No More Learning

The ascent
was virtually accomplished, and a few minutes more of rapid
climbing placed us on the lightning-smitten top. Thus ended the
long contest between me and the Matterhorn.
The day thus far had swung through alternations of fog
and sunshine. While we were on the ridge below, the air at
times was blank and chill with mist; then with rapid solution
the cloud would vanish, and open up the abysses right and left
On our attaining the summit a fog from Italy rolled
over us, and for some minutes we were clasped by a cold and
clammy atmosphere. But this passed rapidly away, leaving above
us a blue heaven, and far below us the sunny meadows of Zer-
matt. The mountains were almost wholly unclouded, and such
clouds as lingered amongst them only added to their magnificence.
of us.


## p. 15148 (#88) ###########################################

15148
JOHN TYNDALL
on
4
1
The Dent d'Érin, the Dent Blanche, the Gabelhorn, the Mischabel,
the range of heights between it and Monte Rosa, the Lyskamm,
and the Breithorn, were all at hand, and clear; while the Weiss-
horn, noblest and most beautiful of all, shook out a banner to-
wards the north, formed by the humid southern air as it grazed
the crest of the mountain.
The world of peaks and glaciers surrounding this immediate
circlet of giants was also open to us up to the horizon. Our
glance over it was brief; for it was eleven o'clock, and the work
before us soon claimed all our attention. I found the débris of
my former expedition everywhere: below, the fragments of my
tents, and on the top a piece of my ladder fixed in the snow as
a flagstaff. The summit of the Matterhorn is a sharp horizontal
arête, and along this we now moved eastward. On our left was
the roof-like slope of snow seen from the Riffel and Zermatt;
our right were the savage precipices which fall into Italy.
Looking to the further end of the ridge, the snow there seemed
to be trodden down; and I drew my companions' attention to
the apparent footmarks. As we approached the place, it became
evident that human feet had been there two or three days pre-
viously. I think it was Mr. Elliot of Brighton who had made
this ascent,—the first accomplished from Zermatt since 1865.
On the eastern end of the ridge we halted to take a little food;
not that I seemed to need it, - it was the remonstrance of reason
rather than the consciousness of physical want that caused me
to do so.
We took our ounce of nutriment and gulp of wine (my only
sustenance during the entire day), and stood for a moment
silently and earnestly looking down towards Zermatt. There was
a certain official formality in the manner in which the guides
turned to me and asked, “Êtes-vous content d'essayer ? ” [“Are
you willing to try ? "] A sharp responsive “Oui! ” set us immedi-
ately in motion. It was nearly half past eleven when we quitted
the summit. The descent of the roof-like slope already referred
to offered no difficulty; but the gradient very soon became more
formidable.
One of the two faces of the Matterhorn pyramid, seen from
Zermatt, falls towards the Zmutt glacier, and has a well-known
snow plateau at its base. The other face falls towards the Furgge
glacier. We were on the former. For some time, however, we
kept close to the arête formed by the intersection of the two


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JOHN TYNDALL
15149
faces of the pyramid; because nodules of rock jutted from it
which offered a kind of footing. These rock protuberances helped
us in another way: round them an extra rope which we carried
was frequently doubled, and we let ourselves down by the rope
as far as it could reach, liberating it afterwards (sometimes with
difficulty) by a succession of jerks. In the choice and use of
these protuberances the guides showed both judgment and skill.
The rocks became gradually larger and more precipitous, a good
deal of time being consumed in dropping down and doubling
round them. Still we preferred them to the snow slope at our
left as long as they continued practicable.
This they at length ceased to be, and we had to commit
ourselves to the slope. It was in the worst possible condition.
When snow first falls at these great heights it is usually dry,
and has no coherence. It resembles to some extent flour, or
sand, or sawdust. Shone upon by a strong sun, it partly melts,
shrinks, and becomes more consolidated; and when subsequently
frozen it may be safely trusted. Even though the melting of
the snow and its subsequent freezing may only be very partial,
the cementing of the granules adds immensely to the safety of
the footing. Hence the advantage of descending such a slope
before the sun has had time to unlock the rigidity of the night's
frost. But we were on the steepest Matterhorn slope during the
two hottest hours of the day, and the sun had done his work
effectually. The layer of snow was about fifteen inches thick.
In treading it we came immediately upon the rock, which in
most cases was too smooth to furnish either prop or purchase. It
was on this slope that the Matterhorn catastrophe occurred; it is
on this slope that other catastrophes will occur, if this mountain
should ever become fashionable.
Joseph Maquignaz was the leader of our little party; and a
brave, cool, and competent leader he proved himself to be. He
was silent, save when he answered his brother's anxious and
oft-repeated question, Es-tu bien placé, Joseph ? ” Along with
being perfectly cool and brave, he seemed to be perfectly truth-
ful. He did not pretend to be “ bien placé » when he was not,
nor avow a power of holding which he knew he did not possess.
Pierre Maquignaz is, I believe, under ordinary circumstances, an
excellent guide, and he enjoys the reputation of being never
tired. But in such circumstances as we encountered on the Mat-
terhorn he is not the equal of his brother. Joseph, if I may
»


## p. 15150 (#90) ###########################################

15150
JOHN TYNDALL
-
use the term, is a man of high boiling point, his constitutional
sangfroid resisting the ebullition of fear. Pierre, on the con-
trary, shows a strong tendency to boil over in perilous places.
Our progress was exceedingly slow, but it was steady and
continued. At every step our leader trod the snow cautiously,
seeking some rugosity on the rock beneath it. This however
was rarely found, and in most cases he had to establish a me-
chanical attachment between the snow and the slope which bore
it. No semblance of a slip occurred in the case of any one of
us; and had it occurred, I do not think the worst consequences
could have been avoided. I wish to stamp this slope of the
Matterhorn with the character that really belonged to it when
I descended it; and I do not hesitate to say that the giving way
of any one of our party would have carried the whole of us to
ruin. Why, then, it may be asked, employ the rope ? The rope, I
reply, notwithstanding all its possible drawbacks under such cir-
cumstances, is the safeguard of the climber. Not to speak of the
,
moral effect of its presence, an amount of help upon a dangerous
slope that might be measured by the gravity of a few pounds is
often of incalculable importance; and thus, though the rope may
be not only useless but disastrous if the footing be clearly lost,
and the glissade fairly begun, it lessens immensely the chance of
this occurrence.
With steady perseverance, difficulties upon a mountain, as
elsewhere, come to an end. We were finally able to pass from
the face of the pyramid to its rugged edge, where it was a great
relief to feel that honest strength and fair skill, which might
have gone for little on the slope, were masters of the situation.
Standing on the arête, at the foot of a remarkable cliff gable
seen from Zermatt, and permitting the vision to range over the
Matterhorn, its appearance is exceedingly wild and impressive.
Hardly two things can be more different than the two aspects of
the mountain from above and below. Seen from the Riffel, or
Zermatt, it presents itself as a compact pyramid, smooth and
steep, and defiant of the weathering air. From above, it seems
torn to pieces by the frosts of ages; while its vast facettes are so
foreshortened as to stretch out into the distance like plains. But
this underestimate of the steepness of the mountain is checked
by the deportment of its stones. Their discharge along the side
of the pyramid to-day was incessant; and at any moment, by de-
taching a single bowlder, we could let loose a cataract of them,
1


## p. 15151 (#91) ###########################################

JOHN TYNDALL
15151
soon
which flew with wild rapidity and with a thunderous clatter down
the mountain. We once wandered too far from the arête, and
were warned back to it by a train of these missiles sweeping
past us.
As long as our planet yields less heat to space than she
receives from the bodies of space, so long will the forms upon
her surface undergo mutation; and as as equilibrium in
regard to heat has been established, we shall have, as Thomson
has pointed out, not peace but death. Life is the product and
accompaniment of change; and the selfsame power that tears the
flanks of the hills to pieces is the mainspring of the animal and
vegetable worlds. Still there is something chilling in the contem-
plation of the irresistible and remorseless character of those infi-
nitesimal forces, whose integration through the ages pulls down
even the Matterhorn. Hacked and hurt by time, the aspect of
the mountain from its higher crags saddened me. Hitherto the
impression that it made was that of savage strength; but here we
had inexorable decay.
This notion of decay, however, implied a reference to a period
when the Matterhorn was in the full strength of mountainhood.
My thoughts naturally ran back to its possible growth and origin.
Nor did they halt there; but wandered on through molten worlds
to that nebulous haze which philosophers have regarded, and
with good reason, as the proximate source of all material things.
I tried to look at this universal cloud, containing within itself
the prediction of all that has since occurred; I tried to imagine
it as the seat of those forces whose action was to issue in solar
and stellar systems, and all that they involve. Did that form-
less fog contain potentially the sadness with which I regarded the
Matterhorn? Did the thought which now ran back to it simply
return to its primeval home? If so, had we not better recast our
definitions of matter and force ? for if life and thought be the
very flower of both, any definition which omits life and thought
must be inadequate if not untrue.
Questions like these, useless as they seem, may still have a
practical outcome. For if the final goal of man has not been
yet attained, if his development has not been yet arrested, who
can say that such yearnings and questionings are not necessary to
the opening of a finer vision, to the budding and the growth
of diviner powers? Without this upward force could man have
risen to his present height? When I look at the heavens and the


## p. 15152 (#92) ###########################################

15152
JOHN TYNDALL
are
earth, at my own body, at my strength and weakness of mind.
even at these ponderings, and ask myself, Is there no being or
thing in the universe that knows more about these matters than
I do? — what is my answer? Supposing our theologic schemes of
creation, condemnation, and redemption to be dissipated; and the
warmth of denial which they excite, and which, as a motive force,
can match the warmth of affirmation, dissipated at the same time:
would the undeflected human mind return to the meridian of
absolute neutrality as regards these ultra-physical questions? Is
such a position one of stable equilibrium ?
Such the questions, without replies, which could run
through consciousness during a ten-minutes' halt upon the weath-
ered spire of the Matterhorn.
We shook the rope away from us, and went rapidly down the
rocks. The day was well advanced when we reached the cabin,
and between it and the base of the pyramid we missed our way.
It was late when we regained it, and by the time we reached the
ridge of the Hörnli we were unable to distinguish rock from ice.
We should have fared better than we did if we had kept along
the ridge and felt our way to the Schwarz See, whence there
would have been no difficulty in reaching Zermatt; but we left
the Hörnli to our right, and found ourselves incessantly checked
in the darkness by ledges and precipices, possible and actual. We
were afterwards entangled in the woods of Zmutt, carving our
way wearily through bush and bramble, and creeping at times
along dry and precipitous stream-beds. But we finally struck the
path and followed it to Zermatt, which we reached between one
and two o'clock in the morning.
THE CLAIMS OF SCIENCE
From the Belfast Address)
T
RACE the line of life backwards, and see it approaching more
and more to what we call the purely physical condition.
We come at length to those organisms which I have com-
pared to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of alcohol and
water. We reach the protogenes of Haeckel, in which we have
"a type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its
finely granular character. " Can we pause here? We break a


## p. 15153 (#93) ###########################################

JOHN TYNDALL
15153
magnet and find two poles in each of its fragments. We con-
tinue the process of breaking; but however small the parts, each
carries with it, though enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. And
when we can break no longer, we prolong the intellectual vision
to the polar molecules. Are we not urged to do something sim-
ilar in the case of life? Is there not a temptation to close to
some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that “Nature is seen
to do all things spontaneously of herself, without the meddling
of the gods”? or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter is
not that 'mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured
her to be, but the universal mother, who brings forth all things
as the fruit of her own womb”? Believing as I do in the con-
tinuity of nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes
cease to be of use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively
supplements the vision of the eye. By an intellectual necessity I
cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in
that Matter — which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers,
and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have
hitherto covered with opprobrium — the promise and potency of
all terrestrial life.
If you ask me whether there exists the least evidence to prove
that any form of life can be developed out of matter, without
demonstrable antecedent life, my reply is that evidence considered
perfectly conclusive by many has been adduced; and that, were
some of us who have pondered this question to follow a very
common example, and accept testimony because it falls in with
our belief, we also should eagerly close with the evidence referred
But there is in the true man of science a wish stronger than
the wish to have his beliefs upheld, -namely, the wish to have
them true; and this stronger wish causes him to reject the most
plausible support if he has reason to suspect that it is vitiated
by error. Those to whom I refer as having studied this ques-
tion, believing the evidence offered in favor of "spontaneous gen-
eration to be thus vitiated, cannot accept it. They know full
well that the chemist now prepares from inorganic matter a vast
array of substances which were some time ago regarded as the
sole products of vitality. They are intimately acquainted with
the structural power of matter as evidenced in the phenomena
of crystallization. They can justify scientifically their belief in its
potency, under the proper conditions, to produce organisms. But
in reply to your question, they will frankly admit their inability
XXVI–948
to.
.
1


## p. 15154 (#94) ###########################################

15154
JOHN TYNDALL
»
to point to any satisfactory experimental proof that life can be
developed save from demonstrable antecedent life.
As already
indicated, they draw the line from the highest organisms through
lower ones down to the lowest; and it is the prolongation of this
line by the intellect beyond the range of the senses that leads
them to the conclusion which Bruno so boldly enunciated.
The “materialism ” here professed may be vastly different
from what you suppose, and I therefore crave your gracious
patience to the end. « The question of an external world,” says
Mr. J. S. Mill, "is the great battle-ground of metaphysics. ” Mr.
Mill himself reduces external phenomena to "possibilities of sen-
sation. ” Kant, as we have seen, made time and space « forms »
of our own intuitions. Fichte, having first by the inexorable logic
of his understanding proved himself to be a mere link in that
chain of eternal causation which holds so rigidly in nature, vio-
lently broke the chain by making nature, and all that it inherits,
an apparition of his own mind. And it is by no means easy to
combat such notions. For when I say I see you, and that I have
not the least doubt about it, the reply is, that what I am really
conscious of is an affection of my own retina.
And if I urge
that I can check my sight of you by touching you, the retort
would be that I am equally transgressing the limits of fact; for
what I am really conscious of is, not that you are there, but that
the nerves of my hand have undergone a change. All we hear,
and see, and touch, and taste, and smell, are, it would be urged,
mere variations of our own condition, beyond which, even to the
extent of a hair's-breadth, we cannot go. That anything answer-
ing to our impressions exists outside of ourselves is not a fact,
but an inference, to which all validity would be denied by an
idealist like Berkeley, or by a skeptic like Hume. Mr. Spencer
, .
takes another line. With him, as with the uneducated man, there
is no doubt or question as to the existence of an external world.
But he differs from the uneducated, who think that the world
really is what consciousness represents it to be. Our states of
consciousness are mere symbols of an outside entity, which pro-
duces them and determines the order of their succession, but the
real nature of which we never know. In fact, the whole
process of evolution is the manifestation of a' Power absolutely
inscrutable to the intellect of man. As little in our day as in the
days of Job can man by searching find this Power out. Con-
sidered fundamentally, then, it is by the operation of an insoluble
can


## p. 15155 (#95) ###########################################

JOHN TYNDALL
15155
-
mystery that life on earth is evolved, species differentiated, and
mind unfolded, from their prepotent elements in the unmeasur-
able past. There is, you will observe, no very rank materialism
here,
The strength of the doctrine of evolution consists, not in an
experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible
to this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific
thought.
From contrast, moreover, it derives enormous relative strength.
On the one side, we have a theory (if it could with any pro-
priety be so called) derived, as were the theories referred to at
the beginning of this address, not from the study of nature, but
from the observation of men - a theory which converts the
Power whose garment is seen in the visible universe into an
artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by broken
efforts as a man is seen to act. On the other side, we have
the conception that all we see around us, and all we feel within
us, - the phenomena of physical nature as well as those of the
human mind,- have their unsearchable roots in a cosmical life
(if I dare apply the term), an infinitesimal span of which is
offered to the investigation of man. And even this span is only
knowable in part. We can trace the development of a nervous
system, and correlate with it the parallel phenomena of sensation
and thought. We see with undoubting certainty that they go
hand in hand. But we try to soar in a vacuum the moment
we seek to comprehend the connection between them. An Archi-
medean fulcrum is here required which the human mind cannot
command; and the effort to solve the problem, to borrow a com-
parison from an illustrious friend of mine, is like the effort of
a man trying to lift himself by his own waistband. All that
has been here said is to be taken in connection with this funda-
mental truth. When nascent senses are spoken of, when the
differentiation of a tissue at first vaguely sensitive all over
. » is
spoken of, and when these processes are associated with the
(
modification of an organism by its environment,” the same paral-
lelism, without contact or even approach to contact, is implied.
Man the object is separated by an impassable gulf from man the
subject. There is no motor energy in intellect to carry it without
logical rupture from the one to the other.
Further, the doctrine of evolution derives man in his total-
ity from the interaction of organism and environment through
(
>>
(


## p. 15156 (#96) ###########################################

15156
JOHN TYNDALL
countless ages past. The human understanding, for example, -
that faculty which Mr. Spencer has turned so skillfully round
upon its own antecedents,- is itself a result of the play between
organism and environment through cosmic ranges of time.
Never surely did prescription plead so irresistible a claim. But
then it comes to pass that, over and above his understanding,
there are many other things appertaining to man whose pre-
scriptive rights are quite as strong as those of the understanding
itself. It is a result, for example, of the play of organism and
environment, that sugar is sweet and that aloes are bitter, that
the smell of henbane differs from the perfume of a rose. Such
facts of consciousness (for which, by the way, no adequate rea-
son has yet been rendered) are quite as old as the understand-
ing; and many other things can boast an equally ancient origin.
Mr. Spencer at one place refers to that most powerful of pas-
sions, the amatory passion, as one which when it first occurs is
antecedent to all relative experience whatever; and we may pass
its claim as being at least as ancient and valid as that of the
understanding. Then there are such things woven into the text-
ure of man as the feelings of awe, reverence, wonder; and not
alone the sexual love just referred to, but the love of the beau-
tiful, physical, and moral, in nature, poetry, and art. There is
also that deep-set feeling, which since the earliest dawn of his-
tory, and probably for ages prior to all history, incorporated itself
in the religions of the world. You who have escaped from these
religions into the high-and-dry light of the intellect may deride
them; but in so doing you deride accidents of form merely, and
fail to touch the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in
the nature of man. To yield this sentiment reasonable satisfac-
tion is the problem of problems at the present hour.
tesque in relation to scientific culture as many of the religions
of the world have been and are,- dangerous, nay destructive, to
the dearest privileges of freemen as some of them undoubtedly
have been, and would, if they could, be again,- it will be wise
to recognize them as the forms of a force, mischievous if per-
mitted to intrude on the region of knowledge, over which it holds
no command, but capable of being guided to noble issues in the
region of emotion, which is its proper and elevated sphere.
All religious theories, schemes, and systems, which embrace
notions of cosmogony, or which otherwise reach into the domain
of science, must, in so far as they do this, submit to the control
And gro-
>


## p. 15157 (#97) ###########################################

JOHN TYNDALL
15157
source.
of science, and relinquish all thought of controlling it. Acting
otherwise proved disastrous in the past, and it is simply fatuous
to-day. Every system which would escape the fate of an organ-
ism too rigid to adjust itself to its environment, must be plastic
to the extent that the growth of knowledge demands. When
this truth has been thoroughly taken in, rigidity will be relaxed,
exclusiveness diminished, things now deemed essential will be
dropped, and elements now rejected will be assimilated. The lift-
ing of the life is the essential point; and as long as dogmatism,
fanaticism, and intolerance are kept out, various modes of lever-
age may be employed to raise life to a higher level. Science itself
not unfrequently derives a motive power from an ultra-scientific
Whewell speaks of enthusiasm of temper as a hindrance
to science; but he means the enthusiasm of weak heads. There
is a strong and resolute enthusiasm in which science finds an
ally; and it is to the lowering of this fire, rather than to the
diminution of intellectual insight, that the lessening productive-
ness of men of science in their mature years is to be ascribed.
Mr. Buckle sought to detach intellectual achievement from moral
force. He gravely erred; for without moral force to whip it into
action, the achievements of the intellect would be poor indeed.
It has been said that science divorces itself from literature;
but the statement, like so many others, arises from lack of
knowledge. A glance at the least technical writings of its lead-
ers — of its Helmholtz, its Huxley, and its Du Bois-Reymond -
would show what breadth of literary culture they command.
Where among modern writers can you find their superiors in
clearness and vigor of literary style ? Science desires not isola-
tion, but freely combines with every effort towards the bettering
of man's estate. Single-handed, and supported not by outward
sympathy but by inward force, it has built at least one great
wing of the many-mansioned home which man in his totality
demands. And if rough walls and protruding rafter-ends indi-
cate that on one side the edifice is still incomplete, it is only
by wise combination of the parts required, with those already
irrevocably built, that we can hope for completeness. There
is no necessary incongruity between what has been accomplished
and what remains to be done. The moral glow of Socrates, which
we all feel by ignition, has in it nothing incompatible with the
physics of Anaxagoras which he so much scorned, but which he
would hardly scorn to-day.


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JOHN TYNDALL
3
And here I am reminded of one amongst us, hoary but still
strong, whose prophet-voice some thirty years ago, far more than
any other of his age, unlocked whatever of life and nobleness lay
latent in its most gifted minds; one fit to stand beside Socrates
or the Maccabean Eleazar, and to dare and suffer all that they
suffered and dared, — fit, as he once said of Fichte, “to have
been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of beauty
and virtue in the grove of Academe. ” With a capacity to grasp
physical principles which his friend Goethe did not possess, and
which even total lack of exercise has not been able to reduce to
atrophy, it is the world's loss that he, in the vigor of his years,
did not open his mind and sympathies to science, and make its
conclusions a portion of his message to mankind. Marvelously
endowed as he was, equally equipped on the side of the heart
and of the understanding, he might have done much towards
teaching us how to reconcile the claims of both, and to enable
them in coming times to dwell together in unity of spirit, and
in the bond of peace.
And now the end is come. With more time or greater strength
and knowledge, what has been here said might have been better
said, while worthy matters here omitted might have received fit
expression. But there would have been no material deviation
from the views set forth. As regards myself, they are not the
growth of a day; and as regards you, I thought you ought to
know the environment which, with or without your consent, is
rapidly surrounding you, and in relation to which some adjust-
ment on your part may be necessary. A hint of Hamlet's, how-
ever, teaches us all how the troubles of common life may be
ended; and it is perfectly possible for you and me to purchase
intellectual peace at the price of intellectual death. The world is
not without refuges of this description; nor is it wanting in per-
sons who seek their shelter, and try to persuade others to do the
same. The unstable and the weak will yield to this persuasion,
and they to whom repose is sweeter than the truth. But I would
exhort you to refuse the offered shelter, and to scorn the base
repose; to accept, if the choice be forced upon you, commotion
before stagnation, the leap of the torrent before the stillness of
the swamp.
In the course of this address I have touched on debatable ques-
tions, and led you over what will be deemed dangerous ground;
and this partly with the view of telling you that as regards


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JOHN TYNDALL
15159
these questions, science claims unrestricted right of search. It is
not to the point to say that the views of Lucretius and Bruno,
of Darwin and Spencer, may be wrong.
Here I should agree
with you, deeming it indeed certain that these views will under-
go modification. But the point is, that whether right or wrong,
we ask the freedom to discuss them. For science, however,
no exclusive claim is here made; you are not urged to erect
it into an idol. The inexorable advance of man's understanding
in the path of knowledge, and those unquenchable claims of his
moral and emotional nature which the understanding can never
satisfy, are here equally set forth. The world embraces not only
a Newton, but a Shakespeare; not only a Boyle, but a Raphael;
not only a Kant, but a Beethoven; not only a Darwin, but a Car-
lyle. Not in each of these, but in all, is human nature whole.
They are not opposed, but supplementary; not mutually exclusive,
but reconcilable. And if, unsatisfied with them all, the human
mind, with the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant home, will
turn to the Mystery from which it emerged, seeking so to fash-
ion it as to give unity to thought and faith;- so long as this is
done not only without intolerance or bigotry of any kind, but
with the enlightened recognition that ultimate fixity of conception
is here unattainable, and that each succeeding age must be held
free to fashion the Mystery in accordance with its own needs,-
then, casting aside all the restrictions of materialism, I would
affirm this to be a field for the noblest exercise of what, in con-
trast with the knowing faculties, may be called the creative
faculties of man.
« Fill thy heart with it,” said Goethe, "and then name it as
thou wilt. ” Goethe himself did this in untranslatable language.
Wordsworth did it in words known to all Englishmen, and which
may be regarded as a forecast and religious vitalization of the
latest and deepest scientific truth :-
“For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,-
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime


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15160
JOHN TYNDALL
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts,
And rolls through all things. ”
1
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15161
TYRTÆUS, ARCHILOCHUS,
AND THEIR SUCCESSORS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF
GREEK LYRIC
(700-450 B. C. )
BY H. RUSHTON FAIRCLOUGH
«Their songs divine
Who mixed for Grecian mouths heaven's lyric wine. ”
- SWINBURNE, (On the Cliffs. )
T is hardly necessary, 'I imagine, to insist upon the intrinsic
and permanent value of Greek poetry. As a body of liter-
ature, Greek poetry is the richest legacy that the modern
world has received from ancient times. The epic poems of Greece,
the Iliad and Odyssey, whether we regard them as the work of one
mind or the still more wonderful result of a school of bards, are in
their freshness, strength, and artistic beauty without a rival in the
early literature of nations. Greek tragedy under the masters, Æschy-
lus, Sophocles, and Euripides, comprises works of consummate genius,
which take rank with the highest tragic art of all times. Greek
comedy, at least that of Aristophanes, is unique in the history of
literature; and in later times the pastoral Muse of Theocritus sings
with a delicacy and sweetness that have never been surpassed.
In the sphere of lyric poetry Greece was no less great; but of the
ancient lyric writers the modern world is for certain reasons compar-
atively ignorant.
The Iliad and Odyssey have come down to us in their entirety.
In the case of the dramatists, though only a tithe of what they
wrote has survived, still so prolific were these masters, that that tithe
is very considerable. But the lyric writers have met misfortune at
the hands of time. In the case of many, their works are completely
lost; and as for the rest, mere scraps and fragments of their songs
are all that we can pick up. The only lyric poet of whom we can
know much, because much of him is preserved, is Pindar; and Pin-
dar's grand triumphal odes, written as they were to celebrate the
glories of victors in a chariot or foot race, a boxing or wrestling
match, are so elaborate and difficult of construction, and so alien in


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TYRTÆUS, ARCHILOCHUS, ETC.
spirit to modern literary taste, that it is no easy matter to appre-
ciate his grandeur.
It may be asked why the great bulk of Greek lyric verse has dis-
appeared. The main answer is to be found in the essential character
of that poetry. It was song-poetry; i. l. , poetry composed for singing,
the soul of which vanished when the music passed away. After the
loss of Greek independence, Greek music rapidly degenerated. The
music composed by the poets of the classical period was too severe
and noble for the Greeks of later days. The older songs, therefore,
were no longer sung; and the poetry, minus its music, giving way
to shallow and sensational compositions, passed into oblivion.
Scanty however as are the fragments of Greek lyric poetry, these
scanty fragments are of priceless value. The little we possess makes
every lover of literature pray that among the rediscovered treasures
of antiquity, to which every year of late has made valuable contribu-
tions, many more of these lost lyrics may come to light.
In one sense or another, singing was characteristic of nearly all
forms of Greek poetry. The earliest conditions of epic recitation
may be realized from certain scenes in the Odyssey. In one passage
(viii. 62 ff. ) the shipwrecked Odysseus is a guest in the palace of King
Alcinous. The feast is spread, and the great hall is thronged with
Phæacians, when in the midst appears the blind Demodocus, led by
the King's herald, who sets the minstrel on a high chair inlaid with
silver, hangs up his lyre, and brings him a basket of bread and a
goblet of wine. After the feast the minstrel is stirred by the Muse
to sing the deeds of famous men, and his theme is a quarrel between
Odysseus and Achilles, “whereof the fame had reached the wide
heaven. ” At another feast (i. 325 ff. ) the suitors of Penelope compel
Phemius the minstrel to take his lyre and sing to them.
deals with the return of the Achæans from Troy; and as he sings,
Penelope in an upper room, with tears in her eyes, listens to the
strain.
Thus epic poetry, at least in the earliest times, was sung to the
lyre; but this singing was probably unlike the later recitations by
the rhapsodists, for the verse of Homer is unsuited for melodies, and
Greek writers uniformly distinguish epic from lyric, — the former
being narrative poetry, the latter song poetry.
Even elegiac poetry was not regarded by the Greeks as lyric; and
yet elegiac verse was originally sung to the music of the flute, an
instrument used both on mournful occasions and also at festive social
gatherings. But as melodies were found to be inappropriate with the
hexameter of epic verse, so their use was not long continued with
the elegiac couplet, which in its metrical form is so closely allied to
the hexameter.
His lay


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TYRTÆUS, ARCHILOCHUS, ETC.
15163
no
Still less lyric in character was the iambic verse of satire, which
was first perfected by Archilochus of Paros. Iambic metre, the metre
of English blank verse, is (as Aristotle long ago perceived) of all
verse forms the least removed from prose. And yet the iambics of
Archilochus, according to Plutarch, were sometimes sung. More fre-
quently this verse was given in recitative with musical accompani-
ment.
Both elegiac and iambic poetry, then, though originally lyrical, at
an early time lost their distinctly lyrical character; and even if their
recitation at a funeral or in camp or round the banqueting-board was
accompanied by music, yet they were more regarded by the
Greeks as lyrical than were the poems of Homer. For the sake of
convenience, however, and because of their subject-matter, these forms
are usually included under the head of lyric poetry by historians of
Greek literature.
During the epic period in Greece, lyric poetry existed mainly in
an embryonic, undeveloped state. Epic poetry held undisputed sway
till near the end of the eighth century before our era. Then began
a movement in the direction of political freedom. Oligarchies and
democracies took the place of ancient monarchies; the planting of col-
onies and the extension of commerce gave an impetus to the spirit
of enterprise and individual development; and the citizen began to
assume his proper rôle as a factor in the life of the State.
It was coincident with this change that lyric poetry — the poetry
thať voiced, not the ancestral glory of kings and princes, but the
feelings and experience of the individual — entered upon its course of
artistic development. The Ionians of Asia Minor were perhaps the
first Greeks among whom democratic institutions came to life. They
were certainly the most active in commercial and colonizing enter-
prises by land and sea, as well as the first to enter the hitherto un-
explored field of speculative philosophy.
To the student of Greek history, lyric poetry is very significant.
Without it we should hardly realize the great extent of the Greek
world toward east and west. Greece would mean little more than
Athens and Sparta. But lyric poetry widens ‘our vision.
Here we
learn of the wealth and luxury of the Asiatic Ionians, of the oble
chivalry and refinement of life in the Æolian isles of the Ægean sea,
of the beauty and grace of festal celebrations in the Dorian Pelopon-
nesus, in southern Italy and distant Sicily. Then comes Pindar, the
heroes of whose triumphal odes are Greeks hailing from all corners
of the known world,— from the coasts of the Black Sea, or the col-
onies of far-off Libya and remote Gaul.
In Ionic Greece the new poetry took two forms, - elegiac and
iambic. The structure of elegiac verse shows its close connection
with the epic; for it is written in couplets, of which the first line is
-


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TYRTÆUS, ARCHILOCHUS, ETC.
1
i
the ordinary hexameter as employed by Homer, and the second the
same line abbreviated to five feet. The name elegy, however, indi-
cates the presence of a foreign element; for it comes from that of a
plaintive instrumental dirge, in vogue among certain tribes of Asia
Minor, especially the Phrygians, to which people belonged Olympus, a
musical reformer of the eighth century. As adopted by the Greeks,
elegy was not confined to mournful themes, but its application varied
as much as that of the flute, the Asiatic instrument which at first
accompanied it.
The earliest Greek elegists of whom we have any records are Cal-
linus and Tyrtæus, who lived as contemporaries at the beginning of
the seventh century B. C. Callinus, it is true, is a rather shadowy
personage; but he was regarded by the Greeks as the inventor of
elegy, and is known to have lived at Ephesus in Ionia, at a time
when Asia Minor was overrun by hordes of Cimmerians, who came
down from the northern shores of the Black Sea.
Tyrtæus, according to tradition, was born in Attica; but his poetic
career centres in Sparta. Here, during and after the second Messe-
nian war, there was much civic discord; and both Tyrtæus the poet
and Terpander the musician are said to have been publicly invited
by the Lacedæmonians to apply the resources of art in inspiring a
lofty patriotism, and thus healing the wounds of the body politic.
The lame Attic schoolmaster for tradition thus describes Tyrtaus
was eminently successful in his noble task; and the Spartans not
only conferred upon the poet the rare favor of citizenship, but did
him the greater honor of preserving his poems from age to age, and
revering them as national songs. These were sung by the soldiers
round the camp-fires at night; and the officers rewarded the best singer
with extra rations. Tyrtæus also composed choruses for groups of old
men, young men, and boys, the general character of which may be
inferred from the following popular ditty, which was sung to a dance
accompaniment:-
(a) In days of yore, most sturdy youths were we.
(6) That we are now: come, watch us, if
(c) But we'll be stronger far than all of you. *
.
you will.
Famous too were the marching-songs of Tyrtæus, which were
accompanied by flute music, and sung by the soldiers advancing to
battle. These were written in the tripping anapæstic measure, and
in the Dorian dialect. One example may be paraphrased thus:
On, ye glory of Sparta's youth!
Ye whose sires are the city's might:
* Unless otherwise credited, translations are by the essayist.
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TYRTÆUS, ARCHILOCHUS, ETC.
15165
:
Grasp the shield with the left hand thus,
Boldly poise the spear in the right;
Of your lives' worth take ye no heed, -
Sparta knows not a coward's deed.
It is for his elegies, however, that Tyrtæus is most favorably
known. True to their origin, these poems, though addressed to a
Dorian audience, are written in the Ionic dialect. We have fragments
of one elegy called (Good Government,' which eulogizes the Spartan
constitution and King Theopompus, one of the heroes of the first Mes-
senian war. But most of the elegies of Tyrtæus are less distinctly
political, and aim simply at infusing into the citizen soldiery a spirit
of valor, military honor, and contempt for cowardice. The following
is a rendering of one of these martial elegies, by the poet Thomas
Campbell. The picture of the youth whose fair form lies outstretched
in death, is not only pathetic and beautiful but also peculiarly
Greek:
HOW GLORIOUS fall the valiant, sword in hand,
In front of battle for their native land!
But oh! what ills await the wretch that yields,
A recreant outcast from his country's fields!
The mother whom he loves shall quit her home,
An aged father at his side shall roam;
His little ones shall weeping with him go,
And a young wife participate his woe;
While, scorned and scowled upon by every face,
They pine for food, and beg from place to place.
Stain of his breed! dishonoring manhood's form,
All ills shall cleave to him; affliction's storin
Shall blind him wandering in the vale of years,
Till, lost to all but ignominious fears,
He shall not blush to leave a recreant's name,
And children, like himself, inured to shame.
But we will combat for our fathers' land,
And we will drain the life-blood where we stand,
To save our children: fight ye side by side,
And serried close, ye men of youthful pride,
Disdaining fear, and deeming light the cost
Of life itself in glorious battle lost.
1
Leave not our sires to stem the unequal fight,
Whose limbs are nerved no more with buoyant might;
Nor, lagging backward, let the younger breast
Permit the man of age (a sight unblest)


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TYRTÆUS, ARCHILOCHUS, ETC.
To welter in the combat's foremost thrust,
His hoary head disheveled in the dust,
And venerable bosom bleeding bare.
But youth's fair form, though fallen, is ever fair,
And beautiful in death the boy appears, –
The hero boy, that dies in blooming years:
In man's regret he lives, and woman's tears;
More sacred than in life, and lovelier far,
For having perished in the front of war.
In striking contrast with Tyrtæus and Callinus, whose elegies are
so full of martial spirit, stands Mimnermus, an Ionian poet of Smyrna,
who flourished near the end of the seventh century B. C. This cen-
tury witnessed the gradual subjection of the Asiatic Greeks to the
Lydian yoke; and from Mimnerinus we gather that his Ionian fellow-
countrymen, who in former days had successfully resisted the bar-
barian might, were now sunk in inglorious inactivity and fettered in
complacent slavery. Yet the poet can rejoice in the brave days of
old, when on the Hermian plain the spearman mowed down the
dense ranks of Lydian cavalry, and Pallas Athene ne'er found fault
with his keen valor, as on he rushed in the vanguard, escaping the
piercing arrows of his foes in the clash of bloody battle. ” The
poet's forefathers too once “left lofty Pylus, home of Neleus, and
came in ships to lovely Asia, and in fair Colophon settled with the
might of arms, being leaders of fierce boldness; and thence they
passed by the counsel of the gods and captured Æolian Smyrna. ”
But the prevailing tone of Mimnermus's verse is that of luxurious
indolence and sensual enjoyment. This is the main characteristic
of those elegies, which are addressed to a favorite flute-player called
Nanno.
Where's life or joy, when Love no more shines fair?
2
The beauty of comely youth fires the poet with the heat of intense
passion:-
Then down my body moisture runs in streams,
As gazing on the bloom of joyous youth,
I tremble oft; so bright are beauty's beams.
But his heart is flooded with melancholy; for all this joy and beauty
remind Mimnermus that crabbed age, “unhappy and graceless,” is
coming on apace,
And cherished youth is short-lived as a dream.
As Homer had said long before, we are but as the leaves which
appear with the flowers of spring”; and “when springtime is past,
((


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1
.
1
TYRTÆUS, ARCHILOCHUS, ETC.
15167
then is it better to die than live »: for at our side stand two black
Fates, one of gloomy age and the other of death”; and of the two,
old age and death, the soft, effeminate, pleasure-loving Mimnermus
hesitates not to choose the latter:-
1
1
1
1
1
AH! FAIR and lovely bloom the flowers of youth-
On men and maids they beautifully smile;
But soon comes doleful eld, who, void of ruth,
Indifferently afflicts the fair and vile:
Then cares wear out the heart; old eyes forlorn
Scarce reck the very sunshine to behold,
Unloved by youths, of every maid the scorn,-
So hard a lot God lays upon the old.
Translation of John Addington Symonds.
WA.
If disease and care trouble not, Mimnermus would make sixty years
the extreme limit of life to be desired; but his younger contempo-
rary, the Athenian Solon, who had little sympathy with such gloomy
views, appeals to the "sweet singer” to change his three to four score
years.
Mimnermus, a pure hedonist, lived only for the sensual pleasures
that life could afford; and when these were withdrawn, life was to
him no longer worth living. The poet had no sublime religious
faith, no lofty philosophy, to guide and comfort his soul; and at a
time when Greece was still in her youth, and almost before she had
entered upon her wonderful career of glorious achievement, this
bright intellect sinks into a nerveless ennui, and gives way to a
world-weary pessimism.
Mimnermus lived before his time; and it is therefore a less re-
markable fact that when elegiac verse was long afterwards cultivated
by learned poets and versifiers in the artificial society of Alexandria
and Augustan Rome, the sweet sentimental Mimnermus should have
been more often taken as a model than were the saner and more
robust writers of early Greek elegy.
From elegiac we pass to iambic verse; which, like elegy, has an
Ionic origin, is written in the Ionic dialect, and lies midway between
epic and lyric poetry proper. But there is this important difference
between iambic and elegiac verse: the latter is in form but slightly
removed from the dignified measure of heroic poetry; the former -
the metre of English blank verse — is but one remove from the lan-
guage of every-day life. It is therefore suitable for poetry of a per-
sonal tone and conversational style; and thus it became the common
form for miscellaneous subjects of no great elevation in thought, as
well as for sharp satire and dramatic dialogue.
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TYRTÆUS, ARCHILOCHUS, ETC.
There is a story that connects the name ia mbic with the festi-
vals of Demeter. When that goddess was bewailing the loss of her
daughter Persephone, none could relieve her grief until the maid
Iambe, with her sparkling witticisms, raised a smile on the sorrowful
mother's lips. Archilochus, the reputed inventor of iambic poetry,
was a competitor with his verses at the feasts of Demeter; and it is
doubtless in the freedom of satiric and jocular utterance tolerated
on such occasions, that we are to seek the origin of this species of
verse.
Both iambic and elegiac verse were often cultivated by the same
poets. Certain fragments of the elegies of Archilochus, as well as of
Solon, have come down to us. In one elegy Archilochus lamented,
in graceful language, the loss of a friend at sea. In another we find
the martial tone of Callinus. «I serve the Lord of war,” says the
soldier-poet, and am skilled in the Muses' pleasing gifts. With my
spear I earn my kneaded bread, with my spear my Thracian wine,
and when I drink 'tis on my spear I rest. ”
Archilochus was born in the island of Paros, one of the Cyclades,
and flourished at the beginning of the seventh century B. C. His
father Telesicles was man of aristocratic rank, but his mother
Enipo was a slave. While a mere youth he accompanied his father,
when the latter led to Thasos, in the northern Ægean, a colony of
gold-seekers from Paros.
To the young man, disappointed in his
quest, Paros with her figs and sailor life seemed infinitely superior
to Thasos which «like a donkey's back, stands crowned with wild
wood. 'Tis a place by no means fair or lovely or pleasant, as is the
land by Siris's streams. ” This allusion to the Siris would seem to
imply that the poet had previously traveled to southern Italy. Archilo-
chus soon found the condition of Thasos to be desperate:
a
>>>
All the woes of Hellas throng the Thasian isle,
(
((
over which the stone of Tantalus was suspended. ” The colonists
attempted to gain a foothold on the mainland opposite, but the
Thracian tribes drove them back; and in one conflict Archilochus,
though he managed to save his life, had to part with his shield.
“I'll get another just as fine," he adds with cheerful composure.
This roving soldier-poet afterwards engaged in war in Eubea, and
visited Sparta; but the paternal government of that model State
would have none of him, and he was promptly ordered to withdraw.
Subsequently he returned to his native place, and was eventually
killed in a battle between the Parians and the people of the neigh-
boring island of Naxos.
The poet's private life was not of a high type, and seems to have
been deeply colored by his ill-success in love. He was betrothed to


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TYRTÆUS, ARCHILOCHUS, ETC.
15169
Neobule, daughter of Lycambes, a Parian, and was passionately en-
amored of the girl.
But oh! to touch the hand of her I love!
he sighs; and then gives us this simple and beautiful picture:-
Holding a myrtle rod she blithely moved,
And a fair blossoming rose; the flowing hair
Shadowed her shoulders, falling to her girdle.
Translation of J. A. Symonds.
we
In the depth of personal feeling, and the impetuosity and fire of his
passion for Neobule, Archilochus belongs to the same class as the Les-
bian singers, Alcæus and Sappho. “So strong,” he writes, « was the
storm of love which gathered in my heart, that over my eyes it
poured a heavy mist, and from my brain stolė my wits away. ”
For what reason can only conjecture, Lycambes withdrew his
consent to the marriage of his daughter; whereupon the poet, in
furious rage, assailed him with merciless abuse, embracing in his
venomous attack — for chivalry was a virtue unrecognized by Archilo-
chus — both Neobule herself and her innocent sisters. To illustrate
the power of this master of satire, tradition assures us that Lycambes
and his daughters were driven to self-destruction. Good reason, then,
had Archilochus to utter in blunt fashion the unchristian boast :
One mighty art full well I know-
To punish sore my mischief-working foe.
We possess but scanty fragments of the poems of Archilochus,
and therefore are unable to form for ourselves a correct judgment
upon his merits. There is, however, plenty of evidence to show
in what esteem he was held by antiquity. Though Homer stood
supreme above all other poets, yet Archilochus, summo proximus, was
placed in the same rank. In statuary they were represented together;
and Quintilian assures us that if Archilochus was inferior to any other
poet, the inferiority, in the opinion of many, was due to his subject-
matter, not his genius. When Plato made his first assaults upon the
Sophists, Gorgias exclaimed, “Athens has found a new Archilochus. ”
The Roman Horace claimed to be not merely the Alcæus but also
the Archilochus of Rome. “I was the first,” he says, “to show to
Latium Parian iambics; following the metre and spirit of Archilochus,
but not his subjects or words.