[Author Unknown]

[Published in The Knickerbocker, August, 1847 (30:2)]

[Edited and Annotated by Isabel Garcia for University of Arizona Antebellum Magazine Edition Project, May 8, 2015]

[Editor's Note]

 

‘L’expereince de monde brise le coeur, ou le bronse.’[1]

 

              WERE we required to express in a single sentence the distinguishing characteristic of Shakespeare, we could not more thoroughly sift his excellence to its original elements than by saying, that with him thought is all essence, and the style of its expression suggestive. Truth appears here in its undiluted form. Ideas, like ‘gems of purest ray,[2]’ are scattered along his pages, with a profuseness that bespeaks an exhaustless mine. They glow with the fervor of condensation; they shine with the lustre of intensity. The thought comprehended in half-a-dozen words would elsewhere furnish matter for as many pages. Our age, for instance, is certainly infected with the ‘cacoëthes scribendi,[3]’ but along with the disease is associated a wonderful costiveness of ideas. Ramification supplies the deficiency, and thought is presented us in a milk-and-water[4] style, with the strength and often the purity of Truth, impaired by dilution. Sickened to loathing with such matter, we turn with pleasure to the ‘strong meat’ of Shakespeare, on which the mind may feed with profit, and be satisfied. The ramification now takes place in our own minds. New beauties unfold themselves on closer inspection. Though unmeaning words may appear on the surface, like Le Sage’s student at the epitaph,[5] pry after a hidden treasure, and success will crown you with a reward even greater than the ‘soul of a miser.’ Let the mind have full play to fill out half-developed ideas, and follow up loose hints, and you will strike on rich veins of thought, that less wealthy intellects would be less prodigal of. But we are betrayed into an eulogy, where the intention was only to mention an author, half-a-dozen of whose lines have furnished food for reflection.

            Hamlet, the philosopher-prince, enters, with his friend, the graveyard at Elsinore, and indulges his half-misanthropic melancholy by stopping to ponder on the novel scene before him; of a merry tune and merry words proceeding from one engaged in the strangely inconsistent occupation of digging a grave:

 

HAM. Has this fellow no feeling of his business? He sings at grave-making!

HORATIO: Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

HAM: “T is e’en so! The hand of little employment hath the daintiest sense.

 

            Let us change this scene from the church-yard to the civilized world; make the indifferent old sexton impersonate the abstract man of society in its eighteen hundredth and odd year; and substitute for the reflective prince Miss Jane Porter’s[6] ‘Mysterious Stranger’ just arrived on this globe of ours from some distant inhabited planet; need we put different or more natural language in the mouths of several actors? ‘Hath this man no feeling of his business?’ might our visitor exclaim, as, after being duly apprised of all the realities pertaining to human life and human destiny, he looks around him in vain to observe their natural effect. Informed of facts whose import causes his own heart to quake with awe and stagger under responsibility; yea, so terrible as well nigh to banish reason from her throne, and drive the mind to madness; he feels it is a solemn thing to live in this world of ours. But this man that represents his kind, how bears he such soul-moving truths? A smile is on his lips, a levity is in his words, and his thoughts, could they be seen as plainly, would relate to not one of those subjects so interesting to the stranger. ‘He sings at grave-making,’ continues our imaginary actor, as he looks on the scene we have pictured. Ah! he is a child of Nature, over whom Art has not yet been set for a step-mother,[7] to teach him by her craft to despise the ministrations of our true parent, and by her insinuating address to benumb the sensibilities of the heart, and pervert the vision of the mind. Custom hath not yet made it in him a ‘property of easiness’ to contemplate with a smile the dread realties of life. His mind, of little employment in such matters, hath a daintier sense of them than theirs who have been born into this ‘world’s artificial system,[8]’ and know not how little in its present condition and character is natural, and how much is but the interpolation of a distorted mind and blunted sensibilities.

            Conceive, like Hawthorne, of a new Adam and Eve[9] landed into the midst of a busy metropolis! Could they recognize as the inheritance they had bequeathed to their posterity, this soil that is now covered with the miniature works of man, the puzzling contrivances of human design, and that glitters with the ‘pomp and vain circumstance’ of civilized life, instead of the verdure and furniture of Nature? Could they recognize as the air that once was fragrant with the aroma of ten thousand flowers, and conveyed to their ears the sounds only of a joyous animate creation, this present atmosphere, foul with the belchings of artificial throats, and loaded with the buzz of business? Would it not be difficult in them too, to discover that they beheld their legitimate descendants in the actors in the strange scene before them? Imagine the first man Adam following with his invisible presence these his sons, one by one, day after day, in hopes that haply he may find one with whom his spirit may claim kindred. As they ‘come in and go out’ in their daily business, he finds naught that runs parallel with his own experience. They discourse of matters to him a mystery; they are engaged in occupations whereof he knew nought during his sojourn here. But imagine our common father gifted with the power of ‘discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart,[10]’ and vain indeed is his pilgrimage to meet a child of his own kin and kind. Many are found to have sold their hearts as a price for worldly goods; others have driven the same bargain cheaper by merely disposing of a part of this pearl, and supplying the deficiency with a base artificial alloy; while by far the greater part have only rubbed away its light enamel of sensibility, by contact with a world that furnishes so much occasion for its use. It is the case with some, that this precious jewel has degenerated into a mere muscle, that serves only the purposes of an even circulation of the blood, but has no part in giving a healthy tone to the moral system.

            Discoveries like these cause this Man of Nature to inspect more narrowly those about him; and such appears to be the almost constitutional difference between them and himself, that he fancies all wear spectacles with glasses more or less colored, which possess the remarkable property of changing the apparent desirableness of objects, making things in themselves good to appear, when seen though this medium, repulsive; while it covers with charms objects that to Adam’s eye were either disgusting from their nature, or at least indifferent from their short-lived existence. He could not fail remarking, moreover, the nature of these glasses in directing the vision solely to near objects, while those beyond the horizon of three-score years and ten, made with some no image whatsoever on the mind’s retina, and even with the farthest-sighted, possessed none of that vivid distinctness which would undoubtedly have been the case had they looked merely with the eyes of Nature, unassisted by Art.

            But why continue farther these imaginary illustrations, when we have but to consult our own experience in order to realize the fact? Whence comes it that to believe with the mind is not synonymous with believing with the heart; that speculative assent is different from confiding faith? Or why is not the knowledge of what is right or politic invariably accompanied with corresponding action?

            Whatever may be the philosophical division of the immaterial part of men, yet, avoiding the ‘jargon of the schools,’[11] certain it is that we all naturally adopt a distinction between two of its component parts, the understanding and the heart. In this view the heart is regarded as the spring of all action; the understanding itself does not cause action, but only mediately, by the first operating upon the former. Now belief is simply an act of the understanding, viz: its assent. So far considered, it is a lifeless principle; but when this belief acts upon the heart, then, and then only, can it lead to any of the activities of humanity. We refer not to religion alone, but to all the concerns of life, when we say that the belief then becomes faith. This being the case, the thought occurs, ‘Should there not be a constant concurrence between the intellect and the heart, so that the decisions of he one may cause the decisions of the other?’  Also, ‘Why this process is ever interrupted?’ The questions may be answered by contemplating the nature of that machinery by which the force of an assenting or rejecting understanding is communicated to the heart.

            The connection between the two consists, as it were, in cog-wheels, of which the sensibilities present the cogs[12] and by their means alone can truth gain a handle on the feelings. In this world, where the five senses are so many avenues, hourly trodden by applicants for our sympathy and emotion, such is the incessant use of this machinery, that these cogs become each day more and more worn away. On subjects where they have been most exercised they disappear entirely; and the wheel of the intellect has been known to whirl around for years, and yet that of the heart be perfectly inactive. Nor is this ‘wear and tear’ of the sensibilities at all diminished when vicious passions are allowed to run wild in the heart, and consequently exert all the violence of opposition to disturb the machinery of nature. Few cogs, indeed, can long stand such unnatural pressure as this. Of a texture nice and delicate, rather than strong and enduring, they give way before the contrary force; and could we look into the internal constitution of many around us, we should see the melancholy picture of a heart stripped of all feeling, as catches for the propagation of force from the intellect. But is it supposed that in such cases all is quiet and peaceful within? Ah, no! a new power has arisen, that by a different connection whirls around the poor heart with a continually increasing momentum, which it is hopeless for the mind’s opposition ever effectually to resist.

            Let us then guard these sensibilities as the ‘apple of the eye;’ suffering, in the first place, no erroneous decision of the understanding to grate upon the healthy play of the system, and in the second place, chaining off at a distance from resisting its natural connection of parts, those evil passions that feed on the heart. Consistency with truth requires that we should no sooner believe than feel, and no sooner see what actually exists around us than act according to nature (i.e., our sensibilities) in view of it. The question whether opening all these doors of sensitiveness would allow the entrance of the most pleasure or pain, is a foreign consideration here, here truth is at stake.

            To conclude, then: it appears that man can love, follow, and live by truth only so long as he preserves the sensibility-enamelled surface of the heart bright and polished, so as to mirror forth in his life the reflections of his intellect.

 

 

 

Editor’s Note

Written during the Industrial Revolution, this essay criticizes the nature of unfeeling labor inherent in America’s growing economy. Themes of materialism and “the buzz of business,” like the ones condemned in this essay, permeated literature throughout the antebellum period. For example, in Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street,” Bartleby, Turkey, and Nippers represent different ways the capitalist economy dehumanized workers. In particular, Bartleby becomes progressively unimportant, and by the end of the story he can only say, “I prefer not to.” Responding to Bartleby’s degeneration, the narrator notes, “‘I prefer not to’ was sure to come; and then, how could a human creature with the common infirmities of our nature, refrain from bitterly exclaiming upon such perverseness—such unreasonableness” (Melville). This perverseness and unreasonableness of abject labor seems to parallel the author of this essay’s critique on people selling “their hearts as a price for worldly goods,” which he claims was a result of the disconnection between thought and feeling.

Concurrently with economic growth, print culture was also expanding during the antebellum period. Numerous newspapers, magazines, periodicals, and journals made information more accessible than ever. Observing the extensive power of print, Marshall McLuhan contends, “the fragmenting and analytic power of print in our psychic lives, gave us [a]  ‘disassociation of sensibility,’” replacing the extended form of a family of blood relatives with “an association of men homogenously trained to be individuals” (236, 240). Further, the homogenous individuals’ specialization by dissociation created Western power and efficiency (240). Since this essay criticizes the insensate labor characteristic of a powerful, efficient economy and implores people to act based on both the intellect and the heart, it could confirm McLuhan’s theory that print fragmented the connection between thought and feeling. However, if also viewed in terms of McLuhan’s assertion that “the medium is the message,” then the essay, itself a disembodied idea, extended the “unnatural pressure” placed on an individual’s cogs of sensibility to a wider community of educated and literate readers. Thus, the detachment of thought and feeling through the medium of print might have actually helped preserve the hourly trodden sensibilities that connect the mind and the heart.

Today’s age of electricity has extended typography far beyond the scope of print. McLuhan claims that the “implosion” of electric writing “pour upon [us] the concerns of all other men,” reverting us back to interdependence (234). In contrast with print’s linear, fixed point of view, electricity has a decentralizing effect since it eradicates the boundaries of time and space (235). Even unearthing this essay from an online database, annotating it with research found online, and uploading it to a website featuring similar content, modifies its original meaning and makes it more accessible to a wider audience. Though McLuhan would argue that this further fragments thought and feeling, if the readers’ sensibilities have been guarded by a continuous detachment from instantaneous information, then it may be possible for “truth [to] gain a handle on the feelings” as they read the “The Enamel of the Heart.”

 

 

WORKS CITED

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"Cog, n.2." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.

"Exodus 3:14." Bible Hub. Biblos, n.d. Web. 08 May 2015.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The New Adam and Eve." Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1843, 1846. Eldritch Press, n.d. Web. 08 May 2015.

"Hebrews 4 - King James Version." Bible Gateway. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 May 2015.

McLean, Thomas (2007). "Nobody's Argument: Jane Porter and the Historical Novel". Journal for Early Modern Culture Studies 7 (2): 88–103.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Melville, Herman. "Bartleby, the Scrivener. A Story of Wall-street." Melville, Herman. 1853. Bartleby.com, n.d. Web. 10 May 2015.

"Milk-and-water, n. and adj." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 8 May 2015.

Prior, Matthew, and John Mitford. The Poetical Works of Matthew Prior. Edinburgh: Houghton, Mifflin, 1880. Web.

Scott, Walter. "LIFE AND CHARACTER OF LE SAGE." The Museum of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art (1822-1842) Oct 01 1824: 20. ProQuest. Web. 8 May 2015.