To Miss Jane Norton.

Cambridge, Sept. 1, 1875.

----- has convinced me that letters ought to begin like talk. I have paraded all my reasons against it, and

surrendered the point. I stayed in Northampton until this week, when by a desperate effort, on Monday, I tore myself away, and came to Cambridge.

This was a true case of fascination, — out of the realm of the simply agreeable and rational, — and I believe I understand now what the attractions of Northampton are to the summer visitors who stay there. These visitors very generally appear in the character of invalids. The place is medicinal, the climate sedative. A few days, or doses, of it, induce complete inactivity, a semi-paralysis, which benefits the nervous patient by compelling rest, bodily and mental. The scenery is charming and a rational attraction. All besides is fascination; that is, a drawing, or holding, without reason or excuse, or even in spite of reason and against one’s will. How lazy those are made by it, who are not acclimated, is seen in the fact that, to induce them to ascend Mount Holyoke, the charms of its matchless view are powerless. Elaborate steam machinery is provided to carry them all the way up the tremendous height of three hundred feet (not very steep), all the rest of the entire nine hundred feet being accomplished in common carriages. Six or seven times the height is an easy feat for pedestrian tourists, in stimulating mountain air. I do not think that I was hurt by this treatment, though I was not in much need of it.

The later days were much more pleasant than the first, and added rationality to my stay. I was too lazy to write even a postal card (what I never did) to say that what struck me in the article in the “Springfield Republican” that I sent to you was the reference to Mr. Tennyson’s own judgment on his “Queen Mary,” and the accordance of this judgment with the view which ----- , alone among the critics, had expressed regarding the motive of its interest; the accordance of this judgment also with Miss -----’s as to the artistic merits of the poem.

The marriage question discussed by Mr. Gladstone was interesting, but did not suggest to me our talk. I think we agreed that the State, or all outside influences, whether civil or religious, legal or moral, could wisely exert over marriages only a veto power of a well-defined character, laid down in black and white. Reason, or rather the analytic reason, is but a rude guide of life; there can be but little positive wisdom in any system of laws; and the happiness of life in minutiae depends upon very much that is not common in our judgments, or laid down in any defined wisdom; these are not competent to deal with such questions. Wisdom herself, if I may use so realistic an expression, — or the power of judgment, and not merely wise counsels, — must be imparted when possible; or men and women will make marriages of a piece with the general tenor of their foolish lives.

I do not think that we ought to idealize the marriage state to the extent of expecting that two weaklings, however skilfully matched, could make themselves strong by the union, nor do I believe that any censors (much less any system of censorship) could compass the skill of true match-making, except negatively in well-defined prohibitory rules, — though some obstacles thrown in the way of marriage, not materially different from what now exist, would have the effect to make the parties give more thought to the rational side of the subject than their natures or fancies incline them to do. As to any ill effect upon posterity of the present freedom of marriage unions, no law-givers, no private counsellors, are at all equal to the subtle skill of nature, shown in the survival of the fittest; which, though a rough remedy for evils that wisdom, if it existed, might forestall, is one which wisdom has not yet equalled. The ancient state of Sparta, whose law-givers undertook to do the work of nature in selection, perished in consequence; and nature selected those ancient communities whose principles of freedom and humanity to the weak

seemed opposed to her Dracontic laws. Not to help natural selection is the human way, strong in its weakness, of gaining the favor of this fatal power; and not to legislate is often the wisest principle of legislation. Not to judge for one’s neighbor, not to advise even for a friend, but rather to present grounds of judgment and advice, is often the wisest rule of personal influence. For what do we know? Does wisdom exist? And if not, — are we to be misanthropes or despairing philanthropists? This would certainly prove that wisdom does not exist in us, but rather that the conceit of it has made us judges. To those whose past life is predominantly practical and executive, whose first question is “what to do about it?” who feel called upon first to act, and secondly to act wisely, the special Delphic answers are these radical ones: “Know first, and act only on real knowledge; beware of opinion.” — “Keep knowledge at nurse as long as possible; cherish its grounds, reasons, and questions; draw conclusions only when the necessity of decision compels.” And the Delphic wisdom would, I think, also say, in criticism of a later oracle, “Let not your love of your neighbor mistake itself for a knowledge of him.” — “Treat him, morally, as a specimen, not as an individual. As an individual, like or dislike him, according to the bent of your nature, yet strictly within the limits of justice.” — “Don’t mistake an æsthetic preference, on the one hand, for a moral judgment; nor let generous feeling, on the other hand, corrupt either justice or good taste.” — “The Golden Mean, as a rule of duty, is more level with reason than the Golden Rule, though perhaps as a sentiment it is less effectively beneficial in the unreasoning mass.”

But perhaps you are mentally charging me with the supreme conceit of dealing out Delphic wisdom much beyond what is written or delivered by the priestess. My defence is that this wisdom is only of the negative sort, about “what not to do,” in which the moral institutes of wisdom chiefly consist,

and to which the common experience of life mainly contributes; and if I have fallen into my old way of preaching, — why, this, I hope, will be a pleasant reminder of old written talks of the sort. This is the last of the letters to Miss Jane Norton. I preserve, upon a later page, Chauncey’s expression of admiration for this gracious and noble woman. She died in May, 1877. ⁹⁰