Book: Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI
"Were there truth in this train of argument," replied De Montaigne, "had
we ever abstained from communicating to the Multitude the enjoyments and
advantages of the Few, had we shrunk from the good, because the good is a
parent of the change and its partial ills, what now would be society? Is
there no difference in collective happiness and virtue between the
painted Picts and the Druid worship, and the glorious harmony, light, and
order of the great English nation?"
"The question is popular," said Maltravers, with a smile; "and were you
my opponent in an election, would be cheered on any hustings in the
kingdom. But I have lived among savage tribes,--savage, perhaps, as the
race that resisted Caesar; and their happiness seems to me, not perhaps
the same as that of the few whose sources of enjoyment are numerous,
refined, and, save by their own passions, unalloyed; but equal to that of
the mass of men in States the most civilized and advanced. The artisans,
crowded together in the fetid air of factories, with physical ills
gnawing at the core of the constitution, from the cradle to the grave;
drudging on from dawn to sunset and flying for recreation to the dread
excitement of the dram-shop, or the wild and vain hopes of political
fanaticism,--are not in my eyes happier than the wild Indians with hardy
frames and calm tempers, seasoned to the privations for which you pity
them, and uncursed with desires of that better state never to be theirs.
The Arab in his desert has seen all the luxuries of the pasha in his
harem; but he envies them not. He is contented with his barb, his tent,
his desolate sands, and his spring of refreshing water.
"Are we not daily told, do not our priests preach it from their pulpits,
that the cottage shelters happiness equal to that within the palace? Yet
what the distinction between the peasant and the prince, differing from
that between the peasant and the savage? There are more enjoyments and
more privations in the one than in the other; but if, in the latter case,
the enjoyments, though fewer, be more keenly felt,--if the privations,
though apparently sharper, fall upon duller sensibilities and hardier
frames,--your gauge of proportion loses all its value. Nay, in
civilization there is for the multitude an evil that exists not in the
savage state. The poor man sees daily and hourly all the vast
disparities produced by civilized society; and reversing the divine
parable, it is Lazarus who from afar, and from the despondent pit, looks
upon Dives in the lap of Paradise: therefore, his privations, his
sufferings, are made more keen by comparison with the luxuries of others.
Not so in the desert and the forest. There but small distinctions, and
those softened by immemorial and hereditary usage--that has in it the
sanctity of religion--separate the savage from his chief. The fact is,
that in civilization we behold a splendid aggregate,--literature and
science, wealth and luxury, commerce and glory; but we see not the
million victims crushed beneath the wheels of the machine,--the health
sacrificed, the board breadless, the jails filled, the hospitals reeking,
the human life poisoned in every spring, and poured forth like water!
Neither do we remember all the steps, marked by desolation, crime, and
bloodshed, by which this barren summit has been reached. Take the
history of any civilized state,--England, France, Spain before she rotted
back into second childhood, the Italian Republics, the Greek
Commonwealths, the Empress of the Seven Hills--what struggles, what
persecutions, what crimes, what massacres! Where, in the page of
history, shall we look back and say, 'Here improvement has diminished the
sum of evil'? Extend, too, your scope beyond the State itself: each
State has won its acquisitions by the woes of others. Spain springs
above the Old World on the blood-stained ruins of the New; and the groans
and the gold of Mexico produce the splendours of the Fifth Charles!
"Behold England, the wise, the liberal, the free England--through what
struggles she has passed; and is she yet contented? The sullen oligarchy
of the Normans; our own criminal invasions of Scotland and France; the
plundered people, the butchered kings; the persecutions of the Lollards;
the wars of Lancaster and York; the new dynasty of the Tudors, that at
once put back Liberty, and put forward Civilization! the Reformation,
cradled in the lap of a hideous despot, and nursed by violence and
rapine; the stakes and fires of Mary, and the craftier cruelties of
Elizabeth,--England, strengthened by the desolation of Ireland, the Civil
Wars, the reign of hypocrisy, followed by the reign of naked vice; the
nation that beheaded the graceful Charles gaping idly on the scaffold of
the lofty Sidney; the vain Revolution of 1688, which, if a jubilee in
England, was a massacre in Ireland; the bootless glories of Marlborough;
the organized corruption of Walpole, the frantic war with our own
American sons, the exhausting struggles with Napoleon!
"Well, we close the page; we say, Lo! a thousand years of incessant
struggles and afflictions! millions have perished, but Art has survived;
our boors wear stockings, our women drink tea, our poets read Shakspeare,
and our astronomers improve on Newton! Are we now contented? No! more
restless than ever. New classes are called into power; new forms of
government insisted on. Still the same catchwords,--Liberty here,
Religion there; Order with one faction, Amelioration with the other.
Where is the goal, and what have we gained? Books are written, silks are
woven, palaces are built,--mighty acquisitions for the few--but the
peasant is a peasant still! The crowd are yet at the bottom of the
wheel; better off, you say. No, for they are not more contented! The
artisan is as anxious for change as ever the serf was; and the
steam-engine has its victims as well as the sword.
"Talk of legislation: all isolated laws pave the way to wholesale changes
in the form of government! Emancipate Catholics, and you open the door
to democratic principle, that Opinion should be free. If free with the
sectarian, it should be free with the elector. The Ballot is a corollary
from the Catholic Relief-bill. Grant the Ballot, and the new corollary
of enlarged suffrage. Suffrage enlarged is divided but by a yielding
surface (a circle widening in the waters) from universal suffrage.
Universal suffrage is Democracy. Is Democracy better than the
aristocratic commonwealth? Look at the Greeks, who knew both forms; are
they agreed which is the best? Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon,
Aristophanes--the Dreamer, the Historian, the Philosophic Man of Action,
the penetrating Wit--have no ideals in Democracy. Algernon Sidney, the
martyr of liberty, allows no government to the multitude. Brutus died
for a republic, but a republic of Patricians! What form of government is
then the best? All dispute, the wisest cannot agree. The many still say
'a Republic;' yet, as you yourself will allow, Prussia, the Despotism,
does all that Republics do. Yes, but a good despot is a lucky accident;
true, but a just and benevolent Republic is as yet a monster equally
short-lived. When the People have no other tyrant, their own public
opinion becomes one. No secret espionage is more intolerable to a free
spirit than the broad glare of the American eye.
"A rural republic is but a patriarchal tribe--no emulation, no glory;
peace and stagnation. What Englishman, what Frenchman, would wish to be
a Swiss? A commercial republic is but an admirable machine for making
money. Is man created for nothing nobler than freighting ships and
speculating on silk and sugar? In fact, there is no certain goal in
legislation; we go on colonizing Utopia, and fighting phantoms in the
clouds. Let us content ourselves with injuring no man, and doing good
only in our own little sphere. Let us leave States and senates to fill
the sieve of the Danaides, and roll up the stone of Sisyphus."
"My dear friend," said De Montaigne, "you have certainly made the most of
an argument, which, if granted, would consign government to fools and
knaves, and plunge the communities of mankind into the Slough of Despond.
But a very commonplace view of the question might suffice to shake your
system. Is life, mere animal life, on the whole, a curse or a blessing?"
"The generality of men in all countries," answered Maltravers, "enjoy
existence, and apprehend death; were it otherwise, the world had been
made by a Fiend, and not a God!"
"Well, then, observe how the progress of society cheats the grave! In
great cities, where the effect of civilization must be the most visible,
the diminution of mortality in a corresponding ratio with the increase of
civilization is most remarkable. In Berlin, from the year 1747 to 1755,
the annual mortality was as one to twenty-eight; but from 1816 to 1822,
it was as one to thirty-four! You ask what England has gained by her
progress in the arts? I will answer you by her bills of mortality. In
London, Birmingham, and Liverpool, deaths have decreased in less than a
century from one to twenty, to one to forty (precisely one-half!).
Again, whenever a community--nay, a single city, decreases in
civilization, and in its concomitants, activity and commerce, its
mortality instantly increases. But if civilization be favourable to the
prolongation of life, must it not be favourable to all that blesses
life,--to bodily health, to mental cheerfulness, to the capacities for
enjoyment? And how much more grand, how much more sublime, becomes the
prospect of gain, if we reflect that, to each life thus called forth,
there is a soul, a destiny beyond the grave, multiplied immortalities!
What an apology for the continued progress of States! But you say that,
however we advance, we continue impatient and dissatisfied: can you
really suppose that, because man in every state is discontented with his
lot, there is no difference in the _degree_ and _quality_ of his
discontent, no distinction between pining for bread and longing for the
moon? Desire is implanted within us, as the very principle of existence;
the physical desire fills the world, and the moral desire improves it.
Where there is desire, there must be discontent: if we are satisfied with
all things, desire is extinct. But a certain degree of discontent is not
incompatible with happiness, nay, it has happiness of its own; what
happiness like hope,--what is hope but desire? The European serf, whose
seigneur could command his life, or insist as a right on the chastity of
his daughter, desires to better his condition. God has compassion on his
state; Providence calls into action the ambition of leaders, the contests
of faction, the movement of men's aims and passions: a change passes
through society and legislation, and the serf becomes free! He desires
still, but what? No longer personal security, no longer the privileges
of life and health; but higher wages, greater comforts, easier justice
for diminished wrongs. Is there no difference in the quality of that
desire? Was one a greater torment than the other is? Rise a scale
higher: a new class is created--the Middle Class,--the express creature
of Civilization. Behold the burgher and the citizen, and still
struggling, still contending, still desiring, and therefore still
discontented. But the discontent does not prey upon the springs of life:
it is the discontent of _hope_, not _despair_; it calls forth faculties,
energies, and passions, in which there is more joy than sorrow. It is
this desire which makes the citizen in private life an anxious father, a
careful master, an _active_, and therefore not an unhappy, man. You
allow that individuals can effect individual good: this very
restlessness, this very discontent with the exact place that he occupies,
makes the citizen a benefactor in his narrow circle. Commerce, better
than Charity, feeds the hungry and clothes the naked. Ambition, better
than brute affection, gives education to our children, and teaches them
the love of industry, the pride of independence, the respect for others
and themselves!
"In other words, a deference to such qualities as can best fit them to
get on in the world, and make the most money!"
"Take that view if you will; but the wiser, the more civilized the State,
the worse chances for the rogue to get on! There may be some art, some
hypocrisy, some avarice,--nay, some hardness of heart,--in paternal
example and professional tuition. But what are such sober infirmities to
the vices that arise from defiance and despair? Your savage has his
virtues, but they are mostly physical,--fortitude, abstinence, patience:
mental and moral virtues must be numerous or few, in proportion to the
range of ideas and the exigencies of social life. With the savage,
therefore, they must be fewer than with civilized men; and they are
consequently limited to those simple and rude elements which the safety
of his state renders necessary to him. He is usually hospitable;
sometimes honest. But vices are necessary to his existence as well as
virtues: he is at war with a tribe that may destroy his own; and
treachery without scruple, cruelty without remorse, are essential to him;
he feels their necessity, and calls them _virtues_! Even the
half-civilized man, the Arab whom you praise, imagines he has a necessity
for your money; and his robberies become virtues to him. But in
civilized States, vices are at least not necessary to the existence of
the majority; they are not, therefore, worshipped as virtues. Society
unites against them; treachery, robbery, massacre, are not essential to
the strength or safety of the community: they exist, it is true, but they
are not cultivated, but punished. The thief in St. Giles's has the
virtues of your savage: he is true to his companions, he is brave in
danger, he is patient in privation; he practises the virtues necessary to
the bonds of his calling and the tacit laws of his vocation. He might
have made an admirable savage: but surely the mass of civilized men are
better than the thief?"
Maltravers was struck, and paused a little before he replied; and then he
shifted his ground. "But at least all our laws, all our efforts, must
leave the multitude in every State condemned to a labour that deadens
intellect, and a poverty that embitters life."
"Supposing this were true, still there are multitudes besides _the_
multitude. In each State Civilization produces a middle class, more
numerous to-day than the whole peasantry of a thousand years ago. Would
Movement and Progress be without their divine uses, even if they limited
their effect to the production of such a class? Look also to the effect
of art, and refinement, and just laws, in the wealthier and higher
classes. See how their very habits of life tend to increase the sum of
enjoyment; see the mighty activity that their very luxury, the very
frivolity of their pursuits, create! Without an aristocracy, would there
have been a middle class? Without a middle class, would there ever have
been an interposition between lord and slave? Before commerce produces a
middle class, Religion creates one. The Priesthood, whatever its errors,
was the curb to Power. But, to return to the multitude,--you say that in
all times they are left the same. Is it so? I come to statistics again:
I find that not only civilization, but liberty, has a prodigious effect
upon human life. It is, as it were, by the instinct of self-preservation
that liberty is so passionately desired by the multitude. A negro slave,
for instance, dies annually as one to five or six, but a free African in
the English service only as one to thirty-five! Freedom is not,
therefore, a mere abstract dream, a beautiful name, a Platonic
aspiration: it is interwoven with the most practical of all
blessings,--life itself! And can you say fairly that by laws labour
cannot be lightened and poverty diminished? We have granted already that
since there are degrees in discontent, there is a difference between the
peasant and the serf: how know you what the peasant a thousand years
hence may be? Discontented, you will say,--still discontented. Yes; but
if he had not been discontented, he would have been a serf still! Far
from quelling this desire to better himself, we ought to hail it as the
source of his perpetual progress. That desire to him is often like
imagination to the poet, it transports him into the Future--
'Crura sonant ferro, sed canit inter opus.'
It is, indeed, the gradual transformation from the desire of Despair to
the desire of Hope, that makes the difference between man and man,
between misery and bliss."
"And then comes the crisis. Hope ripens into deeds; the stormy
revolution, perhaps the armed despotism; the relapse into the second
infancy of States!"
"Can we, with new agencies at our command, new morality, new wisdom,
predicate of the Future by the Past? In ancient States, the mass were
slaves; civilization and freedom rested with oligarchies; in Athens
twenty thousand citizens, four hundred thousand slaves! How easy
decline, degeneracy, overthrow in such States,--a handful of soldiers and
philosophers without a People! Now we have no longer barriers to the
circulation of the blood of States. The absence of slavery, the
existence of the Press; the healthful proportions of kingdoms, neither
too confined nor too vast, have created new hopes, which history cannot
destroy. As a proof, look to all late revolutions: in England the Civil
Wars, the Reformation,--in France her awful Saturnalia, her military
despotism! Has either nation fallen back? The deluge passes, and,
behold, the face of things more glorious than before! Compare the French
of to-day with the French of the old _regime_. You are silent; well, and
if in all States there is ever some danger of evil in their activity, is
that a reason why you are to lie down inactive; why you are to leave the
crew to battle for the helm? How much may individuals by the diffusion
of their own thoughts in letters or in action regulate the order of vast
events,--now prevent, now soften, now animate, now guide! And is a man
to whom Providence and Fortune have imparted such prerogatives to stand
aloof, because he can neither foresee the Future nor create Perfection?
And you talk of no certain and definite goal! How know we that there is
a certain and definite goal, even in heaven? How know we that excellence
may not be illimitable? Enough that we improve, that we proceed. Seeing
in the great design of earth that benevolence is an attribute of the
Designer, let us leave the rest to Posterity and to God."
"You have disturbed many of my theories," said Maltravers, candidly; "and
I will reflect on our conversation; but, after all, is every man to
aspire to influence others; to throw his opinion into the great scales in
which human destinies are weighed? Private life is not criminal. It is
no virtue to write a book, or to make a speech. Perhaps, I should be as
well engaged in returning to my country village, looking at my schools,
and wrangling with the parish overseers--"
"Ah," interrupted the Frenchman, laughing; "if I have driven you to this
point, I will go no further. Every state of life has its duties; every
man must be himself the judge of what he is most fit for. It is quite
enough that he desires to be active, and labours to be useful; that he
acknowledges the precept, 'Never to be weary in well-doing.' The divine
appetite once fostered, let it select its own food. But the man who,
after fair trial of his capacities, and with all opportunity for their
full development before him, is convinced that he has faculties which
private life cannot wholly absorb, must not repine that Human Nature is
not perfect, when he refuses even to exercise the gifts he himself
possesses."
Now these arguments have been very tedious; in some places they have been
old and trite; in others they may appear too much to appertain to the
abstract theory of first principles. Yet from such arguments, _pro_ and
_con_, unless I greatly mistake, are to be derived corollaries equally
practical and sublime,--the virtue of Action, the obligations of Genius,
and the philosophy that teaches us to confide in the destinies, and
labour in the service, of mankind.
CHAPTER VI.
I'LL tell you presently her very picture;
Stay--yes, it is so--Lelia.
_The Captain_, Act V. sc. I.
MALTRAVERS had not shrunk into a system of false philosophy from wayward
and sickly dreams, from resolute self-delusion; on the contrary, his
errors rested on his convictions: the convictions disturbed, the errors
were rudely shaken.
But when his mind began restlessly to turn once more towards the duties
of active life; when he recalled all the former drudgeries and toils of
political conflict, or the wearing fatigues of literature, with its small
enmities, its false friendships, and its meagre and capricious
rewards,--ah, then, indeed, he shrank in dismay from the thoughts of the
solitude at home! No lips to console in dejection, no heart to
sympathize in triumph, no love within to counterbalance the hate
without,--and the best of man, his household affections, left to wither
away, or to waste themselves on ideal images, or melancholy remembrance.
It may, indeed, be generally remarked (contrary to a common notion), that
the men who are most happy at home are the most active abroad. The
animal spirits are necessary to healthful action; and dejection and the
sense of solitude will turn the stoutest into dreamers. The hermit is
the antipodes of the citizen; and no gods animate and inspire us like the
Lares.
One evening, after an absence from Paris of nearly a fortnight, at De
Montaigne's villa, in the neighbourhood of St. Cloud, Maltravers, who,
though he no longer practised the art, was not less fond than heretofore
of music, was seated in Madame de Ventadour's box at the Italian Opera;
and Valerie, who was above all the woman's jealousy of beauty, was
expatiating with great warmth of eulogium upon the charms of a young
English lady whom she had met at Lady G-----'s the preceding evening.
"She is just my beau-ideal of the true English beauty," said Valerie: "it
is not only the exquisite fairness of the complexion, nor the eyes so
purely blue,--which the dark lashes relieve from the coldness common to
the light eyes of the Scotch and German,--that are so beautifully
national, but the simplicity of manner, the unconsciousness of
admiration, the mingled modesty and sense of the expression. No, I have
seen women more beautiful, but I never saw one more lovely: you are
silent; I expected some burst of patriotism in return for my compliment
to your countrywoman!"
"But I am so absorbed in that wonderful Pasta--"
"You are no such thing; your thoughts are far away. But can you tell me
anything about my fair stranger and her friends? In the first place,
there is a Lord Doltimore, whom I knew before--you need say nothing about
him; in the next there is his new married bride, handsome, dark--but you
are not well!"
"It was the draught from the door; go on, I beseech you, the young lady,
the friend, her name?"
"Her name I do not remember; but she was engaged to be married to one of
your statesmen, Lord Vargrave; the marriage is broken off--I know not if
that be the cause of a certain melancholy in her countenance,--a
melancholy I am sure not natural to its Hebe-like expression. But who
have just entered the opposite box? Ah, Mr. Maltravers, do look, there
is the beautiful English girl!"
And Maltravers raised his eyes, and once more beheld the countenance of
Evelyn Cameron!