,
Que ne vaincra-t-il point? Il s'est vaincu lui-même.
Cried the whole camp, with overflowing joy —
What still resist him? He's o'ercome himself.
In the first place it does not at all follow, because one has overcome one's anger, that one shall not be beaten. Secondly, is it possible that a whole army should, by some sudden inspiration, make instantaneously the same pun?