The Crown of Wild Olive
share of public notice, under its ambiguous title of "slavery."
130. I have not, however, been able to ascertain in definite terms, from
the declaimers against slavery, what they understand by it. If they mean
only the imprisonment or compulsion of one person by another, such
imprisonment or compulsion being in many cases highly expedient,
slavery, so defined, would be no evil in itself, but only in its abuse;
that is, when men are slaves, who should not be, or masters, who should
not be, or even the fittest characters for either state, placed in it
under conditions which should not be. It is not, for instance, a
necessary condition of slavery, nor a desirable one, that parents should
be separated from children, or husbands from wives; but the institution
of war, against which people declaim with less violence, effects such
separations,--not unfrequently in a very permanent manner. To press a
sailor, seize a white youth by conscription for a soldier, or carry off
a black one for a labourer, may all be right acts, or all wrong ones,
according to needs and circumstances. It is wrong to scourge a man
unnecessarily. So it is to shoot him. Both must be done on occasion; and
it is better and kinder to flog a man to his work, than to leave him
idle till he robs, and flog him afterwards. The essential thing for all
creatures is to be made to do right; how they are made to do it--by
pleasant promises, or hard necessities, pathetic oratory, or the
whip--is comparatively immaterial.[73] To be deceived is perhaps as
incompatible with human dignity as to be whipped; and I suspect the last
method to be not the worst, for the help of many individuals. The Jewish
nation throve under it, in the hand of a monarch reputed not unwise; it
is only the change of whip for scorpion which is inexpedient; and that
change is as likely to come to pass on the side of license as of law.
For the true scorpion whips are those of the nation's pleasant vices,
which are to it as St. John's locusts--crown on the head, ravin in the
mouth, and sting in the tail. If it will not bear the rule of Athena and
Apollo, who shepherd without smiting ([Greek: ou plege nemontes]),
Athena at last calls no more in the corners of the streets; and then
follows the rule of Tisiphone, who smites without shepherding.
131. If, however, by slavery, instead of absolute compulsion, is meant
_the purchase, by money, of the right of compulsion_, such purchase is
necessarily made whenever a portion of any territory is transferred, for
money, from one monarch to another: which has happened frequently enough
in history, without its being supposed that the inhabitants of the
districts so transferred became therefore slaves. In this, as in the
former case, the dispute seems about the fashion of the thing, rather
than the fact of it. There are two rocks in mid-sea, on each of which,
neglected equally by instructive and commercial powers, a handful of
inhabitants live as they may. Two merchants bid for the two properties,
but not in the same terms. One bids for the people, buys _them_, and
sets them to work, under pain of scourge; the other bids for the rock,
buys _it_, and throws the inhabitants into the sea. The former is the
American, the latter the English method, of slavery; much is to be said
for, and something against, both, which I hope to say in due time and
place.[74]
132. If, however, slavery mean not merely the purchase of the right of
compulsion, but _the purchase of the body and soul of the creature
itself for money_, it is not, I think, among the black races that
purchases of this kind are most extensively made, or that separate souls
of a fine make fetch the highest price. This branch of the inquiry we
shall have occasion also to follow out at some length, for in the worst
instances of the selling of souls, we are apt to get, when we ask if the
sale is valid, only Pyrrhon's answer[75]--"None can know."
133. The fact is that slavery is not a political institution at all,
_but an inherent, natural, and eternal inheritance_ of a large portion
of the human race--to whom, the more you give of their own free will,
the more slaves they will make themselves. In common parlance, we idly
confuse captivity with slavery, and are always thinking of the
difference between pine-trunks (Ariel in the pine), and cowslip-bells
("in the cowslip-bell I lie"), or between carrying wood and drinking
(Caliban's slavery and freedom), instead of noting the far more serious
differences between Ariel and Caliban themselves, and the means by
which, practically, that difference may be brought about or diminished.
134.[76] Plato's slave, in the _Polity_, who, well dressed and washed,
aspires to the hand of his master's daughter, corresponds curiously to
Caliban attacking Prospero's cell; and there is an undercurrent of
meaning throughout, in the _Tempest_ as well as in the _Merchant of
Venice_; referring in this case to government, as in that to commerce.
Miranda[77] ("the wonderful," so addressed first by Ferdinand, "Oh, you
wonder!") corresponds to Homer's Arete: Ariel and Caliban are
respectively the spirits of faithful and imaginative labour, opposed to
rebellious, hurtful and slavish labour. Prospero ("for hope"), a true
governor, is opposed to Sycorax, the mother of slavery, her name
"Swine-raven," indicating at once brutality and deathfulness; hence the
line--
"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed, with _raven's feather_,"--&c.
For all these dreams of Shakespeare, as those of true and strong men
must be, are "[Greek: phantasmata theia, kai skiai ton onton]"--divine
phantasms, and shadows of things that are. We hardly tell our children,
willingly, a fable with no purport in it; yet we think God sends his
best messengers only to sing fairy tales to us, fond and empty. The
_Tempest_ is just like a grotesque in a rich missal, "clasped where
paynims pray." Ariel is the spirit of generous and free-hearted service,
in early stages of human society oppressed by ignorance and wild
tyranny: venting groans as fast as mill-wheels strike; in shipwreck of
states, dreadful; so that "all but mariners plunge in the brine, and
quit the vessel, then all afire with _me_," yet having in itself the
will and sweetness of truest peace, whence that is especially called
"Ariel's" song, "Come unto these yellow sands, and there, _take hands_,"
"courtesied when you have, and kissed, the wild waves whist:" (mind, it
is "cortesia," not "curtsey,") and read "quiet" for "whist," if you want
the full sense. Then you may indeed foot it featly, and sweet spirits
bear the burden for you--with watch in the night, and call in early
morning. The _vis viva_ in elemental transformation follows--"Full
fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made." Then, giving
rest _after_ labour, it "fetches dew from the still vext Bermoothes,
and, with a charm joined to their suffered labour, leaves men asleep."
Snatching away the feast of the cruel, it seems to them as a harpy;
followed by the utterly vile, who cannot see it in any shape, but to
whom it is the picture of nobody, it still gives shrill harmony to their
false and mocking catch, "Thought is free;" but leads them into briers
and foul places, and at last hollas the hounds upon them. Minister of
fate against the great criminal, it joins itself with the "incensed seas
and shores "--the sword that layeth at it cannot hold, and may "with
bemocked-at stabs as soon kill the still-closing waters, as diminish one
dowle that is in its plume." As the guide and aid of true love, it is
always called by Prospero "fine" (the French "fine," not the English),
or "delicate"--another long note would be needed to explain all the
meaning in this word. Lastly, its work done, and war, it resolves itself
into the elements. The intense significance of the last song, "Where the
bee sucks," I will examine in its due place.
The types of slavery in Caliban are more palpable, and need not be dwelt
on now: though I will notice them also, severally, in their proper
places;--the heart of his slavery is in his worship: "That's a brave
god, and bears celestial--liquor." But, in illustration of the sense in
which the Latin "benignus" and "malignus" are to be coupled with
Eleutheria and Douleia, note that Caliban's torment is always the
physical reflection of his own nature--"cramps" and "side stiches that
shall pen thy breath up; thou shalt be pinched, as thick as honeycombs:"
the whole nature of slavery being one cramp and cretinous contraction.
Fancy this of Ariel! You may fetter him, but you set no mark on him; you
may put him to hard work and far journey, but you cannot give him a
cramp.
135. I should dwell, even in these prefatory papers, at more length on
this subject of slavery, had not all I would say been said already, in
vain, (not, as I hope, ultimately in vain), by Carlyle, in the first of
the _Latter-day Pamphlets_, which I commend to the reader's gravest
reading; together with that as much neglected, and still more
immediately needed, on model prisons, and with the great chapter on
"Permanence" (fifth of the last section of "Past and Present"), which
sums what is known, and foreshadows, or rather forelights, all that is
to be learned of National Discipline. I have only here farther to
examine the nature of one world-wide and everlasting form of slavery,
wholesome in use, as deadly in abuse;--the service of the rich by the
poor.
FOOTNOTES:
[54] [Think over this paragraph carefully; it should have been much
expanded to be quite intelligible; but it contains all that I want it to
contain.]
[55] "The ordinary brute, who flourishes in the very centre of ornate
life, tells us of unknown depths on the verge of which we totter, being
bound to thank our stars every day we live that there is not a general
outbreak, and a revolt from the yoke of civilization."--_Times_ leader,
Dec. 25, 1862. Admitting that our stars are to be thanked for our
safety, whom are we to thank for the danger?
[56] Our politicians, even the best of them, regard only the distress
caused by the _failure_ of mechanical labour. The degradation caused by
its excess is a far more serious subject of thought, and of future fear.
I shall examine this part of our subject at length hereafter. There can
hardly be any doubt, at present, cast on the truth of the above
passages, as all the great thinkers are unanimous on the matter. Plato's
words are terrific in their scorn and pity whenever he touches on the
mechanical arts. He calls the men employed in them not even human, but
partially and diminutively human, "[Greek: anthropiskoi,]" and opposes
such work to noble occupations, not merely as prison is opposed to
freedom but as a convict's dishonoured prison is to the temple (escape
from them being like that of a criminal to the sanctuary); and the
destruction caused by them being of soul no less than body.--_Rep._ vi.
9. Compare _Laws_, v. 11. Xenophon dwells on the evil of occupations at
the furnace and especially their "[Greek: ascholia], want of
leisure."--_Econ._ i. 4. (Modern England, with all its pride of
education, has lost that first sense of the word "school;" and till it
recover that, it will find no other rightly.) His word for the harm to
the soul is to "break" it, as we say of the heart.--_Econ._ i. 6. And
herein, also, is the root of the scorn, otherwise apparently most
strange and cruel, with which Homer, Dante, and Shakspeare always speak
of the populace; for it is entirely true that, in great states, the
lower orders are low by nature as well as by task, being precisely that
part of the commonwealth which has been thrust down for its coarseness
or unworthiness (by coarseness I mean especially insensibility and
irreverence--the "profane" of Horace); and when this ceases to be so,