to leave nothing but the naked reason: because prejudice with its reason has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permaPrejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature." nence. IV THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF RECENT POETRY HE world changes the modes of its TH religious feeling and thought as it changes the modes of its political feeling and thought. The two sets of changes go hand in hand. An age of political complacence is usually an age of religious complacence. An age of political struggle is almost always an age of religious struggle. We think of the Reformation as a religious movement, and we think of the French Revolution as a political movement; but the Reformation was a time of political upheavals no less than of religious ones, and the French Revolution was marked by just as profound convulsions in the world of religion as in the world of politics. In the ages of peace, when authority is accepted as a matter of course, the religious element in literature is apt to be essentially mystical-a confession of human weakness, an expression of human aspirations, a devout homage from a man who feels himself weak to a God who is immeasurably above him. In the ages of conflict and upheaval religious literature takes a different character. The time no longer calls for meditation, but for fighting-for fighting in which each man's own individual work may be overwhelmingly important. The sense of humility gives place to the feeling of responsibility; the vagueness of the aspiration to be like God gives place to the assertion of the overwhelming importance of bringing God and the world together. The peaceful devotion of the psalmist is overborne by the convulsive struggles of the prophet. The quiet of the gods is invaded by the cries of humanity. Their very authority is challenged by the indomitable will of Prometheus, the friend of man. In such an age it is no longer to the voice of David, but to that of Ezekiel, that we respond. It is no longer the song of Hesiod or even of Pindar, but the song of Aeschylus and of Euripides, that moves men. A single instance, chosen to illustrate this contrast, will show what I mean better than any amount of description. In a passage of In Memoriam, much admired at the time of its publication and still much quoted, Tennyson voiced the religious thought of a large part of the English-speaking world of his day in the following lines: "So runs my dream: but what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry." Not quite fifty years later another poet, Henley, less known to the casual reader but not less significant in the history of English literature, put these burning words on paper: Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, For my unconquerable soul." In time these two utterances are less than half a century apart; in spirit fifty centuries would not measure the difference. Their The first half of the nineteenth century was an age of religious peace-an age when church authority was accepted as a fact, whether the people believed in the doctrines of the church or not. doubt and disbelief were essentially intellectual things which did not greatly affect their outward conduct or even their inward feelings. The ideal and the aim of those who put their religious emotions into poetry was quiet submission to the author |