CHAPTER IX.

LORD bacon's "history OF THE SYMPATHY AND ANTIPATHY OF THINGS."
" Merry and tragical ! Tedious and brief ! That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow. How shall we find the concord of this discord ? "
— Mid9ummer-Night*8 Dream,
" Strife and Friendship in Nature are the spurs of motions, and the Keys of Works " (page 203, vol. v., Lord Bacon's Works).
" In the 63rd section of the Novum Organum he (Bacon) men- tions very approvingly the philosophers of antiquity who taught this philosophy, of opposites or contraries, 'The strife and friendship of Empedocles, Heraclitus's doctrine how bodies are resolved into the indifferent nature of fire.' " (Spedding.)
These quotations point out that Bacon had accepted and adopted these philosophic principles, which we shall do well therefore to study closer. The moet prominent and striking feature of the Sonnets, is the reiterated appearance of Love (as a male) in conflict and opposition to Hate (as a female). Some- times they appear as Light and Darkness, as Truth and False- hood, Summer and Winter, Spirit and Matter, but always in opposition or strife. The Friendship is as prominent as the Strife. For this Friendship is for the friend of the Sonnets to whom they are addressed, and who is Love, Light, Logos, and Truth — the poet's alter ego— who is himself and not himself. The first thing that strikes us is the division of the Sonnets into two parts, not only by a line, but by the second part opening with the subject of a Woman, who, whilst being black, is connoted with the direct opposite characteristics of the male friend of the
1 88 5 VMPA TH Y AND ANTIPA THY OF THINGS.
first division of these poems. And not only are these two antagonistical principles at War or strife with each other, but they form a paradox, inasmuch as one is embraced by the other under the androgynous term, ^^Master-Mistress." The Woman not only is termed heU,iiate, and termed as ''black as night," but she is everything the male friend is not. In short, we may say, whatever the male or friend is by nature of Affirmatives the Woman is the contrary by Negatives or exclusions. Nevertheless it is this female that the poet persuades his friend to many for the sake of begetting offspring. In short, the entire subject- matter of the Sonnets is from the opening, persuasion that his friend may marry this seemingly detestable woman (whom many regard as a real personage), for the sake of immortality.
In the Sonnets we find this idea of Strife and Friendship not only prominently brought forward by the contrasted attributes of the male friend and the black mistress, but openly termed a War .—
" And all in war with time for love of you, As he takes from you, I eugraft you new."
Sonnet 16—
." But wherefore do not you, a mightier way, Make voar upon this bloody tyrant time % "
Sonnet 35 —
" Such civil War is in my Love and Hate^ That I, an accessory, needs must be To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me."
We see here not only the epithet war applied to this strife, but its nature is revealed in the words Love and ffaie, or Friendship and Strife. These were the principles which were taught as the origin of things in the Mysteries of Eleusis, the eternal War of Eleusis (vide "Banquet of Plato," cap. 14, p. 30). "For unity whilst it separates from itself identifies itself" (vide Creuzer's " Symbolik," vol. i. p. 199). Majian system :— " All things consist in the mixture of opposites ; disunion, difference gives existence to things. When this ceases, t.e., when the differences resolve into their source, so do they cease to exist"
SYMPATHY AND ANTIPATHY OF THINGS. 189
This is the equivalent of separation^ and of reconcUiaiion, And it seems to us clearly to be the very basis of an art which is created for eternity and revelation. For the synthesis or mar- riage of philosophy (or ideas) to art is at once a separation and a reconciliation. It is the union of mind to matter, of the spiritual to the material, of the signification to the vehicle. Thus Creuzer tells us that " a grand doctrine of the Eleusinian (Mysteries) was the principle of War and Peace, of the strife of matter with the spirit, and of the purification of the latter through it. Thus the doctrine of separation and reconciliation, which in the Pytha- gorean resembles dualism" (vol. iv. p. 387, ed. iv.). The war of such an art consists in the mixture of contraries. For the material outer form of such art is clearly at enmity, as an obscuring and veiling garb of the inner spiritual signification.
But it is not only in this sense that we would apply it. We
find that a great number of the plays turn upon separation and
final reconciliation in a most phenomenal and striking manner. For
example. The IFinter^s Tale presents us with a structure that turns
upon the separation of Hermione and Leontes as a pivot, and
closes with their reconciliation or unity. Pericles discloses an
identical substructure with other prominent parallels that are
too persistent to be accidental. In Pericles we have, as in The
}Finter*s Tale, a lost child, who is the means of bringing about
the reunion of father and mother. Marina is the counterpart of
Perdita. Hermione and Thaisa, separated from their respective
husbands, are both presented as supposed to be dead, and both
miraculou8ly return to life, and are rejoined to their husbands
through the indirect instrumentality of their lost children.
Again, in Alt's Well that Ends Well we have the separation of
Helena and Bertram as the main plot of Love on one side. Hate
on the other, to be followed by their reconciliation. In this play
the poet actually brings in these contraries or oppositcs into the
text, and evidently intentionally.
^ '* Let me confess that we two must be twain, Although our undivided loves are one : 80 shall those faults that do with me remain, Without thy help, by me be borne alone."
I90 SYMPATHY AND ANTIPATHY OF THINGS.
Helena says of Bertram : —
'* His humble ambitioD, proud humility, His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet, His faith his sweet disaster."
The entire plot of Romeo and Juliet is Love at civil war, at cross purposes, with Hate. The lovers are separated to such a degree in life by the family feud that they can only be united in death. It is impossible that these reiterated and prominent principles can be thus brought in by chance.
In the Two Noble Kinsmen, a play attributed to Shakespeare, we find these principles not only brought forward in the pro- tagonist characters of Palamon and Arcite, but we have the introduction of the altars of Mars and Venus, who were the representative deities of these principles.
Again, in Hermione, which is only another name for Harmonia, we have a direct reference to Mars and Venus (or this Strife and Friendship), for she was the daughter of Mars and Venus.
To the general reader it may appear absurd or trifling to assert, that out of ''Love and Hate" we can trace deliberate philosophic creative principles. But it must not be forgotten that these terms embrace the universe. In Love we have the great attractive force — Gravitation. In Hate we have its direct opposite — Repulsion, which it is not improper to connote with heat. These two are centripetal and centrifugal — a unifying and a separating power. The act of creation, whether physical or poetical, is a love force, synthetic or attractive, marrying for the sake of offspring. The poet marries his ideas to his vehicle. TiOve, according to the Orphic poets, was the gravitating or at- tractive principle, which brought the universe into shape and gave birth to the starry spheres. But the other power, the opposite of Love, was necessary to prevent everything unifying or marrying. The entire solar system keeps its allotted round through attrac- tion and repulsion — Love and Hate.
We are not making imaginary parallels, or stretching a fanciful analogy to breaking point. Call attraction, gravity (or by any
S YMPA THY AND ANTIPA TIIY OF THINGS, 1 9 1
term of Newton's you like), it is simply Love, Desire, the force that compels one thing to another, whether it be particle to par- ticle, or man to woman. And it is this power (which is a marry- ing or sjmthetic act), that Plato terms '^ marriage for the sake of immortality." It is the opening theme of the Sonnets. But it must not be taken alone, it must be coupled at the same time with its opposite, "strife," or war, or hate. For in art this latter is the obscuring matrix or form, which, whilst receiving the imprint of the archetypal ideas, transforms them into sensuous objects or pictures, and is at cross purposes with them as external to internal, or object to subject. These two in action with each other exemplify Nature as Strife and Friendship, for, as Heraclitus declares, "War is the father of all things." These principles run through all nature, and we call their balance moderation or temperance. In politics we see them displayed in the reciprocal play of party against party. No one thing exists in nature alone, but it has its direct opposite to balance it, and it is easy to maintain without fear of denial that out of the conflict of a great dualism, things exist Can this be applied to art? We think so. And the plays, with ^ their planned rebirth, will illustrate it.
It is worthy of a second notice to remark that we have this war described as "a (xM war" (Sonnet 35) —
** Such dvH vxir is in my love and hate That I am aooessary needs must be To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me."
Now we have here a confession, that the poet takes pari against himself in this private warfare. He tells us again in Sonnet 46 —
How to divide the conquest of thy sight ; My eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar, My heart mine eye the freedom of that right. My heart doth plead, that thou in him doth lie, (A closet never pierced with crystal eyes), But the defendant doth that plea deny, And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
192 SYMPATHY AND ANTIPATHY OF THINGS.
To 'cide this title is impanneled A quest of thoughts all tenants to the heart ; And by their verdict is determined The clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part : As thus : mine eye's due is thy outward party And my heart's right thy inward love of heart}*
We see here very unmistakably that this "mortal war," or
"civil war," is connected with an " outtmrd" and an '* inward**
part, that belong respectively to the eye, and to something that
is secret, interior, and obscured by the outward eye. This is a
species of perspective or illusion produced by exquisite art.
Let us hear the poet upon this wonderful art : —
" Perspective it is best painter's art, For through the painter must you see his skill,"
which (being paraphrased) declares "perspective" to be only
(" best ") a trick of art, and if we desire to judge of the painter's
skill or excellence, we must see through the " perspective." ^ That
the poet employs the term " perspective " in the sense of illusion
is clear in Twelfth Night, where we have Viola and Sebastian so
alike that they are " A natural perspective, that is and is not."
But suppose we summon the real author to our assistance
Francis Bacon, who appears as if he had written his prose works
as commentaries, explanations, and keys to his other poetical
creations. In the "Natural History" (Century i 98) we find:
" Like perspectives which show things intoards when they are hid
paintings*^ In the " Advancement of Learning," we have —
" Poetry is nothing else but feigned history."
In Twelfth Night, Act i. sc. 2, we have—
" Viola, 'TIS poetical. Olivia. It is the more likely to be feigned."
1 Perspective, Perspective meant a onnning picture, which seen directly seemed in confusion, and seen obliquely became an intelligible composi- tion ; also a glass so cut as to produce optical illusion. See King Richard //., Act ii. sc. 2, I. 18. But here does it not simply mean that a painter's highest art is to produce the illusion of distance, one thing seeming to Hj behind another ; yon must look through the painter (my eye or myself), to see your picture, the product of his skill, which lies within him (in my heart) ? — Dowden,
SYMPATHY AND ANTIPATHY OF THINGS. 193
In As You Like It, Act iii. sc. 7 —
" The truest poetry is the most feigning."
Or Richard IL^ Act ii. sc. 2 —
" Like perspectives, which, rightly gazed upon, Show nothing but confusion— ey'd awry, Distinguish form."
What does the poet mean by '' rightly gazed upon," unless he means in the " right or usual way " ? Yet this shows nothing but confusion ! There are certain pictures with figures in them that do not appear when we gaze rightly or simply, or in the usual way at them.
To find a face in a tree, or a figure in a landscape, must be a familiar form of amusement, in pictorial invention, to everybody. In order to get at the secret, we have to twist and screw the picture about, and in the words of the poet, " ey'd awry ; " we " distinguish form," that is, we arrive at the solution or discovery. It is so with allegory, and with all high art requiring intense study to reveal its spiritual archetypal idea or form. Thus we have the poet telling us in Richard IL, that ''perspective" pro- duces confusion when rightly gazed upon. Dante writes, in his Convito —
" By heart I mean the inward secret,"
so that the author of the plays is only using, after all, an estab- lished form of secret language, and we cannot be charged with foisting fanciful theories of our own upon the text. Bossetti, in his " History of the Antipapal Spirit which preceded the Refor- mation," gives us an elaborate account of the mystic language which he terms the "Gay Science," which we quote : —
''The mystic language of this society was taught by means of a vocabulary, called the Grammar of the Gay Science ; founded chiefly on ideas and words put in opposition to each other. The antithesis of gay science was sad ignorance ; and, hence, to he gay and to be sad^ to langh, and to weep, with all their respective syno- nimes and derivatives, signified to be a sectarian, or to be, on the
N
194 SYMPATHY AND ANTIPATHY OF THINGS.
contraryy a papalist. Heart meant the hidden secret ; /ace the outward meaning; and si^A^ the verses in this jargon, &c
" Before Dante livedo this gay science had fixed the foundation of its language on the two words, love and hatred ; and all their attendant qualities followed on each side— pleasure and grief, truth and falsehood, light and darkness, sun and moon, life and death, good and evil, virtue and vice, courage and cowardice, mountain and valley, fire and frost, garden and desert, &c."
Nor should we be surprised to find the author of the plays employing the same secret language as Dante, inasmuch as we have a very strong hint thrown out to us in Sonnet 86 that Dante inspired the poet first.
" Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all too-precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew ? **
The expression of "proud full sail" can only be applied to Dante (or Virgil), inasmuch as we find him comparing his great work to a ship.
"The 'Purgatorio' opens with the metaphor of Dante's poetic bark, or sail— a simile continued in the 'Paradiso' (canto ii, 1)—
" PURGATORIO— CANTO i.
" 0*er the smooth waters of a milder sea
The light bark of my genius hoists her sail, Leaving behind the flood of misery : For now that second kingdom claims my song,
Wherein is purified the spirit frail. And fitted to rejoin the heavenly throng."
— Wrighfs Translation,
In Sonnet 80 we find the author of the plays comparing his " saucy bark " to another poet's—
" My saucy bark inferior far to his, On your broad main doth wilfully appear."
5 VMPA THY AND ANTIPA TH Y OF THINGS. 1 95
We find Dante making Beatrice the Admiral who commands his figurative bark—
*' As to the prow or stern, some admiral Paces the deck, inspiriting his crew, When 'mid the sail-yards all hands plj aloof ; Thus on the left side of the car, I saw The virgin stationed, who before appear'd.^'
— (" Purg.» 30.)
We cannot too sufficiently study the creative principles con- sisting of a Loved One or Beloved, as we find so repeatedly in the Sonnets.
Analysing Brahma, we find Creuzer thus describes him—
(a.) The first Being before and over all things.
(&.) The Love that the first Being has for himself, and which he gives away.
(c.) Consequently God divided into a Lover and a Beloved,
(d.) This Separation is the primai origin of Things.
Kot only do the Sonnets deal almost exclusively with a Lover
and a Beloved as alter ego (whom the poet repeatedly tells us is
himself), but the separation, which is the primal orgin of things,
is distinctly enunciated. The poet must beget an heir, a son —
who is his Beloved, his spiritual archetype or wisdom — which
shall be wedded to his art, and be reborn by revelation of that
art. So we find the opening theme deals with marriage for the
sake of immortality. And by this we believe he means the
marriage of pure rationalistic thought to a vehicle which shall at
the same time veil and carry it, as dual unity. We find this
"union in partition" plainly enunciated in the poem of the
Phoenix and Turtle : —
'' So they lov'd, as love in twain Had the essence but in one : Two distincts, division none : Number there in love was slain.
Pi*operty was thus appall'd. That the self was not the same ; Single nature's double name Neither two nor one was call'd.
196 SYMPATHY AND ANTIPATHY OF THINGS.
fteasoD, in itself confounded, Saw division grow together, To themselves yet either-neither, Simple were so well compounded.
That it cried, How tme a twain Seemeth this concordant one ! TiOve hath reason, reason none, If what parts can so remain.''
We find it again brought forward in the relationship of Hermia to Helena : —
'* We, Hermia, like two artificial gods. Have with our ueelds created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key ; As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, Had been incorporate. So we grew together. Like to a double cherry, iteming parted ; But yet a union in partition^ Two lovely berries moulded on one stem ; So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart ; Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one, and crownM with one crest"
Hermia is plainly the Hermetic ideas imprinted upon Helena, as a stamp imprints itself upon wax. This is Plato's simile for the participation of ideas with Matter (Parmenides).
Fouillde writes {La Philosophie de Platan) : —
''Les Pythagoriciens repr^entaient le sensible comme one imitation, fJi^t/i^tng, de Tintelligible. Gette image se retrouve souyent dans Platen. Le Timie^ dont le h^ros est un pythagori- cien, appelle Tensemble des Id^es ou monde intelligible le module da monde sensible. Litemel artiste^ les yeuxfixis sur cet exemplaire^ le reproduit en fa^mint la maiihe d Vimage des Iddes, Dans un autre passage du TinUe^ la maiihe est reprdsentie comme recevant Vempreinie des Id^s, de mhne que la cire refoit une forme sous la main qui la pitrit. La Rdpublique appelle les objets sensibles les reflets, les ombres^ les images du monde intelligible."
5 YMPA TH V AND ANTIPA TH V OF THINGS. 1 97
Bat here is the conclusive proof. The poet uses the same simile in the Dream : —
" The. What say you, Hermia ? be advis'd, fair maid : To you, your father should be as a god ; One that compo^d your beauties ; yea, and one To whom you are but as a form in was. By him imprinted, and within his power To leave the figure, or disfigure if
Here we have the same metaphor. And the comparison of Hermia's father with a god who *^ composed her beauties" is a proof of the nature of the relationship of Hermia to Helena, that is, of the spiritual to the phenomenal, of the idea to the form, of mind to matter. But the entire play is a proof of it, the mis- takes in the wood arising from the likeness of Hermia to Helena, for we cannot recognise Hermia until we can exclaim —
" Transparent ^ Helena ! Mature here shows Art That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart.''
This heart is the secret Hermia. For the poet has told us, — that his inward side is his heart side : —
" As thus ; mine eye's due is thine outward part. And my heart's right thine inward love of heart."
This is the Templar language or jargon of the gay science which we have already quoted from Dante — where Heart means the hidden secret, Hermia and Helena have '^ but one heart ; " as the poet tells us, " they grew in the act of creation together," like to a double cherry, seeming parted, but yet "a union in partition." This is nothing else but —
" So they lov'd, as love in twain Had the essence but in one j Two distincts, division none ; Number there in love was dain"
Love is the synthetic or marrying power of creation, whereby two are identified into one. And this is the key of the
^ This simile is borrowed from the Mysteries or the Gate of Horn, through which transparent substance the reoZ, spiritual ideas or visions were apprehended. See page 211.
198 SYMPATHY AND ANTIPATHY OF THINGS.
Sonnets, marriage for the sake of the immortality, which such perfect art is sure to bring in the rebirth or discovery of the ideas married (and buried) in such art. This is why Love plays such an important part in the Sonnets. For Love, in the Platonic sense, is the creative power by which two things are married and made one. Thus the entire proposition of marriage, set forth in the opening of the Sonnets, is this idea of creation, for the sake of rebirth or revelation. If the poet copies a copy (like almost all other art in existence), his art will not be inmiortal in the sense he aims at. For phenomena are already images, or idols of spiritual ideas. He must therefore copy not things, but ideas, and imprint them upon his creations in the widest philosophic sense possible, so will his plays become philosophic play systems, which indeed they are with a venge- ance. We see at once that such a sublime scheme as this, seemingly impossible, is not only Godlike, but is something almost superhuman. We see also that it makes the characters of the plays, idols representative of ideas, whereby the entire Baconian theory of words, as " Pygmalion's images," as idols of the theatre, may be brought in to illustrate his inductive method, and his idols with their four classes particularly. This art will never be understood until Plato's similes to represent the relationship of ideas to phenomena or matter are thoroughly grasped. That is, that phenomena are images, idols, shadows, reflections of the ideas stamped upon them, as a die or seal imprints its picture upon wax. The terms he uses express this in the simplest and plainest way possible. We are told upon the monument at Stratford that the poet has the genius of Socrates and the art of Virgil ! What more do we want, considering it is written everywhere in the Sonnets, over and over again 1. As a Dream is the reflection of something real, as a Shadow is to the light, so does the play of the Midsummer-Nighfs Dream deal with this very subject of the poet's art and its creative principles, being self-reflective, in irony picturing the cross-purposes, mistakes, and illusions which arise from our mistaking Helena for Hermia — ^the
SYMPATHY AND ANTIPATHY OF THINGS. 199
spiritual for the phenomenal. Bat whilst applying to itself, it applies to Nature also. And this is the miracle of this art, which the World must awake to realize, that it has risen to an equal point of height with Nature, and what it reflects of itself, it reflects always doubly — to Nature at the same time also.