Sic. The custom of request you have discharged: The people do admit you; and are summon'd To meet anon, upon your approbation.
Cor. Where? At the senate-house?
Sic. There Coriolanus.
Cor. May I change these garments?
Sic. You may, Sir.
Cor. That I'll straight do, and knowing myself again, Repair to the senate house.
Men. I'll keep you company.—Will you along.
Bru. We stay here for the people.
Sic. Fare you well.
[Exeunt Coriolanus and Menenius.]
He has it now; and by his looks, methinks,
'Tis warm at his heart.
Bru. With a proud heart he wore
His humble weeds: Will you dismiss the people?
[This is the popular election: but the afterthought, the review, the critical review, is that which must follow, for this is not the same people we had on the stage when the play began. They are the same in person, perhaps; but it is no longer a mob, armed with clubs, clamouring for bread, rushing forth to kill their chiefs, and have corn at their own price. It is a people conscious of their political power and dignity, an organised people; it is a people with a constituted head, capable of instructing them in the doctrine of political duties and rights. It is the tribune now who conducts this review of the Military Hero's civil claims. It is the careful, learned Tribune who initiates, from the heights of his civil wisdom, this great, popular veto, this deliberate 'rejection' of the popular affirmation. For this is what is called, elsewhere, 'a negative instance.']
[Re-enter Citizens.]
Sic. How now, my masters? HAVE YOU CHOSE THIS MAN?
First Cit. He has our voices, Sir.
Bru. We pray the gods he may deserve your loves.
Second Cit. Amen, Sir: To my poor unworthy notice, He mocked us when he begg'd our voices.
Third Cit. Certainly
He flouted us downright.
First Cit. No, 'tis his kind of speech; he did not mock us.
Second Cit. Not one amongst us save yourself, but says, He used us scornfully: he should have show'd us His marks of merit, wounds received for his country.
Sic. Why, so he did, I am sure.
Cit. No; no man saw 'em. [Several speak.]
Third Cit. He said he had wounds which he could show in private;
And with his hat, thus waving it in scorn,
'I would be consul,' says he,' AGED CUSTOM,
BUT BY YOUR VOICES, WILL NOT SO PERMIT ME;
Your voices THEREFORE:' When we granted that,
Here was,—'I thank you for your voices,—thank you,—
Your most sweet voices:—now you have left your voices,
I have no further with you:'—Was not this mockery?
Sic. Why, either, were you ignorant to see't?
Or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness
To yield your voices?
Bru. Could you not have told him As you were lesson'd—when he had no power, But was a petty servant to the state, He was your enemy; ever spake against Your LIBERTIES, and the CHARTERS that you bear I' THE BODY of the WEAL: and now arriving A place of potency, and sway o' the state, If he should still malignantly remain Fast foe to the plebeii, your voices might Be CURSES to YOURSELVES.
Sic. Thus to have said As you were fore-advised, had touched his spirit, And tried his inclination; from him plucked, Either his gracious promise, which you might, As cause had called you up, have HELD HIM TO; Or else it would have galled his surly nature, Which easily endures, not article Tying him to aught;—so putting him to rage, You should have ta'en advantage of his choler, And so left him unelected.
[Somewhat sagacious instructions for these old Roman statesmen to give, and not so very unlike those which English Commons found occasion to put in execution not long after.]
Bru. Did you perceive he did solicit you in free contempt, When he did need your loves; and do you think That his contempt shall not be bruising to you, When, he hath power to crush? Why had your bodies No heart among you, or had you tongues To cry against THE RECTORSHIP of—judgment?
Sic. Have you Ere now, deny'd the asker, and now again, On him that did not ask, but mock, [with a pretence of asking,] bestow Your sued for tongues?
Third Cit. HE'S NOT CONFIRMED, we may deny him YET.
Second Cit. And will deny him:
I'll have five hundred voices of that sound.
First Cit. I, twice five hundred, and their friends to piece 'em.
Bru. Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends, They have chose a consul that will from them Take their liberties, MAKE THEM OF NO MORE VOICE THAN DOGS, that are as often BEAT for barking, As KEPT TO DO SO.
Sic. Let them assemble,
And on a safer judgment, ALL REVOKE
Your IGNORANT ELECTION.
Bru. Lay
A fault on us, your tribunes; that WE LABOURED
NO IMPEDIMENT BETWEEN, but that you must
Cast your election on him.
Sic. Say, you chose him
More after our commandment, than as guided
By your own true affections, and that your minds,
Pre-occupied with what you rather must do,
Than what you should, made you against the grain
To voice him consul: lay the fault on us.
Bru. Ay, SPARE us NOT. Say WE READ LECTURES TO YOU,
How youngly he began to serve his country,
How long continued, and what stock he springs of;
The noble house o' the Marcians, from whence came,
That Ancus Martius, Numa's daughter's son,
Who, after great Hostilius, here was king:
Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,
That our best water brought by conduits hither;
And Censoriuus, darling of the people,
And nobly named so, being censor twice,
Was his great ancestor.
[Of course this man has never meddled with the classics at all. His reading and writing comes by nature.]
Sic. One thus descended, That hath beside well in his person wrought, To be set high in place, we did commend To your remembrances; but you have found, Scaling his present bearing with his past, That he's your fixed enemy, and REVOKE Your sudden approbation.
Bru.. Say you ne'er had done't,— Harp on that still,—but by our putting on, And presently when you have drawn your number, Repair to the Capitol.
Citizens. [Several speak.] We will so. Almost all
Repent in their election. [Exeunt Citizens.]
Bru. Let them go on.
This mutiny were better put in hazard,
Than stay, past doubt, for greater;
If, as his nature is, he fall in rage
With their refusal, both observe and answer
The vantage of his anger.
Sic. To the Capitol:
Come, we'll be there before the stream o' the people,
And this shall seem, as partly'tis, their own
Which WE HAVE GOADED ONWARD.
[See the Play of Henry the Seventh, Founder of the Elizabethan
Tyranny, by the same author.]
We have witnessed the popular election on the scientific boards: we have seen, now, in all its scientific detail, the civil confirmation of the soldier's vote on the battle-field: we have seen it in the senate-chamber and in the market-place, and we saw it in 'the smothered stalls, and bulks, and windows,' and on 'the leads and ridges': we have seen and heard it, not in the shower and thunder that the commons made with their caps and voices only, but in the scarfs, and gloves, and handkerchiefs, which 'the ladies, and maids, and matrons threw.' We have seen each single contribution to this great public act put in by the Poet's selected representative of classes. 'The kitchen malkin, with her richest lockram pinned on her neck, clambering the wall to eye him,' spake for hers; 'the seld-shown flamen, puffing his way to win a vulgar station,' was hastening to record the vote of his; 'the veiled dame, exposing the war of white and damask in her nicely-gawded cheeks to the spoil of Phebus' burning kisses,' was a tribune, too, in this Poet's distribution of the tribes, and spake out for the veiled dames; 'the prattling nurse' who will give her baby that is 'crying itself into a rapture there, while she chats him' her reminiscence of this scene by and by, was there to give the nurses' approbation.
For this is the vote which the great Tribune has to sum up and count, when he comes to review at last, 'in a better hour,' these spontaneous public acts—these momentous acts that seal up the future, and bind the unborn generations of the advancing kind with the cramp of their fetters. Not less careful than this is the analysis when he undertakes to track to its historic source one of those practical axioms, one of those received beliefs, which he finds determining the human conduct, limiting the human history, moulding the characters of men, determining beforehand what they shall be. This is the process when he undertakes, to get one of these rude, instinctive, spontaneous affirmations—one of those idols of the market or of the Tribe—reviewed and criticised by the heads of the Tribe, at least, 'in a better hour,'—criticised and rejected. 'Proceeding by negatives and exclusion first': this is the form in which this Tribune puts on record his scientific veto of that 'ignorant election.'
And in this so carefully selected and condensed combination of historical spectacles—in this so new, this so magnificently illustrated political history—there is another historic moment to be brought out now; and in this same form of 'visible history,' one not less important than those already exhibited.
In the scene that follows, we have, in the Poet's arrangement, the great historic spectacle of a people 'REVOKING THEIR IGNORANT ELECTION,' under the instigation and guidance of those same remarkable leaders, whose voice had been wanting (as they are careful to inform us) till then in the business of the state; leaders who contrive at last to inform the people, in plain terms, that they 'are at point to lose their liberties,' that 'Marcius will have all from them,' and who apologise for their conduct afterwards by saying, that 'he affected one sole throne, without assistance'; for the time had come when the Tribune could repeat the Poet's whisper, 'The one side shall have bale.'
This so critical spectacle is boldly brought out and exhibited here in all its actual historical detail. It is produced by one who is able to include in his dramatic programme the whole sweep of its eventualities, the whole range of its particulars, because he has made himself acquainted with the forces, he has ascended, by scientifically inclusive definition, to the 'powers' that are to be 'operant' in it; and he who has that 'charactery' of nature, may indeed 'lay the future open.' We talk of prophecy; but there is nothing in literature to compare at all with this great specimen of the prophecy of Induction. There is nothing to compare with it in its grasp of particulars, in its comprehension and historic accuracy of detail.
But this great speech, which he entreats for leave to make before that revolutionary movement, which in its weak beginnings in his time lay intreasured, should proceed any further—this preliminary speech, with its so vivid political illustration, is not yet finished. The true doctrine of an instructed scientific election and government, that 'vintage' of politics—that vintage of scientific definitions and axioms which he is getting out of this new kind of history—that new vintage of the higher, subtler fact, which this fine selected, adapted history, will be made to yield, is not yet expressed. The fault with the popular and instinctive mode of inquiry is, he tells us, that it begins with affirmation—but that is the method for gods, and not men—men must begin with negations; they must have tables of review of instances, tables of negation, tables of rejection; and divide nature, not with fire, but with the mind, that divine fire. 'If the mind attempt this affirmation from the first,' he says, 'which it always will when left to itself there will spring up phantoms, mere theories, and ill-defined notions, with axioms requiring daily correction. These will be better or worse, according to the power and strength of the understanding which creates them. But it is only for God to recognise forms affirmatively, at the first glance of contemplation; men can only proceed first by negatives, and then to conclude with affirmatives, after every species of rejection.' And though he himself appears to be profoundly absorbed with the nature of HEAT, at the moment in which he first produces these new scientific instruments, which he calls tables of review, and explains their 'facilities,' he tells us plainly, that they are adapted to other subjects, and that those affirmations which are most essential to the welfare of man, will in due time come off from them, practical axioms on matters of universal and incessant practical concern, that will not want daily correction, that will not want revolutionary correction, to fit them to the exigency.
The question here is not of 'heat,' but of SOVEREIGNTY; it is the question of the consulship, regarded from the ground of the tribuneship. It is not Coriolanus that this tribune is spending so much breath on. The instincts, which unanalytic, barbaric ages, enthrone and mistake for greatness and nobility, are tried and rejected here; and the business of the play is, to get them excluded from the chair of state. The philosopher will have those instincts which men, in their 'particular and private natures,' share with the lower orders of animals, searched out, and put in their place in human affairs, which is not, as he takes it, THE HEAD—the head of the COMMON-weal. It is not Coriolanus; the author has no spite at all against him—he is partial to him, rather; it is not Coriolanus but the instincts that are on trial here, and the man—the so-called man—of instinct, who has no principle of state and sovereignty, no principle of true _man_liness and nobility in his soul; and the trial is not yet completed. The author would be glad to have that revolution which he has inserted in the heart of this play deferred, if that were possible, though he knows that it is not; he thinks it would be a saving of trouble if it could be deferred until some true and scientifically prepared notions, some practical axioms, which would not need in their turn fierce historical correction—revolutionary correction—could be imparted to the common mind.
But we must follow him in this process of division and exclusion a little further, before we come in our plot to the revolution. That revolution which he foresees as imminent and inevitable, he has put on paper here: but there is another lurking within, for which we are not yet ripe. This locked-up tribune will have to get abroad; he will have to get his limits enlarged, and find his way into some new departments, before ever that can begin.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS.
'If any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied.'
Advancement of Learning.
'We leave room on every subject for the human or optative part; for it is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes.'
Novum Organum.
As to the method of this new kind of philosophical inquiry, which is brought to bear here so stedfastly upon the most delicate questions, at a time when the Play-house was expressly forbidden by a Royal Ordinance, on pain of dissolution, to touch them—in an age, too, when Parliaments were lectured, and brow-beaten, and rudely sent home, for contumaciously persisting in meddling with questions of state—in an age in which prelates were shrilly interrupted in the pulpit, in the midst of their finest and gravest Sunday discourse, and told, in the presence of their congregations, to hold their tongues and mind their own business, if they chanced to touch upon 'questions of church,' on a day when the Head of the Church herself, in her own sacred person, in her largest ruff, and 'rustling' in her last silk, happened to be in her pew;—as to the method of the philosophical investigations which were conducted under such critical conditions, of course there was no harm in displaying that in the abstract, as a method merely. As a method of philosophical inquiry, there was no harm in presenting it in a tolerably lucid and brilliant manner, accompanying the exhibition with careful, and apparently specific, directions as to the application of it to indifferent subjects. There was no harm, indeed, in blazoning this method a little, and in soliciting the attention of the public, and the attention of mankind in general, to it in a somewhat extraordinary manner, not without some considerable blowing of trumpets. As a method of philosophical inquiry, merely, what earthly harm could it do? Surely there was no more innocent thing in nature than 'your philosophy,' then, so far as any overt acts were concerned; it certainly was the last thing in the world that a king or a queen need trouble their heads about then. Who cared what methods the philosophers were taking, or whether this was a new one or an old one, so that the men of letters could understand it? The modern Solomon was fain to confess that, for his part, he could not—that it was beyond his depth; whereas the history of Henry the Seventh, by the same author, appeared to him extremely clear and lively, and quite within his range, and to that he gave his own personal approbation. The other work, however, as it was making so much noise in the world, and promising to go down to posterity, would serve to adorn his reign, and make it illustrious in future ages.
There was no harm in this philosopher's setting forth his method then, and giving very minute and strict directions in regard to its applications to 'certain subjects.' As to what the Author of it did with it himself—that, of course, was another thing, and nobody's business but his own just then, as it happened.
So totally was the world off its guard at the moment of this great and greatest innovation in its practice—so totally unaccustomed were men then to look for anything like power in the quarter from which this seemed to be proceeding—so impossible was it for this single book to remove that previous impression—that the Author of the Novum Organum could even venture to intersperse these directions, with regard to its specific and particular applications, with pointed and not infrequent allusions to the comprehensive nature—the essentially comprehensive nature—of 'the Machine' whose application to these certain instances he is at such pains to specify; he could, indeed, produce it with a continuous side-long glance at this so portentous quality of it.
Nay, he could go farther than that, and venture to assert openly, over his own name, and leave on record for the benefit of posterity, the assertion that this new method of inquiry does apply, directly and primarily, to those questions in which the human race are primarily concerned; that it strikes at once to the heart of those questions, and was invented to that end.
Such a certificate and warranty of the New Machine was put up by the hands of the Inventor on the face of it, when he dedicated it to the human use—when he appealed in its behalf from the criticism of the times that were near, to those that were far off. Nay, he takes pains to tell us; he tells us in that same moment, what one who studies the NOVUM ORGANUM with the key of 'Times' does not need to be told—can see for himself—that in his description of the method he has already contrived to make the application, the universal practical application.
In his PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, the mind of man is brought out already from its SPECIFIC narrowness, from its own abstract logical conceits and arrogant prenotions, into that collision with fact—the broader fact, the universal fact—and subjected to that discipline from it which is the intention of this logic. It is a 'machine' which is meant to serve to Man as a 'New' Mind—the scientific mind, which is in harmony with nature—a mind informed and enlarged with the universal laws, the laws of KINDS, instead of the spontaneous uninstructed mind, instead of the narrow specific mind of a barbaric race, filled with its own preposterous prenotions and vain conceits, and at war with universal nature; boldly pursuing its deadly feud with that, priding itself on it, making a virtue of it. It is a machine in which those human faculties which are the gifts of God to man, as the instruments of his welfare, are for the first time scientifically conjoined. It is a Machine in which the senses, those hitherto despised instruments in philosophy, by means of a scientific rule and oversight, and with the aid of scientific instruments, are made available for philosophic purposes. It is a Machine in which that organization whereby the universal nature impresses itself on us—reports itself to us—striking its incessant telegraphs on us, whether we read them or not, is for the first time brought to the philosopher's aid; and it is a Machine, also, by which speculation, that hitherto despised instrument in practice, is for the first time, brought to the aid of the man of practice. It is doubly 'New': it is a Machine in which speculation becomes practical—it is a Machine in which practice becomes scientific.
[Fool. Canst thou tell why a man's nose stands in the middle of his face?
Lear. No.
Fool. Why, to keep his eyes on either side of it, that what he cannot smell out, he may spy into.]
In 'THE PREROGATIVE INSTANCES,' the universal matter of fact is already taken up and disposed of in grand masses, under these headships and chief cases, not in a miscellaneous, but scientific manner. The Nature of Things is all there; for this is a Logic which bows the mind of man to the law of the universal nature, and informs and enlarges it with that. It is not a Logic merely in the old sense of that term. The old Logic, and the cobwebs of metaphysics that grew out of it, are the things which this Machine is going to puff away, with the mere whiff and wind of its inroads into nature, and disperse for ever. It is not a logic merely as logic has hitherto been limited, but a philosophy. A logic in which the general 'notions of nature' which are causes, powers, simple powers, elemental powers, true differences, are substituted for those spontaneous, rude, uncorrected, specific notions,—pre-notions of men, which have in that form, as they stand thus, no correlative in nature, and are therefore impotent—not true terms and forms, but air-words, air-lines, merely. It is a logic which includes the Mind of NATURE, and her laws; and not one which is limited to the mind of Man, and so fitted to its incapacity as to nurse him in his natural ignorance, to educate him in his born foolery and conceit, to teach him to ignore by rule, and set at nought the infinite mystery of nature.
The universal history, all of it that the mind of man is constituted to grasp, is here in the general, under these PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, in the luminous order of the Inventor of this science, blazing throughout with his genius, and the mind that has abolished its prenotions, and renounced its rude, instinctive, barbaric tendencies, and has taken this scientific Organum instead; has armed itself with the Nature of Things, and is prepared to grapple with all specifications and particulars.
The author tells us plainly, that those seemingly pedantic arrangements with which he is compelled to perplex his subject in this great work of his, the work in which he openly introduces HIS INNOVATION,—as that—will fall off by and by, when there is no longer any need of them. They are but the natural guards with which great Nature, working in the instinct of the philosophic genius, protects her choicest growth,—the husk of that grain which must have times, and a time to grow in,—the bark which the sap must stop to build, ere its delicate works within are safe. They are like the sheaths with which she hides through frost and wind and shower, until their hour has come, her vernal patterns, her secret toils, her magic cunning, her struggling aspirations, her glorious successes, her celestial triumphs.
In the midst of this studious fog of scholasticism, this complicated network of superficial divisions, the man of humour, who is always not far off and ready to assist in the priestly ministrations as he sees occasion, gently directs our attention to those more simple and natural divisions of the subject, and those more immediately practical terms, which it might be possible to use, under certain circumstances, in speaking of the same subjects, into which, however, these are easily resolvable, as soon as the right point of observation is taken. Through all this haze, he contrives to show us confidentially, the outline of those grand natural divisions, which he has already clearly produced—under their scholastic names, indeed,—in his book of the Advancement of Learning; but which he cannot so openly continue, in a work produced professedly, as a practical instrument fit for application to immediate use, and where the true application is constantly entering the vitals of subjects too delicate to be openly glanced at then.
But he gives us to understand, however, that he has made the application of this method to practice, in a much more specific, detailed manner, in another place, that he has brought it down from those more general forms of the Novum Organum, into 'the nobler' departments, 'the more chosen' departments of that universal field of human practice, which the Novum Organum takes up in its great outline, and boldly and clearly claims in the general, though when it comes to specific applications and particulars, it does so stedfastly strike, or appear to strike, into that one track of practice, which was the only one left open to it then,—which it keeps still as rigidly as if it had no other. He has brought it out, he tells us, from that trunk of 'universality,' and carried it with his own hand into the minutest points and fibres of particulars, those points and fibres, those living articulations in which the grand natural divisions he indicates here, naturally terminate; the divisions which the philosopher who 'makes the Art and Practic part of life, the mistress to his Theoric,' must of course follow. He tells us that he has applied it to PARTICULAR ARTS, to those departments of the human experience and practice in which the need of a rule is most felt, and where things have been suffered to go on hitherto, in a specially miscellaneous manner, and that his axioms of practice in these departments have been so scientifically constructed from particulars, that he thinks they will be apt to know their way to particulars again;—that their specifications are at the same time so comprehensive and so minute, that he considers them fit for immediate use, or at least so far forth fitted, as to require but little skill on the part of the practitioner, to insure them against failure in practice. The process being, of course, in this application to the exigencies of practice, necessarily disentangled from those technicalities and relics of the old wordy scholasticism in which he was compelled to incase and seal up his meanings, in his professedly scientific works, and especially in his professedly practical scientific work.
But these so important applications of his philosophy to practice, of which he issues so fair a prospectus, though he frequently refers to them, could not then be published. The time had not come, and personally, he was obliged to leave, before it came. He was careful, however, to make the best provision which could be made, under such circumstances, for the carrying out of his intentions; for he left a will. These works of practice could not then be published; and if they could have been, there was no public then ready for them. They could not be published; but there was nothing to hinder their being put under cover. There was no difficulty to a man of skill in packing them up in a portable form, under lids and covers of one sort and another, so unexceptionable, that all the world could carry them about, for a century or two, and not perceive that there was any harm in them. Very curiously wrought covers they might be too, with some taste of the wonders of mine art pressing through, a little here and there. They might be put under a very gorgeous and attractive cover in one case, and under a very odd and fantastic one in another; but in such a manner as to command, in both cases, the admiration and wonder of men, so as to pique perpetually their curiosity and provoke inquiry, until the time had come and the key was found.
'Some may raise this question,' he says, talking as he does sometimes in the historical plural of his philosophic chair,—'this question, rather than objection,'—[it was much to be preferred in that form certainly]—'whether we talk of perfecting NATURAL PHILOSOPHY alone, according to our method, or the other sciences such as—ETHICS, LOGIC, POLITICS.' A pretty question to raise just then, truly, though this philosopher sees fit to take it so demurely. 'Whether we talk of perfecting politics with our method,' Elizabethan politics,—and not politics only, but whether we talk of perfecting 'ethics' with it also, and 'logic,—common logic,' which last is as much in need of perfecting as anything, and the beginning of perfecting of that is the reform in the others. 'We certainly intend,'—the emphasis here is on the word 'certainly,' though the reader who has not the key of the times may not perceive it; 'We certainly intend to comprehend them ALL.' For this is the author whose words are most of them emphatic. We must read his sentences more than once to get all the emphasis. We certainly INTEND to comprehend them all. 'We are not vain promisers,' he says, emphasizing that word in another place, and putting this intention into the shape of a promise.
And as common logic which regulates matters by syllogism is applied, not only to natural, but to every other science, so our inductive method likewise, comprehends them all.—Again—[he thinks this bears repeating, repeating in this connection, for now he is measuring the claims of this new method, this new logic, with the claims of that which he finds in possession, regulating matters by syllogism, not producing a very logical result, however:] 'For we form a history, and tables of invention, for ANGER, FEAR, SHAME, and the like,' [that is—we form a history and tables of invention for the passions or affections,] 'and also for EXAMPLES IN CIVIL LIFE, and the MENTAL OPERATIONS … as well as for HEAT, COLD, LIGHT, VEGETATION and THE LIKE,' and he directs us to the Fourth Part of the Instauration, which he reserves for his noblest and more chosen subjects for the confirmation of this assertion.
'But since our method of interpretation, after preparing and arranging a history, does not content itself with examining the opinions and desires of THE MIND—[hear]—like common logic, but also inspects THE NATURE of THINGS, we so regulate the mind that it may be enabled to apply itself, in every respect, correctly to that nature.' Our examples in this part of the work, which is but a small and preparatory part of it, are limited, as you will observe, to heat, cold, light, vegetation, and the like; but this is the explanation of the general intention, which will enable you to disregard that circumstance in your reading of it.—Those examples will serve their purpose with the minds that they detain. They are preparatory, and greatly useful, if you read this new logic from the height of this explanation, you will have a mind, formed by that process, able to apply itself, in every respect, correctly to the subjects omitted here by name, but so clearly claimed, not as the proper subjects only, but as the actual subjects of the new investigation. But lest you should not understand this explanation, he continues—'On this account we deliver necessary and various precepts in our doctrine of interpretation, so that we may apply, in some measure, to the method of discovering the quality and condition of the subject matter of investigation.' And this is the apology for omitting here, or seeming to omit, such sciences as Ethics, Politics, and that science which is alluded to under the name of Common Logic.
This is, indeed, a very instructive paragraph, though it is a gratuitous one for the scholar who has found leisure to read this work with the aid of that doctrine of interpretation referred to, especially if he is already familiar with its particular applications to the noble subjects just specified.
Among the prerogative instances—'suggestive instances' are included—'such as suggest or point out that which is advantageous to mankind; for bare power and knowledge in themselves exalt, rather than enrich, human nature. We shall have a better opportunity of discovering these, when we treat of the application to practice. BESIDES, in the WORK of INTERPRETATION, we LEAVE ROOM ON EVERY SUBJECT for the human or optative part; FOR IT is A PART OF SCIENCE, to make JUDICIOUS INQUIRIES and WISHES.' 'The generally useful instances. They are such as relate to various points, and frequently occur, sparing by that means considerable labour and new trials. The proper place for speaking of instruments, and contrivances, will be that in which we speak of application to practice, and the method of EXPERIMENT. All that has hitherto been ascertained and made use of, WILL BE APPLIED in the PARTICULAR HISTORY of EACH ART.' [We certainly intend to include them ALL, such as Ethics, Politics, and Common Logic.]
'We have now, therefore, exhibited the species, or simple elements of the motions, tendencies, and active powers, which are most universal in nature; and no small portion of NATURAL, that is, UNIVERSAL SCIENCE, has been sketched out. We do not, however, deny that OTHER INSTANCES can, perhaps, be added' (he has confined himself chiefly to the physical agencies under this head, with a sidelong glance at others, now and then), 'and our divisions changed to some more natural order of things [hear], and also reduced to a less number [hear], in which respect we do not allude to any abstract classification, as if one were to say,'—and he quotes here, in this apparently disparaging manner, his own grand, new-coined classification, which he has drawn out with his new method from the heart of nature, and applied to the human,—which he had to go into the universal nature to find, that very classification which he has exhibited abstractly in his Advancement of Learning—abstractly, and, therefore, without coming into any dangerous contact with any one's preconceptions,—'as if one were to say, that bodies desire the preservation, exaltation, propagation, or fruition of their natures; or, that motion tends to the preservation and benefit, either of the UNIVERSE, as in the case of the motions of resistance and connection—those two universal motions and tendencies—or of EXTENSIVE WHOLES, as in the case of those of the greater congregation.' These are phrases which look innocent enough; there is no offensive approximation to particulars here, apparently; what harm can there be in the philosophy of 'extensive wholes,' and 'larger congregations'? Nobody can call that meddling with 'church and state.' Surely one may speak of the nature of things in general, under such general terms as these, without being suspected of an intention to innovate. 'Have you heard the argument?' says the king to Hamlet. 'Is there no offence in it?' 'None in the world.' But the philosopher goes on, and does come occasionally, even here, to words which begin to sound at little suspicious in such connexions, or would, if one did not know how general the intention must be in this application of them. They are abstract terms, and, of course, nobody need see that they are a different kind of abstraction from the old ones, that the grappling-hook on all particulars has been abstracted in them. Suppose one were to say, then, to resume, 'that motion tends to the preservation and benefit, either of the universe, as in the case of the motions of resistance and connection, or of extensive wholes, as in the case of the motions of the greater congregation— [what are these motions, then?]—REVOLUTION and ABHORRENCE of CHANGE, or of particular forms, as in the case of the others.' This looks a little like growing towards a point. We are apt to consider these motions in certain specific forms, as they appear in those extensive wholes and larger congregations, which it is not necessary to name more particularly in this connection, though they are terms of a 'suggestive' character, to borrow the author's own expression, and belong properly to subjects which this author has just included in his system.
But this is none other than his own philosophy which he seems to be criticising, and rating, and rejecting here so scornfully; but if we go on a little further, we shall find what the criticism amounts to, and that it is only the limitation of it to the general statement—that it is the abstract form of it, which he complains of. He wishes to direct our attention to the fact, that he does not consider it good for anything in that general form in which he has put it in his Book of Learning. This is the deficiency which he is always pointing out in that work, because this is the deficiency which it has been his chief labour to supply. Till that defect, that grand defect which his philosophy exhibits, as it stands in his books of abstract science, is supplied—that defect to which, even in these works themselves, he is always directing our attention—he cannot, without self-contradiction, propound his philosophy to the world as a practical one, good for human relief.
In order that it should accomplish the ends to which it is addressed, it is not enough, he tells us in so many words, to exhibit it in the abstract, in general terms, for these are but 'the husks and shells of sciences.' It must be brought down and applied to those artistic reformations which afflicted, oppressed human nature demands—to those artistic constructions to which human nature spontaneously, instinctively tends, and empirically struggles to achieve.
'For although,' he continues,'such remarks—those last quoted—be just, unless they terminate in MATTER AND CONSTRUCTION, according to the TRUE DEFINITIONS, they are SPECULATIVE, and of LITTLE USE.' But in the Novum Organum, those more natural divisions are reduced to a form in which it IS possible to commence practice with them at once, in certain departments, where there is no objection to innovation,—where the proposal for the relief of the human estate is met without opposition,—where the new scientific achievements in the conquest of nature are met with a universal, unanimous human plaudit and gratulation.
'In the meantime,' he continues, after condemning those abstract terms, and declaring, that unless they terminate in matter and construction, according to true definitions, they are speculative, and of little use—'In the meantime, our classification will suffice, and be of much use in the consideration of the PREDOMINANCE of POWERS, and examining the WRESTLING INSTANCES, which constitute our PRESENT SUBJECT.' [The subject that was present then. The question.]
So that the Novum Organum presents itself to us, in these passages, only as a preparation and arming of the mind for a closer dealing with the nature of things, in particular instances, which are not there instanced,—for those more critical 'WRESTLING INSTANCES' which the scientific re-constructions, according to true definitions, in the higher departments of human want will constitute,—those wrestling instances, which will naturally arise whenever the philosophy which concerns itself experimentally with the question of the predominance of powers—the philosophy which includes in its programme the practical application of the principles of revolution and abhorrence of change, in 'greater congregations' and 'extensive wholes,' as well as the principles of motion in 'particular forms'—shall come to be applied to its nobler, to its noblest subjects. That is the philosophy which dismisses its technicalities, which finds such words as these when the question of the predominance of powers, and the question of revolution and abhorrence of change in the greater congregations and extensive wholes, comes to be practically handled. This is the way we philosophise 'when we come to particulars.'
'In a rebellion,
When what's not meet, but what must be, was law,
Then were they chosen. In a better hour,
Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
And throw their power in the dust.'
That is what we should call, in a general way, 'the motion of revolution' in our book of abstractions; this is the moment in which it predominates over 'the abhorrence of change,' if not in the extensive whole—if not in the whole of the greater congregation, in that part of it for whom this one speaks; and this is the critical moment which the man of science makes so much of,—brings out so scientifically, so elaborately in this experiment. But this is a part of science which he is mainly familiar with. Here is a place, for instance, where the motion of particular forms is skilfully brought to the aid of that larger motion. Here we have an experiment in which these petty motives come in to aid the revolutionary movement in the minds of the leaders of it, and with their feather's weight turn the scale, when the abhorrence of change is too nicely balanced with its antagonistic force for a predominance of powers without it.
'But for my single self,
I had as lief not be, as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
I was born free as Caesar; so were you.
* * * * *
Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus; and we, petty men, Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. Brutus and Caesar. What should be in that Caesar? Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Conjure with them; Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar. Now in the name of all the gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our CAESAR feed, That he is grown so great? AGE, thou art shamed: Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods. When went there by an AGE, since the great flood, But it was famed with more than with ONE MAN? When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome, That her wide walls encompassed but One Man? Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough, When there is in it but One Only Man.
* * * * *
What you would work me to, I have some aim;
How I have thought of this, and of these times,
I shall recount hereafter.
Now could I, Casca,
Name to thee a man most like this dreadful night;
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
As doth the lion in the Capitol,
A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
In PERSONAL ACTION; yet prodigious grown,
And fearful as these strange eruptions are.'
''T is Caesar that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?'
'Let it be—WHO IT is: for Romans now
Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.
* * * * *
Poor man, I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the Romans are but sheep. He were no lion, were not Romans hinds. Those that with haste will make a mighty fire, Begin it with—WEAK STRAWS. What trash is—Rome What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves for the base matter to illuminate So vile a thing as—Caesar. But— I perhaps speak this Before a willing bondman.
And here is another case where the question of the predominance of powers arises. In this instance, it is the question of British freedom that comes up; and the tribute—not the tax—that a Caesar—the first Caesar himself, had exacted, is refused 'in a better hour,' by a people kindling with ancestral recollections, throwing themselves upon their ancient rights, and 'the natural bravery of their isle,' and ready to re-assert their ancient liberties.
The Ambassador of Augustus makes his master's complaint at the British Court. The answer of the State runs thus, king, queen and prince taking part in it, as the Poet's convenience seems to require.
'This tribute,' complains the Roman; 'by thee, lately, is left untendered.'
Queen. And, to kill the marvel,
Shall be so ever.
Prince Cloten. There be many Caesars, Ere such another Julius. Britain is A world by itself; and we will nothing pay, For wearing our own noses. [General principles.]
Queen. That opportunity Which then they had to take from us, to resume We have again. Remember, sir, my liege,
[It is the people who are represented here by Cymbeline.]
The kings your ancestors; together with
The natural bravery of your isle; which stands
As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in
With rocks unscaleable, and roaring waters;
With sands, that will not bear your enemies' boats,
But suck them up to the top-mast.
* * * * *
Cloten. Come, there's no more tribute to be paid: Our kingdom is stronger than it was at that time; and, as I said, there is no more such Caesars: other of them may have crooked noses; but, to owe such straight arms, none.
Cymbeline. Son, let your mother end.
Cloten. We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan: I do not say, I am one; but I have a hand.—Why tribute? Why should we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, Sir, no more tribute, pray you now.
Cymbeline. You must know, Till the injurious Romans did extort This tribute from us, we were free: Caesar's ambition …. against all colour, here Did put the yoke upon us; which to shake off, Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon Ourselves to be. We do say then to Caesar, Our ancestor was that Mulmutius, which Ordained OUR LAWS, whose use THE SWORD OF CAESAR Hath too much mangled; whose REPAIR and FRANCHISE, Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed. Mulmutius made our laws, Who was the first of BRITAIN which did put His brows within a golden crown, and called Himself a KING.
That is the tune when the Caesar comes this way, to a people who have such an ancestor to refer to; no matter what costume he comes in. This is Caesar in Britain; and though Prince Cloten appears to incline naturally to prose, as the medium best adapted to the expression of his views, the blank verse of Cymbeline is as good as that of Brutus and Cassius, and seems to run in their vein very much.
It is in some such terms as these that we handle those universal motions on whose balance the welfare of the world depends—'the motions of resistance and connection,' as the Elizabethan philosopher, with a broader grasp than the Newtonian, calls them—when we come to the diagrams which represent particulars. This is the kind of language which this author adopts when he comes to the modifications of those motions which are incident to extensive wholes in the case of the greater congregations; that is, 'revolution' and 'abhorrence of change,' and to those which belong to particular forms also. For it is the science of life; and when the universal science touches the human life, it will have nothing less vivacious than this. It will have the particular of life here also. It will not have abstract revolutionists, any more than it will have abstract butterflies, or bivalves, or univalves. This is the kind of 'loud' talk that one is apt to hear in this man's school; and the clash and clang that this very play now under review is full of, is just the noise that is sure to come out of his laboratory, whenever he gets upon one of these experiments in 'extensive wholes,' which he is so fond of trying. It is the noise that one always hears on his stage, whenever the question of 'particular forms' and predominance of powers comes to be put experimentally, at least, in this class of 'wrestling instances.'
For we have here a form of composition in which that more simple and natural order above referred to is adopted—where those clear scientific classifications, which this author himself plainly exhibits in another scientific work, though he disguises them in the Novum Organum, are again brought out, no longer in the abstract, but grappling the matter; where, instead of the scientific technicalities just quoted—instead of those abstract terms, such as 'extensive wholes,' 'greater congregation,' 'fruition of their natures,' and the like—we have terms not less scientific, the equivalents of these, but more living—words ringing with the detail of life in its scientific condensations—reddening with the glow, or whitening with the calm, of its ideal intensities—pursuing it everywhere—everywhere, to the last height of its poetic fervors and exaltations.
And it is because this so vivid popular science has its issue from this 'source'—it is because it proceeds from this scientific centre, on the scientific radii, through all the divergencies and refrangibilities of the universal beam—it is because all this inexhaustible multiplicity and variety of particulars is threaded with the fibre of the universal science—it is because all these thick-flowering imaginations, these 'mellow hangings,' are hung upon the stems and branches that unite in the trunk of the prima philosophia—it is because of this that men find it so prophetic, so inclusive, so magical; this is the reason they find all in it. 'I have either told, or designed to tell, all,' says the expositor of these plays. 'What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger.' For all the building of this genius is a building on that scientific ground-plan he has left us; and that is a plan which includes all the human field. It is the plan of the Great Instauration.
CHAPTER VII.
VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY.
'My boy Marcius approaches.'
'Why should I war without the walls of Troy,
That find such cruel battle here within?
Each Trojan that is master of his heart,
Let him to field.'
Is not the ground which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish and preserve them, is to reduce them ad principia; a rule in religion and nature, as well as in civil administration? [Again.] Was not the Persian magic a reduction or correspondence of the principles and architectures of nature to the rules and policy of governments?'—['Questions to be asked.']—Advancement of Learning.
It is by means of this popular rejection of the Hero's claims, which the tribunes succeed in procuring, that the Poet is enabled to complete his exhibition and test of the virtue which he finds in his time 'chiefest among men, and that which most dignifies the haver'; the virtue which he finds in his time rewarded with patents of nobility, with patrician trust, with priestly authority, with immortal fame, and thrones and dominions, with the disposal of the human welfare, and the entail of it to the crack of doom—no matter what 'goslings' the law of entail may devolve it on.
He makes use of this incident to complete that separation he is effecting in the hitherto unanalysed, ill-defined, popular notions, and received and unquestioned axioms of practice—that separation of the instinctive military heroism, and the principle of the so-called heroic greatness, from the true principles of heroism and nobility, the true principle of subjection and sovereignty in the individual human nature and in the common-weal.
That martial virtue has been under criticism and suspicion torn the beginning of this action. It was shown from the first—from that ground and point of observation which the sufferings of the diseased common-weal made for it—in no favourable light. It was branded in the first scene, in the person of its Hero, as 'a dog to the commonalty.' It is one of the wretched 'commons' who invents, in his distress, that title for it; but the Poet himself exhibits it, not descriptively only, but dramatically, as something more brutish than that—eating the poor man's corn that the gods have sent him, and gnawing his vitals, devouring him soul and body, 'tooth and fell.' It was shown up from the first as an instinct that men share with 'rats'. It was brought out from the first, and exhibited with its teeth in the heart of the common-weal. The Play begins with a cross-questioning in the civil streets, of that sentiment which the hasty affirmations of men enthrone. It was brought out from the first—it came tramping on in the first act, in the first scene—with its sneer at the commons' distress, longing to make 'a quarry of the quartered slaves, as high' as the plumed hero of it 'could prick his lance'; and that, too, because they rebelled at famine, as slaves will do sometimes, when the common notion of hunger is permitted to instruct them in the principle of new unions; when that so impressive, and urgent, and unappeasable teacher comes down to them from the Capitol, and is permitted by their rulers to induct them experimentally into the doctrine of 'extensive wholes,' and 'larger congregations,' and 'the predominance of powers.' And it so happened, that the threat above quoted was precisely the threat which the founder of the reigning house had been able to carry into effect here a hundred years before, in putting down an insurrection of that kind, as this author chanced to be the man to know.
But the cry of the enemy is heard without; and this same principle, which shows itself in such questionable proofs of love at home, becomes with the change of circumstances—patriotism. But the Poet does not lose sight of its identity under this change. This love, that looks so like hatred in the Roman streets, that sniffs there so haughtily at questions about corn, and the price of 'coals,' and the price of labour, while it loves Rome so madly at the Volscian gates—this love, that sneers at the hunger and misery of the commons at home, while it makes such frantic demonstrations against the common enemy abroad, appears to him to be a very questionable kind of love, to say the least of it.
In that fine, conspicuous specimen of this quality, which the hero of his story offers him—this quality which the hostilities of nations deify—he undertakes to sift it a little. While in the name of that virtue which has at least the merit of comprehending and conserving a larger unity, a more extensive whole, than the limit of one's own personality, 'it runs reeking o'er the lives of men, as 'twere a perpetual spoil'; while under cover of that name which in barbaric ages limits human virtue, and puts down upon the map the outline of it—the bound which human greatness and virtue is required to come out to; while in the name of country it shows itself 'from face to foot a thing of blood, whose every motion is timed with dying cries,' undaunted by the tragic sublimities of the scene, this Poet confronts it, and boldly identifies it as that same principle of state and nobility which he has already exhibited at home.
That sanguinary passion which the heat of conflict provokes is but the incident; it is the principle of acquisition, it is the natural principle of absorption, it is the instinct that nature is full of, that nature is alive with; but the one that she is at war with, too—at war with in the parts—one that she is forever opposed to, and conquering in the members, with her mathematical axioms—with her law of the whole, of 'the worthier whole,' of 'the greater congregation'; it is that principle of acquisition which it is the business of the state to set bounds to in the human constitution—which gets branded with other names, very vulgar ones, too, when the faculty of grasp and absorption is smaller. That, and none other, is the principle which predominates, and is set at large here. The leashed 'dog' of the commonalty at home, is let slip here in the conquered town. The teeth that preyed on the Roman weal there, have elongated and grown wolfish on the Volscian fields. The consummation of the captor's deeds in the captured city—those matchless deeds of valor—the consummation for Coriolanus in Corioli, for 'the conqueror in the conquest,' is—'NOW ALL'S HIS.' And the story of the battle without is—'He never stopped to ease his breast with panting, till he could call both field and city—OURS.'
The Poet sets down nought in malice, but he will have the secret of this LOVE, he will have the heart out of it—this love that stops so short with geographic limits,—that changes with the crossing of a line into a demon from the lowest pit.
But it is a fair and noble specimen, it is a highly-qualified, 'illustrious instance,' of this instinctive heroic virtue, he has seized on here, and made ready now for his experiment; and even when he brings him in, reeking from the fresh battlefield, with the blood undried on his brow, rejoicing in his harvest, even amid the horrors of the conquered town, this Poet, with his own ineffable and matchless grace of moderation, will have us pause and listen while his Coriolanus, ere he will take food or wine in his Corioli, gives orders that the Volscian who was kind to him personally—the poor man at whose house he lay—shall be saved, when he is so weary with slaying Volscians that 'his very memory is tired,' and he cannot speak his poor friend's name.
He tracks this conqueror home again, and he watches him more sharply than ever—this man, whose new name is borrowed from his taken town. CORIOLANUS of CORIOLI. Marcius, plain Caius Marcius, now no more. He will think it treason—even in the conquered city he will resent it—if any presume to call him by that petty name henceforth, or forget for a breathing space to include in his identity the town—the town, that in its sacked and plundered streets, and dying cries—that, with that 'painting' which he took from it so lavishly, though he scorned the soldiers who took 'spoons'—has clothed him with his purple honours: those honours which this Poet will not let him wear any longer, tracked in the misty outline of the past, or in the misty complexity of the unanalysed conceptions of the vulgar, the fatal unscientific opinion of the many-headed many; that old coat of arms, which the man of science will trace now anew (and not here only) with his new historic pencil, which he will fill now anew—not here only—which he will fill on another page also, 'approaching his particular more near'—with all its fresh, recent historic detail, with all its hideous, barbaric detail.
He is jealous,—this new Poet of his kind,—he is jealous of this love that makes such work in Volscian homes, in Volscian mother's sons, under this name, 'that men sanctify, and turn up the white of the eyes to.' He flings out suspicions on the way home, that it is even narrower than it claims to be: he is in the city before it; he contrives to jet a jar into the sound of the trumpets that announce its triumphant entry; he has thrown over all the glory of its entering pageant, the suspicion that it is base and mercenary, that it is base and avaricious, though it puts nothing in its pocket, but takes its hire on its brows.
Menenius. Brings a victory in his pocket. Volumnia. On's brows Menenius.
He surprises the mother counting up the cicatrices. He arrests the cavalcade on its way to the Capitol, and bids us note, in those private whispers of family confidence, how the Camp and the Capitol stand in this hero's chart, put down on the road to 'our own house.' Nay, he will bring out the haughty chieftain in person, and show him on his stage, standing in his 'wolfish gown,' showing the scars that he should hide, and asking, like a mendicant, for his hire. And though he does it proudly enough, and as if he did not care for this return, though he sets down his own services, and expects the people to set them down, to a disinterested love for his country, it is to this Poet's purpose to show that he was mistaken as to that. It is to his purpose to show that these two so different things which he finds confounded under one name and notion in the popular understanding here, and, what is worst of all, in the practical understanding of the populace, are two, and not one. That the mark of the primal differences, the original differences, the difference of things, the simplicity of nature herself divides them, makes two of them, two,—not one. He has caught one of those rude, vulgar notions here, which he speaks of elsewhere so often, those notions which make such mischief in the human life, and he is severely separating it—he is separating the martial virtue—from the true heroism, 'with the mind, that divine fire.' He is separating this kind of heroism from that cover under which it insinuates itself into governments, with which it makes its most bewildering claim to the popular approbation.
He is bound to show that the true love of the common-weal, that principle which recognises and embraces the weal of others as its own, that principle which enters into and constitutes each man's own noblest life, is a thing of another growth and essence, a thing which needs a different culture from any that the Roman Volumnia could give it, a culture which unalytic, barbaric ages—wanting in all the scientific arts—could not give it.
He will show, in a conspicuous instance, what that kind of patriotism amounts to, in the man who aspires to 'the helm o' the State,' while there is yet no state within himself, while the mere instincts of the lower nature have, in their turn, the sway and sovereignty in him. He will show what that patriotism amounts to in one so schooled, when the hire it asks so disdainfully is withheld. And he will bring out this point too, as he brings out all the rest, in that large, scenic, theatric, illuminated lettering, which this popular design requires, and which his myth furnishes him, ready to his hand. He will have his 'transient hieroglyphics,' his tableaux vivants, his 'dumb-shows' to aid him here also, because this, too, is for the spectators—this, too, is for the audience whose eyes are more learned than their ears.
It is a natural hero, one who achieves his greatness, and not one who is merely born great, whom the Poet deals with here. 'He has that in his face which men love—authority.' 'As waves before a vessel under sail, so men obey him and fall below his stern.' The Romans have stripped off his wings and turned him out of the city gates, but the heroic instinct of greatness and generalship is not thus defeated. He carries with him that which will collect new armies, and make him their victorious leader. Availing himself of the pride and hostility of nations, he is sure of a captaincy. His occupation is not gone so long as the unscientific ages last. The principle of his heroism and nobility has only been developed in new force by this opposition. He will have a new degree; he will purchase a new patent of it; he will forge himself a new and better name, for 'the patricians are called good citizens.' He will forget Corioli; Coriolanus now no more, he will conquer Rome, and incorporate that henceforth in his name. He will make himself great, not by the grandeur of a true citizenship and membership of the larger whole, in his private subjection to it,—not by emerging from his particular into the self that comprehends the whole; he will make himself great by subduing the whole to his particular, the greater to the less, the whole to the part. He will triumph over the Common-weal, and bind his brow with a new garland. That is his magnanimity. He will take it from without, if they will not let him have it within. He will turn against that country, which he loved so dearly, that same edge which the Volscian hearts have felt so long. 'There's some among you have beheld me fighting,' he says. 'Come, try upon yourselves what you have seen me?' He is only that same narrow, petty, pitiful private man he always was, in the city, and in the field, at the head of the Roman legions, and in the legislator's chair, when, to right his single wrong, or because the people would not let him have all from them, he comes upon the stage at last with Volscian steel, and sits down, Captain of the Volscian armies, at Rome's gates.
'This morning,' says Menenius, after the reprieve, 'this morning for ten thousand of your throats, I'd not have given a doit.' But this is only the same 'good citizen' we saw in the first scene, who longed to make a quarry of thousands of the quartered slaves, as high as he could prick his lance! That was 'the altitude of his virtue' then. It is the same citizenship with its conditions altered.
So well and thoroughly has the philosopher done his work throughout—so completely has he filled the Roman story with his 'richer and bolder meanings,' that when the old, familiar scene, which makes the denouement of the Roman myth, comes out at last in the representation, it comes as the crowning point of this Poet's own invention. It is but the felicitous artistic consummation of the piece, when this hero, in his conflicting passions and instincts, gives at last, to one private affection and impulse, the State he would have sacrificed to another; when he gives to his boy's prattling inanities, to his wife's silence, to the moisture in her eyes, to a shade less on her cheek, to the loss of a line there, to his mother's scolding eloquence, and her imperious commands, the great city of the gods, the city he would have offered up, with all its sanctities, with all its household shrines and solemn temples, as one reeking, smoking holocaust, to his wounded honour. That is the principle of the citizenship that was 'accounted GOOD' when this play began, when this play was written.
'He was a kind of nothing, titleless,— Till he had forged himself a name i' the fire Of burning Rome.'
That is his modest answer to the military friend who entreats him to spare the city.
'Though soft-conscienced men may be content to say it was for his country, he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud.'
Surely that starving citizen who found himself at the beginning of this play, 'as lean as a rake' with this hero's legislation, and in danger of more fatal evils, was not so very wide of the truth, after all, in his surmise as to the principles of the heroic statesmanship and warfare, when he ventured thus early on that suggestion. The State banished him, as an enemy, and he came back with a Volscian army to make good that verdict. But his sword without was not more cruel than his law had been within. It was not starving only that he had voted for. 'Let them hang,' ay—(ay) 'and BURN TOO,' was 'the disposition' they had 'thwarted',—measuring 'the quarry of the quartered slaves,' which it would make, 'would the nobility but lay aside their ruth.' That was the disposition, that was the ignorance, the blind, brutish, demon ignorance, that 'in good time' they had thwarted. They had ruled it out and banished it from their city on pain of death, forever; they had turned it out in its single impotence, and it came back 'armed;' for this was one of rude nature's monarchs, and outstretched heroes.
Yet is he conquered and defeated. The enemy which has made war without so long, which has put Corioli and Rome in such confusion, has its warfare within also, and it is there that the hero is beaten and slain. For there is no state or fixed sovereignty in his soul. Both sides of the city rise at once; there is a fearful battle, and the red-eyed Mars is dethroned. The end which he has pursued at such a cost is within his reach at last; but he cannot grasp it. The city lies there before him, and his dragon wings encircle it; there is steel enough in the claws and teeth now, but he cannot take it. For there is no law and no justice of the peace, and no general within to put down the conflict of changeful, warring selfs, to suppress the mutiny of mutually opposing, mutually annihilating selfish dictates.
In vain he seeks to make his will immutable; for the single passion has its hour, this 'would-do' changes. With the impression the passion changes, and the purpose that is passionate must alter with it, unless pure obstinacy remain in its place, and fulfil the annulled dictate. For such purpose, one person of the scientific drama tells us—one who had had some dramatic experience in it,—