Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
contemporaries.
Sue, however, does not merely assail, but would build up. His anatomy is
not intended to injure the corpse, or, like that of Balzac, to
entertain the intellectual merely. Earnestly he hopes to learn from it
the remedies for disease and the conditions of health. Sue is a
Socialist. He believes he sees the means by which the heart of mankind
may be made to beat with one great hope, one love; and instinct with
this thought, his tales of horror are not tragedies.
This is the secret of the deep interest he has awakened in this country,
that he shares a hope which is, half unconsciously to herself, stirring
all her veins. It is not so warmly outspoken as in other lands, both
because no such pervasive ills as yet call loudly for redress, and
because private conservatism is here great, in proportion to the absence
of authorized despotism. We are not disposed to quarrel with this; it is
well for the value of new thoughts to be tested by a good deal of
resistance. Opposition, if it does not preclude free discussion, is of
use in educating men to know what they want. Only by intelligent men,
exercised by thought and tried in virtue, can such measures as Sue
proposes be carried out; and when such associates present themselves in
sufficient numbers, we have no fear but the cause of association, in its
grander forms, will have fair play in America.
As a writer, Sue shows his want of a high kind of imagination by his
unshrinking portraiture of physical horrors. We do not believe any man
could look upon some things he describes and live. He is very powerful
in his description of the workings of animal nature; especially when he
speaks of them in animals merely, they have the simplicity of the lower
kind with the more full expression of human nature. His pictures of
women are of rare excellence, and it is observable that the more simple
and pure the character is, the more justice he does to it. This shows
that, whatever his career may have been, his heart is uncontaminated.
Men he does not describe so well, and fails entirely when he aims at one
grand and simple enough for a great moral agent. His conceptions are
strong, but in execution he is too melodramatic. Just compare _his_
"Wandering Jew" with that of Beranger. The latter is as diamond compared
with charcoal. Then, like all those writers who write in numbers that
come out weekly or monthly, he abuses himself and his subject; he often
_must_; the arrangement is false and mechanical.
The attitude of Sue is at this moment imposing, as he stands, pen in
hand,--this his only weapon against an innumerable host of foes,--the
champion of poverty, innocence, and humanity, against superstition,
selfishness, and prejudice. When his works are forgotten,--and for all
their strong points and brilliant decorations, they may ere long be
forgotten,--still the writer's name shall be held in imperishable honor
as the teacher of the ignorant, the guardian of the weak, a true tribune
for the people of his own time.
One of the most unexceptionable and attractive writers of modern France
is De Vigny. His life has been passed in the army; but many years of
peace have given him time for literary culture, while his acquaintance
with the traditions of the army, from the days of its dramatic
achievements under Bonaparte, supply the finest materials both for
narrative and reflection. His tales are written with infinite grace,
refined sensibility, and a dignified view. His treatment of a subject
shows that closeness of grasp and clearness of sight which are rarely
attained by one who is not at home in active as well as thoughtful life.
He has much penetration, too, and has touched some of the most delicate
springs of human action. His works have been written in hours of
leisure; this has diminished their number, but given him many advantages
over the thousands of professional writers that fill the coffee-houses
of Paris by day, and its garrets by night. We wish he were more read
here in the original; with him would be found good French, and the
manners, thoughts, and feelings of a cosmopolitan gentleman.
To sum up this imperfect account of the merits of these Novelists: I see
De Vigny, a retiring figure, the gentleman, the solitary thinker, but,
in his way, the efficient foe of false honor and superstitious
prejudice; Balzac is the heartless surgeon, probing the wounds and
describing the delirium of suffering men for the amusement of his
students; Sue, a bold and glittering crusader, with endless ballads
jingling in the silence of the night before the battle. They are all
much right and a good deal wrong; for instance, all who would lay down
their lives for the sake of truth, yet let their virtuous characters
practise stratagems, falsehood, and violence; in fact, do evil for the
sake of good. They still show this taint of the old regime, and no
wonder! La belle France has worn rouge so long that the purest mountain
air will not, at once, or soon, restore the natural hues to her
complexion. But they are fine figures, and all ruled by the onward
spirit of the time. Led by that spirit, I see them moving on the
troubled waters; they do not sink, and I trust they will find their way
to the coasts where the new era will introduce new methods, in a spirit
of nobler activity, wiser patience, and holier faith, than the world has
yet seen.
Will Balzac also see that shore, or has he only broken away the bars
that hindered others from setting sail? We do not know. When we read an
expression of such lovely innocence as the letter of the little country
maidens to their Parisian brother, (in Father Goriot,) we hope; but
presently we see him sneering behind the mask, and we fear. Let
Frenchmen speak to this question. They know best what disadvantages a
Frenchman suffers under, and whether it is possible Balzac be still
alive, except in his eyes. Those, we know, are quite alive.
To read these, or any foreign works fairly, the reader must understand
the national circumstances under which they were written. To use them
worthily, he must know how to interpret them for the use of the
universe.
THE NEW SCIENCE, OR THE PHILOSOPHY OF MESMERISM OR ANIMAL MAGNETISM.[21]
Man is always trying to get charts and directions for the super-sensual
element in which he finds himself involuntarily moving. Sometimes,
indeed, for long periods, a life of continual activity in supplying
bodily wants or warding off bodily dangers will make him inattentive to
the circumstances of this other life. Then, in an interval of leisure,
he will start to find himself pervaded by the power of this more subtle
and searching energy, and will turn his thoughts, with new force, to
scrutinize its nature and its promises.
At such times a corps is formed of workmen, furnished with various
implements for the work. Some collect facts from which they hope to
build up a theory; others propose theories by whose light they hope to
detect valuable facts; a large number are engaged in circulating reports
of these labors; a larger in attempting to prove them invalid and
absurd. These last are of some use by shaking the canker-worms from the
trees; all are of use in elucidating truth.
Such a course of study has the civilized world been engaged in for some
years back with regard to what is called Animal Magnetism. We say the
civilized world, because, though a large portion of the learned and
intellectual, to say nothing of the thoughtless and the prejudiced, view
such researches as folly, yet we believe that those prescient souls,
those minds more deeply alive, which are the life of this and the
parents of the next era, all, more or less, consciously or
unconsciously, share the belief in such an agent as is understood by the
largest definition of animal magnetism; that is, a means by which
influence and thought may be communicated from one being to another,
independent of the usual organs, and with a completeness and precision
rarely attained through these.
For ourselves, since we became conscious at all of our connection with
the two forms of being called the spiritual and material, we have
perceived the existence of such an agent, and should have no doubts on
the subject, if we had never heard one human voice in correspondent
testimony with our perceptions. The reality of this agent we know, have
tested some of its phenomena, but of its law and its analysis find
ourselves nearly as ignorant as in earliest childhood. And we must
confess that the best writers we have read seem to us about equally
ignorant. We derive pleasure and profit in very unequal degrees from
their statements, in proportion to their candor, clearness of
perception, severity of judgment, and largeness of view. If they possess
these elements of wisdom, their statements are valuable as affording
materials for the true theory; but theories proposed by them affect us,
as yet, only as partially sustained hypotheses. Too many among them are
stained by faults which must prevent their coming to any valuable
results, sanguine haste, jealous vanity, a lack of that profound
devotion which alone can win Truth from her cold well, careless
classification, abrupt generalizations. We see, as yet, no writer great
enough for the patient investigation, in a spirit liberal yet severely
true, which the subject demands. We see no man of Shakspearian,
Newtonian incapability of deceiving himself or others.
However, no such man is needed, and we believe that it is pure democracy
to rejoice that, in this department as in others, it is no longer some
one great genius that concentrates within himself the vital energy of
his time. It is many working together who do the work. The waters
spring up in every direction, as little rills, each of which performs
its part. We see a movement corresponding with this in the region of
exact science, and we have no doubt that in the course of fifty years a
new spiritual circulation will be comprehended as clearly as the
circulation of the blood is now.
In metaphysics, in phrenology, in animal magnetism, in electricity, in
chemistry, the tendency is the same, even when conclusions seem most
dissonant. The mind presses nearer home to the seat of consciousness the
more intimate law and rule of life, and old limits, become fluid beneath
the fire of thought. We are learning much, and it will be a grand music,
that shall be played on this organ of many pipes.
With regard to Mr. Grimes's book, in the first place, we do not possess
sufficient knowledge of the subject to criticise it thoroughly; and
secondly, if we did, it could not be done in narrow limits. To us his
classification is unsatisfactory, his theory inadequate, his point of
view uncongenial. We disapprove of the spirit in which he criticises
other disciples in this science, who have, we believe, made some good
observations, with many failures, though, like himself, they do not hold
themselves sufficiently lowly as disciples. For we do not believe there
is any man, _yet_, who is entitled to give himself the air of having
taken a degree on this subject. We do not want the tone of qualification
or mincing apology. We want no mock modesty, but its reality, which is
the almost sure attendant on greatness. What a lesson it would be for
this country if a body of men could be at work together in that harmony
which would not fail to ensue on a _disinterested_ love of discovering
truth, and with that patience and exactness in experiment without which
no machine was ever invented worthy a patent! The most superficial,
go-ahead, hit-or-miss American knows that no machine was ever perfected
without this patience and exactness; and let no one hope to achieve
victories in the realm of mind at a cheaper rate than in that of
matter.