The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

of their own efforts, the accent and

the demeanour of those with whom they live. This instinct, when

adroitly managed, is a means of education; it is, in fact, the

first principle of progress. The Red Indians are not imitative,

and they have now nearly been destroyed; the negroes imitate

like monkeys, and what is the result? They are preachers,

traders, clerks, and artisans, all over the world, and there is

no reason to suppose that they will remain always in the

imitative stage. With respect to individuals it is the same.

Paradoxical as it may appear, it is only the imitative mind

which can attain originality, the artist must learn to copy

before he can create. Mozart began by imitating Bach; Beethoven

began by copying Mozart. Molière mimicked the Greek dramatists

before he learnt to draw from the world. The many-sided

character of Goethe’s mind, which has made him a marvel among

men, was based upon his imitative instincts; it has been said

that he was like a chameleon, taking the hue of the ground on

which he fed. What, in fact, is emulation but a noble form of

imitativeness? Michaelangelo saw a man modelling in clay in

the garden of Lorenzo, and was seized with the desire to become

a sculptor; and most men who have chosen their own vocation

could trace its origin in the same way to some imitative

impulse.

 

Among the primeval men this instinct, together with wonder and

the taste for beauty, explains the origin of art: The tendency

to reproduce with the hand whatever pleases and astonishes the

mind, undoubtedly begins at an early period in the history of

man; pictures were drawn in the period of the mammoth; I once

saw a boy from a wild bush tribe look at a ship with

astonishment and then draw it on the sand with a stick. It

frequently happens in savage life, that a man is seized with a

passion for representing objects, and such a Giotto is always

invited, and perhaps, paid, to decorate walls and doors. With

this wall-painting the fine arts began. Next the outlines were

engraved with a knife, making a figure in relief. Next came a

statue with the back adhering to the wall, and lastly the

sculptured figure was entirely detached. In the same manner

painting was also separated from the wall; and mural painting

was developed into another form of art. By means of a series of

pictures a story was told; the picture-writing was converted

into hieroglyphics, and thence into a system of alphabetical

signs. Thus the statue, the picture, and the book are all

descended from such figures as those which savages scrawl with

charcoal on their hut walls, and which seldom bear much

resemblance to the thing portrayed. The genius of art and the

genius of science are developed by means of priesthoods and

religion but when a certain point has been attained, they must

be divorced from religion, or they will cease to progress.

 

And now, finally, with respect to music. There is a science of

music; but music is not a science. Nor is it an imitative art.

It is a language.

 

Words at first were rather sung than spoken, and sentences were

rhythmical. The conversation of the primeval men was conducted

in verse and song; at a later period they invented prose; they

used a method of speech which was less pleasing to the ear, but

better suited for the communication of ideas. Poetry and music

ceased to be speech, and became an art, as pantomime, which

once was a part of speech, is now an art exhibited upon the

stage. Poetry and music at first were one; the bard was a

minstrel, the minstrel was a bard. The same man was composer,

poet, vocalist, and instrumentalist, and instrument-maker. He

wrote the music and the air; as he sang he accompanied himself

upon the harp, and he also made the harp. When writing came

into vogue the arts of the poet and the musician were divided,

and music again was divided into the vocal and the

instrumental, and finally instrument-making became a distinct

occupation, to which fact may partly he ascribed the

superiority of modern music to that of ancient times.

 

The human language of speech bears the same relation to the

human language of song as the varied bark of the civilised dog

to its sonorous howl. There seems little in common between the

lady who sings at the piano and the dog who chimes in with jaws

opened and nose upraised; yet each is making use of the

primitive language of its race the wild dog can only howl, the

wild woman can only sing.

 

Gestures with us are still used as ornaments of speech, and

some savage languages are yet in so imperfect a condition that

gestures are requisite to elucidate the words. Gestures are

relics of the primeval language, and so are musical sounds.

With the dog of the savage there is much howl in its bark: its

voice is in a transitional condition. The peasants of all

countries sing in their talk, and savages resemble the people

in the opera. Their conversation is of a “libretto” character;

it glitters with hyperbole and metaphor, and they frequently

speak in recitative, chanting or intoning, and ending every

sentence in a musically sounded O! Often also in the midst of

conversation, if a man happens to become excited, he will sing

instead of speaking what he has to say; the other also replies

in song, while the company around, as if touched by a musical

wave, murmur a chorus in perfect unison, clapping their hands,

undulating their bodies, and perhaps breaking forth into a

dance.

 

Just as the articulate or conventional speech has been

developed into rich and varied tongues, by means of which

abstract ideas and delicate emotions can be expressed in

appropriate terms, so the inarticulate or musical speech, the

true, the primitive language of our race, has been developed

with the aid of instruments into a rich and varied language of

sound in which poems can be composed. When we listen to the

sublime and mournful sonatas of Beethoven, when we listen to

the tender melodies of Bellini, we fall into a trance; the

brain burns and swells; its doors fly open; the mind sweeps

forth into an unknown world where all is dim, dusky,

unutterably vast; gigantic ideas pass before us; we attempt to

seize them, to make them our own, but they vanish like shadows

in our arms. And then, as the music becomes soft and low, the

mind returns and nestles to the heart; the senses are steeped

in languor; the eyes fill with tears; the memories of the past

take form; and a voluptuous sadness permeates the soul, sweet

as the sorrow of romantic youth when the real bitterness of

life was yet unknown.

 

What, then, is the secret of this power in music? And why

should certain sounds from wood and wire thus touch our very

heart strings to their tune? It is the voice of Nature which

the great composers combine into harmony and melody; let us

follow it downwards and downwards in her deep bosom, and there

we discover music, the speech of passion, of sentiment, of

emotion, and of love; there we discover the divine language in

its elements; the sigh, the gasp, the melancholy moan, the

plaintive note of supplication, the caressing murmur of

maternal love, the cry of challenge or of triumph, the song of

the lover as he serenades his mate.

 

The spirit of science arises from the habit of seeking food;

the spirit of art arises from the habit of imitation, by which

the young animal first learns to feed; the spirit of music

arises from primeval speech, by means of which males and

females are attracted to each other. But the true origin of

these instincts cannot be ascertained: it is impossible to

account for primary phenomena. There are some who appear to

suppose that this world is a stage-play, and that if we pry

into it too far, we shall discover ropes and pulleys behind the

scenes, and that so agreeable illusions will be spoiled. But

the great masters of modern science are precisely those whom

Nature inspires with most reverence and awe. For as their minds

are wafted by their wisdom into untravelled worlds, they find

new fields of knowledge expanding to the view; the firmament

ever expands, the abyss deepens, the horizon recedes. The

proximate Why may be discovered; the ultimate Why is

unrevealed. Let us take, for instance, a single law. A slight

change invigorates the animal; and so the offspring of the pair

survive the offspring of the single individual. Hence the

separation of the sexes, desire, affection, family love,

combination, gregariousness, clan-love, the Golden Rule,

nationality, patriotism, and the religion of humanity, with all

those complex sentiments and emotions which arise from the fact

that one animal is dependent on another for the completion of

its wants. But why should a slight change invigorate the

animal? And if that question could be answered; we should find

another why behind.

Even when science shall be so far advanced that all the

faculties and feelings of men will be traced with the

precision of a mathematical demonstration to their latent

condition in the fiery cloud of the beginning, the luminous

haze, the nebula of the sublime Laplace: even then the origin

and purpose of creation, the How and the Why, will remain

unsolved. Give me the elementary atoms, the philosopher will

exclaim; give me the primeval gas and the law of gravitation,

and I will show you how man was evolved, body and soul, just as

easily as I can explain the egg being hatched into a chick.

But, then, where did the egg come from? Who made the atoms and

endowed them with the impulse of attraction? Why was it so

ordered that reason should be born of refrigeration, and that a

piece of white-hot star should cool into a habitable world, and

then be sunned into an intellectual salon, as the earth will

some day be? All that we are doing, and all that we can do, is

to investigate secondary laws; but from these investigations

will proceed discoveries by which human nature will be

elevated, purified, and finally transformed.

 

The ideas and sentiments, the faculties and the emotions,

should be divided into two classes; those which we have in

common with the lower animals, and which therefore we have

derived from them; and those which have been acquired in the

human state. Filial, parental, and conjugal affection, fellow-feeling and devotion to the welfare of the community, are

virtues which exist in every gregarious association. These

qualities, therefore, were possessed by the progenitors of man

before the development of language, before the separation of

the foot and the hand. Reproduction was once a part of growth:

animals, therefore, desire to perpetuate their species from a

natural and innate tendency inherited from their hermaphrodite

and animalcule days. But owing to the separation of the sexes,

this instinct cannot be appeased except by means of co-operation. In order that off spring may be produced, two

animals must enter into partnership; and in order that

offspring may be reared, this partnership must be continued for a

considerable time. All living creatures of the higher grade are

memorials of conjugal affection and parental care; they are

born with a tendency to love, for it is owing to love that they

exist. Those animals that are deficient in conjugal desire or

parental love produce or bring up no offspring, and are blotted

out of the book of Nature. That parents and children should

consort together is natural enough; and the family is

multiplied into the herd. At first the sympathy by which the

herd is united is founded only on the pleasures of