Part 11 (1/2)
And Plato's notable sentence in the third book of the _Polity_.--”Tell them they have divine gold and silver in their souls for ever; that they need no money stamped of men--neither may they otherwise than impiously mingle the gathering of the divine with the mortal treasure, _for through that which the law of the mult.i.tude has coined, endless crimes have been done and suffered; but in their's is neither pollution nor sorrow_.”
90. At the entrance of this place of punishment an evil spirit is seen by Dante, quite other than the ”Gran Nemico.” The great enemy is obeyed knowingly and willingly; but this spirit--feminine--and called a Siren--is the ”_Deceitfulness_ of riches,” [Greek: apate ploutou] of the Gospels, winning obedience by guile. This is the Idol of riches, made doubly phantasmal by Dante's seeing her in a dream. She is lovely to look upon, and enchants by her sweet singing, but her womb is loathsome.
Now, Dante does not call her one of the Sirens carelessly, any more than he speaks of Charybdis carelessly; and though he had got at the meaning of the Homeric fable only through Virgil's obscure tradition of it, the clue he has given us is quite enough. Bacon's interpretation, ”the Sirens, _or pleasures_,” which has become universal since his time, is opposed alike to Plato's meaning and Homer's. The Sirens are not pleasures, but _Desires_: in the Odyssey they are the phantoms of vain desire; but in Plato's Vision of Destiny, phantoms of divine desire; singing each a different note on the circles of the distaff of Necessity, but forming one harmony, to which the three great Fates put words. Dante, however, adopted the Homeric conception of them, which was that they were demons of the Imagination, not carnal; (desire of the eyes; not l.u.s.t of the flesh); therefore said to be daughters of the Muses. Yet not of the Muses, heavenly or historical but of the Muse of pleasure; and they are at first winged, because even vain hope excites and helps when first formed; but afterwards, contending for the possession of the imagination with the Muses themselves, they are deprived of their wings.
91. And thus we are to distinguish the Siren power from the power of Circe, who is no daughter of the Muses, but of the strong elements, Sun and Sea; her power is that of frank, and full vital pleasure, which, if governed and watched, nourishes men; but, unwatched, and having no ”moly,” bitterness or delay, mixed with it, turns men into beasts, but does not slay them,--leaves them, on the contrary, power of revival. She is herself indeed an Enchantress;--pure Animal life; transforming--or degrading--but always wonderful (she puts the stores on board the s.h.i.+p invisibly, and is gone again, like a ghost); even the wild beasts rejoice and are softened around her cave; the transforming poisons she gives to men are mixed with no rich feast, but with pure and right nourishment,--Pramnian wine, cheese, and flour; that is, wine, milk, and corn, the three great sustainers of life--it is their own fault if these make swine of them; (see Appendix V.) and swine are chosen merely as the type of consumption; as Plato's [Greek: hyon polis], in the second book of the _Polity_, and perhaps chosen by Homer with a deeper knowledge of the likeness in variety of nourishment, and internal form of body.
”Et quel est, s'il vous plait, cet audacieux animal qui se permet d'etre bati au dedans comme une jolie pet.i.te fille?”
”Helas! chere enfant, j'ai honte de le nommer, et il ne faudra pas m'en vouloir. C'est ... c'est le cochon. Ce n'est pas precis.e.m.e.nt flatteur pour vous; mais nous en sommes tous la, et si cela vous contrarie par trop, il faut aller vous plaindre au bon Dieu qui a voulu que les choses fussent arrangees ainsi: seulement le cochon, qui ne pense qu'a manger, a l'estomac bien plus vaste que nous et c'est toujours une consolation.”--_(Histoire d'une Bouchee de Pain_, Lettre ix.)
92. But the deadly Sirens are in all things opposed to the Circean power. They promise pleasure, but never give it. They nourish in no wise; but slay by slow death. And whereas they corrupt the heart and the head, instead of merely betraying the senses, there is no recovery from their power; they do not tear nor scratch, like Scylla, but the men who have listened to them are poisoned, and waste away. Note that the Sirens' field is covered, not merely with the bones, but with the _skins_, of those who have been consumed there. They address themselves, in the part of the song which Homer gives, not to the pa.s.sions of Ulysses, but to his vanity, and the only man who ever came within hearing of them, and escaped untempted, was Orpheus, who silenced the vain imaginations by singing the praises of the G.o.ds.
93. It is, then, one of these Sirens whom Dante takes as the phantasm or deceitfulness of riches; but note further, that she says it was her song that deceived Ulysses. Look back to Dante's account of Ulysses' death, and we find it was not the love of money, but pride of knowledge, that betrayed him; whence we get the clue to Dante's complete meaning: that the souls whose love of wealth is pardonable have been first deceived into pursuit of it by a dream of its higher uses, or by ambition. His Siren is therefore the Philotime of Spenser, daughter of Mammon--
”Whom all that folk with such contention Do flock about, my deare, my daughter is-- Honour and dignitie from her alone Derived are.”
By comparing Spenser's entire account of this Philotime with Dante's of the Wealth-Siren, we shall get at the full meaning of both poets; but that of Homer lies hidden much more deeply. For his Sirens are indefinite; and they are desires of any evil thing; power of wealth is not specially indicated by him, until, escaping the 'harmonious danger of imagination, Ulysses has to choose between two practical ways of life, indicated by the two _rocks_ of Scylla and Charybdis. The monsters that haunt them are quite distinct from the rocks themselves, which, having many other subordinate significations, are in the main Labour and Idleness, or getting and spending; each with its attendant monster, or betraying demon. The rock of gaining has its summit in the clouds, invisible, and not to be climbed; that of spending is low, but marked by the cursed fig-tree, which has leaves, but no fruit. We know the type elsewhere; and there is a curious lateral allusion to it by Dante when Jacopo di Sant' Andrea, who had ruined himself by profusion and committed suicide, scatters the leaves of the bush of Lotto degli Agli, endeavouring to hide himself among them. We shall hereafter examine the type completely; here I will only give an approximate rendering of Homer's words, which have been obscured more by translation than even by tradition.
94. ”They are overhanging rocks. The great waves of blue water break round them; and the blessed G.o.ds call them the Wanderers.
”By one of them no winged thing can pa.s.s--not even the wild doves that bring ambrosia to their father Jove--but the smooth rock seizes its sacrifice of them.” (Not even ambrosia to be had without Labour. The word is peculiar--as a part of anything is offered for Sacrifice; especially used of heave-offering.) ”It reaches the wide heaven with its top, and a dark blue cloud rests on it, and never pa.s.ses; neither does the clear sky hold it, in summer nor in harvest. Nor can any man climb it--not if he had twenty feet and hands, for it is smooth as though it were hewn.
”And in the midst of it is a cave which is turned the way of h.e.l.l. And therein dwells Scylla, whining for prey: her cry, indeed, is no louder than that of a newly-born whelp: but she herself is an awful thing--nor can any creature see her face and be glad; no, though it were a G.o.d that rose against her. For she has twelve feet, all fore-feet, and six necks, and terrible heads on them; and each has three rows of teeth, full of black death.
”But the opposite rock is lower than this, though but a bow-shot distant; and upon it there is a great fig-tree, full of leaves; and under it the terrible Charybdis sucks down the black water. Thrice in the day she sucks it down, and thrice; casts it up again: be not thou there when she sucks down, for Neptune himself could not save thee.”
[Thus far went my rambling note, in _Fraser's Magazine_. The Editor sent me a compliment on it--of which I was very proud; what the Publisher thought of it, I am not informed; only I know that eventually he stopped the papers. I think a great deal of it myself, now, and have put it all in large print accordingly, and should like to write more; but will, on the contrary, self-denyingly, and in grat.i.tude to any reader who has got through so much, end my chapter.]
FOOTNOTES:
[33] Remember this definition: it is of great importance as opposed to the imperfect ones usually given. When first these essays were published, I remember one of their reviewers asking contemptuously, ”Is half-a-crown a doc.u.ment?” it never having before occurred to him that a doc.u.ment might be stamped as well as written, and stamped on silver as well as on parchment.
[34] I do not mean the demand of the holder of a five-pound note for five pounds, but the demand of the holder of a pound for a pound's worth of something good.
[35] [Read and think over, the following note very carefully.] The waste of labour in obtaining the gold, though it cannot be estimated by help of any existing data, may be understood in its bearing on entire economy by supposing it limited to transactions between two persons. If two farmers in Australia have been exchanging corn and cattle with each other for years, keeping their accounts of reciprocal debt in any simple way, the sum of the possessions of either would not be diminished, though the part of it which was lent or borrowed were only reckoned by marks on a stone, or notches on a tree; and the one counted himself accordingly, so many scratches, or so many notches, better than the other. But it would soon be seriously diminished if, discovering gold in their fields, each resolved only to accept golden counters for a reckoning; and accordingly, whenever he wanted a sack of corn or a cow, was obliged to go and wash sand for a week before he could get the means of giving a receipt for them.
[36] It is difficult to estimate the curious futility of discussions such as that which lately occupied a section of the British a.s.sociation, on the absorption of gold, while no one can produce even the simplest of the data necessary for the inquiry. To take the first occurring one,--What means have we of ascertaining the weight of gold employed this year in the toilettes of the women of Europe (not to speak of Asia); and, supposing it known, what means of conjecturing the weight by which, next year, their fancies, and the changes of style among their jewellers, will diminish or increase it?
[37] See, in Pope's epistle to Lord Bathurst, his sketch of the difficulties and uses of a currency literally ”pecuniary”--(consisting of herds of cattle).
”His Grace will game--to White's a bull be led,” &c.
[38] Perhaps both; perhaps silver only. It may be found expedient ultimately to leave gold free for use in the arts. As a means of reckoning, the standard might be, and in some cases has already been, entirely ideal.--_See_ Mill's _Political Economy_, book iii. chap. VII.
at beginning.
[39] The purity of the drachma and zecchin were not without significance of the state of intellect, art, and policy, both in Athens and Venice;--a fact first impressed upon me ten years ago, when, in taking daguerreotypes at Venice, I found no purchaseable gold pure enough to gild them with, except that of the old Venetian zecchin.
[40] Under which term, observe, we include all doc.u.ments of debt, which, being honest, might be transferable, though they practically are not transferred; while we exclude all doc.u.ments which are in reality worthless, though in fact transferred temporarily, as bad money is. The doc.u.ment of honest debt, not transferred, is merely to paper currency as gold withdrawn from circulation is to that of bullion. Much confusion has crept into the reasoning on this subject from the idea that the withdrawal from circulation is a definable state, whereas it is a graduated state, and indefinable. The sovereign in my pocket is withdrawn from circulation as long as I choose to keep it there. It is no otherwise withdrawn if I bury it, nor even if I choose to make it, and others, into a golden cup, and drink out of them; since a rise in the price of the wine, or of other things, may at any time cause me to melt the cup and throw it back into currency; and the bullion operates on the prices of the things in the market as directly, though not as forcibly, while it is in the form of a cup as it does in the form of a sovereign. No calculation can be founded on my humour in either case. If I like to handle rouleaus, and therefore keep a quant.i.ty of gold, to play with, in the form of jointed basaltic columns, it is all one in its effect on the market as if I kept it in the form of twisted filigree, or, steadily ”amicus lamnae,” beat the narrow gold pieces into broad ones, and dined off them. The probability is greater that I break the rouleau than that I melt the plate; but the increased probability is not calculable. Thus, doc.u.ments are only withdrawn from the currency when cancelled, and bullion when it is so effectually lost as that the probability of finding it is no greater than of finding new gold in the mine.
[41] For example, suppose an active peasant, having got his ground into good order and built himself a comfortable house, finding time still on his hands, sees one of his neighbours little able to work, and ill-lodged, and offers to build him also a house, and to put his land in order, on condition of receiving for a given period rent for the building and t.i.the of the fruits. The offer is accepted, and a doc.u.ment given promissory of rent and t.i.the. This note is money. It can only be good money if the man who has incurred the debt so far recovers his strength as to be able to take advantage of the help he has received, and meet the demand of the note; if he lets his house fall to ruin, and his field to waste, his promissory note will soon be valueless: but the existence of the note at all is a consequence of his not having worked so stoutly as the other. Let him gain as much as to be able to pay back the entire debt; the note is cancelled, and we have two rich store-holders and no currency.