To Mr. Norton.

Cambridge, Aug. 10, 1870.

Letters grow more charming and interesting as our correspondences are lengthened out, partly, perhaps, because from the necessity of the case they become, in default of any better, the normal mode of intercourse, and become as precious to us as the sign language is to the deaf and dumb.

... I am sure you will regard charitably my evident disposition to review you, and will consider that you are in a measure responsible for this tendency from my training under you in the “North American Review,” for which, by the way, I have not written for a very long time. I have just finished reading Mr. Wallace’s book of essays on Natural Selection, which I may notice, if I do not lose my interest in it before coming round to it again. It is a very clever book.

I never told you of my acquaintance with Charles Salter, See p. 199. ⁵¹ formerly Unitarian minister in West Cambridge, who died very suddenly last spring, on a voyage to Europe. I came to know him quite intimately last fall and winter, and exchanged opinions on theological and kindred subjects quite freely. He was studying law, having given up the ministry on account of doubts on fundamental tenets in theology. This change was a matter of very serious concern with him, and was made from the most modest and conscientious motives, such as an unwillingness to dogmatize beyond the limits of his own assurance. He appeared to me to be a most accomplished

and sensible man; and unlike most radicals he had no philosophical substitutes for, or original proofs of, the religious doctrines he had undertaken to teach; but he seemed to be governed in his views of religious doctrines, much more than most men, by moods of feeling. He felt the force of sceptical objections most when it was his duty to remove or ignore them, but freedom from this responsibility restored his confidence. His mind and character interested me a great deal, though I am not at all sure that I have indicated the interest or can express it.

. . . The Gurneys are in Cambridge most of the time this summer, interested in the progress of their house. I occasionally see them, and share with them the summer comforts of Shady Hill. Mr. Norton’s place at Cambridge, then occupied by Professor Gurney. ⁵² I was for two days last week the guest of James Thayer, in Milton, and devoted most of one day to a call on the Lesleys at Brush Hill.

. . . What you say of the responsibility of the glittering generalities of our Revolutionary politics for the irrationality of political creeds in Europe seems to me quite true, though not the whole truth, or a complete explanation of the matter. As the revolutionists borrow from us, so we borrowed from the philosophers certain half truths, really founded in utility and in history, but needing the interpretations and qualifications of the philosophic reason. But the philosophic reason is out of place in a quarrel, and resigns its influence to the sentimentalist and the maximist, and these fight fallacy with fallacy. Against the fallacies of divine rights, whether in king or capitalists, the fallacies of liberty and equality are good thunder; and, so long as force is an efficient means of supporting or overthrowing convictions, they are legitimate arguments. But these are the staples of politics in Europe. Ergo, &c.

Forgive my resorting to the emphasis of the syllogism as if I were arguing against any thing you say. I wish only to transfer part of the responsibility of Utopian politics to the hard necessities of the case. The ideal absurdities of Utopia are in part at least induced by the actual absurdities of Europe. Two of the causes you mention, the deep-rooted, religion-sanctioned, actual abuses in the social conditions of Europe, and the delusive aims and absurd expectations of the revolutionists, — are in a great measure responsible for each other, like the polar conditions, or the two electricities of electric induction. I am the more inclined to this opinion, since we have outgrown our old sentimental creed from the lack of opposition to it, which, I think, was the condition of its very existence; while it seems to me to remain still the creed of European republicans from the continuance of the opposition. But this is only an incidental point of your most interesting discussion; and, having performed my patriotic duty in respect to it, I fully agree with you in regard to the deplorable consequences of the facts, however interpreted. There seems no escape from them, only a mitigation by making the revolution as rapid and complete as possible. This will not achieve perfection, but will afford the only basis on which substantial progress is possible. Perhaps the best service France or Louis Napoleon could do at the present juncture would be to republicanize Europe, as some prophet has predicted he will do as a last desperate measure.

From this the transition is natural enough, though somewhat abrupt, to the consideration of the part which utilitarian reason has to play in such a tragedy. Reason is quite out of place in dealing with the idea militant, with passions or sentiments, in assisting their direct actual power over the human will; but it is ever ready, in moments of reflection and in peace, to harmonize conflicting passions and sentiments by the only certain and universal standard of well-being and

duty. Utility does not oppose itself, as many intuitive or sentimental moralists suppose, to the proper jurisdiction of feeling, — to devotion or to the passionate love of the beautiful. Its philosophy does not contend for the sanction of utility as the sole and sufficing motive to conduct. It only proposes a standard as the proper test — a negative test it may be — of every motive. It does not propose to measure beforehand the positive elements of possible human excellences, the highest aims or the supremest delights. Its real enemy is a priori conviction, or prejudice asserting itself as its own justification, or sentiment born of strife and narrowness, and sanctioned only by custom and traditional religious authority. So far as a feeling is ultimate and an immediate source of human happiness or excellence, it is its own positive standard and sanction. Utility tests it only negatively in its consistency with other interests and feelings, and with the maximum of all in all sentient beings measured both by intensity and rank, — not moral rank, for this is a resultant, an acquired or conferred dignity. The inductions and criticisms by which this test is applied may be long and difficult, and may not be possible for an individual observer of social conditions, — being like the inductions of astronomy or other physical sciences; but, as the result of many centuries of observation, they are embodied in the best or wisest moral codes or exemplars, which come to us sanctioned by many associations, not in themselves rightly authoritative, but often more influential (and usefully so) than their rational grounds could be, except with the most refined and enlightened.

There is an antithesis between utility and beauty, between the useful and the beautiful, which is often mistaken for an antagonism. A useful thing is a means simply, and not an end in itself. A beautiful thing belongs to the class of ends in themselves, or absolute ends, to which also belongs every ultimate source of pleasure of whatever rank or intensity.

The beautiful thing agrees with the class to which it belongs in having no ulterior end, or only an incidental one, like Mr. Darwin’s uses of color in birds and flowers; but it differs from its class generally in having a high rank, an intrinsic dignity or preferability in kind, which depends on its mental relationships and affinities. But whether the pursuit of the beautiful be right or wrong is not determined by its rank as a pleasure, although this rank, depending on its broad relationships, would be likely enough to insure that consistency with the maximum of excellence or happiness or pleasure or wellbeing, or by whatever name we call the true ultimate standard of moral excellence. Now so far is the pursuit of the useful from being inconsistent with the pursuit of the beautiful, that it really presupposes such ultimate ends as the grounds of its utility.

But it is not the beautiful alone or even pre-eminently, but the whole class of ends in themselves — all our pleasures and those of all sentient beings — that constitute the grounds of utility. It is a mistake, however, which all, or almost all the opponents of the utilitarian philosophy make, as well as many of its advocates, to suppose that the measure of a pleasure in this philosophy is simply its intensity as a feeling, and not also its rank or preferability in kind, or a certain dignity it has in the spiritual hierarchy independent of and antecedent to its proper moral rank. This moral rank is a derived dignity, and is determined by preferability or weight with the will on the whole and as compared with the sum of the pleasures or ends that are sacrificed for it, both in ourselves and others. But in this estimate the intrinsic value of a pleasure, independent of its intensity and depending on its extent in our natures and in our lives, should be taken into account. Thus, the intuitive moralist is correct in affirming intrinsic differences of dignity in ends, at least as motives in the developed will, or in any but the most elementary of

mental natures; but he errs again in supposing that these are the same as moral differences or original distinctions of right and wrong. They are unquestionably the grounds, which, along with the intensities of feelings as pleasures or pains, determine the moral rank of actions or rules of conduct.

To allow these original differences of rank in ends may seem to be granting to the intuitive moralist all that he demands, and leaving nothing distinctive in the utilitarian philosophy. But this is far from being the case, either theoretically or practically. In theory, this philosophy has still to insist distinctively that no rule or principle of conduct, except its own fundamental maxim of the greatest universal benevolence and disinterestedness, can be received on the authority of any sense or sentiment or properly intuitive power, or be ultimately and authoritatively determined to be right, except by the longest acquaintance with the conditions of well-being, and the general consequence or effects on well-being of acting on the rule. Some of the most fundamental and important rules of morality, chiefly negative in form, are, it is true, quite simple corollaries from obvious conditions of well-being and the fundamental axiom of the greatest good; and it is also true practically that more influential sanctions than utility are necessary to enforce its injunctions, and are therefore sanctioned by it. Moreover, what is called the conscience, or strong and controlling aversions to certain classes of actions and admirations or approvals of other classes, should be respected and carefully fostered, even though in some matters it leads wrong; since a faulty conscience is more useful or less harmful on the whole than unprincipled conduct, even in the best disposed natures. But practically, also, the utilitarian philosophy has a distinctive lesson to teach, or rather many lessons, — a whole world of abuses to correct, which subsist by the very same sanctions or the same kind of sanctions the intuitive morality adopts as the basis of right and wrong.

Such are the self-sanctioned prejudices, time-sanctioned iniquities, religious absurdities, all of which can claim the same grounds of justification as those on which the intuitive morality would base the ten commandments; namely, that most people, or at least somebody, feels them to be right. That somebody, say the pope, should be infallible in his feelings, is a necessary corner-stone of this philosophy, and most of the unorthodox or radical advocates of it claim this infallibility for themselves ; but it follows from their principles that in cases of dispute some pope, — whether the Roman pontiff or not, — some holiest man, must be the final arbiter. The aims and lessons of the utilitarian philosophy are not, however, in any way opposed to, but are rather in alliance with all that is noble and beautiful and delightful in the possibilities of human nature. It is only incidentally, or perhaps by a mistake of its true scope and interests, that it turns attention away from æsthetic pursuits to the broader but perhaps on the whole not worthier interests of science or industry or politics.

I do not think that you at all overestimate the spiritual rank of æsthetic pleasures. They are intimately associated with the fundamental quality of moral nobility; they consist with generosity and sympathy, and are inconsistent with monopoly, thus differing from merely sensual pleasures, though like these they are ends in themselves. Again, they are refined pleasures. All that is disagreeable or loathsome is removed; and the special end of the fine arts is this refinement or abstraction of the beautiful. Moreover, they are pleasures of the higher senses, and have extensive intellectual affinities This is Mr. Bain’s analysis, which, whether complete or not, is the best I have seen. æsthetic pleasures doubtless belong, as you say, to the most sensitive, susceptible, and passionate natures; and they were doubtless more pursued, but I think for a different reason and not from

temperament, by the men of the thirteenth century than by those of the nineteenth. There is nothing in the aims of our times inconsistent with them, except, perhaps, the catholicity and variety of modern interests, and a consequent want of concentration and general sympathy and of public patronage of them. Instead of whole communities devoting their surplus wealth to them, and re-enforcing them with the powerful sentiments of patriotism and religion, we have now, and probably can have, only schools or at best colonies of artists, who must inevitably seem narrow in their aims compared to the men with whom Art meant not only beauty, but the highest honors and public spirit and religion. A great general may be entirely absorbed in the problems of the art of war, but his enthusiasm for his pursuit cannot be said to be independent of the patriotic ardor of his soldiers. And so, though no doubt, as you say, the best Gothic artists were distinctly and consciously moved not through devout passion, but through plain æsthetic joy, yet the intensity and quality of their feeling must have depended on an appreciation of their work, which sprung from other than æsthetic motives, — from national or race pride, from patriotism or religious devotion. Indeed, as you go on to say, the happiness of the Gothic artists was “in the successful solution of problems they had to solve. It was the delight of beauty joined with the excitement of genuine scientific achievements but this adjunct is not an æsthetic motive, though it be the last infirmity of noble minds.