such debating-society questions is one of the noblest pieces of Latin prose It ever penned by an Englishman. The Latin differs from Bacon's Latin precisely as Milton himself differed from Bacon. It is eloquent after a different fashion; a magnanimous chant rather than a splendid dissertation. might be worth while to translate the whole into English, so as to compare Milton's essay "On the objects, pleasures and advantages of Knowledge" with others that are better known. Abbreviation here, however, may not be amiss. "This I consider, my hearers, as known and received by all, that the great Maker of the Universe, when he had framed all else fleeting and subject to decay, did mingle with man, in addition to that of him which is mortal, a certain divine breath, and as it were, part of Himself, immortal, indestructible, free from death and all hurt; which, after it had sojourned purely and holily for some time in the earth, as a heavenly visitant, should flutter upwards to its native heaven, and return to its proper place and country; accordingly, that nothing can deservedly be taken into account as among the causes of our happiness, unless it some how or other regards both that everlasting life and this secular one." This being his main proposition, he argues that it is only by the exercise of the soul in contemplation, so as to penetrate beyond the grosser aspects of phenomena to the cardinal ideas of things human and divine, that man can be true to his origin and destiny, and so in the higher sense happy. He then passes, in poetic rather than in logical order, to such thoughts related to his subject as successively present themselves. "That there have been many very learned men who were bad, many more who were slaves to anger, hatred, and evil lusts; and that, on the other hand, men ignorant of letters have proved themselves good and excellent - what of that? Is ignorance the more blessed state? By no means! **Where no arts flourish, where all learning is exterminated, there there is no trace of a good man; but cruelty and horrid barbarism stalk abroad. I call as witness to this fact not one state, or province, or race, but Europe, the fourth part of the globe, over the whole of which some centuries past all good arts had perished. The presiding Muses had then long left all academies; blind inertness had invaded and occupied all things; nothing was heard in the schools except the impertinent dogmas of most stupid monks; the profane and formless monster, Ignorance, having forsooth obtained a gown, capered boastingly through our empty reading-desks and pulpits, and through our squalid cathedrals. Then piety languished, and religion was extinguished and went to wreck, so that even but lately, and scarce even at this day, has there been a recovery from the heavy wound. But, truly, my hearers, it is sufficiently agreed upon, as an old maxim in philosophy, that the cognizance of every art and every science belongs only to the Intellect, but that the home and abode of the virtues and of goodness is the Will. Since, however, in the judgment of all, the human intellect shines as chief and ruler over the other faculties of the mind, it governs and illuminates the will itself, otherwise blind and dark; the will, as the moon, then shining with borrowed light. Wherefore, though we concede and spontaneously allow that virtue without knowl edge is better for a happy life than knowledge without virtue, yet, when once they have been mutually consociated by a happy connection, - -as they chiefly ought, and as very often happens, - then straightway Science appears and shines forth far superior, with countenance erect and lofty, and places itself on high with king and emperor Intellect, and thence regards as humble and low under foot whatever is done in the Will." The orator then passes to civil life and historical instances. After speaking of great princes who had voluntarily retired, in the end of their lives, into the recluse enjoyment of letters, as a happiness higher than that of conquest or statesmanship, he continues: "But the greatest share of civil happiness is generally made to consist in human companionship and the contracting of friendships. Now, many complain that most very learned men are harsh, uncourteous, of ill-ordered manners, with no grace of speech for the conciliation of men's minds. I admit, indeed, that one who is almost wholly secluded and immersed in studies, is readier to address the gods than men — whether because he is generally at home with the gods, but a stranger and pilgrim in human affairs, or because the mind, having been made larger by the constant contemplation of divine things, and so wriggling with difficulty in the straits of the body, is less clever at the more exquisite gestures of salutation (ad exquisitiores salutationum gesticulationes). But if worthy and suitable friendships are formed by such a person, no one cherishes them more sacredly; for what can be imagined pleasanter or happier than those colloquies of learned and most grave men, such as the divine Plato is said to have often largely held under his plane-tree, — colloquies worthy, surely, to be received with the attentive silence of the whole human race flocking to hear! But to talk together stupidly, to humor one another in luxury and lusts-this is the friendship of Ignorance, or truly rather the ignorance of Friendship (Ignorantiæ est amicitia, aut certe Amicitiæ ignorantia). 'Moreover, if civil happiness consists in the honorable and liberal delectation of the mind, there is a pleasure in Learning and Art which easily surpasses all pleasures besides. What a thing it is to have compassed the whole humor of heaven and its stars; all the motions and vicissitudes of the air, whether it terrifies untaught minds by the august sound of its thunders, or by the blazing hair of its comets, or whether it stiffens into snow and hail, or whether it descends soft and placid in rain and dew; then to have thoroughly learnt the alternating winds, and all the exhalations or vapors which earth or sea gives forth; thereafter to have become skilled in the secret forces of plants and metals, and understanding in the nature and, if possible, the sensations of animals; further, to have studied the exact structure and medicine of the human body, and finally the divine vis and vigor of the mind, and whether any knowl edge reaches us of what are called guardian spirits and genii and demons! There are other infinite things besides, a good part of which might be learnt before I could have enumerated them all. So, at length, my hearers, when once universal learning has finished its circles, the soul, not content with this darksome prison-house, will reach out far and wide till it shall have filled the world itself, and space beyond that, in the divine expatiation of its magnitude. * * And what additional pleasure it is to the mind to wing its way through all the histories and local sites of nations, and to turn to the account of prudence and of morals the conditions and mutations of kingdoms, states, cities, and peoples! This is, my hearers, to be present as if alive in every age, and to be born as it were coeval with time itself; verily, while for the glory of our name we look forward into the future, this will be to extend and outstretch life backward from the womb, and to extort from unwilling fate a certain foregone immortality. "I omit that, with which what else is there to be counted equivalent? To be the oracle of many nations; to have one's house a kind of temple; to be such as kings and commonwealths invite to come to them, such as neighbors and foreigners flock to visit, such as to have even once seen shall be boasted of by others as something meritorious - these are the rewards, these the fruits which learning both can and often does secure for her votaries in private life. 'But what,' it will be said, 'in public life?' It is true the reputation of learning has elevated few, nor has the reputation of goodness elevated many more, to the summit of actual majesty. And no wonder! Those men enjoy a kingdom in themselves far more glorious than all dominion over realms; and who, without incurring the obloquy of ambition, affects a double sovereignty? I will add this more, however, that there have been but two men yet who held in their possession as a gift from heaven the universal globe, and shared over all kings and dynasts an empire equal to that of the gods themselves to wit, Alexander the Great and Octavius Cæsar, both of them pupils of philosophy. It is as if a kind of model of election had been divinely exhibited to men, to what sort of man above all the baton and reins of affairs ought to be entrusted (Perinde ac si quoddam electionis exemplar divinitùs exhibitum esset hominibus, quali potissimùm viro clavam et habenas rerum credi oporteret)." particularly that of the ancient The orator then discusses certain cases Spartans and that of the modern Turks- in which it might be said there had been powerful political rule by illiterate men. He disposes of this objection; and proceeds to consider the objection involved in the common complaint that "Life is short and Art long." With all deference to Galen, he says, as the author of that celebrated saying, it depends chiefly on two removable the one the bad tradition of Art itself, the other our own laziness, that this saying does not give place to its opposite, "Life is long and Art is short." In expounding this sentiment, he becomes more than Baconian in his measure of what is possible to man regulating his reason by right methods. causes, --- "If, by living modestly and temperately, we choose rather to tame the first impulses of fierce youth by reason and persevering constancy in study, preserving the heavenly vigor of the mind pure and untouched from all contagion and stain, it would be incredible, my hearers, to us, looking back after a few years, what a space we should seem to have traversed, what a huge sea of learning to have over-navigated with placid voyage. To which, however, this will be an important help,- that one should know the Arts that are useful, and how rightly to select what is useful in the Arts. How many despicable trifles there are, in the first place, among grammarians and rhetoricians! You may hear some talking like barbarians, and others like infants, in teaching their own Art. What is Logic? The queen, truly, of Arts, if treated according to her worth. But alas! what madness there is in reason! Here it is not men, but clearly finches that live-live on thistles and thorns! O the hard bowels of those that reap them! Why should I repeat that what the Peripatetics call Metaphysics, is not a most rich Art, as the authority of great men assures me- is not, I say, generally an Art at all, but an infamous tract of rocks, a kind of Lerna of sophisms invented to cause shipwrecks and breed pestilence? ** All those things which can be of no profit being deservedly contemned and cut off, it will be a matter of wonder how many whole years we shall save. * * If from boyhood we allow no day to pass without its lessons and diligent study, if in Art we wisely omit what is foreign, superfluous, useless, certainly, within the age of Alexander the Great, we shall have made a greater and more glorious conquest than that of the globe; and so far shall we be from accusing the brevity of life or the fatigue of Knowledge, that I believe we should be readier, like him of old, to weep and sob that there remained no more worlds for us to triumph over." One last argument, he goes on to say, Ignorance may still plead on her side. It is this: "That, whereas a long series and downward course of years has celebrated the illustrious men of antiquity, we, on the other hand, are under a disadvantage by reason of the decrepit old age of the world, and the fast approaching crash of all things; that if we leave anything to be spoken of with eternal praise, our name has but a narrow space to have dealings with, inasmuch as there is scarcely any posterity to inherit its memory; that already in vain are so many books and excellent monuments of genius being produced which the world's coming pyre will burn in its conflagration!" To this argument he answers as follows: "I do not deny that this may be likely; but, truly, not to wait for glory when one has done well-that itself is above all glory (At verò non morari gloriam cum bene feceris, id supra omnem gloriam est). What a nothing the happiness conferred on those very heroes of the past by the empty speech of men, no pleasure from which, no sense of it at all, could reach the absent and the dead! Let us expect an eternal life, in which at least the memory of our good deeds on earth shall never perish; in which, if we have done anything fairly here, we shall be present to hear of it; in which, as many have speculated, they who have formerly, in this life passed virtuously, given all their time to good acts, and by them been helpful to men, shall be aggrandized with singular and supreme science above all the rest of the immortals." Among the Academic exercises of Milton is clearly to be reckoned the short piece of Latin Iambic verse printed among his Sylva, under the title " De Ideâ Platonica quemadodum Aristoteles intellexit," (" Of the Platonic Idea, as Aristotle understood it.") In what year or in what circumstances it was composed, there is nothing to indicate; but it may be inserted here as an appendage to the series of the prose exercises. It is interesting as showing the nature of Milton's affection for Plato and his philosophy. The following is a literal version: "Say, ye guardian goddesses of the sacred groves; and thou, O Memory, thrice blessed mother of the nine deities; and thou, Eternity, who reclinest at leisure in thy immense and far distant cave, preserving the archives and the fixed laws of Jove, and the annals of heaven and the anniversaries of the gods; - who was that Original after whose type cunning Nature shaped the human race, that eternal, incorrupt being, the coeval of the skies, one and universal, the copy of God? Not as the twin brother of virgin Pallas does he dwell, an internal product, in the mind of Jove; but, although of more general essence than Nature, yet he exists apart in the fashion of one distinct being, and, wonderful to tell, is bound within a definite local space-whether, as an eternal companion of the stars, he roams the ranks of the tenfold heaven, or inhabits that part of the moon's globe which neighbors the earth, or lies sluggish among the souls waiting for the bodies they are to enter by the oblivious waters of Lethe, or, mayhap, in some remote region of the earth, stalks, a huge giant, the archetype of man, and, larger than Atlas, the sustainer of the stars, raises his lofty head to the terror of the gods. Never did even the Dircæan Augur [Tiresias of Thebes], on whom his blindness conferred the gift of inner sight, behold him in secret vision; never did the offspring of Pleione [Mercury], descending in the silent night, show him to the sagacious prophet-choir: never was he known to the Assyrian priest, though he commemorates the long ancestry of ancient Ninus, and primeval Belus, and renowned Osiris; nay, nor has thrice great Hermes, glorious with his triple name, indicated, with all his occult science, any such object to the worshippers of Isis. But thou, perennial ornament of the groves of Academe, if thou wert really the first to introduce this monster of the fancy into the schools, wilt surely either straightway recall the banished poets into thy republic, as being the biggest fabler of them all, or wilt thyself migrate beyond the walls of the city thou hast founded. "At, tu perenne ruris Academi decus, (Hæc monstra si tu primus induxti scholis,) This poem of Milton was reprinted, Warton tells us, in a burlesque book of the year 1715, as "a specimen of unintelligible metaphysics;" but the drift of it, it is to be hoped, will be clear enough to all who have heard of Plato and his ideas. The phrase "as understood by Aristotle," in the title, seems to indicate that Milton did not mean to commit himself to the representation as an absolutely fair one. |