In art, Mr. Ruskin has explained the
palpable truth that semi-civilised nations can colour better than we do,
and that an Indian shawl and China vase are inimitable by us. 'It is
their glorious ignorance of all rules that does it; the pure and true
instincts have play, and do their work; and the moment we begin teaching
people any rules about colour, and make them do this or that, we crush
the instinct, generally for ever' (_Modern Painters_, iii. 91). Emerson
said what comes to the same thing about morals. The philosophy of
democracy, or the government of a great mixed community by itself, rests
on a similar assumption in politics. The foundations of a self-governed
society on a great scale are laid in leading instincts. Emerson was
never tired of saying that we are wiser than we know. The path of
science and of letters is not the way to nature. What was done in a
remote age by men whose names have resounded far, has no deeper sense
than what you and I do to-day. What food, or experience, or succour have
Olympiads and Consulates for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, for the Kanaka
in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter? When he is
in this vein Emerson often approaches curiously near to Rousseau's
memorable and most potent paradox of 1750, that the sciences corrupt
manners.[8]
[Footnote 8: What so good, asks Rousseau, 'as a sweet and precious
ignorance, the treasure of a pure soul at peace with itself, which
finds all its blessedness in inward retreat, in testifying to itself
its own innocence, and which feels no need of seeking a warped and
hollow happiness in the opinion of other people as to its
enlightenment?']
Most men will now agree that when the great fiery trial came, the
Emersonian faith and the democratic assumption abundantly justified
themselves.
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