definiteness of purpose. For him, 'there is some use of everything,' and nothing is fully known until its highest usefulness has been identified. In general his teleology is positive. 'There can be no doubt,' he writes, "but that everything in the world, by the beauty of its order and the evidence of a determinate and beneficial purpose which pervades it, testifies that some supreme efficient Power must have pre-existed by which the whole was ordained for a specific end." The passage makes clear that, according to Milton's philosophy, every created thing ideally renders a good service, and evil is present only when there is some violation of the law. When a violation confronts him, Milton does not lose faith in his reasoning, but concludes that, under abnormal conditions, things realize themselves only negatively. At best, perverted from their proper function by what he calls 'worst abuse,' or 'meanest use,'3 they lapse into absurdity, or meet a 'ridiculous frustration';4 1 Eikonoclastes (8), Works 3.392. 2 Christian Doctrine (Bk. 1, chap. 2), trans. by Sumner, 1.16-17. 3 Cf. Romeo and Juliet 2.3.17-20: For nought so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give, Nor aught so good but, strained from that fair use, 'Milton frequently employs the adjective ridiculous to designate the state of absurdity resulting from uselessness or misuse. See the following examples: [The law] 'reducing itself to the state of neither saving nor condemning, will not fail to expire solemnly ridiculous.' Tetrachordon (Matt. 19. 7, 8), Works 4.217-218. 'Who have been so prudent as never to employ the civil sword further than the edge of it could reach, that is to civil offenses only, proving always against objects that were spiritual a ridiculous weapon." Ormond, Works 4.563. 'Agricola, discerning that those little targets and unwieldy glaves illpointed would soon become ridiculous against the thrust and close, com at worst, they grow malign and harmful, or suffer the curse of God, and become 'for evil only, good.' It is hard to distinguish between Milton's search for the purpose, and his insight into the spirit, of all reality. With him, the one examination but completed the other. Though forced to admit that 'good events oftimes arise from evil occasions' he did not feel his logic compromised, and would have agreed with that maxim of La Rochefoucauld: 'No matter how brilliant an action may be, it ought not to pass for great unless it is the result of a great motive.'. Sobriety and industry, patient effort and daring, are meaningless, perhaps vicious, unless the end for which they are practised form them in 'the lovely shapes of virtues and graces." Thus explorers, if their achievements are to be called heroic, must be moved by higher impulses than the love of gain;2 soldiers must know the reason of their valor, and must rate the feats of war most honorable as they soonest exact a victorious peace; lawgivers must look to the intention of every precept; ministers, if they would escape manded three Batavian cohorts, and two of the Tungrians exercised and armed for close fight, to draw up and come to handy-strokes.' Hist. Brit. (Bk. 2), Works 5.70. Thus was the building left Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named. P. L. 12.61-62. The 'building' is the tower of Babel. Weaponless himself, Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery Of brazen shield and spear. S. A. 130-131. Not to sit idle with so great a gift Useless, and thence ridiculous, about him. S. A. 1500-1501. Church-Gov. (Bk. 1., chap 2), Works 3.103. Moscovia (chap. 5), Works 8.502. 'Hist. Brit. (Bk. 3), Works 5.100. Ibid. (Bk. 6), Works 5.285. 'Tetrachordon (Matt. 19.9), Works 4.233. reproach, must expound the letter of divine teachings by an 'unerring paraphrase of Christian love and charity';1 and poets can in no other way justify the beauties and ornaments of their style than by dedicating their 'industry and art' to the great ends of society. In the ordinary affairs of life, in politics, in philosophy, and in art, Milton exacts clarity and nobility of design, and opposes the common tendency to condone aimlessness and to interpret form as something independent of function. In nothing is Milton's regard for certainty of purpose better illustrated than in his attitude toward his own life, a life so ordered in conscious accordance with a correct method that it may well be looked upon as in itself a work of art, 'a true poem.' From his boyhood, he knew but one ambition; his intentions and motives were defined; he was to be student and poet, that is, in the most exalted sense of the word, teacher. For this career he needed learning, and with a single mind and an inspired heart he set about its acquisition. Every step of his prodigious intellectual activity he challenged by some such query as the 'Ad quid venisti, Bernarde?' of the great Benedictine, and every step he could have justified as definitely carrying him nearer to fulness of knowledge. Of the power of learning, and the sacredness of its end, he spoke with something of Dante's grandeur and something of Sidney's grace, and with the same positiveness that had brought their diverse minds into momentary agreement. Dante, the mediaeval thinker, had taught that the good of the intellect was to be realized in the contemplation of God. Sidney, the Elizabethan 1 Tetrachordon (Matt. 19.9), Works 4.245. * Church-Gov. (Bk. 2), Works 3.144-145. pattern of courtesy, had written: "This purifying of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling of judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call learning, under what name soever it come forth, or to what immediate end soever it be directed, the final end is to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clayey lodgings, can be capable of." Milton, as it were, echoes both: 'The end of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection." From this ideal of learning sprang the conception of a particular task which should give an animating purpose to his life. The particular task is described in The Reason of ChurchGovernment Urged against Prelaty. There Milton announces his office in the dissemination of re-creative learning. The favorable reception of his early poetry by the members of the Italian academies, together with an 'inward prompting,' had brought him to conclude that he might 'perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes as they should not willingly let it die'; and he adds: I applied myself to that resolution which Ariosto followed against the persuasion of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adornment of my native tongue; not to make verbal curiosities the end-that were a toilsome vanity-but to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this island in the mother dialect. That what the greatest and choicest 1 An Apology for Poetry, in Eliz. Crit. Essays 1.160–161. Education, Works 4.381. wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old, did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this over and above of being a Christian, might do for mine.1 To the accomplishment of this undertaking no one of Milton's writings was unrelated. The prose works were but lesser and cruder contributions to the lofty design that culminated in the universalized teaching and high argument of the epics. Whether Milton expounded a wise programme of education, vindicated the honor of his people, espoused the cause of a free press, or defended the ways of God to men, he was faithful to one aim, and unremitting in his effort to give to his countrymen the best that throughout a life of studious concentration he had found for himself. Thus far we have noted only the simplest bearing of Milton's belief in the identity of form and function—that is, its bearing upon his opinion and conduct, or upon what we might call his philosophy of life; and we have seen little more than that, like all men of orderly mind, he recognized the importance of motive, and of precision and steadfastness of purpose. Yet this discovery, ordinary and inevitable as it appears, has value because of the common tendency to consider genius irresponsible, and to associate its products with eccentricity. Let us next examine a development of the principle which more obviously affects the articles of Milton's aesthetic creed, and more deeply stamps the quality of his poetic gift. For a creative artist the correspondence between inner spirit and tangible manifestation is the measure of the perfection in form. In Milton's prose, scattered passages touch upon this correspondence. Take first his definition of 1 Church-Gov. (Bk. 2), Works 3.144-145. |