The Crown of Wild Olive
do so at its centre; but it constantly happens, with well filled veins,
that the cross stitches are too strong to break; the walls of the vein,
instead, are torn away by them; and another little supplementary
vein--often three or four successively--will be thus formed at the side
of the first.
MARY. That is really very much like our work. But what do the mountains
use to sew with?
L. Quartz, whenever they can get it: pure limestones are obliged to be
content with carbonate of lime; but most mixed rocks can find some
quartz for themselves. Here is a piece of black slate from the Buet: it
looks merely like dry dark mud;--you could not think there was any
quartz in it; but, you see, its rents are all stitched together with
beautiful white thread, which is the purest quartz, so close drawn that
you can break it like flint, in the mass; but, where it has been exposed
to the weather, the fine fibrous structure is shown: and, more than
that, you see the threads have been all twisted and pulled aside, this
way and the other, by the warpings and shifting of the sides of the vein
as it widened.
MARY. It is wonderful! But is that going on still? Are the mountains
being torn and sewn together again at this moment?
L. Yes, certainly, my dear: but I think, just as certainly (though
geologists differ on this matter), not with the violence, or on the
scale, of their ancient ruin and renewal. All things seem to be tending
towards a condition of at least temporary rest; and that groaning and
travailing of the creation, as, assuredly, not wholly in pain, is not,
in the full sense, 'until now.'
MARY. I want so much to ask you about that!
SIBYL. Yes; and we all want to ask you about a great many other things
besides.
L. It seems to me that you have got quite as many new ideas as are good
for any of you at present: and I should not like to burden you with
more; but I must see that those you have are clear, if I can make them
so; so we will have one more talk, for answer of questions, mainly.
Think over all the ground, and make your difficulties thoroughly
presentable. Then we'll see what we can make of them.
DORA. They shall all be dressed in their very best; and curtsey as they
come in.
L. No, no, Dora; no curtseys, if you please. I had enough of them the
day you all took a fit of reverence, and curtsied me out of the room.
DORA. But, you know, we cured ourselves of the fault, at once, by that
fit. We have never been the least respectful since. And the difficulties
will only curtsey themselves out of the room, I hope;--come in at one
door--vanish at the other.
L. What a pleasant world it would be, if all its difficulties were
taught to behave so! However, one can generally make something, or
(better still) nothing, or at least less, of them, if they thoroughly
know their own minds; and your difficulties--I must say that for you,
children,--generally do know their own minds, as you do yourselves.
DORA. That is very kindly said for us. Some people would not allow so
much as that girls had any minds to know.
L. They will at least admit that you have minds to change, Dora.
MARY. You might have left us the last speech, without a retouch. But
we'll put our little minds, such as they are, in the best trim we can,
for to-morrow.
LECTURE X.
_THE CRYSTAL REST._
_Evening. The fireside._ L's _arm-chair in the comfortablest
corner._
L. (_perceiving various arrangements being made of foot-stool, cushion,
screen, and the like_). Yes, yes, it's all very fine! and I am to sit
here to be asked questions till supper-time, am I?
DORA. I don't think you can have any supper to-night:--we've got so much
to ask.
LILY. Oh, Miss Dora! We can fetch it him here, you know, so nicely!
L. Yes, Lily, that will be pleasant, with competitive examination going
on over one's plate; the competition being among the examiners. Really,
now that I know what teasing things girls are, I don't so much wonder
that people used to put up patiently with the dragons who took _them_
for supper. But I can't help myself, I suppose;--no thanks to St.
George. Ask away, children, and I'll answer as civilly as may be.
DORA. We don't so much care about being answered civilly, as about not
being asked things back again.
L. 'Ayez seulement la patience que je le parle.' There shall be no
requitals.
DORA. Well, then, first of all--What shall we ask first, Mary?
MARY. It does not matter. I think all the questions come into one, at
last, nearly.
DORA. You know, you always talk as if the crystals were alive; and we
never understand how much you are in play, and how much in earnest.
That's the first thing.
L. Neither do I understand, myself, my dear, how much I am in earnest.
The stones puzzle me as much as I puzzle you. They look as if they were
alive, and make me speak as if they were; and I do not in the least know
how much truth there is in the appearance. I'm not to ask things back
again to-night, but all questions of this sort lead necessarily to the
one main question, which we asked, before, in vain, 'What is it to be
alive?'
DORA. Yes; but we want to come back to that: for we've been reading
scientific books about the 'conservation of forces,' and it seems all so
grand, and wonderful; and the experiments are so pretty; and I suppose
it must be all right: but then the books never speak as if there were
any such thing as 'life.'
L. They mostly omit that part of the subject, certainly, Dora; but they
are beautifully right as far as they go; and life is not a convenient
element to deal with. They seem to have been getting some of it into and
out of bottles, in their 'ozone' and 'antizone' lately; but they still
know little of it: and, certainly, I know less.
DORA. You promised not to be provoking, to-night.
L. Wait a minute. Though, quite truly, I know less of the secrets of
life than the philosophers do; I yet know one corner of ground on which
we artists can stand, literally as 'Life Guards' at bay, as steadily as
the Guards at Inkermann; however hard the philosophers push. And you may
stand with us, if once you learn to draw nicely.
DORA. I'm sure we are all trying! but tell us where we may stand.
L. You may always stand by Form, against Force. To a painter, the
essential character of anything is the form of it; and the philosophers
cannot touch that. They come and tell you, for instance, that there is
as much heat, or motion, or calorific energy (or whatever else they like
to call it), in a tea-kettle as in a Gier-eagle. Very good; that is so;
and it is very interesting. It requires just as much heat as will boil
the kettle, to take the Gier-eagle up to his nest; and as much more to
bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. But we painters,
acknowledging the equality and similarity of the kettle and the bird in
all scientific respects, attach, for our part, our principal interest to
the difference in their forms. For us, the primarily cognisable facts,
in the two things, are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a
beak; the one a lid on its back, the other a pair of wings;--not to
speak of the distinction also of volition, which the philosophers may
properly call merely a form or mode of force;--but then, to an artist,
the form, or mode, is the gist of the business. The kettle chooses to
sit still on the hob; the eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of
the choice, not the equal degree of temperature in the fulfilment of it,
which appears to us the more interesting circumstance;--though the other
is very interesting too. Exceedingly so! Don't laugh, children; the
philosophers have been doing quite splendid work lately, in their own
way: especially, the transformation of force into light is a great piece
of systematised discovery; and this notion about the sun's being
supplied with his flame by ceaseless meteoric hail is grand, and looks
very likely to be true. Of course, it is only the old gun-lock,--flint
and steel,--on a large scale: but the order and majesty of it are
sublime. Still, we sculptors and painters care little about it. 'It is
very fine,' we say, 'and very useful, this knocking the light out of the
sun, or into it, by an eternal cataract of planets. But you may hail
away, so, for ever, and you will not knock out what we can. Here is a
bit of silver, not the size of half-a-crown, on which, with a single
hammer stroke, one of us, two thousand and odd years ago, hit out the
head of the Apollo of Clazomenae. It is merely a matter of form; but if
any of you philosophers, with your whole planetary system to hammer
with, can hit out such another bit of silver as this,--we will take off
our hats to you. For the present, we keep them on.'
MARY. Yes, I understand; and that is nice; but I don't think we shall
any of us like having only form to depend upon.
L. It was not neglected in the making of Eve, my dear.
MARY. It does not seem to separate us from the dust of the ground. It is
that breathing of the life which we want to understand.
L. So you should: but hold fast to the form, and defend that first, as
distinguished from the mere transition of forces. Discern the moulding
hand of the potter commanding the clay, from his merely beating foot,
as it turns the wheel. If you can find incense, in the vase,
afterwards,--well: but it is curious how far mere form will carry you
ahead of the philosophers. For instance, with regard to the most
interesting of all their modes of force--light;--they never consider how
far the existence of it depends on the putting of certain vitreous and
nervous substances into the formal arrangement which we call an eye. The
German philosophers began the attack, long ago, on the other side, by
telling us, there was no such thing as light at all, unless we chose to
see it: now, German and English, both, have reversed their engines, and
insist that light would be exactly the same light that it is, though
nobody could ever see it. The fact being that the force must be there,
and the eyes there; and 'light' means the effect of the one on the
other;--and perhaps, also--(Plato saw farther into that mystery than any
one has since, that I know of),--on something a little way within the
eyes; but we may stand quite safe, close behind the retina, and defy the
philosophers.
SIBYL. But I don't care so much about defying the philosophers, if only
one could get a clear idea of life, or soul, for one's self.
L. Well, Sibyl, you used to know more about it, in that cave of yours,
than any of us. I was just going to ask you about inspiration, and the
golden bough, and the like; only I remembered I was not to ask anything.
But, will not you, at least, tell us whether the ideas of Life, as the
power of putting things together, or 'making' them; and of Death, as the
power of pushing things separate, or 'unmaking' them, may not be very
simply held in balance against each other?
SIBYL. No, I am not in my cave to-night; and cannot tell you anything.
L. I think they may. Modern Philosophy is a great separator; it is
little more than the expansion of Moliere's great sentence, 'Il s'ensuit
de la, que tout ce qu'il y a de beau est dans les dictionnaires; il n'y
a que les mots qui sont transposes.' But when you used to be in your
cave, Sibyl, and to be inspired, there was (and there remains still in
some small measure), beyond the merely formative and sustaining power,
another, which we painters call 'passion'--I don't know what the
philosophers call it; we know it makes people red, or white; and
therefore it must be something, itself; and perhaps it is the most truly
'poetic' or 'making' force of all, creating a world of its own out of a
glance, or a sigh: and the want of passion is perhaps the truest death,