CHAPTER III.

THE LAW OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS.

MENTION is made in certain histories of a piece of music composed by Al Farabi (the philosopher who spoke seventy languages), and played before Seifeddoula, Sultan of Syria, the first movement of which threw the prince and his courtiers into fits of laughter (mere imaginative activity); the next melted all into tears (the sense of incongruity vanishing, and sympathy or harmony taking its place); while the last, grandest of all, lulled even the performers to sleep. The story may be taken as an allegory showing that the nobler activities of the mind require the unconsciousness not only of those in whom they are awakened, but also of the awakeners. With the unconsciousness of the artists we have nothing at present to do: that is a subject belonging properly to the theory of poesy. Here we are to treat of unconsciousness as the last and highest law of poetry.] To satisfy the ghost of Locke, let the question be waved, whether in very sound sleep the imagination or any other part of the mind is at work. It will,

however, be generally allowed, that in slumber it accomplishes its most astonishing feats, and that this can be said of no other faculty, unless of spirit, whose unconsciousness-the unconsciousness of the entranced seer, is still deeper. This unconsciousness, in the midst of which, and according as it becomes greater, the imagination revels with greater and greater freedom, is the crowning bliss-the native element, of poetry.

We might arrive at the same conclusion by another route. It must be evident that there are but three possible states of the mind, the poetic, the unpoetic or prosaic, and the antipoetic or philosophic. (The prosaic might also be called the unphilosophic.) Prosing cannot be the antipode of poetry, as is sometimes supposed, any more than is indifference the opposite of love; but is that dull, vacant state of the mind, when it has no eye for beauty, and no ear for truth. Philosophy and poetry, however, are true opposites; every active mind being always engaged either in philosophizing or in poetizing, according to its power. And wherein do philosophy and poetry stand opposed? They may be regarded, each as the work of the whole mind, but evolved from opposite poles. The mind, when philosophizing, dwells in the subjective or self; when poetizing, it is thrown into the objective or unself; as a consequence of which it is self-conscious in the one case, in the other self-forgetting. Very much, indeed, of what people study under the name of science or of philosophy ought

not so to be termed; for the science really is what Coleridge, with his never-failing happiness, has called

a fairy tale of nature," and the philosophy, not being reflective but contemplative, is called most truly poetic philosophy. Poetry, says Longinus, always brings us to an ecstacy (exoтaσis)-an outgoing or outstanding. (ἔκστασις)- —an In this broad sense it may be said of every man in his station that he is either a poet or a philosopher. Iago is too self-conscious for a poet; he is one of those philosophers called men of the world, a thoroughly selfish sharper, who declares that in following the Moor, he follows but himself. On the other hand, look at Othello. Othello, the hero and the lover, is a poet-entirely under the rule of dreams, and who so far forgets himself as to destroy the very being where (in his own language) he had garnered up his heart. The life of such a one, as Campbell said of Sir Philip Sidney, is poetry done into action; and still more forcibly has this been expressed by Ben Jonson, who, remarkably happy as he was in his epitaphs, both those which he gave and that which he got, perhaps never wrote a finer one than the following on his son, which indeed would be perfect but for peace and piece, one sound with two meanings.

"Rest in soft peace, and, askt, say here doth lye

Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."

A child is the very personification of poetry, it is so

unconscious.

The unconsciousness of poetic feeling will further be manifest, if it can be shown that self-consciousness in any form is hurtful to poesy. This will not be difficult. There are three forms in which self-consciousness is most liable to be intruded into a poem, namely, as didactic, as artistic, and as satiric; and none of these can be admitted into a poem without doing much harm.

Take the didactic strain for instance. It is an object with poesy to direct the mind as well as to please. The mind may be directed in two ways; either by precept or by example, either by teaching or by training. The exposition of how, when, and where, as on a map, is teaching; the exercises of a gymnasium constitute training. We see both these methods employed in the services of the Church, in some places the one, and in some the other, being deemed the more important. Sermons are for the most part precept: they expose the anatomy of our own and of other bodies, the arrangements of the different parts, the purposes they fulfil, how they act and how they are acted on; the other services, confession, praise, and prayer, are exercises, a noble running, leaping, and wrestling to fit us for battling with the world and becoming fellow-workers with God. The former is instruction in the theory, the latter is instruction in the practice, of a divine music. Now it is in this latter way that the poet endeavours to influence the mind, trusting in the unconscious power of a sympathy that instinctively leads us to imitate whatever we

can be brought to admire, and stamps upon our souls, for better for worse, the likeness of that which we attempt to imitate; at least, it is in this way that he endeavours to influence the mind by poems of the dramatic and of the lyrical order.] Narrative poems are more akin to sermons in the manner of their influence; but it is to be observed that even sermons have the two methods of influencing. Thus, if the preacher, discoursing about faith, should tell his hearers what it is, and how, and why, and when, and through whom, and by whom, and by what means, it is called into exercise, should proclaim the duty and the rewards of believing, should declare the danger of not believing, and should entreat all by their hopes and by their fears to believe and live, his sermon would be of the preceptive order; but if, on the other hand, without saying a word about that faith to awaken which is the supposed aim of his discourse, he should endeavour by a recital of marvellous Power, Wisdom, and Love to place the object of faith vividly before the mind's eye, expecting it thus to be awakened unaware, and as it were by infection from himself, his sermon would belong to the other, the less conscious order. It is in this way that the narrative poet commonly influences the mind; but when his narrative is didactic, he affects the mind by the former, the conscious, method, as in Sir John Davies' poem on the Immortality of the Soul, and in the Georgics of Virgil. The Georgics are considered

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