Confessions and Criticisms by Julian Hawthorne

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The title of the story also underwent various vicissitudes. The one first
chosen was "Happy Jack"; but that was objected to as suggesting, to an
English ear at least, a species of cheap Jack or rambling peddler. The
next title fixed upon was "Luck"; but before this could be copyrighted,
somebody published a story called "Luck, and What Came of It," and thereby
invalidated my briefer version. For several weeks, I was at a loss what to
call it; but one evening, at a representation of "Romeo and Juliet," I
heard the exclamation of _Romeo_, "Oh, I am fortune's fool!" and
immediately appropriated it to my own needs. It suited the book well
enough, in more ways than one.

CHAPTER II

NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM.

The novel of our times is susceptible of many definitions. The American
publishers of Railway libraries think that it is forty or fifty double-
column pages of pirated English fiction. Readers of the "New York Ledger"
suppose it to be a romance of angelic virtue at last triumphant over
satanic villany. The aristocracy of culture describe it as a philosophic
analysis of human character and motives, with an agnostic bias on the
analyst's part. Schoolboys are under the impression that it is a tale of
Western chivalry and Indian outrage--price, ten cents. Most of us agree in
the belief that it should contain a brace or two of lovers, a suspense,
and a solution.

To investigate the nature of the novel in the abstract would involve going
back to the very origin of things. It would imply the recognition of a
certain faculty of the mind, known as imagination; and of a certain fact
in history, called art. Art and imagination are correlatives,--one implies
the other. Together, they may be said to constitute the characteristic
badge and vindication of human nature; imagination is the badge, and art
is the vindication. Reason, which gets so much vulgar glorification, is,
after all, a secondary quality. It is posterior to imagination,--it is one
of the means by which imagination seeks to realize its ends. Some animals
reason, or seem to do so: but the most cultivated ape or donkey has not
yet composed a sonnet, or a symphony, or "an arrangement in green and
yellow." Man still retains a few prerogatives, although, like Aesop's
stag, which despised the legs that bore it away from the hounds, and
extolled the antlers that entangled it in the thicket,--so man often
magnifies those elements of his nature that least deserve it.

But, before celebrating art and imagination, we should have a clear idea
what those handsome terms mean. In the broadest sense, imagination is the
cause of the effect we call progress. It marks all forms of human effort
towards a better state of things. It embraces a perception of existing
shortcomings, and an aspiration towards a loftier ideal. It is, in fact, a
truly divine force in man, reminding him of his heavenly origin, and
stimulating him to rise again to the level whence he fell. For it has
glimpses of the divine Image within or behind the material veil; and its
constant impulse is to tear aside the veil and grasp the image. The world,
let us say, is a gross and finite translation of an infinite and perfect
Word; and imagination is the intuition of that perfection, born in the
human heart, and destined forever to draw mankind into closer harmony with
it.

In common speech, however, imagination is deprived of this broader
significance, and is restricted to its relations with art. Art is not
progress, though progress implies art. It differs from progress chiefly in
disclaiming the practical element. You cannot apply a poem, a picture, or
a strain of music, to material necessities; they are not food, clothing,
or shelter. Only after these physical wants are assuaged, does art
supervene. Its sphere is exclusively mental and moral. But this definition
is not adequate; a further distinction is needed. For such things as
mathematics, moral philosophy, and political economy also belong to the
mental sphere, and yet they are not art. But these, though not actually
existing on the plane of material necessities, yet do exist solely in
order to relieve such necessities. Unlike beauty, they are not their own
excuse for being. Their embodiment is utilitarian, that of art is
aesthetic. Political economy, for example, shows me how to buy two drinks
for the same price I used to pay for one; while art inspires me to
transmute a pewter mug into a Cellini goblet. My physical nature, perhaps,
prefers two drinks to one; but, if my taste be educated, and I be not too
thirsty, I would rather drink once from the Cellini goblet than twice from
the mug. Political economy gravitates towards the material level; art
seeks incarnation only in order to stimulate anew the same spiritual
faculties that generated it. Art is the production, by means of
appearances, of the illusion of a loftier reality; and imagination is the
faculty which holds that loftier reality up for imitation.

The disposition of these preliminaries brings us once more in sight of the
goal of our pilgrimage. The novel, despite its name, is no new thing, but
an old friend in a modern dress. Ever since the time of Cadmus,--ever
since language began to express thought as well as emotion,--men have
betrayed the impulse to utter in forms of literary art,--in poetry and
story,--their conceptions of the world around them. According to many
philologists, poetry was the original form of human speech. Be that as it
may, whatever flows into the mind, from the spectacle of nature and of
mankind, that influx the mind tends instinctively to reproduce, in a shape
accordant with its peculiar bias and genius. And those minds in which
imagination is predominant, impart to their reproductions a balance and
beauty which stamp them as art. Art--and literary art especially--is the
only evidence we have that this universal frame of things has relation to
our minds, and is a universe and not a poliverse. Outside revelation, it
is our best assurance of an intelligent purpose in creation.

Novels, then, instead of being (as some persons have supposed) a wilful
and corrupt conspiracy on the part of the evilly disposed, against the
peace and prosperity of the realm, may claim a most ancient and
indefeasible right to existence. They, with their ancestors and near
relatives, constitute Literature,--without which the human race would be
little better than savages. For the effect of pure literature upon a
receptive mind is something more than can be definitely stated. Like
sunshine upon a landscape, it is a kind of miracle. It demands from its
disciple almost as much as it gives him, and is never revealed save to the
disinterested and loving eye. In our best moments, it touches us most
deeply; and when the sentiment of human brotherhood kindles most warmly
within us, we discover in literature an exquisite answering ardor. When
everything that can be, has been said about a true work of art, its finest
charm remains,--the charm derived from a source beyond the conscious reach
even of the artist.

The novel, then, must be pure literature; as much so as the poem. But
poetry--now that the day of the broad Homeric epic is past, or temporarily
eclipsed--appeals to a taste too exclusive and abstracted for the demands
of modern readers. Its most accommodating metre fails to house our endless
variety of mood and movement; it exacts from the student an exaltation
above the customary level of thought and sentiment greater than he can
readily afford. The poet of old used to clothe in the garb of verse his
every observation on life and nature; but to-day he reserves for it only
his most ideal and abstract conceptions. The merit of Cervantes is not so
much that he laughed Spain's chivalry away, as that he heralded the modern
novel of character and manners. It is the latest, most pliable, most
catholic solution of the old problem,--how to unfold man to himself. It
improves on the old methods, while missing little of their excellence. No
one can read a great novel without feeling that, from its outwardly
prosaic pages, strains of genuine poetry have ever and anon reached his
ears. It does not obtrude itself; it is not there for him who has not
skill to listen for it: but for him who has ears, it is like the music of
a bird, denning itself amidst the innumerable murmurs of the forest.

So, the ideal novel, conforming in every part to the behests of the
imagination, should produce, by means of literary art, the illusion of a
loftier reality. This excludes the photographic method of novel-writing.
"That is a false effort in art," says Goethe, towards the close of his
long and splendid career, "which, in giving reality to the appearance,
goes so far as to leave in it nothing but the common, every-day actual."
It is neither the actual, nor Chinese copies of the actual, that we demand
of art. Were art merely the purveyor of such things, she might yield her
crown to the camera and the stenographer; and divine imagination would
degenerate into vulgar inventiveness. Imagination is incompatible with
inventiveness, or imitation. Imitation is death, imagination is life.
Imitation is servitude, imagination is royalty. He who claims the name of
artist must rise to that vision of a loftier reality--a more true because
a more beautiful world--which only imagination can reveal. A truer world,
--for the world of facts is not and cannot be true. It is barren,
incoherent, misleading. But behind every fact there is a truth: and these
truths are enlightening, unifying, creative. Fasten your hold upon them,
and facts will become your servants instead of your tyrants. No charm of
detail will be lost, no homely picturesque circumstance, no touch of human
pathos or humor; but all hardness, rigidity, and finality will disappear,
and your story will be not yours alone, but that of every one who feels
and thinks. Spirit gives universality and meaning; but alas! for this new
gospel of the auctioneer's catalogue, and the crackling of thorns under a
pot. He who deals with facts only, deprives his work of gradation and
distinction. One fact, considered in itself, has no less importance than
any other; a lump of charcoal is as valuable as a diamond. But that is the
philosophy of brute beasts and Digger Indians. A child, digging on the
beach, may shape a heap of sand into a similitude of Vesuvius; but is it
nothing that Vesuvius towers above the clouds, and overwhelms Pompeii?

* * * * *

In proceeding from the general to the particular,--to the novel as it
actually exists in England and America,--attention will be confined
strictly to the contemporary outlook. The new generation of novelists (by
which is intended not those merely living in this age, but those who
actively belong to it) differ in at least one fundamental respect from the
later representatives of the generation preceding them. Thackeray and
Dickens did not deliberately concern themselves about a philosophy of
life. With more or less complacency, more or less cynicism, they accepted
the religious and social canons which had grown to be the commonplace of
the first half of this century. They pictured men and women, not as
affected by questions, but as affected by one another. The morality and
immorality of their personages were of the old familiar Church-of-England
sort; there was no speculation as to whether what had been supposed to be
wrong was really right, and _vice versa_. Such speculations, in various
forms and degrees of energy, appear in the world periodically; but the
public conscience during the last thirty or forty years had been gradually
making itself comfortable after the disturbances consequent upon the
French Revolution; the theoretical rights of man had been settled for the
moment; and interest was directed no longer to the assertion and support
of these rights, but to the social condition and character which were
their outcome. Good people were those who climbed through reverses and
sorrows towards the conventional heaven; bad people were those who, in
spite of worldly and temporary successes and triumphs, gravitated towards
the conventional hell. Novels designed on this basis in so far filled the
bill, as the phrase is: their greater or less excellence depended solely
on the veracity with which the aspect, the temperament, and the conduct of
the _dramatis personae_ were reported, and upon the amount of ingenuity
wherewith the web of events and circumstances was woven, and the
conclusion reached. Nothing more was expected, and, in general, little or
nothing more was attempted. Little more, certainly, will be found in the
writings of Thackeray or of Balzac, who, it is commonly admitted, approach
nearest to perfection of any novelists of their time. There was nothing
genuine or commanding in the metaphysical dilettanteism of Bulwer: the
philosophical speculations of Georges Sand are the least permanently
interesting feature of her writings; and the same might in some measure be
affirmed of George Eliot, whose gloomy wisdom finally confesses its
inability to do more than advise us rather to bear those ills we have than
fly to others that we know not of. As to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he cannot
properly be instanced in this connection; for he analyzed chiefly those
parts of human nature which remain substantially unaltered in the face of
whatever changes of opinion, civilization, and religion. The truth that he
brings to light is not the sensational fact of a fashion or a period, but
a verity of the human heart, which may foretell, but can never be affected
by, anything which that heart may conceive. In other words, Hawthorne
belonged neither to this nor to any other generation of writers further
than that his productions may be used as a test of the inner veracity of
all the rest.

But of late years a new order of things has been coming into vogue, and
the new novelists have been among the first to reflect it; and of these
the Americans have shown themselves among the most susceptible. Science,
or the investigation of the phenomena of existence (in opposition to
philosophy, the investigation of the phenomena of being), has proved
nature to be so orderly and self-sufficient, and inquiry as to the origin
of the primordial atom so unproductive and quixotic, as to make it
convenient and indeed reasonable to accept nature as a self-existing fact,
and to let all the rest--if rest there be--go. From this point of view,
God and a future life retire into the background; not as finally
disproved,--because denial, like affirmation, must, in order to be final,
be logically supported; and spirit is, if not illogical, at any rate
outside the domain of logic,--but as being a hopelessly vague and
untrustworthy hypothesis. The Bible is a human book; Christ was a
gentleman, related to the Buddha and Plato families; Joseph was an ill-
used man; death, so far as we have any reason to believe, is annihilation
of personal existence; life is--the predicament of the body previous to
death; morality is the enlightened selfishness of the greatest number;
civilization is the compromises men make with one another in order to get
the most they can out of the world; wisdom is acknowledgment of these
propositions; folly is to hanker after what may lie beyond the sphere of
sense. The supporter of these doctrines by no means permits himself to be
regarded as a rampant and dogmatic atheist; he is simply the modest and
humble doubter of what he cannot prove. He even recognizes the persistence
of the religious instinct in man, and caters to it by a new religion
suited to the times--the Religion of Humanity. Thus he is secure at all
points: for if the religion of the Bible turn out to be true, his
disappointment will be an agreeable one; and if it turns out false, he
will not be disappointed at all. He is an agnostic--a person bound to be
complacent whatever happens. He may indulge a gentle regret, a musing
sadness, a smiling pensiveness; but he will never refuse a comfortable
dinner, and always wear something soft next his skin, nor can he
altogether avoid the consciousness of his intellectual superiority.

Agnosticism, which reaches forward into nihilism on one side, and extends
back into liberal Christianity on the other, marks, at all events, a
definite turning-point from what has been to what is to come. The human
mind, in the course of its long journey, is passing through a dark place,
and is, as it were, whistling to keep up its courage. It is a period of
doubt: what it will result in remains to be seen; but analogy leads us to
infer that this doubt, like all others, will be succeeded by a
comparatively definite belief in something--no matter what. It is a
transient state--the interval between one creed and another. The agnostic
no longer holds to what is behind him, nor knows what lies before, so he
contents himself with feeling the ground beneath his feet. That, at least,
though the heavens fall, is likely to remain; meanwhile, let the heavens
take care of themselves. It may be the part of valor to champion divine
revelation, but the better part of valor is discretion, and if divine
revelation prove true, discretion will be none the worse off. On the other
hand, to champion a myth is to make one's self ridiculous, and of being
ridiculous the agnostic has a consuming fear. From the superhuman
disinterestedness of the theory of the Religion of Humanity, before which
angels might quail, he flinches not, but when it comes to the risk of
being laughed at by certain sagacious persons he confesses that bravery
has its limits. He dares do all that may become an agnostic,--who dares do
more is none.

But, however open to criticism this phase of thought may be, it is a
genuine phase, and the proof is the alarm and the shifts that it has
brought about in the opposite camp. "Established" religion finds the
foundation of her establishment undermined, and, like the lady in Hamlet's
play, she doth protest too much. In another place, all manner of odd
superstitions and quasi-miracles are cropping up and gaining credence, as
if, since the immortality of the soul cannot be proved by logic, it should
be smuggled into belief by fraud and violence--that is, by the testimony
of the bodily senses themselves. Taking a comprehensive view of the whole
field, therefore, it seems to be divided between discreet and supercilious
skepticism on one side, and, on the other, the clamorous jugglery of
charlatanism. The case is not really so bad as that: nihilists are not
discreet and even the Bishop of Rome is not necessarily a charlatan.
Nevertheless, the outlook may fairly be described as confused and the
issue uncertain. And--to come without further preface to the subject of
this paper--it is with this material that the modern novelist, so far as
he is a modern and not a future novelist, or a novelist _temporis acti_,
has to work. Unless a man have the gift to forecast the years, or, at
least, to catch the first ray of the coming light, he can hardly do better
than attend to what is under his nose. He may hesitate to identify himself
with agnosticism, but he can scarcely avoid discussing it, either in
itself or in its effects. He must entertain its problems; and the
personages of his story, if they do not directly advocate or oppose
agnostic views, must show in their lives either confirmation or disproof
of agnostic principles. It is impossible, save at the cost of affectation
or of ignorance, to escape from the spirit of the age. It is in the air we
breathe, and, whether we are fully conscious thereof or not, our lives and
thoughts must needs be tinctured by it.

Now, art is creative; but Mephistopheles, the spirit that denies, is
destructive. A negative attitude of mind is not favorable for the
production of works of art. The best periods of art have also been periods
of spiritual or philosophical convictions. The more a man doubts, the more
he disintegrates and the less he constructs. He has in him no central
initial certainty round which all other matters of knowledge or
investigation may group themselves in symmetrical relation. He may analyze
to his heart's content, but must be wary of organizing. If creation is not
of God, if nature is not the expression of the contact between an infinite
and a finite being, then the universe and everything in it are accidents,
which might have been otherwise or might have not been at all; there is no
design in them nor purpose, no divine and eternal significance. This being
conceded, what meaning would there be in designing works of art? If art
has not its prototype in creation, if all that we see and do is chance,
uninspired by a controlling and forming intelligence behind or within it,
then to construct a work of art would be to make something arbitrary and
grotesque, something unreal and fugitive, something out of accord with the
general sense (or nonsense) of things, something with no further basis or
warrant than is supplied by the maker's idle and irresponsible fancy. But
since no man cares to expend the trained energies of his mind upon the
manufacture of toys, it will come to pass (upon the accidental hypothesis
of creation) that artists will become shy of justifying their own title.
They will adopt the scientific method of merely collecting and describing
phenomena; but the phenomena will no longer be arranged as parts or
developments of a central controlling idea, because such an arrangement
would no longer seem to be founded on the truth: the gratification which
it gives to the mind would be deemed illusory, the result of tradition and
prejudice; or, in other words, what is true being found no longer
consistent with what we have been accustomed to call beauty, the latter
would cease to be an object of desire, though something widely alien to it
might usurp its name. If beauty be devoid of independent right to be, and
definable only as an attribute of truth, then undoubtedly the cynosure to-
day may be the scarecrow of to-morrow, and _vice versa_, according to our
varying conception of what truth is.

And, as a matter of fact, art already shows the effects of the agnostic
influence. Artists have begun to doubt whether their old conceptions of
beauty be not fanciful and silly. They betray a tendency to eschew the
loftier flights of the imagination, and confine themselves to what they
call facts. Critics deprecate idealism as something fit only for children,
and extol the courage of seeing and representing things as they are.
Sculpture is either a stern student of modern trousers and coat-tails or a
vapid imitator of classic prototypes. Painters try all manner of
experiments, and shrink from painting beneath the surface of their canvas.
Much of recent effort in the different branches of art comes to us in the
form of "studies," but the complete work still delays to be born. We would
not so much mind having our old idols and criterions done away with were
something new and better, or as good, substituted for them. But apparently
nothing definite has yet been decided on. Doubt still reigns, and, once
more, doubt is not creative. One of two things must presently happen. The
time will come when we must stop saying that we do not know whether or not
God, and all that God implies, exists, and affirm definitely and finally
either that he does not exist or that he does. That settled, we shall soon
see what will become of art. If there is a God, he will be understood and
worshipped, not superstitiously and literally as heretofore, but in a new
and enlightened spirit; and an art will arise commensurate with this new
and loftier revelation. If there is no God, it is difficult to see how art
can have the face to show herself any more. There is no place for her in
the Religion of Humanity; to be true and living she can be nothing which
it has thus far entered into the heart of man to call beautiful; and she
could only serve to remind us of certain vague longings and aspirations
now proved to be as false as they were vain. Art is not an orchid: it
cannot grow in the air. Unless its root can be traced as deep down as
Yggdrasil, it will wither and vanish, and be forgotten as it ought to be;
and as for the cowslip by the river's brim, a yellow cowslip it shall be,
and nothing more; and the light that never was on sea or land shall be
permanently extinguished, in the interests of common sense and economy,
and (what is least inviting of all to the unregenerate mind) we shall
speedily get rid of the notion that we have lost anything worth
preserving.

This, however, is only what may be, and our concern at present is with
things as they are. It has been observed that American writers have shown
themselves more susceptible of the new influences than most others, partly
no doubt from a natural sensitiveness of organization, but in some measure
also because there are with us no ruts and fetters of old tradition from
which we must emancipate ourselves before adopting anything new. We have
no past, in the European sense, and so are ready for whatever the present
or the future may have to suggest. Nevertheless, the novelist who, in a
larger degree than any other, seems to be the literary parent of our own
best men of fiction, is himself not an American, nor even an Englishman,
but a Russian--Turguenieff. His series of extraordinary novels, translated
into English and French, is altogether the most important fact in the
literature of fiction of the last twelve years. To read his books you
would scarcely imagine that their author could have had any knowledge of
the work of his predecessors in the same field. Originality is a term
indiscriminately applied, and generally of trifling significance, but so
far as any writer may be original, Turguenieff is so. He is no less
original in the general scheme and treatment of his stories than in their
details. Whatever he produces has the air of being the outcome of his
personal experience and observation. He even describes his characters,
their aspect, features, and ruling traits, in a novel and memorable
manner. He seizes on them from a new point of vantage, and uses scarcely
any of the hackneyed and conventional devices for bringing his portraits
before our minds; yet no writer, not even Carlyle, has been more vivid,
graphic, and illuminating than he. Here are eyes that owe nothing to other
eyes, but examine and record for themselves. Having once taken up a
character he never loses his grasp on it: on the contrary, he masters it
more and more, and only lets go of it when the last recesses of its
organism have been explored. In the quality and conduct of his plots he is
equally unprecedented. His scenes are modern, and embody characteristic
events and problems in the recent history of Russia. There is in their
arrangement no attempt at symmetry, nor poetic justice. Temperament and
circumstances are made to rule, and against their merciless fiat no appeal
is allowed. Evil does evil to the end; weakness never gathers strength;
even goodness never varies from its level: it suffers, but is not
corrupted; it is the goodness of instinct, not of struggle and aspiration;
it happens to belong to this or that person, just as his hair happens to
be black or brown. Everything in the surroundings and the action is to the
last degree matter-of-fact, commonplace, inevitable; there are no
picturesque coincidences, no providential interferences, no desperate
victories over fate; the tale, like the world of the materialist, moves
onward from a predetermined beginning to a helpless and tragic close. And
yet few books have been written of deeper and more permanent fascination
than these. Their grim veracity; the creative sympathy and steady
dispassionateness of their portrayal of mankind; their constancy of
motive, and their sombre earnestness, have been surpassed by none. This
earnestness is worth dwelling upon for a moment. It bears no likeness to
the dogmatism of the bigot or the fanaticism of the enthusiast. It is the
concentration of a broadly gifted masculine mind, devoting its unstinted
energies to depicting certain aspects of society and civilization, which
are powerfully representative of the tendencies of the day. "Here is the
unvarnished fact--give heed to it!" is the unwritten motto. The author
avoids betraying, either explicitly or implicitly, the tendency of his own
sympathies; not because he fears to have them known, but because he holds
it to be his office simply to portray, and to leave judgment thereupon
where, in any case, it must ultimately rest--with the world of his
readers. He tells us what is; it is for us to consider whether it also
must be and shall be. Turguenieff is an artist by nature, yet his books
are not intentionally works of art; they are fragments of history,
differing from real life only in presenting such persons and events as are
commandingly and exhaustively typical, and excluding all others. This
faculty of selection is one of the highest artistic faculties, and it
appears as much in the minor as in the major features of the narrative. It
indicates that Turguenieff might, if he chose, produce a story as
faultlessly symmetrical as was ever framed. Why, then, does he not so
choose? The reason can only be that he deems the truth-seeming of his
narrative would thereby be impaired. "He is only telling a story," the
reader would say, "and he shapes the events and persons so as to fit the
plot." But is this reason reasonable? To those who believe that God has no
hand in the ordering of human affairs, it undoubtedly is reasonable. To
those who believe the contrary, however, it appears as if the story of no
human life or complex of lives could be otherwise than a rounded and
perfect work of art--provided only that the spectator takes note, not
merely of the superficial accidents and appearances, but also of the
underlying divine purpose and significance. The absence of this
recognition in Turguenieff's novels is the explanation of them: holding
the creed their author does, he could not have written them otherwise;
and, on the other hand, had his creed been different, he very likely would
not have written novels at all.

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