LECTURE XII.

MACBETH.-INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

THE ce ebrated William Hunter, while lecturing on the process of digestion, after reviewing the various theories on the subject, is said to have remarked, that after all a stomach was a stomach; and that digestion was the result, not of a chemical nor of a mechanical process, but simply of a digestive process and the still more celebrated John Hunter in a similar spirit took the ground, that the phenomena of organic nature were referable to an unexplained and unexplainable principle, called the principle of life. These positions, assuredly, are as much more philosophical as they are less difficult. than the theories they are designed to supersede. There is often more of wisdom in knowing how to stop, than in knowing how to proceed, in our investigations.

Modern science has probably been more vitiated by attempts to trace all the phenomena of nature up to one principle, and all the phenomena of mind up to one faculty, than by all other causes put together. Metaphysicians, for example, endeavouring to account for all our ideas by the understanding, have ended in materialism: moralists, undertaking to explain all our moral sentiments by the understanding, have ended in expediency: theologians, undertaking to teach religion altogether

through the understanding, have ended in orthodoxism: critics, endeavouring to account for our perceptions of beauty by the understanding, have ended in utility: in like manner, naturalists, attempting to explain the phenomena of animal and vegetable life by a common principle, have ended in mechanism. Such are some of the evils resulting to science from too great a rage for simplification. One of the great faults in modern teaching is the trying to give and get a knowledge of every thing through the understanding. In attempting to teach or to learn through one faculty what is addressed to another faculty, we are in danger of spoiling both the mind studying and the subject studied. The man in whom reverence is not developed of course finds no sacredness anywhere, because he has no eye to find it with; and all attempts to give him a knowledge of it through the understanding will but tend to convince him that no such thing exists. The ear alone cannot possibly distinguish the colour of scarlet from the sound of a trumpet; neither can the mere understanding distinguish virtue from utility, nor duty from expediency. By the time we have got the nature of beauty or virtue or religion fully explained to the understanding, there ceases to be any such thing as beauty or virtue or religion. The fact is, these things all require special developments, and cannot possibly be understood by the same faculty to which political economy is addressed, until they are themselves turned into political economy. Some persons can see surface and hear noise, but cannot distinguish colours or sounds, and therefore cannot see painting or hear music. We say such people have eyes, but no eye for painting-ears, but no ear for

music; that is, they lack the inward senses to which painting and music are respectively addressed. On the same principle some one has said, a taste for Shakspeare involves the development of a special sense; and Wordsworth tells us,

"He who feels contempt

For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used;"

and Coleridge has remarked, that "every great original author, in so far as he is truly original, has to call forth the power to understand and create the taste to enjoy him :" for his originality lies in the very fact, that he not merely exercises what is already developed, but requires and effects a new development for himself. It is a general truth, indeed, that what we seem to see around us is, in some sense, but a reflection more or less distinct, of what is within us:

"We can receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does nature live."

The rainbow of course spans the heavens in vain for the soul that lacks an eye; the sweetest music is but noise to the soul that has no ear. Without the inward power of love no outward thing has loveliness for us; and of him who has no primrose smiling at his heart, we may truly say,

"The primrose on the river's brim

A yellow primrose is to him,
And it is nothing more."

On the other hand, the beauty of creation shines out in

perpetual apocalypse to every soul whose inward springs of beauty have been opened. Thus our outward discoveries naturally correspond to our inward developments; and it is because some people use nothing but their eyes that they really see so little. Prompted, perhaps, by the dim half-awakened instincts of their better nature, they are often looking with their eyes into the distant for what the eye can nowhere discover, but what the proper use of their higher faculties would at once disclose in their most immediate vicinity.

Much ingenuity has been displayed by critics, in endeavouring to account for the pleasure we derive from works of art. Now, notwithstanding the various theories on this subject, I am inclined to think, in the spirit of Dr. Hunter's philosophy, that beauty is beauty, virtue is virtue, religion is religion, and art is art; that they are respectively addressed to certain distinct correlative principles within us; and that all attempts to explain our perception of them or our interest in them by the mere understanding, can only succeed by spoiling them, or by turning them into something else. In other words, the appreciation of works of art involves the development of special faculties, and cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by the faculties employed in appreciating other objects.

It is universally allowed, that unless a given performance yield the genuine student an overbalance of pleasure, it is not entitled to be called a work of art. All our susceptibilities find pleasure in the attainment of their proper objects. Not that pleasure is the end of the susceptibility, but only an accompaniment inseparable from the attainment of that end; as pleasure springs from

the meeting of appetite with its appropriate food, so that if any thing purporting to be food bring no pleasure to the taste, we infer at once that it is no food: the object does not correspond to the appetite, and therefore is not the thing required. In like manner, unless the perception of an alleged work of art bring an overbalance of pleasure, it is not a true work of art. The susceptibility of art does not find in such a work its corresponding object. Here pleasure is not the end of the work, but only a test whether the work be genuine or not; so that the absence of pleasure from its contemplation invalidates its pretensions.

Again: It is universally allowed that a work of art, to be genuine, must, when properly studied, produce the illusion of reality. Art, in all its forms, becomes perfect only when and so far as it ceases to seem art: the painting or music or statue which, when rightly viewed, seems to be such, is not genuine, but only a collection of colours or a succession of sounds or a block of marble. And yet it is a well-known fact, that in the world of art many things afford great pleasure, which in the actual world would give unmixed pain. The difficulty, then, is, that under the illusion of reality we enjoy things which in the actual occurrence would cause us great distress. To obviate this difficulty, some have tried to account for the interest we take in works of art by the principle of curiosity. But the truth is, the legitimate interest of such works increases as their novelty wears off, so that they really become more interesting as they cease to excite curiosity. The man who does not enjoy Shakspeare's plays much more the fiftieth time reading