To Miss Grace Norton.

March 25, 1870.

The principles of this art [jugglery] are really very few, but their applications are manifold. And this is in the main true of the much more dignified and impressive shows, — the mysteries and problems of human nature. Forgive my drawing a moral, after all; but your studies in history and my studies in psychology, which happen to be nearly parallel, suggest it. While you have been studying types and theories of character in mediaeval history, I have been reading how the finest, most amiable phases of human nature are consistent with the entirely selfish origin and nature of its fundamental elements. How the capacity for sympathy and disinterested actions and the foundation of the higher justice can come into our volitions, without being originally planted there, — as the sentimental orthodox psychologists maintain that they are, — is a problem which my author, Mr. Bain, has attempted; and, though his explanations do not seem fully adequate or on a level with their theme, yet it is true, as he says in reply to Mr. Martineau’s criticisms of another of his theories, that “scientific

explanations have often a repulsive and disenchanting effect, and the scientific man is not made answerable for this.” We plainly see this in tricks. Why shouldn’t it be so in more serious matters? Mr. Martineau and his school may prefer the enchantment to the explanation, as many do in regard to tricks; but do not let them rest under the further illusion that they compass both in what they are pleased to call philosophy, that fine composition of poetry under the forms of science, of which Hegelianism is the most notable modern epic. The tendency of an idea to become the reality, considered as a distinct source of the active impulses in the mind, and the tendency of “fixed ideas” to thwart the operations of the will, whose nature it is to urge us from pain or to pleasure in ourselves, where alone they really exist to us, — are the basis of his explanations. Not only the phenomena of ordinary and mesmeric or somnambulic dreaming, and the effects in waking moments of ideas in conjunction with states of excitement or under the influence of great passions, like that of fear, or of great concentration, as in the fascination of a precipice, or the depression of a painful recollection, culminating sometimes in insanity, and commonly exhibited by it, — not only these exceptional phenomena, but also facts of wider and deeper import in human nature, find their explanation in this tendency. “The only way,” Mr. Bain says, “that I am able to explain the great fact of our nature denominated Sympathy, — fellow-feeling, pity, compassion, disinterestedness, — is by reference to this tendency of an idea to act itself out,” through which the perceptions of the outward signs of pleasure and pain urge us to act as if they were our own. The utilitarian does not differ from other moral beings in this respect. He also must be irrational to the extent of being habitually urged in his conduct by ideal, in place of actual, pleasures and pains, by goods and evils which are not present except in idea.

Now, the natures which are the most capable of thus living

out of themselves are also those most prone to passionate as opposed to rational actions; that is, to act from motives which are not real and present pleasures and pains in themselves, but which replace them by a susceptibility to the excitement of ideas. This susceptibility goes even further in most cases. In all moral actions but those of the extreme utilitarian, whose motives or sanctions, as well as his standard of conduct, come through his sympathetic nature, and by an immediate reference of conduct to the goods and evils felt through ideas, —in all other cases, the excitement does not take the immediate form of sympathy, but has apparently an absolute character. Indeed, the motive power of moral ideas is not ordinarily, if it ever is, derived immediately from any connection between them and ideas of good and evil as ends; and it is regarded by most psychologists as a unique power, whatever may be the source of the ideas which exert it. The ideas of right and wrong are certainly not the same as those of good and evil simply. In the last analysis, they are a commanded good and a forbidden evil. The element of authority is essential to them. Hence, the introspective psychologists have naturally been unable to discover the moral nature in the mere capacity for sympathy. But they are mistaken in assuming that the “moral imperative” is unique as a motive power, or is underived. Indeed, in the more tractable intellects, allied to the human, as in the more intelligent dogs, the education of the conscience, both as an active force and as a power of judgment, is capable of being carried much further than the capacity for sympathy would account for, great as this is in these animals. Right and wrong in a dog’s conscience may be supposed to differ from those of a more highly sympathetic nature, in having in much larger proportion the element of pure authority. They are, perhaps, the commanded and forbidden simply, — the connected ideas of good and evil being simply those of reward and punishment. So a dog could never be a utilitarian, or feel the “good of all” as a commanding motive, and as the warrant of his master’s authority. “Conscience is an education under authority,” and its force is primarily the various motives which authority addresses to us. These are not unique, but borrowed powers, — love, fear, and all the train of pains and pleasures under human control, the goods and evils of rewards and punishments, with their moral representatives, approbation and disapprobation.

But here, again, as in the case of pure sympathy or disinterestedness, the actual goods and evils or rewards and punishments, or even the reference to them through actual approval or condemnation, may be wholly replaced by the power of ideas, when these have acquired the requisite associations. And here, again, the utilitarian is like all other moral agents. He differs only as to the authority which he acknowledges as final, or as the test or ultimate authority of all proximate authorities. He simply denies an absolute, intuitive standard, and for an outward standard substitutes the good of all in place of the will of God; or, if he identifies these, it is by limiting his definition of the latter by his ideas of the former; and, if he is a practical utilitarian as well, then also his controlling motive to right conduct is the good it does, commanding him through his sympathies, since, as before, this is only present to him in idea, and is objective only through the excitement of ideas, or by the quality through which ideas tend to act themselves out.

Now, this quality, and the temper which conduces to it, in a perfectly sane mind, I regard as a chief constituent, when existing in a high degree, of what you describe as noble passion; and, when wrought into the character or the persistent and habitual tendencies of the will, it seems to me to be essential to the finest types of character. But, besides this, there is an element in what would commonly be understood by noble passion or energy of moral activity, which comes from

without or is objective, and dependent not merely on fineness of nature, but on historical causes, — on the times, the manners, and the prevailing religious, æsthetic, and moral conceptions. We ought to discriminate in an historical personage between the admirable qualities which are intrinsic and excite to universal and genuine imitation, and other charms which give attractiveness to him and his times, yet are not the pure gold, but the ornaments, the images, the sacred vessels, or, it may be, the utensils which are wrought from it. The charm of the forms into which genuine excellence has entered may be easily confounded with their intrinsic worth, — especially since genuineness, not fearing singularity, nor yet seeking it, will fall naturally into a diversity of outward embodiments, in some of which falseness will seek by imitation to hide itself; and since imitation has thus gained by association a bad character, and individuality an equally factitious good one. But this is not worse than the utilitarian insensibility to association, as opposed to æsthetic feeling, which would estimate an antique coin, for example, solely by its weight and quality of metal.

There were times when the relations of men to wealth, to its acquisition and administration, were inconsistent with the highest types of character, and were instinctively shunned as an impertinence and a moral obstacle; but for the modern man to seek the kingdom of heaven by this road would be like seeking to resemble a man of genius by imitating his eccentricities. There may be cases, even in modern times, in which wealth is truly felt to be such an obstacle,—the instance lately of wealth in slaves,—but these are fortunately cases of casuistry or individual morality, and do not any longer demand that poverty shall be preached. Or, to come to the true theme of this discussion, there were times in which the problem of noble life demanded for its solution a greater concentration and singleness of purpose, — even an escape from “the world,” — and the consideration of fewer objects of a

universal and disinterested character than are embraced in the moral scope of to-day. These conditions gave to the controlling ideas much more the character of ruling passions, and even led to the insane forms of moral action or to fanaticisms.

“It is easy to die for an idea when we have but one.” Beyond the utilitarian or beneficent measure of an idea thus made effective, there is an æsthetic charm in this very intensity, provided we can forget the cost, or overlook the narrowness and the poverty of the conditions to which such wealth of character is related. Such refining or æsthetic views are easy in historical perspective. The grand cathedral hides the squalid hovel. But the refining process cannot be applied by the living to their own age. The meanness, the corruption, the vice of it, meet them at every turn. That these are really less than in past times, and that great resources of moral energy, less conspicuous, but not less real, are guiding it toward a better future cannot be made clear to the imagination, and can only be evidenced by dry comparative statistics to the utilitarian understanding. But if the monument of our age, the religious edifice on which thousands of busy hands and studious minds are laboring, be the future material well-being of mankind, dedicated to the worship of happier and purer lives, and to a like pious care for posterity, will it be a less glorious monument or less deserving of future admiration than the cathedral? We are apt to think of the old cathedral-builders as all animated by the “quality of noble passion and the finer sensibilities, faculties, and emotions;” but may not a future age see in our enterprises a similar elevation of moral purpose? Some of the leading spirits of our times are as disinterested and devoted, and find in their aims, whether in politics, industry, or science, as powerful a stimulus to noble passion as the leaders of that age. The masses in all ages are led by the few in all that raises them much above the level of animal wants. Their moral powers are chiefly comprised under the

principles of imitation and authority, or in the faculties of folllowing and obeying. There are also the selfish rich in all ages alike. Posterity will see the money of the rich and the labor of the poor, or all that remains of either, glorified in the monuments, whether religious or utilitarian, whether material ones dedicated to immaterial interests, or immaterial ones dedicated to material interests, that commemorate the nobly disinterested, or the few that really live for mankind.

The moral type of modern times, besides being familiar, and thus disenchanted, is more broadly based on ordinary and universal human interests. Its catholicity is its only distinction. Hence, an æsthetic charm is missed; but shall we on that account call it a lower type? Do not let us forget that the picturesqueness of past types is in great measure relative and an historical illusion, like the charm and attractiveness of some old fashions of dress or of architecture. The qualities which determine individuality or its charm, cannot be used for distinctions of rank. They are not, as the naturalists say, “ordinal characters.” The orders of moral excellence cannot be made to depend on them: though individuality itself is a sign of genuineness, and in this has its charm, as when we judge from such characters in a painting that it is a faithful portrait. The intensity of the energy of moral feeling, provided this feeling rises to that stage of efficiency and steadiness of purpose which can justly be expected of it, is not in any higher degree the measure of its nobility, even though occasion should prove it equal to heroic action. It must also be rationally directed, else it may be insane rather than noble. The utility of its end, in which should be included the refinements of real life, must be this measure, though an absorption in ideas which spurns pleasure and wealth, and foregoes the innocent enjoyments and the goods of common human nature without feeling the sacrifice, must always be to us æsthetically fine. It is not moral, because it is inimitable. The

spirit of it only touches our life. It does not demand our approbation, since it involves no real sacrifice; but it commands our admiration, and appeals to æsthetic and religious emotion. Such types are to be prized, as all fine things are; if they could be common, an essential element of their worth and attractiveness would be wanting. They belong to our religious nature. The condition of moral esteem is that the sacrifice should be real and felt to be such, both by ourselves and by the objects of our esteem. Such esteem, to be morally effective, cannot consist with a small estimate of the goods to be sacrificed. This belongs to our utilitarian moral nature. So also a religious type, to be morally effective, must be real. A purely fictitious ideal is morally inert. Hence, a myth which has ceased to command faith is morally dead also.

But I have moralized enough to prove at least that I believe in modem times and types, if not to throw any light on the problems of your letter. If I have been wandering in all these pages around the real questions without having touched them, the fault is in the monologue. The Socratic dialectic, or art of getting at clear issues and a common understanding, is, as you say, the better way. If we had been taking one of the charming walks [about Florence] which might have furnished hints and illustrations, our talk would have been less connected perhaps, but could hardly have wandered more widely or more at will. Don’t take this moralizing as a specimen of a psychological lecture, but only as a letter. I can imagine the patiently attentive, somewhat puzzled look, expressive of “What is he driving at?” in the audience listening to such a “brief.” Extemporizing and watching the faces of the audience, as lawyers do before a jury, may make up for a want of illustrative and expansive power in my pen. But this letter is long enough without—long enough to refute — any suggestion of a defect in the way of expansion.