the sense, and the form, not the expression of thought, is the chief thing. In the face of such principles we must turn elsewhere to establish the true educational value of the art of language and the disciplines subsidiary thereto; and in the course of our inquiry we shall also ascertain what is true and what false in the ancient view of the subject. He who would speak, or write, or make a poem, must have something to say. An art of language that does not proceed from a content-whether of thought or feeling to be embodied in words is unreal. But this content can not be properly expressed unless the speaker or writer takes into consideration the expressions that have been coined for the ideas, concepts, and feelings; i.e., he must pay due regard to the thoughts and feelings embodied in language through the work of many generations. The speaker or writer can not express his ideas clearly and fully until he finds the right equation between these two factors, the mind content and the language content. It is a case of changing the old rule, "proprie communia dicere, to read, "propria communibus dicere. To express oneself involves, as it were, a compromise between one's individual thought and feeling and that collective thought and feeling which is embodied in language. If too much scope is allowed to the latter, the speaker drifts aimlessly on and is borne along by the stream of language. But if, on the other hand, too much scope is allowed to the individual's thought and feeling, the writer will miss the many concepts, apperceptions, and turns of thought to which language has been adapted through the long and varied thought activity of the race; and this will not only reflect upon the form of the composition, but will also materially enfeeble its content. The true art of language is an art of intellectual wrestling: the writer must struggle and wrestle with the language so as to subject its powers and instruments to his individual thought; in no other way can language be brought to do justice to this specific thought. The art of language is also the art of the advocate: the writer appears at the bar of language, and, while holding firmly to his own intellectual content, pleads strongly for as great a share as possible of the intellectual property of the nation. 1 Newman, Idea of a University (London, 1902, pp. 282-283), speaks of the "absurdity of making sentences the very end of literary labour," where "the style outruns the sense," and refers to Isocrates and Dr. Johnson as examples of this practice. Of Isocrates and some of the Sophists he says that they "were set on words, to the neglect of thought or things." 3. In this point of view, the art of language affords a double training: it necessitates, first, the working up of the objective content of thoughts and feelings embodied in language and, secondly, the elaboration of the subjective thoughts and feelings. It teaches us more than merely the use of the conventional instruments of language, because it shows us how to master those media that are employed to express adequately whatever has been recognized as true; and in this respect it cultivates, not only the taste, but also the sense of truth. Hence the art of language is no mean educational instrument. At the same time it is a real art in that it establishes a coincidence between subjective and objective thought-the subjective thought being worked into the material of language, and the objective thought being placed with all its powers at the service of the subjective thought. The works of literary art embrace, then, not only poems and orations, but every piece of writing as well as every saying that is so worded as to lose in strength or beauty if any change were made in its form. Now, there are certain phases of this art that may well be made the subject of teaching and exercises, and consequently, there is ample opportunity in literary art for the technical disciplines. However, the art of oratory, which is restricted to oratory, and prosody, which is restricted to poetry, are of less general importance than rhetoric, which, taken in its broadest meaning, is "the art of adapting discourse, in harmony with its subject and occasion, to the requirements of a reader or hearer" (Genung). In view of this double aim, rhetoric may also be defined as the science dealing with the linguistic expression of thought and with language as embodying thought. The ancient evaluation of the art of language is therefore justifiable to a certain degree. Moreover, there is a mean between the formalism, to which the ancient conception may lead, and the materialism, which attends to the content to the utter neglect of the form. And this happy mean points the way to the attainment of what the ancients strove for in their art of language the spiritualization of one's personality. The relation between language technique and the classics is a much less debated question: there can be no doubt that practicing an art will open the eyes to beauties never noted before; and rhetoric study and rhetoric exercises are the straight road leading to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the great books of the world. When comparing the masterpieces of literature with his own exercises, the pupil will appreciate and enjoy the former much more than if the teacher merely drew his attention to their beauties. "There is a greater educational gain," says Jean Paul, "in writing one page than in reading a whole book. He might have added that writing that one page will also teach the pupil how to read a whole book. The mastery of any art involves a long apprenticeship; and even if our purpose is, not to imitate the masterpieces, but only to understand and appreciate them, yet even then must the hammers resound and the chisels carve the blocks of marble (müssen die Hämmer tönen und die Meissel knirschen). CHAPTER XIX. Polite Literature. 1. The masterpieces of language are the philological element (in a narrow sense) of education and thus represent one of the chief elements of general education. They are the monuments that the spirit of the language and nation has reared; and as a sacred trust does each generation transmit them to its successors. They are eloquent witnesses to the progress made by a nation in the beautiful expression of the broadly human. They are the cream of what a nation has recorded in writing and the basis of polite learning-nay, the basis, to a degree, of the sciences in general. Horace has well said of the poet that "His lessons form the child's young lips, and wean The boyish ear from words and tales unclean; As years roll on, he moulds the ripening mind, The example of the past to after days, Consoles affliction, and disease allays."1 Poetry deals with sensuous materials, but is borne aloft on the wings of fancy and draws upon the first source of language forms and so quickens and refreshes human speech, which would otherwise degenerate under the hard usage of daily life. But over and above this service-though not a small service indeedit refreshes the whole content of human life: it infuses into man's 1 Horace, Epist., II, 126 sq. (Conington's translation.) life new and sublime elements and thereby prevents him, who is absorbed in material pursuits, from losing sight of the ideal. A sublime mission has been committed to poetry: it is to raise man above the low and common; also to familiarize him with the world of feelings, pictures, and thoughts; and thus to satisfy in somewhat his longing for the ideal. Poetry must employ, in accordance with these manifold functions, many various forms, and its domain must be universal in extent. Hence it employs the epic with its lavish richness of action and character, the drama with its strong passions of sympathy and fear, the soulstirring song, the pithy epigram, the passionate and moving appeal of the oration, the charm and variety of the story, the novel, the description, the dialogue. And for his material the poet draws upon the whole world: he lets us see the outer world. from within and in a spiritualized form; and the inner world he visualizes by giving, as Shakespeare puts it, “to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. He expresses feelings in the manner of thoughts, and to thoughts he gives the form of feelings. Thus poetry touches at one and the same time the life of the soul at many points. The pictures of poetry, taken from the sensuous sphere, stimulate the intercourse between the mind. and the world of sense; and the feelings and thoughts contained in the pictures direct the mind to the inner world. With its message from the distant and the past poetry invites and also trains the mind's eye to look upon what is remote in time and space. Because of its perfect form, little, if any, effort is needed to retain poetry in the memory. Furthermore, both the form and content of poetry serve for cultivating a refined taste. Again, poetry depicts quick action and changing situations, and in this way readily wins our interest; and it is often the only means for letting a dull mind realize the meaning of interest. In as far as it represents the joys and the sorrows, the hopes and the fears of the human heart, it enkindles sympathy; and by expressing emotions of all kinds and all degrees it renders the reader sensitive and delicate of feeling. Being born of the ideal, it gives eloquent expression to the higher life of the spirit and thereby stimulates the heart's longing for the noble and the sublime. 2. These purifying, idealizing, and humanizing elements of polite literature are interwoven with the elements of the soil whence it grew. Polite literature is the creation as well as the mirror of the national genius. To love and cherish its literature is absolutely necessary for the self-preservation of a nation; and to have its sometime disowned poetry return to honor is synonymous with the rebirth of the nation. "They had no poet and they died," is written on the tombs of all forgotten races. The Greeks had a perennial source of patriotism in the works of Homer; and the Romans, in the poems of Vergil and Horace. Dante and his successors gave the Italians their national consciousness when the political and social institutions failed so to do. The enthusiasm of the German Wars of Liberation was inspired by the rediscovered German poetry of the Middle Ages. In as far as polite literature is a monument of the past history of a nation, it contains a vast wealth of knowledge. The classics are pictures of the successive ages: examine them, and your horizon will be extended beyond the present and you will learn to interpret the past. The work of discovering the tone and color of a certain age, of collecting and combining the characteristic traits of a particular period, will train the inventive powers of the pupil and will teach him the art of combination. Besides, if the making of a complete picture is the aim of our study of literature, this latter subject will include an element even of the arts. True, the study of the classics of a foreign nation does not promote the spirit of national patriotism; still, it contributes the more toward the development of the historical sense. As the foreign language appears more objective and is, therefore, better adapted than the mother-tongue to analytical study, so the picture of an age that lets us forget for a time the here and the now, elicits and trains the powers of observation and penetration much more than the picture of an age to which the student is bound with the very fibers of his being. This educative element of literature has been recognized only since philology came to be considered the reconstruction of the past culture and life of a nation," for this view demands that the reading and study of the classics shall do on a smaller scale what philology does on a larger. Consequently, the philological function proper of language and literature studies is the extending of the mental skyline. These studies contain, however, other elements of knowledge besides those mentioned. Poetry assimilates, because of its 1 W. J. Long, American Literature, New York, 1913, p. 208; cf. R. C. Trench, English Past and Present, London, 1908, p. 4. 2 Vol. I, ch. XXIX, 1. |