The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 34, August, 1860

We all know that the arm and hand of a monkey, the foreleg and foot of a dog and of a horse, the wing of a bat, and the fin of a porpoise are fundamentally identical; that the long neck of the giraffe has the same and no more bones than the short one of the elephant; that the eggs of Surinam frogs hatch into tadpoles with as good tails for swimming as any of their kindred, although as tadpoles they never enter the water; that the Guinea-pig is furnished with incisor teeth which it never uses, as it sheds them before birth; that embryos of mammals and birds have branchial slits and arteries running in loops, in imitation or reminiscence of the arrangement which is permanent in fishes; and that thousands of animals and plants have rudimentary organs which, at least in numerous cases, are wholly useless to their possessors, etc., etc. Upon a derivative theory this morphological conformity is explained by community of descent; and it has not been explained in any other way.

Naturalists are constantly speaking of "related species," of the "affinity" of a genus or other group, and of "family resemblance,"—vaguely conscious that these terms of kinship are something more than mere metaphors, but unaware of the grounds of their aptness. Mr. Darwin assures them that they have been talking derivative doctrine all their lives without knowing it.

If it is difficult and in some cases practically impossible to fix the limits of species, it is still more so to fix those of genera; and those of tribes and families are still less susceptible of exact natural circumscription. Intermediate forms occur, connecting one group with another in a manner sadly perplexing to systematists, except to those who have ceased to expect absolute limitations in Nature. All this blending could hardly fail to suggest a former material connection among allied forms, such as that which an hypothesis of derivation demands.

Here it would not be amiss to consider the general principle of gradation throughout organic Nature,—a principle which answers in a general way to the law of continuity in the inorganic world, or rather is so analogous to it that both may fairly be expressed by the Leibnitzian axiom, Natura non agit saltatim. As an axiom or philosophical principle, used to test modal laws or hypotheses, this in strictness belongs only to physics. In the investigation of Nature at large, at least in the organic world, nobody would undertake to apply this principle as a test of the validity of any theory or supposed law. But naturalists of enlarged views will not fail to infer the principle from the phenomena they investigate,—to perceive that the rule holds, under due qualifications and altered forms, throughout the realm of Nature; although we do not suppose that Nature in the organic world makes no distinct steps, but only short and serial steps,—not infinitely fine gradations, but no long leaps, or few of them.

To glance at a few illustrations out of many that present themselves. It would be thought that the distinction between the two organic kingdoms was broad and absolute. Plants and animals belong to two very different categories, fulfil opposite offices, and, as to the mass of them, are so unlike that the difficulty of the ordinary observer would be to find points of comparison. Without entering into details, which would fill an article, we may safely say that the difficulty with the naturalist is all the other way,—that all these broad differences vanish one by one as we approach the lower confines of the two kingdoms, and that no absolute distinction whatever is now known between them. It is quite possible that the same organism may be both vegetable and animal, or may be first the one and then the other. If some organisms may be said to be at first vegetables and then animals, others, like the spores and other reproductive bodies of many of the lower Algae, may equally claim to have first a characteristically animal, and then an unequivocally vegetable existence. Nor is the gradation purely restricted to these simple organisms. It appears in general functions, as in that of reproduction, which is reducible to the same formula in both kingdoms, while it exhibits close approximations in the lower forms; also in a common or similar ground of sensibility in the lowest forms of both, a common faculty of effecting movements tending to a determinate end, traces of which pervade the vegetable kingdom,—while on the other hand, this indefinable principle, this vegetable animula vagula, blandula, graduates into the higher sensitiveness of the lower class of animals. Nor need we hesitate to recognize the fine gradations from simple sensitiveness and volition to the higher instinctive and other psychical manifestations of the higher brute animals. The gradation is undoubted, however we may explain it. Again, propagation is of one mode in the higher animals, of two in all plants; but vegetative propagation, by budding or offshoots, extends through the lower grades of animals. In both kingdoms there may be separation of the offshoots, or indifference in this respect, or continued and organic union with the parent stock; and this either with essential independence of the offshoots, or with a subordination of these to a common whole, or finally with such subordination and amalgamation, along with specialization of function, that the same parts, which in other cases can be regarded only as progeny, in these become only members of an individual.

This leads to the question of individuality, a subject quite too large and too recondite for present discussion. The conclusion of the whole matter, however, is, that individuality—that very ground of being as distinguished from thing—is not attained in Nature at one leap. If anywhere truly exemplified in plants, it is only in the lowest and simplest, where the being is a structural unit, a single cell, memberless and organless, though organic,—the same thing as those cells of which all the more complex plants are built up, and with which every plant and (structurally) every animal began its development. In the ascending gradation of the vegetable kingdom individuality is, so to say, striven after, but never attained; in the lower animals it is striven after with greater, though incomplete success; it is realized only in animals of so high a rank that vegetative multiplication or offshoots are out of the question, where all parts are strictly members and nothing else, and all subordinated to a common nervous centre,—fully realized, perhaps, only in a conscious person.

So, also, the broad distinction between reproduction by seeds or ova and propagation by buds, though perfect in some of the lowest forms of life, becomes evanescent in others; and even the most absolute law we know in the physiology of genuine reproduction, that of sexual co-operation, has its exceptions in both kingdoms in parthenogenesis, to which in the vegetable kingdom a most curious series of gradations leads. In plants, likewise, a long and most finely graduated series of transitions leads from bisexual to unisexual blossoms; and so in various other respects. Everywhere we may perceive that Nature secures her ends, and makes her distinctions on the whole manifest and real, but everywhere without abrupt breaks. We need not wonder, therefore, that gradations between species and varieties should occur; the more so, since genera, tribes, and other groups into which the naturalist collocates species are far from being always absolutely limited in Nature, though they are necessarily represented to be so in systems. From the necessity of the case, the classifications of the naturalist abruptly define where Nature more or less blends. Our systems are nothing, if not definite. They are intended to express differences, and perhaps some of the coarser gradations. But this evinces, not their perfection, but their imperfection. Even the best of them are to the system of Nature what consecutive patches of the seven colors are to the rainbow.

Now the principle of gradation throughout organic Nature may, of course, be interpreted upon other assumptions than those of Darwin's hypothesis,—certainly upon quite other than those of materialistic philosophy, with which we ourselves have no sympathy. Still we conceive it not only possible, but probable, that this gradation, as it has its natural ground, may yet have its scientific explanation. In any case, there is no need to deny that the general facts correspond well with an hypothesis like Darwin's, which is built upon fine gradations.

We have contemplated quite long enough the general presumptions in favor of an hypothesis of the derivation of species. We cannot forget, however, while for the moment we overlook, the formidable difficulties which all hypotheses of this class have to encounter, and the serious implications which they seem to involve. We feel, moreover, that Darwin's particular hypothesis is exposed to some special objections. It requires no small strength of nerve steadily to conceive not only of the variation, but of the formation of the organs of an animal through cumulative variation and natural selection. Think of such an organ as the eye, that most perfect of optical instruments, as so produced in the lower animals and perfected in the higher! A friend of ours, who accepts the new doctrine, confesses that for a long while a cold chill came over him whenever he thought of the eye. He has at length got over that stage of the complaint, and is now in the fever of belief, perchance to be succeeded by the sweating stage, during which sundry peccant humors may be eliminated from the system.

For ourselves, we dread the chill, and have some misgiving about the consequences of the reaction. We find ourselves in the "singular position" acknowledged by Pictet,—that is, confronted with a theory which, although it can really explain much, seems inadequate to the heavy task it so boldly assumes, but which, nevertheless, appears better fitted than any other that has been broached to explain, if it be possible to explain, somewhat of the manner in which organized beings may have arisen and succeeded each other. In this dilemma we might take advantage of Mr. Darwin's candid admission, that he by no means expects to convince old and experienced people, whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed during a long course of years from the old point of view. This is nearly our case. So, owning no call to a larger faith than is expected of us, but not prepared to pronounce the whole hypothesis untenable, under such construction as we should put upon it, we naturally sought to attain a settled conviction through a perusal of several proffered refutations of the theory. At least, this course seemed to offer the readiest way of bringing to a head the various objections to which the theory is exposed. On several accounts some of these opposed reviews specially invite examination. We propose, accordingly, to conclude our task with an article upon "Darwin and his Reviewers."

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REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

Modern Painters. By J. RUSKIN. Vol. V. Smith, Elder, & Co. London.

The completion of a work of the importance of the "Modern Painters," which has occupied in its production the thought and a large portion of the labor of fourteen years, is an event of more interest than it often falls to the lot of a book to excite; but when, as in this case, the result shows the development of an individual taste and critical ability entirely without peer in the history of art-letters, the value of the whole work is immensely enhanced by the time which its publication covers.

The first volume of "Modern Painters" was, as everybody will remember, one of the sensation-books of the time, and fell upon the public opinion of the day like a thunderbolt from the clear sky. Denying, and in many instances overthrowing, the received canons of criticism, and defying all the accepted authorities in it, the author excited the liveliest astonishment and the bitterest hostility of the professional critics in general, and at once divided the world of art, so far as his influence reached, into two parts: the one embracing most of the reverent and conservative minds, and by far the larger; the other, most of the enthusiastic, the radical, and earnest; but this, small in numbers at first, was increased, and still increases, by the force of those qualities of enthusiasm and earnestness, until now, in England, it embraces nearly all of the true and living art of our time. But that volume, professedly treating art with reference to its superficial attributes and for a special purpose, the redemption of a great and revered artist from unjust disparagement and undeserved neglect, touched in scarcely the least degree the vital questions of taste or art-production. It had no considerations of sentiment or discussion of principles to offer: it dealt with facts, and touched the simple truths of Nature with an enthusiastic fire and lucidness which were proof positive of the knowledge and feeling of the author; and the public, either conversant with those facts or capable of being satisfied of them without much thought, abandoned itself to the fascination of his eloquence and acquiesced in his teachings, or arrayed itself in utter hostility to him and his new ideas.

The second volume was more abstruse and deeper in feeling, and comparatively few of Mr. Ruskin's followers through the first cared to get entangled in the metaphysical mazes of the second, and it is generally neglected, although containing some of the deepest and most satisfactory studies on the fundamental principles of art and taste which have ever been printed.

The third and fourth volumes, coming up again nearer the surface, made an application of the principles investigated to the material for art which Nature furnishes; and here again the author found in part his audience diminished among those who had at first been carried away by his enthusiasm or silenced and convinced by his unhesitating dogmatism. A partial reaction took place, owing not only to the change in the tone of the "Modern Painters," but to the springing up of a new school of painting, the consequence, mainly and legitimately, of the teachings of the work,—the pre-Raphaelite,—which, at once attacked virulently and immeasurably by the old school of critics, and defended as earnestly by Mr. Ruskin, became the subject of the war which was still waged between him and them. Turner in the meanwhile had passed away and was admitted to apotheosis, the malignant critics of yesterday becoming the ignorant adulators of to-day: his position was conceded, but the hostility to Ruskin was sustained with unabated bitterness on the new field. He was demolished anew, and proved, many useless times over and over, an ignorant pretender; the public in the meanwhile, even his opponents, taking up in turn his protégés, as he pointed them out to their notice. The effect of his criticisms in enhancing the value of the works they approved would be incredible, if one did not know how glad an English public is to be led. As a single instance,—a drawing which was sold from one of the water-color exhibitions at fifty guineas, sold again, after Ruskin's notice, at two hundred and fifty; and in the lists of pictures sold or to be sold at auction, one sees constantly, "Noticed by Mr. Ruskin," "Approved by Mr. Ruskin," appended to the title.

The third volume, being devoted to the correction of the ideas of Style and the Ideal, to Finish, and a review of the Past Landscape-Painting, recurs to Turner in its closing chapter, "On his Teachers"; the fourth was given to Mountain Beauty, following the parallel of the first, which treated of the Truth of Mountains, and bearing as its burden of moral the expression of that Ideal by Turner; and the fifth now comes to conclude the investigations on the Ideal by chapters: first, on "Leaf Beauty," an exceedingly interesting investigation of the development of the forms of trees and plants as concerned with the laws of beauty; second, "Cloud Beauty"; and then of the "Ideas of Relation," in which the author comes finally to the demonstration of the right of Turner to his position amongst the thinking and poetic painters.

From the first division, "Leaf Beauty," we must make one extract. The author has been speaking of the, influence of the Pine on Swiss character.

"But the point which I desire the reader to note is, that the character of the scene which, if any, appears to have been impressive to the inhabitant is not that which we ourselves feel when we enter the district. It was not from their lakes, nor their cliffs, nor their glaciers, though these were all peculiarly their possession, that the three venerable cantons or states received their name. They were not called the States of the Rock, nor the States of the Lake, but the States of the Forest. And the one of the three which contains the most touching record of the spiritual power of Swiss religion, in the name of the convent of the 'Hill of Angels,' has for its own none but the sweet, childish name of 'Under the Woods.'

"And, indeed, you may pass under them, if, leaving the most sacred spot in Swiss history, the Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the boatman row southward a little way by the Bay of Uri. Steepest there, on its western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to heaven. Far in the blue of evening, like a great cathedral-pavement, lies the lake in its darkness; and you may hear the whisper of innumerable falling waters return from the hollows of the cliff like the voices of a multitude praying under their breath. From time to time, the beat of a wave, slow lifted, where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies heavily as the last note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep grass and set with châlet villages, the Tron Alp rises in one solemn glow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds of twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the shadowy armies of the Unterwalden pine.

"I have seen that it is possible for the stranger to pass through this great chapel, with its font of waters, and mountain pillars, and vaults of cloud, without being touched by one noble thought or stirred by any sacred passion; but for those who received from its waves the baptism of their youth, and learned beneath its rocks the fidelity of their manhood, and watched amidst its clouds the likeness of the dream of life, with the eyes of age,—for these I will not believe that the mountain-shrine was built or the calm of its forest-shadows guarded by their God in vain."

But perhaps that conclusion of Ruskin's, in the new volume, which will most interest his earnest readers, is that the Venetian school is the only religious school that has ever existed. So much has Ruskin's development seemed to contradict itself, that one is scarcely surprised at one conclusion being apparently opposed to the former one; but a change so great as this, from Giotto, Perugino, and Cima, to Tintoret, Titian, and Veronese, as the religious ideals, will, indeed, amaze all who read it. Yet this is but the logical consequence of his progression hitherto. If he commenced with a belief that asceticism was religion, he would recognize Perugino and Giotto as the true religious artists; but if, as seems to be the case, he has learned at last that religion is a thing of daily life, mingling in all that we do, caring for body as well as soul, sense as well as spirit, and that a complete man must be a man who lives in every sense of the word, then the Venetians, as the painters of the truth of life in all its joy and sorrow, are the true painters, and the only ones whose art was inhabited by a religion worth following.

It is interesting to follow what are called Ruskin's contradictions and see how perfectly they represent the whole system of artistic truth, as seen from the different points of a young artist's or student's growth up to mature and ripened judgment; so that there is no stage of artistic development which has not some form of truth particularly adapted to it, in the "Modern Painters." If it be urged that the book should have been written only from the point of final development, it can only be said that no true book will ever he so written, for no man can ever be certain of his having attained final truth. "Modern Painters" has value in this very showing of the critical development, which to an intelligent student is greater than that a complete and infallible guide could have.

The chapter on Invention is full of the most delightful artistic truth, and shows completely, by copious illustrations, how well Turner deserved the rank Ruskin gives him amongst great composers. The analyses of the compositions of Turner are most curious and interesting, but, of course, depend on the accompanying plates. Some most valuable mental philosophy bearing on the production of art-works concludes Part VIII., which is devoted to "Invention Formal," of which we quote the concluding paragraphs:—

"Until the feelings can give strength enough to the will to enable it to conquer them, they are not strong enough. If you cannot leave your picture at any moment, cannot turn from it and go on with another while the color is drying, cannot work at any part of it you choose with equal contentment, you have not firm enough grasp of it.

"It follows, also, that no vain or selfish person can possibly paint, in the noble sense of the word. Vanity and selfishness are troublous, eager, anxious, petulant: painting can only be done in calm of mind. Resolution is not enough to secure this; it must be secured by disposition as well. You may resolve to think of your picture only; but, if you have been fretted before beginning, no manly or clear grasp of it will be possible for you. No forced calm is calm enough: only honest calm, natural calm. You might as well try by external pressure to smooth a lake till it could reflect the sky, as by violence of effort to secure the peace through which only you can reach imagination. That peace must come in its own time, as the waters settle themselves into clearness as well as quietness: you can no more filter your mind into purity than you can compress it into calmness; you must keep it pure, if you would have it pure; and throw no stones into it, if you would have it quiet. Great courage and self-command may to a certain extent give power of painting without the true calmness underneath, but never of doing first-rate work. There is sufficient evidence of this in even what we know of great men, though of the greatest we nearly always know the least (and that necessarily; they being very silent, and not much given to setting themselves forth to questioners,—apt to be contemptuously reserved no less than unselfishly). But in such writings and sayings as we possess of theirs we may trace a quite curious gentleness and serene courtesy. Rubens's letters are almost ludicrous in their unhurried politeness. Reynolds, swiftest of painters, was gentlest of companions; so also Velasquez, Titian, and Veronese.

"It is gratuitous to add that no shallow or petty person can paint. Mere cleverness or special gift never made an artist. It is only perfectness of mind, unity, depth, decision, the highest qualities, in fine, of the intellect, which will form the imagination.

"And, lastly, no false person can paint. A person false at heart may, when it suits his purposes, seize a stray truth here or there; but the relations of truth, its perfectness, that which makes it wholesome truth, he can never perceive. As wholeness and wholesomeness go together, so also sight with sincerity; it is only the constant desire of and submissiveness to truth, which can measure its strange angles and mark its infinite aspects, and fit them and knit them into sacred invention.

"Sacred I call it deliberately; for it is thus in the most accurate senses, humble as well as helpful,—meek in its receiving as magnificent in its disposing; the name it bears being rightly given even to invention formal, not because it forms, but because it finds. For you cannot find a lie; you must make it for yourself. False things may be imagined, and false things composed; but only truth can be invented."

One of those cardinal doctrines by which we may learn the bearings of a writer's system of truth is that of Ruskin's of the intimate connection between landscape art and humanity.

"Fragrant tissue of flowers, golden circlet of clouds, are only fair when they meet the fondness of human thoughts and glorify human visions of heaven.

"It is the leaning on this truth which more than any other has been the distinctive character of all my own past work. And in closing a series of art-studies, prolonged during so many years, it may be perhaps permitted me to point out this specialty,—the rather that it has been, of all their characters, the one most denied. I constantly see that the same thing takes place in the estimation formed by the modern public of the work of almost any true person, living or dead. It is not needful to state here the causes of such error; but the fact is indeed so, that precisely the distinctive root and leading force of any true man's work and way are the things denied him.

"And in these books of mine, their distinctive character, as essays on art, is their bringing everything to a root in human passion or human hope. Arising first not in any desire to explain the principles of art, but in the endeavor to defend an individual painter from injustice, they have been colored throughout, nay, continually altered in shape, and even warped and broken, by digressions respecting social questions, which had for me an interest tenfold greater than the work I had been forced into undertaking. Every principle of painting which I have stated is traced to some vital or spiritual fact; and in my works on architecture the preference accorded finally to one school over another is founded on a comparison of their influences on the life of the workman,—a question by all other writers on the subject of architecture wholly forgotten or despised.

"The essential connection of the power of landscape with human emotion is not less certain because in many impressive pictures the link is slight or local. That the connection should exist at a single point is all that we need…. That difference, and more, exists between the power of Nature through which humanity is seen, and her power in the desert. Desert,—whether of leaf or sand,—true desertness, is not in the want of leaves, but of life. Where humanity is not and was not, the best natural beauty is more than vain. It is even terrible; not as the dress cast aside from the body, but as an embroidered shroud hiding a skeleton."

The volume, as a whole, will be found less dogmatic, calmer, more convincing, and more directly applicable to artistic judgment, than any of the others. There is the same love of mysticism and undermeanings, but freighted with deeper and more central truths: a charming conclusion to a fourteen-years' diary of such study of Art and Nature, so severe, so unremitting, as never critic gave before.

Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb. By W.W. GOODWIN, Ph.D. Cambridge: Sever and Francis.

Grammarians had once a simple way of disposing of the subject on which Professor Goodwin has given us this elaborate treatise of three hundred pages.

In the Greek Grammar of the Messieurs de Port Royal, which Gibbon praises so highly in his charming autobiography, and which has passed through several editions in England within the present century, we are taught, that, "though the moods [in Greek] are not to be rejected entirely, yet their signification is sometimes so very arbitrary, that they are put for one another through all tenses." Lancelot himself seems to have had a glimmering of the essential incredibility of this statement; for, though he attempts to substantiate it by citing from Greek authors a number of passages in which the Greek idiom happens to differ from the Latin,—passages, however, which Mr. Goodwin would have been glad to use, had they fallen in his way, to illustrate the regular constructions of the language,—he feels it necessary to appeal to the authority of the learned Budæus, the greatest of the early Greek scholars. Strange as it seems that really accomplished Greek scholars should have charged Plato and Demosthenes, speaking the most perfect of tongues, with arbitrary interchanges of moods and tenses, yet the same views continued to be presented in grammatical works down to the close of the last century. The transition to the new school of grammarians was made in 1792, by the publication of a Greek Grammar by Philip Buttmann, which, in the greatly improved form which it afterwards received from his hands, is familiar to all Greek scholars. In our frequent boasts of the great strides that knowledge has taken in the present century, we commonly have in mind the physical sciences; but we doubt whether in any department of physical science the manuals in use seventy-five years ago are so utterly inferior to those of the present day as are, for instance, the remarks of Viger, and his commentators before Hermann, on the syntax of the Greek verb, to the philosophical treatment of the same points by Professor Goodwin.

This work is entitled, we think, to rank with the best grammars of the Greek language that have appeared in German or English, in all the points that constitute grammatical excellence; while its monographic character justified and required an exhaustive treatment of its particular topic, not to be found even in the huge grammars of Matthiæ and Kühner. Indeed, not the least of its merits is this, that, in addition to the excellent matter which is original with Professor Goodwin, it furnishes to the student, American or English,—for we hope to see its merits recognized on the other side of the Atlantic,—a digest, as it were, of all that is most valuable on the subject of the syntax of the Greek verb in the best German grammars, from Buttmann to Madvig, enhanced, too, in value by being recast and worked into a homogeneous system by an acute scholar and experienced teacher. One excellence of the book we would by no means pass over, an excellence which we are sure will be particularly appreciated by all who have used translations of German grammars,—the precision both of thought and expression by which it is characterized, which releases the student from the labor of constructing the meaning of a rule from the data of the appended examples. Not that Mr. Goodwin is chary of examples; on the contrary, one of the most attractive and not least profitable features of the book is the copiousness and freshness of the illustrative quotations from Greek authors. These are as welcome as the brightness of newly minted coin to the eye which, in consulting grammar after grammar, has been condemned to meet under corresponding rules always the same examples, till they begin to produce that effect upon the nerves which all have experienced at the mention of the deadly upas-tree, or the imminence of the dissolution of the Union.