ON THE PASSION FOR THE UNIVERSAL.

When I was a younger man than I am now, I was smitten by that ambition for the Universal, not uncommon perhaps in versatile and lively imaginations, which easily master whatever they attempt, and which find therefore labour only a triumph to their self-esteem. I held it as a doctrine, that the mind in its utmost perfection must not be utterly ignorant of any species of human knowledge or accomplishment within its reach, and that the body being a part of us, and that part most prominent and visible, had also a legitimate right to its careful education, for we are not all soul. The frame should indeed be the servant of the mind — but neglect or scorn the slave too much, and he rebels, and may become the tyrant in his turn. The notion of this allaccomplishment, mental and corporeal, is an old one — it is one upon which the character of the Ancient Nations, and of Athens especially, was formed. Alcibiades and Pericles were but incarnations of the genius of their country. But, in truth, the task of circling the round of knowledge was more practicable two thousand years ago than it is now: books were few, speculations contracted, learning flowed with a mighty stream — but not from numerous sources. All the fruits of the Divine Tree were near at hand to the wanderer, and not scattered as they are at present, in myriad grafts, over the surface of the globe. If this was their advantage in the mental, so in the corporeal education, the life which the ancients led — their habits and their customs so entirely dissimilar from the indolent apathy of modern times, were well suited to perfect all the faculties, and to gift with all the graces.

The bath and the gymnasium, which made a necessary part of their existence, served, without an effort, to harmonize, to strengthen, and to embellish. Their very habit of existence brought them beauty. Again; the laws which at Athens were referred entirely to the people — who had to decide not more upon their taxes and their ministers, than upon refinements in music or innovations at the theatre — to approve the new statue, and consider the ornaments of the projected temple — served to diffuse the popular attention, not over all the vulgar necessaries, but all the sublimer arts and elegancies of life: it was necessary to have an eye to grace, an ear to poetry, a nerve to beauty, in order to discharge the daily duties of a citizen. In all things the people were made critics and gentlemen by being in all things legislators and umpires. — Absolute liberty produced universal genius. The stir and ferment, and astonishing activity of those old republics, forced Intellect almost beyond Nature. Their very corruption fostered divine seeds, and the creatures it generated were gods.

These causes combined gave to our ancient models that character of “the all-accomplished,” which the moderns, under different circumstances of society, can never but imperfectly attain.

The division of labour has become necessary to a vast and complex order of civilization, and, no longer living in petty cities, but overpopulated nations, one man cannot hope successfully to unite the poet, the soldier, the philosopher, the artist, the critic; — the oracle of one sex, and the idol of the other. The true character of the Universal has passed away for ever. It is fortunate for us that the world, somewhat early and somewhat roughly, rouses us from this ambition, too excursive for common purposes, if pursued too long — and, that, settled betimes to the pursuit of one career, or to the mastery of one art, we accustom ourselves not to chase the golden apples which lure us from our goal Yet for a short time, at least, this passion has its uses which last throughout our lives: without aiming in youth at the acquisition of many things, we should scarcely in manhood attain perfection in one. Insensibly, through a wide and desultory range, we gather together the vast hoard of thoughts, and images — of practical illustrations of life — of comparisons of the multiform aspects of Truth, whether in men or books, which are the aids and corroborants and embellishments of the single and sole pursuit to which we finally attach ourselves.

We are thus in no danger of becoming the machines of the closet — or the feasters upon one idea. Each individual research into which we have entered may not have been carried to a sufficient depth to open a separate mine. But the broad surface we have ploughed up yields us an abundant harvest. To an active mind it is astonishing what use may be made of every the pettiest acquisition. Gibbon tells us with solemn complacency of the assistance he derived to his immortal work — the sieges and the strategy it expounds — from having served in the Militia! A much wider use of accomplishment is to be found in the instance of Milton: — what a wonderful copiousness of all knowledge, seemingly the most motley, the most incongruous, he has poured into his great poem! Perhaps there is no mighty river of genius which is not fed by a thousand tributary streams. Milton is indeed an august example of the aspiration to the Universal. This severe republican, who has come down to the vulgar gaze in colours so stern though so sublime — had in his early tendencies all that most distinguishes our ideal of the knight and cavalier. No man in these later days was ever by soul and nature so entirely the all-accomplished and consummate gentleman. Beautiful in person — courtly in address — skilled in the gallant exercise of arms — a master of each manlier as each softer art — versed in music — in song — in the languages of Europe — the admired gallant of the dames and nobles of Italy — the cynosure of all eyes “that rained influence and adjudged” — he, the destined Dante of England, was the concentration of our dreams of the Troubadour — and the reality of the imaginary Crichton. In his later life we find the haughty patriot recurring, with a patrician pride, to all the accomplishments he had mastered — the sword as well as lute; and if we could furnish forth the outline of the education he prescribes as necessary to others, we should have no reason to complain that the versatility and the range of Athenian genius had passed away.

Yet this Greek yearning after all lore, not only that instructs, but embellishes, invariably exposes us, with the vulgar, to two charges — superficiality and frivolity — the last accusations which we are likely to deserve. Perhaps no men are more superficial in their views than those who cultivate one branch of learning, and only one branch; — perhaps no men are less superficial than those who know the outlines of many. A man, indeed, who in letters or statesmanship, cultivates only one pursuit, can rarely master it thoroughly. It is by eternal comparisons of truth with truth, that we come to just and profound conclusions; the wider the range of comparisons, the more accurate our inferences. There is an experience of the intellect as well as of the observation, which never can be well attained by exclusive predilections and confined circles.

We find, therefore, in all the deepest masters of the human heart, or of the human mind, an amazingly searching and miscellaneous appetite for knowledge of all sorts, small or great. The statesman who wrote the “Prince,” wrote also comedies and a novel — a treatise on the military Art — and poetry without end. Goethe was a botanist as well as a poet and a philosopher. Shakspeare seems, by the profuse allusions, “enamelling with pied flowers his thoughts of gold,” to have diligently learnt all that his age permitted to one self-educated and not versed betimes in the ancient languages or the physical sciences — yet even of these latter he had taught himself something. You find in him metaphors borrowed from the mechanical arts of life. It was an universal smattering which helped him to be profound. No less universal, no less accomplished, was Bacon, who may be called the Shakspeare of philosophy. With the same pen which demolished the Aristotelism of the schoolmen, he writes a treatise on the laws, a cure for the gout — the translation of a psalm, and an essay on plantations. The men who, on the contrary, are so careful to avoid the Superficial — who plummet only one source of learning, and think that, in order to penetrate to its depth, no time can be spared to sport over other fountains, are usually shallow and headstrong theorists. They go round and round in a narrow circle, and never discover the outlet. Such a man was that pedant mentioned by Boyle, who had devoted his whole life to the study of a single mineral, and who owned he had not ascertained a hundredth part of its properties. These men are not only superficial, they are the truly frivolous — they grow so wedded to their one pursuit, that its pettiest and most insignificant details have a grandeur in their eyes. They are for ever poring over the animalculæ on the one leaf of the Eden tree: they cannot see things that are large — they are spending their lives in the midst of the prodigal world in considering the hundredth part of the properties of a mineral!

Vulgar minds often mistake for frivolities what are but the indications of certain refinement which pervades the whole character, and leaves its stamp upon small things as on great. Most remarkable men have one predominant passion of the intellect strongly developed, which pursues its object into minutiæ. Thus with Goethe, that singular affection for order or harmony which made him the greatest literary artist that ever lived, displayed itself in the neatness of his hand-writing — in his care of the nice arrangement of his furniture and papers — in his hatred to see even a blot of ink upon a manuscript. All this regard to trifles was not frivolity — it was a trait of character — it belonged to the artist: without it he would not have had the habit of mind which made him what he was. We may detect the same traits in a smaller degree in Pope. With him it was less the love of order than of neatness — (a part of order.) In most poets the strongest intellectual passion is the love of beauty: and this often displays itself in the elegance of domestic detail. * * * * * fastidious in the flow of a curtain, is not frivolous — he but manifests the same taste which gives him his acumen in works of art, and polishes to an excess of smoothness the ivory mechanism of his verse.

But this love of beauty in all its aspects is strongest in those whose early years have passed in the attempt to cultivate every faculty and excel in every pursuit. The students of the Universal acquire an almost intuitive instinct into the fluent harmony of things. Their early ambition opens to them a thousand sources of enjoyment. Wherever there is excellence they feel all the rapture of admiration. A landscape, a picture, a statue, a gem, a fine horse, a palace, the possessions of others — if worthy to be admired — their sense of enjoyment makes their own, while they regard; — sympathy, for the moment, appropriates them, and becomes the substitute of envy.

We all flatter ourselves in our favourite tendencies, and, for my own part, I may deceive myself as to the nature of mine — but I consider that to love the Beautiful in all things, to surround ourselves, as far as our means permit, with all its evidences, riot only elevates the thoughts and harmonizes the mind, but is a sort of homage that we owe to the gifts of God and the labours of man. The Beautiful is the Priest of the Benevolent.

Yet, the ambition of the Universal is neither safe nor prudent, unless we cultivate some one pursuit above all the rest, making the others only its ministrants or its reliefs. If we know a little of every thing, it will not do to write upon every thing — but choosing that career of imagination or of thought for which we feel ourselves most fitted, and making this our main object, all the rest that we know or enjoy, illustrates and enlarges the scope of our chief design. It was wise in Milton, or in Homer, to pour the choicest of their multiform lore into their poems; but they might have been justly termed superficial had they written separate essays upon each division of knowledge which they prove themselves to have cultivated. Far from complaining that life is too long, I honour the frankness of the old sage, who, living to a hundred, said his only regret was to die so soon. So vast is the mind of man, so various its faculties, so measureless the range of observation to feed and to elicit his powers, that if we had lived from the birth of the world till now, we could not have compassed a millionth part of that which our capacities, trained to the utmost, would enable us to grasp. — It requires an eternity to develope all the elements of the soul!