Euphuism

“ Both in style and matter Euphues follows Guevara's book, which, in Sir Thomas North's adaptation, bears the title of The Dial of Princes.
The chief characteristics of Euphuism were parallel and assonant antitheses, long strings of comparisons with real or imaginary natural phenomena (borrowed for the most part from Pliny's Natural History) , a partiality for images from antique history and mythology, and a love of alliteration. ”

“ Compare with Despair Bunyan's Giant Despair and the Man in the Iron Cage. 10. Trace the sophistries by which Despair works in the mind of the Knight, e.g. the arguments from necessity (fatalism) , humanity, cowardice, discouragement and disgust on account of his past failures, dread of the future, of God's justice, and the relief of death. 11. Does Despair show knowledge of the Knight's past? 12. With what powerful truths does Una meet the arguments of Despair? 13. Where do you find reference to mediæval art?
14. Find examples of Euphuism, metaphors, similes, Latinisms, and alliteration. ”

“ For I am not embarking on irreyelant themes if I wish to show how great were the blessings that Eusebia procured for me because she honoured the name of philosophy. And yet the name of philosopher which has been, I know not why, applied to myself, is really in my case nothing but a name and lacks reality, for though I love the reality and am terribly enamoured of the thing itself, yet for some reason I have fallen short of it. ”

“ Euphues is a young Athenian, a contemporary not of Pericles, but of Lyly, who goes to Naples, thence to England, to study men and governments. Grave with that gravity peculiar to lay preachers, well-informed on every subject, even on his own merits, assured by his conscience that in making mankind sharer in his illumination, he will assure their salvation, he addresses moral epistles to his fellow men to guide them through life. ”

“ In the old culture endeavour was driven more and more beyond the world of sense to a world of thought, in which it went on from a universal to an ethical and ultimately to a religious conviction. To the thought of Greece, as she grew old, the world of sense experience sank more and more in reality and value, and life found its basis and chief realm of experience in a region transcending sense. Christianity definitely established this view of life, and made the invisible Kingdom of God the true home of man, the most immediate and the most secure that this life knows. ”

“ The ladies knew the phrases of Euphues by heart: strange, studied, and refined phrases, enigmatical; whose author seems of set purpose to seek the least natural expressions and the most farfetched, full of exaggeration and antithesis, in which mythological allusions, reminiscences from alchemy, botanical and astronomical metaphors, all the rubbish and medley of learning, travels, mannerism, roll in a flood of conceits and comparisons. ”

“ Their writings were full of metaphors and figures of speech. The first Euphuists were looked upon as "refiners of speech," and Queen Elizabeth and the ladies at her court did their best to speak as much in the manner of Euphues as they could.
But all men at all times are unconscious Euphuists, in so far as they try to say ugly and unpleasant things in a way which will make them sound pleasant. This tendency in speech is called "euphemism," a word which is made from two Greek words meaning "to speak well." ”

“ We hope that those not previously acquainted with the facts of his life, will find in the present sketch sufficient reason to think and speak otherwise of a man who made the world his country, and the doing good his religion.
"As Euclid near his various writings shone, His pen inspired by glorious truth alone, O'er all the earth diffusing light and life, Subduing error, ignorance, and strife; Raised man to just pursuits, to thinking right, And yet will free the world from woe and falsehood's night; To this immortal man, to Paine 'twas given, To metamorphose earth from hell to heaven." ”

“ Every sentence is a thing bristling with points and antitheses and alliterations. The first part of the book was a kind of novel; two friends, at Naples, woo the same woman, quarrel, write long letters, and the question of education, in the wide sense in which the Renaissance understood education, is always prominent. There is endless conversation and discussion of life, love, and learning, always in the same style of fantastic decoration and allusion: all continued when Euphues arrives in England, all conveying general information not verified by experiment. ”

“ And it is in the failure to recognise this truth that so many Life-systems have set themselves against the higher aspects of philosophy and religion. The most important question has not been asked: What is the relation and value of all results in connection with the deepest potency and necessity of man's spirit? Are these results capable of enriching that spirit of man when he becomes conscious of them? These are the questions which Eucken continually asks and answers in his great works; and it is this fact which makes his teaching so valuable and superior to all the Life-systems of our day. ”

“ Leo, then Bishop of Rome, entered the lists, and in an admirable epistle, explained the point of doctrine. Speaking of Eutyches, he says: “What can be more wicked, than to entertain impiety, and not to give ear to those who are more learned and more wise than himself? But they fall into this folly, who, meeting with some difficulties in the search after truth, turn not to the words of the Prophets, nor the epistles of the Apostles, nor the authorities of the Evangelists, but to themselves. And thus, because they refuse to be the disciples of truth, they become the teachers of error. ”

“ As for philosophy, I cannot describe in words his genius for discourse, or for moral philosophy. As for natural philosophy and the art of divination, let that be left to sacred rites and mysteries. So true is it that the man was a being who combined in himself all the talents for every sort of excellence. One who cares most for this would naturally praise the beauty of the style of his discourse more than his doctrines, or again would prefer his doctrines, if one paid closer attention to these than to the force of his oratory. ”

“ But, like this pillar, outward Beauty—the sense of form that characterized the heathen mind—has survived through the ages. We can gaze up at the one and the other, and wherever the living Truth—the Spirit of Christianity—has informed and penetrated that form of Beauty, the highest hopes of old Eusebius have been realized. Their union is solemnized in Christian Art. ”

“ Theogenes. I am afraid the matter is much worse with me, than it is with Eusebius. For tho’ this doctrine, seems to have got all my heart, as it is a doctrine; yet I am continually thrown out of it in practice, and find myself as much under the power of my old tempers and passions, as I was before I was so full of this doctrine.
Theophilus. You are to know, my friends, that every kind of virtue and goodness, may be brought into us, by two different ways. They may be taught us outwardly by men, by rules and precepts; and they may be inwardly wrought in us. ”

“ The Furies that rise out of the shadow of his action pursue him, no doubt; but the Eumenides are, at the same time, represented as universal powers, and not as voices that cry out to him from his own conscience simply. ”

“ A life thus full of content and joyous activity arose when Greek culture was at its height, and exercised its influence through the course of the centuries; Christianity also soon laid aside its original suspicion against this life and joined it to itself. This life, however, first attained complete independence and self-consciousness in modern culture so far as this culture followed the way of Idealism. It is felt 17 to be superior to Religion and hopes to be able to shape the world of man more satisfactorily than Religion can. ”

“ Eucken points out in his Problem of Human Life how barren in creative power, for instance, was the fourth century. Why? An interval of nearly three centuries had passed away since the Master and his followers had proclaimed truths and experiences which were the burning convictions of their deepest being. Gradually, and often unconsciously, men glided down an inclined plane, until at last the spiritual nucleus of Christianity had largely disappeared and little more than the husks remained. ”

“ Here we have in practical completion that identification of Philosophy with Ethics towards which the whole tendency of Greek speculation had been consciously or unconsciously working, and which was fully consummated in the later development of the Stoic and Epicurean systems. The combined effect of this principle of Epicureanism, and of the contemporaneous failure of political interest, was to direct attention to those less ostentatious, but, for happiness, more effective virtues, which flourish in private society and in the daily intercourse of mankind. ”

“ In Hebrew and Greek times we discover a polytheism, after a long course of development, emerging into henotheism, and finally, here and there, into monotheism. The old conceptions of gods and spirits present in trees and wells, mountains and air, are overcome. They are not so much destroyed as supplanted by higher conceptions. In pre-Socratic philosophy we find the gods and [p.59] spirits relegated to a secondary place, and Nature is conceived as a system of inner energies and strivings. ”

“ The value and the truth of a particular religion will be judged in the first place by the nature of the spiritual substance that it offers, and the degree in which, in its advance, it is able to join itself to the movement of life as a whole and to guide it further. A great divergence is possible between this spiritual substance and the movement and passion that call forth a religion on the basis of humanity: the real is, in human relations, by no means without further consideration to be regarded as rational. ”

“ It is necessary to investigate the final grounds as well as the most complete structure of Life; it is further necessary to discover whether the movement of Life necessarily leads to religion. As Eucken invariably presents the truth of religion, the meaning and significance of religion are to be found through self-consciousness. This meaning of consciousness is twofold in nature. ”

“ Through his sustained and heroic appeal to what is most spiritual in man, Eucken has ennobled the significance and the mission of philosophy. He aims at developing, not a new category, but a new culture, and holds that it is the privilege of philosophy, by penetrating to what is most inward in human nature, to bring a religious inspiration to bear upon the problems of the world of human labor. ”

“ In other words, they must become man's own religion. Man has now become convinced of the reality of a universal spiritual life as constituting, in a measure, the [p.53] foundation of the evolution of the soul, and as the goal towards which he must for ever move. Eucken is unwilling to speculate as to the origin or the goal of this. The centre of gravity of life must be laid in what may be known and experienced between these two poles. There is a certainty which is intermediate between man and the Godhead. ”

“ The permanence of habits formed in a nobler school of teaching, the abiding presence of a loftier ideal not derived from this new philosophy, and (we may add also) the voice of an inward witness whose authority is denied, but whose warnings nevertheless compel a hearing, all tend to raise the level of men's conduct above their principles. The full moral consequences of the teaching would only then be seen, if ever a generation should grow up, moulded altogether under its influences.
II. THE SILENCE OF EUSEBIUS. [JANUARY, 1875.] ”

“ And does it seem so strange to you, Eusebius, if the ear and the eye, those outposts, as it were, of the ever watchful, spiritual, and intellectual sentinels within man, convey the secret intelligences that most concern him? What is there, Eusebius, so marvellous to your conception, if there be sympathy more than electric between those two worlds, outer Nature and Man himself? ”

“ And, when she had finished her discourse, Surius again employs the simile for the purpose of turning a neat compliment, saying, "Lady, if the Tortoise you spoke of in India were as cunning in swimming, as you are in speaking, she would neither fear the heate of the sunne nor the ginne of the Fisher." This is but a mild example of the "unnatural natural philosophy" which Euphues has made famous. An unending procession of such similes, often of the most extravagant nature, runs throughout the book, and sometimes the development of the plot is made dependent on them. ”

“ For you have not undertaken any thing with consideration, nor have you surveyed it well; but carelessly and with cold desire. Thus some who have seen a philosopher and having heard one speak, as Euphrates speaks,—and who can speak as he does?—they wish to be philosophers themselves also. ”

“ In effect this theory denied the human element, and, with this, the possibility of atonement, on the part of human nature, as well as of real union of man with God. Such a magical union of the two natures as Eutyches described is inconsistent with any real becoming man on the part of the Logos,—the manhood is well-nigh as illusory as upon the theory of the Docetæ. ”

“ And such effort and sacrifice are often the best means of calling into activity a still deeper, reserved energy of the soul. The soul now recognises a value beyond the values of culture and civilisation. The Good, the True, and the Beautiful appear as the sole realities by the side of which everything that preceded, if taken as complete in itself, appears as a great shadow or illusion. Here we are reminded of Eucken's affinity with Plato's Doctrine of Ideas, as well as of his attachment to the revival of Platonism by Plotinus. ”