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CHAPTER XII.

CLASSIFICATION, GENERALIZATION, AND METAPHOR.

Extent and Variety of Literary Domain—Individuality of Persons in their Books -Eccentricity taken for Genius-Philosophy More than Classification-Literatures do not Spring Up-Change the Deepest of all Subjects of Thought -Literature Chief Product of Mind-Taine's Imaginary Revolution, Intel- ⚫ lectual and Literary-Misuse of Truisms-Unreasonable Account of Rise of Various Religions-Taine's Compliment to American Intellectuality-His Proposition that Religion is a Human Product-Sources of his SourceTacit Rage of Scandinavians Still Survives in Sombreness of English Laborer-Puritan Disposition an Outgrowth of Scandinavian Rage-The New Tongue-Pagan Renaissance, its Civilization-Christianity Connected the Literature of the Time before the Fall of the Roman Empire with that of the Middle Ages-Generalization Resorted to to Avoid Contradiction--The Philosophic Historian's Nightmare, Change-The Deathly Poetic SpiritDefinitely ascertained Psychology of a People Impossible—Imagination of a Feudal Hero-Intellectual Servitude-Physical Force the Basis of Thought -Imitation and Invention in Nature-Ecclesiastical Oppression-Monotheism vs. Polytheism—Methods and Philosophies Arising from Spirit of the Age-Relation Between the Theatre and Literature-Poetry and Painting as Arts Older than History-Products of Ages-The Derivation of Religions the Strongest Argument Against Them-No Religion can be Reasonable— Scope of the Religious !magination-Paradise Lost more Tragic than EpicTaine's Metaphorical Criticism of Milton's Metaphor-Loathsome Classics, Temple, Waller, Wycherly and Others-French and English War of 1793 Not a Conflict of Literatures-The Spectator, its Decline—Dean Swift a Monstrosity-German Language never Facilitated Philosophic ThoughtPeriodicity of Change in Thought and Literature-Accounting for Literary Freaks-No Age calls Forth any Specific Quality of Literature-Obligations of Literary Integrity.

The domain of literature is so vast and various that the most comprehensive view of it that one can obtain in the course of a life time, can be but little more, comparatively speaking, than a mere glimpse. The names of the writers whose works are in vogue, would themselves fill volumes, to better purpose than many of them are filled with their fluent flatulence. To discuss the ethics of literature one must cite many examples of the expression and thought of those whose records of fact and fancy constitute the mass we call literature. But if he attempts to examine minutely many literary productions, he may find

his work assuming unwieldly proportions, and becoming too profuse to be systematic or useful. It would seem more like discussing individual merit than literature to select certain writers and their works for the ground work of such a treatise. And yet, writings are not so classified, nor capable of classification, as to justify the grouping of them in such manner as to do justice to the subject by anything like a general consideration of any considerable number of them. The individuality of men is more marked in their books than in their persons. As they only resemble each other in being men, so these only resemble each other in being books. Hence the reviewer can only assert what he conceives in reason, philosophy, and manifest utility, ought to be the moral law of literature, and then test the merit of such works of recognized authenticity and importance as his time and resources may enable him to examine, by such standard.

Such allusion as he makes should be sufficiently full to be fair, or his own observations will be entitled to no credit, and he should not assume to authoritatively approve or disapprove of anything in literature, unless he is moved by an intelligent conscientious conviction of the rectitude and propriety of his judgment. But having once reached that which he regards a just judgment of the merit of a literary production, no considerations of popularity, prestige, or fashion, should be allowed any influence in determining him as to his duty.

The bona fide reviewer cannot profitably pause to notice. the triflers who can do but little mischief beyond causing some waste of time, he will find enough to do attending to those of graver aspect, those affecting serious airs, and who seem to have convinced themselves and to be bent on convincing others that they are especially charged with the improvement of the human mind. One of the most unaccountable humors to be encountered in such investigation is in that, the more peculiar and eccentric the writer's methods, the more profoundly he and his readers generally appear to be impressed with the idea of his especial fitness for the office. I have already examined. some works of this kind, which appear to be standard in literature; not merely popular with a reading rabble, but recogniz

ed as superior among the learned, and mainly for what they seem to regard their philosophy.

While particularity may verge to unprofitable profusion, the opposite extreme is even more objectionable. Philosophy is more than mere classification, and generalization is the stale fraud in the practice of which the superficially informed affect many of their owl-wise airs, than which nothing can be more contemptible. At the risk of tedium I have chosen to consider particularly such subordinate topics as have occurred to me in the discussion, in connection with the subjects which have suggested them, believing that by such means only, in such investigations, definite results, specific and intelligible conclusions can be reached.

A writer who has casually glanced over a past period, who has an abbreviated chronology of its more important events and the names of its more conspicuous characters, may adjust himself to that which he fancies is the correct tune of its changes, and give to the world that which he fancies is a philosophy of the literature and history of the period. To call it a history of the literature of a country makes it no more such a history, and no less an attempted philosophy-if nine tenths of it is devoted to discussion of the facts stated in the remaining one tenth, and they are drawn promiscuously from all countries and irregularly from all ages. By skillful classification and generalization one may show an extensive acquaintance with historical fact; but when he comes to construct a philosophy of such fact he will discover, at least he should discover, that coexistence is not correlation and that sequence is not consequence.

No one was ever justified in saying that at any definite point in time "the thinking public and the human mind changed, and whilst these changes took place a new literature sprang up.' Caesar's Commentaries and Gallic War remind one too vividly of Grant's Memoirs; the Agamemnon and Choephora are too suggestive of Hamlet, for a critical reader to accept and swallow so sudden a change. Tautology is a ready resource both in bulk making and in bookmaking, but if the philosophic historian meant one thing or entity by the term thinking public,

and another thing or entity by the term human mind in the connection in which he has used them, he might have conferred a benefit, at least a favor, on his readers by making it manifest. The human mind wrought and reasoned in the same way and with the same kind of results, when it was registering its ravings on Chaldean clay, as while it is pulsing them from continent to continent in currents of electricity.

Change is one of the deepest subjects of intelligent consideration in all cosmology. Yet in simultaneous events wiseacres see an immediate and necessary relation; in successive events they see how the prior necessarily produce the posterior; and attributing general results to specific causes is their favorite vocation. They appear to ignore the fact that causes are themselves results of prior causes which in turn are themselves results of causes still prior. From the complacent assurance with which they speak of causes one might suppose they had discovered absolutely original and independent cause. All life, growth, and development, are change; the most durable existence itself is change; and there is no stability. That which is generally regarded stability is merely slow change. The atoms of stone in the base of the pyramids will sometime be wanting to their place, if for no other reason, because they were not always there. Geology implies that their place will itself sometime be wanting, because it was not always there. Looking back as far as fact and fancy can carry us we are continuously confronted with a scene of constant change; and if there is any feature of the Cosmos which presents any appearance of stability of nature it is mind; it is the very one which the learned seem generally to regard the most mutable of them all. The fact that we have any intelligence, however meager and however derived, of the mind of remote antiquity, implies great stability of the nature of mind. Otherwise no mental fact of such antiquity could be the subject matter of a present cognition, or of a present legitimate deduction. The cuneiform inscription on the Sarcophagi of Nineveh could have no meaning for minds in nature different from those of the ones who made them.

A military campaign may change the political map of a dis

trict; the Cross may supplant the Joss, or the Crescent may supplant the Cross; but the dura mater will continue to contain the usual quantity of the usual quality of vesicular and tubular neurine, which will continue liable to be affected as formerly by similar agencies. Unless the course of Nature should suddenly change, which is not likely to occur, the similar agencies are liable to operate, producing similar states of mind, or giving the same kind of mind the occasion to demonstrate that it is of the same kind as the former, that is of the same nature; though possibly modified for better or worse, depending upon the kind of influences to which it may have been exposed. No matter what follows, nor how different the result from what reasonably might have been and perhaps was generally expected; nor how different from any ever before known to have resulted from similar causes; the literary savant at once proceeds to explain how and why it could not have been otherwise, but in the nature of things must have been so---to formulate a philosophy of the facts.

Literature is the chief of the products of the mind; it is the mind's continuously culminating culmination; its never ending end. They are growths, developments, progressions, and so far are themselves subject to change. But they have never been very spasmodic in their action in this respect. The progress of the growth and development of mind, can be marked off in periods or stages, with about the same degree of propriety as that with which one could make a map of morality, with latitudes, longitudes, altitudes, and coast and isothermal lines. With about the same degree of propriety one may attempt to periodize progress in intellectual and literary attainment, in definite terminals, and attribute shades of difference in form of expression and habit of thought in the alleged different periods, to specific physical causes. That which can go from its own center into the depths of space in less time than can be told would seem to be of a nature rather difficult to be limited specifically by physical agencies. While mind is of great stability of nature, and is doubtless subject to some mysterious limitation in nature; yet no manifestations have ever justified the belief that it or its great product can be appropriately philosophiz