Volume II Part 15 (1/2)
[135] Mystical writer; author of _The Pilgrim and the Shrine_
IV
A few days after the appearance of Miss Nightingale's first Paper in _Fraser_, Mr Mill died of a ”local endenon She was profoundly ale to Julius Mohl_) _May_ 20 [1873] John Stuart Mill's death was a great shock to ic! why he is thrilling with eer-ends” That is just what he was Now, speaker and subject are both gone He said at Mr Grote's funeral, with an agony of tears, ”We er” And noe say of hier” He was only 67 He was always urging me to publish He used to say, with the passion which he put into everything he did say: ”I have no patience with people ill not publish because they think the world is not ripe enough for their ideas: that is only conceit or cowardice If anybody has thought out any thing which he conceives to be truth, in Heaven's naht that this year (I have left much of the India and War Office work, and much of it has left me) I would resume with John Stuart Mill and do as he told azine_ (which I now send you) to please him And now he is dead, and will never know that I intended to do what he wished He used to say, ”Tell the world what you think--your experience It will probably strike the worldthat could be told it” He quoted ht not to have done[136] I published my book on Socrates' : it was a subject he had taken up: he was President of a Society for _that_ When he was in England (till a fortnight before his death) I could not find his address: I was so overwhel away And I did not send him this book And now he is dead, and will never know
But I scarcely regret his death He was not a happy man He was a man as so sure to develop very ious notions: did not believe in a God or in a future life: but believed in a sort of conflict between ters of Good and Evil I re you one of his letters And you said it was just like Zoroaster But he was the most _truly_ ”Liberal”
man I ever knew If it were for the cause of Truth that he should be defeated, he would have _liked_ to have been defeated And now he is dead And we shall never see his like again
[136] See Vol I p 471, _n_
[137] _Notes on Lying-in Institutions_; see above, p 197
It was characteristic of Miss Nightingale that she entered into correspondence with Mr Chadwick on the sanitary state of Mr Mill's house and the climatic conditions of Provence in May Mr Chadwick had to put hi that he had not been consulted by their friend on those subjects and had never been invited by hinon
V
Other literary hich occupied Miss Nightingale a good deal at this time was undertaken either to help Mr Jowett or in accordance with his advice He had urged her to work out her notion of Divine Perfection, and her theory of the Family in relation to ”sisterhoods” and other forly on ”What is the Evidence that there is a Perfect God?” on ”What is the Character of God?” and on ”Christian Fellowshi+p as a Means to Progress” The gist of the latter essay iven in a letter of an earlier date:--
(_Miss Nightingale to Benjamin Jowett_) _July_ [1870] I think that Faraday's idea of friendshi+p is very high: ”One ill serve his companion next to his God” And when one thinks that most, nay almost all people have no idea of friendshi+p at all except pleasant juxtaposition, it strikes one with admiration Yet is Faraday's idea not mine My idea of a friend is one ill and can join you in work the sole purpose of which is to serve God Two in one, and one in God It almost exactly answers Jesus Christ's words And so extraordinarily blessed have I been that I have had three such friends I can truly say that, during the 5 years that I worked with Sidney Herbert every day and nearly all day, from the moment he ca the ith the best of our powers in the service of God (And this tho' he was a enius I have ever known--far beyond Macaulay whom I also knew) This is Heaven; and this is what makes me say ”I have had my heaven”
The two other friends hom in forh and her Aunt, Mrs Sale's other Essays led to much correspondence with Mr Jowett, but as they failed to come up to his standard they were laid aside Many of her letters to him were themselves almost Essays Extracts from one or two consecutive letters will show the kind of discussions into which Miss Nightingale loved to involve her Oxford friend, and upon which he was nothing loath to enter:--
(_Benjaale_) TORQUAY, _Sept_ 29 [1871] I must answer your letter by driblets When you admit that a part of the witness of the character of God is to be sought for in nature, how do you distinguish between the true and false witness of nature? For we cannot deny that physical good is soe the sole or chief principle ought to be health and strength in the parents whether with or without a e ceremony--in other words Plato's Republic: I ain the laws of physical iet rid of sickly and deformed infants And if, as Huxley would say, you reconstruct the world on a physical basis, you have to go to ith received principles of morality I suppose that the answer is you must take man as a whole, and make morality and the mind the limit of physical improvement But it is not easy to see what this limit is, because h we may form ideals we have to descend froree with you in thinking that there are no difficulties, although the old difficulties, about origin of evil &c, are generally a hocus of Theologians
(_Miss Nightingale to Benjamin Jowett_)[138] LEA HURST, _Oct_ 3 [1871] I am quite scandalized at your materialism (I shall shut up you and Plato for a hundred years in punishment in another world till you have both obtained clearer views) Is it for an oldto you a Master in Israel that even ”on physical principles” there are essential points in e (to turn out the best order of children), which, being absent, the perfection of ”health and strength” in both parents is of no avail even for the physical part of the children? And ht I just ask one small question: whether you consider man has a little soul? If he has ever such a little one, you can scarcely consider him as a si one twin and the body the other, but as all one, the soul and the body(altho' only in this sense) If you _do_, at all events _God_ does not And consequently He s enter into the ”physical” constitution even of the children than the th” of the parents (My son, really Plato talked nonsense about this) Take a enerate family or race Take a railway accident What are the laws therein concerned? You have by no th of iron, the speed of steam, the smoothness of rails, the friction &c, &c--but you have to consider the state of mind of Directors, whether they care only for their dividends, so that the railway-servants are underpaid or overworked &c, &c You quote Huxley He is undoubtedly one of the prie, but he makes a profound mistake when he says to Mankind: objects of sense are inations On the contrary, the finest powers ifted with are those which enable him to infer from what he sees what he _can't_ see They lift hiher import than that which he learns from the senses alone I believe that the laws of nature all tend to improve the _whole_ man, moral and physical, that it is absurd to consider man either as a body to be ”improved,” or as a soul to be ”improved,” separately
As to the ”laws of physical iet rid of sickly and deformed infants,” they require that we should _prevent_ or iet rid of some of the finest intellectual and moral specimens of our human nature that have ever existed And, even were this not the case, the heroism, the patience, the wisdo with these and the like forood ofone set of laws or one aspect ofanother
I entirely therefore agree that ”you must take man as a whole” But this seems at variance with a celebrated author's next sentence ”and make morality and the , I should use a word signifying the exact reverse; not lie spirit As Plato says: the mind informs the body, owns the body, the body is the servant of the mind How can the owner and the master be the limit? We must really pray for your conversion
(_Benjaale_) TORQUAY, _Oct_ 4 What have I said to deserve such an outburst? I have no wish to shake the foundation of Society What I think about these matters is feebly expressed in a part of Essay at the end of the introduction to the _Republic_ But when I come to a second edition I will express it better
[138] I have soue in the first and second editions of Mr Jowett's Introduction respectively[139] sho largely he profited by the criticis letter His _Plato_ first appeared in 1871, and at once he began revising it In this work Miss Nightingale gave hirown a little rusty,[140] but her interest in the substance of Plato was intense She annotated Mr Jowett's summaries and introductions very closely, and sent hiestions for revision ”You are the best critic,”
he wrote, ”whoale's notes are preserved, in rough copy, ast her Papers, and by e of Mr Jowett's revised work In the first edition of the introduction to the _Republic_ he made some rehtingale's strong disapproval She agreed that ”the illusion of the feelings commonly called love” was a motive of which too ht, had as yet hardly touched the theme of true love--”two in one, and one in God”--as an incentive to heroic action
”The philosopher e when poetry and sentiination, and the feelings of love are understood and estimated at their proper value” ”Take out that ale; ”take it out thissentence was expunged in the second edition Mr Jowett had gone on to ”blasphe the Mahommedans as a case of the state of the huarded as a false and iious or of the philosophical ideal” Miss Nightingale objected that the Mahoes, but not of architecture: ”Mosques are the highest kind of art: the one true representation of the One God: the Glory of God in the highest: the her than any Christian art or architecture--as you would say if you had seen the e, and used Miss Nightingale's illustration, al froias_, shecriticism:--
Is not Socrates more ineffably tiresoher truth, in the _Gorgias_ than anywhere else? Why call these higher truths ”paradoxes”? Are not your ser to them of God? And why should your Introductions be a sort of apology for recognizing that Socrates speaks the highest truth and no paradox? Have guarded statements, whether about God or any particular ion or inthe _Phaedo_ and _Crito_, where he is so much in earnest? He is so terribly in earnest that towards the end he even throws all his dialectic aside, andas one of the stupid and ignorant, it seems that your Introduction dwells tooout in sufficiently striking relief the great truths which Socrates labours so strenuously to enforce that he alreat reater evil to do than to suffer injustice_ If you call this a ”paradox,” why do you not call the 53rd Chapter of Isaiah a paradox? Is it not the highest of truths? (2) _It is a greater evil not to be punished than to be punished for wrong_ I have no idea why you call this a paradox It follows froher experience of the life of every one of us In fa himself, and oftener herself, and everyone else e (Tho' the ”punishments” of my life have been somewhat severe, yet I can bless God, even in this world, that never in all my life have I been allowed to ”do as I liked”)
[139] See _first_ edition, vol ii p 145, and _second_ edition, vol iii pp 161-162
[140] On one occasion she forgot the Greek for ”Limitless,” and asked Mr Jowett to tell her He replied by quoting Ho insatiably or without li wickedly ”Whom did this represent?”
[141] See _second_ edition, vol iii p 145