Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  ‘P.S. — In spite of what I have written about Comte, reading him has done me some good, and I have certainly gained a clearer idea of what he calls “l’hiérarchie des sciences.” Have you read Schopenhauer? If not, do. You will like him.’

  Probably that philosopher’s ‘Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung’ is responsible for the poem called ‘Pessimism,’ which in a subsequent letter Allen sent to Mr. Richards, and which is printed in ‘The Lower Slopes.’

  The foregoing extracts show how omnivorous was his taste in reading, and in what variety of fields he browsed. Further hints of this are given in a letter to Mr. Nicholson, under date of 19th September 1880: ‘I spent the latter part of my three years in Jamaica on Anglo-Saxon and Early English History,’ and in the Introduction to his translation of the ‘Attis ‘ (1892) he says: ‘It is now nearly twenty years ago that I read Catullus’s masterpiece with my class of students in an abortive little Government College in Spanish Town.’ One of his original axioms, full of suggestion, and with the ‘soupçon’ of paradox wherewith so much that he said was flavoured, was, ‘You must never let schooling interfere with education’ (see ‘ Eye versus Ear,’ in ‘ Post-Prandial Philosophy,’ p. 129). He practised what he preached. Unwavering as he was in the fundamentals of the faith delivered to him in his undergraduate days, the area embraced by that faith was so vast that he had as little need as desire to transcend it. He agreed with Goethe that ‘man is born not to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out where the problem begins, and then to restrain himself within the limits of the. comprehensible’ The thirst after knowledge and the zest to apply it were insatiate in him: to the end of his days he was as a boy at school, as throughout his life he remained a boy at heart And the fruition of his three years in Jamaica is seen in all his after-work. He came back with a store of facts of surpassing importance for his scientific treatises and fugitive essays; and of materials for his more typical stories, notably ‘The Reverend John Creedy,’

  ‘In All Shades,’ and ‘The Devil’s Die.’ As he remarks in a paper on ‘Tropical Education’: —

  The Tropics are the norma of nature — the way things mostly are and always have been. They represent to ns the common condition of the whole world during by far the greater part of its entire existence. Not only are they still in the strictest sense the biological headquarters; they are also the standard or central type by which we must explain all the rest of nature both in man and beast, in plant and animal (‘Science in Arcady,’ p. 23).

  Whenever I meet a cultivated man who knows his Tropics — and more particularly one who has known his Tropics during the formative period of mental development, say from eighteen to thirty — I feel instinctively that he possesses certain keys of man and nature, certain clues to the problems of the world we live in, not possessed in anything like the same degree by the mere average annual output of Oxford or of Heidelberg. I feel that we talk like Freemasons together — we of the Higher Brotherhood who have worshipped the sun, ‘præsentiorem deum,’ in his own nearer temples (Ibid p. 22).

  While Allen was in Jamaica, the deepening impression which the ‘Synthetic Philosophy’ made on him impelled him to address some verses to Mr. Herbert Spencer, which were published twenty years afterwards in ‘The Lower Slopes.’ To these Mr. Spencer made the following acknowledgment, which with subsequent extracts from certain of his letters, he courteously permits me to print

  38 Queen’s Gardens, Bayswater, W. 10th Dec. 1874.

  My dear Sir, — Your letter and its enclosure are so unusual in their kinds, that ordinary forms of response seem scarcely appropriate. Fitly to acknowledge so strong an expression of sympathy is a task for which I find myself quite unprepared.

  Naturally, it is grateful to me to find, here and there, one who recognises the meaning and scope of the work to which I have devoted my life — the more grateful because there are few who have the breadth of view for seeing more than the particular applications of the doctrine of Evolution. Excepting only my friends, Professors Huxley and Tyndall, and my American friends, Professor Fiske and Professor Youmans (Editor of the ‘Popular Science Monthly’) I know none, personally, who have from the beginning seen the general purpose which runs through the System of Synthetic Philosophy. Apart from other reasons, your letter is pleasant to me as implying that even in remote regions there are others, unknown to me, having that mental kinship which is shown by a wider comprehension than that of the specialist.

  Respecting the sentiment expressed in your verses, it is scarcely proper for me to say anything, unless to disclaim a merit so high as that ascribed. I am not debarred, however, from expressing an opinion respecting the rendering of the ideas, which seems to me admirable, alike in its choice of language, and in the music of the versification.

  I may add that the effect of your eulogy is rather the reverse of that which, at first sight, might be anticipated; the effect being to produce a renewed sense of the incongruity which, in all cases, exists more or less between the author as manifested in his works, and the author as he actually exists. — I am, very sincerely yours,

  HERBERT SPENCER.

  On the closing of the College in 1876, Allen, with added intellectual capital, and modest compensation for the abolition of his post, returned to England, whither Mrs. Allen, whose health had suffered from a tropical climate, had preceded him by some months. His return was the resumption of a period of privation which he had not known since the Oxford days. There was no demand for the solid yet attractive wares which he had to offer. Serious himself, he took the public seriously. Three years of absence had put him out of touch with the literary market, and he had to learn through much tribulation that science, outside its commercial application, meant starvation. ‘I produced,’ he says, ‘a hundred or more magazine articles on various philosophical and scientific subjects, every one of which I sent to the editors of leading reviews, and every one of which was punctually “declined with thanks,” or committed without even that polite formality to the editorial waste-paper basket’ Settled in lodgings for the time being at Oxford, where he earned a little by ‘coaching, he used some of his spare time in writing his first book, ‘ Physiological Æsthetics,’ and some of his spare cash — balance of his compensation money — in publishing it.

  The central idea of the book — the origin of the higher pleasure which we derive from natural or artistic products — had, as shown in one of his letters to Mr. Richards, occupied his thoughts while in Jamaica. Mr. Ruskin had said that the question ‘why we receive pleasure from some forms and colours and not from others, is no more to be asked or answered than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood.’ And Darwin ‘ also, in speaking of the constitution of man and the lower animals for the perception of differences in colours and sounds, had added, ‘but why this should be so we know no more than why certain bodily sensations are agreeable and others disagreeable.’ This was relegating the origin of the gustatory and other senses to the realm of the inexplicable; and hence, armed with Mr. Spencer’s ‘Principles of Psychology,’ Professor Bain’s ‘Senses and Intellect,’ and some current textbooks on physiology, Allen showed how the foundation of all sensation is in the laws of nervous action. ‘I feel convinced,’ he says, ‘that every aesthetic feeling, though it may incidentally contain intellectual and complex emotional factors, has necessarily, for its ultimate and principal component, pleasures of sense, ideal or actual, either as tastes, smells, touches, sounds, forms, or colours’

  (p. 193). After showing the general relation of pleasure and pain to our organism and its circumstances, a body of evidence was presented in proof of the origin of existing likes and dislikes in aesthetic matters from the action of natural selection. The argument thus fell into line with the doctrine of Evolution, and warranted the following correspondence on the dedication of the book

  10 Beaumont Street, Oxford, Feb. 26(1877).

  Dear Mr. Spencer, — I have now in the press a short work on ‘Physiological Æsthetics,
’ which I hope to get out in six weeks or two months. I venture to ask your leave to dedicate it to you. I believe everything which I say in it is strictly in accordance with your views of psychological evolution, and I have endeavoured to the best of my ability to secure correctness in my facts by submitting the various chapters to specialists in their particular lines, whose assistance I have been able to obtain here. I think, therefore, that my book will not be one of which you need be ashamed to receive the dedication. As I know, however, that the favour which I ask is not to be lightly granted, I enclose a short abstract of my argument, from which you will be able to judge of the general tenor and the extent of its accordance with your own views. I should be immensely obliged if you could find time to glance through it.

  I must congratulate you upon the issue — even in its present unfinished state — of your sixth volume. Its reception by the reviews, though of course not what one could desire, certainly shews the immense advance of the public mind in the appreciation of sociological inquiry.

  My post in Jamaica has been abolished, and my intention at present is to remain in England. — Yours very sincerely,

  GRANT ALLEN.

  37 Queen’s Gardens, Bayswater, W.

  28th Feb. 1877.

  Dear Professor Allen, — I am greatly pleased with the programme of your ‘Physiological Æsthetics,’ received yesterday. It appears to me highly philosophical in its conception and admirable in its arrangement; and further, you have carried out the general principles in new directions with great originality and insight. So far as I can gather from this sketch, the work deserves a great success, and will, I think, be a very valuable development of Evolution doctrines.

  You may therefore infer that I have great gratification in assenting to your proposed dedication. Indeed, I think I shall have every reason to be proud of a disciple who achieves so important an extension of the general theory as this which your work promises to do.

  I have just been writing to my American friend, Professor Youmans, and have named to him your forthcoming work and the high opinion I have formed of it from the programme. I have suggested that possibly something might be done with it in America, and have said that I would forward to him some of the early proof-sheets if you would let me have them, by way of enabling him to judge. I have also said that I would request you to send to him the programme which you have sent to me, and which I now return. [The rest of the letter is missing; it was probably mutilated to satisfy some autograph-hunter.]

  38 Queen’s Gardens, Bayswater, W.

  May 9,1877.

  Dear Mr. Allen, — I have been reading the earlier part of your book with much satisfaction, and it thus far fulfils the anticipations raised by the programme. Beyond the advance you make in the exposition of the theory of Pleasure and Pain, and beyond the important development constituted by your differentiation of Æsthetics from Play proper, which becomes obvious the moment it is pointed out, the part I have read strikes me by its fertility of illustration and clearness of expression.

  The only criticism of moment that has occurred to me respects the arrangement of certain minor divisions in the chapter on the Differentia of Æsthetics. It seems to me that the sections entitled Æsthetic Taste and Æsthetic Education suspend too much the general argument. The reasoning should, I think, pass more directly from the definition of æsthetic feelings in general to the treatment of the special æsthetic feelings dealt with in the next chapter.

  I yesterday responded to a letter from Mr. Fry respecting the Head Mastership of the Salt Schools, and had pleasure in expressing a high opinion of your fitness.

  Have you sent a copy of your book to the ‘Revue Philosophique’? If not, I will forward the duplicate copy you have sent me to the editor, Prof. Ribot, who will doubtless review it. — Truly yours, — HERBERT SPENCER.

  The letter to Mr. Fry, probably handed by him to Allen for future use, was found with the Spencer correspondence. Mr. Spencer speaks of his special ‘fitness as a teacher and director of teachers.... If he can communicate ideas orally as well as he does it by writing, his abilities as an instructor must be unusually high. His book still more than his conversation shows a familiarity with science in general such as would specially fit him for directing an education having for its aim scientific culture at large.’

  Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace acknowledged a copy of the book as follows: —

  Rosehill, Dorking,

  Oct. 7th, 1877.

  My dear Sir, — I have read the passages you marked, as well as a good many other parts of your book, with much pleasure. I was particularly pleased with your suggestion (which had not occurred to me) that fruits, in our sense of the word, are much more recent developments than flowers, because they attract chiefly mammals and birds instead of insects.

  There is, I admit, a partial contradiction between the view that ‘red’ excites animals on account of its glaring contrast, and that yet the perception of it by man is recent. The latter view must, I believe, be incorrect, and should be stated, I think, even more hypothetically than I have put it. I have just been reading Mr. Gladstone’s interesting paper, which is almost wholly on Homer’s colour terms, or rather the absence of them. The evidence is most curious, but I think it only goes to show that language was imperfect, and that ‘colour’ was too infinitely varied and of too little importance to early man to have received a systematic nomenclature. ‘Flowers’ and ‘birds’ and ‘insects’ were despised, and the colours of more important objects, as the ‘sea,’ ‘sky,’ ‘earth,’ ‘iron,’ ‘brass,’ etc., were not only not pure colours (generally), but subject to endless fluctuations.

  Your remarks on ‘nuts’ are very good. I quite overlooked that case, and shall refer to you when I reprint my paper with others in a volume shortly.

  I think that all the coloured fruits which are poisonous to ‘man’ are eatable to some birds, etc. They are far too numerous to be accounted for otherwise. — With many thanks, believe me, yours faithfully,

  ALFRED R. WALLACE.

  Published, as has been stated, at the author’s risk, ‘Physiological Æsthetics’ was, financially, unsuccessful. The sale did not reach three hundred copies, leaving the author some £50 to the bad. But the book escaped the inglorious fate of a ‘remainder’ by passing ‘out of print’ in a fire at the publishers, who awarded Allen,£15 as compensation.

  But it had a ‘succès d’estime,’ resulting, indirectly, in cash as well as ‘kudos.’

  ‘Not only did it bring me into immediate contact with several among the leaders of thought in London, but,’ Allen adds, ‘it also made my name known in a very modest way, and induced editors — those arbiters of literary fate — to give a second glance at my unfortunate manuscripts. Almost immediately after its appearance, Leslie Stephen (I omit the Mr. “honoris causa”) accepted two papers of mine for publication in the “Cornhill.”

  “Carving a Coconut” was the first, and it brought me in twelve guineas.

  That was the very first money I earned in literature. I had been out of work for months, the abolition of my post in Jamaica having thrown me on my beam-ends, and I was overjoyed at so much wealth poured suddenly in upon me. Other magazine articles followed in due course, and before long I was earning a modest — a very modest — and precarious income, yet enough to support myself and my family.’

  ‘You have done,’ writes Leslie Stephen, ‘what is very rare and very excellent in journalism: you have made a distinct place for yourself, and have done a real service in spreading some popular notions of science. Few journalists can say as much for themselves.’ And in that service Mr. Stephen had given a helping hand by according space to the science-made-easy articles which were produced by Allen, Richard Proctor, and other gifted exponents of those results of modern research which accrued from 1859 onwards. Allen still dallied at intervals with the Muses, and while staying at Lyme Regis, his wife’s native town, in the summer of 1877, he composed ‘Pisgah’ (printed in ‘The Lower Slopes’), and sen
t it with the following letter to Mr. Spencer

  Broad Street, Lyme Regis,

  Dorset, Aug. 16, ‘77.

  Dear Mr. Spencer, — I had been lately reading the supplementary chapters of your ‘Sociology,’ which you were kind enough to give me, and comparing them with certain quasiprophetic passages in the ‘Biology,’

  ‘Psychology,’ and ‘Social Statics,’ whereupon the enclosed lines suggested themselves to my mind. As my metrical lucpbrations are fated never to appear in print, I thought you might perhaps like to see them in MS. In sending them, I need hardly remind ‘you’ that lyrical poetry, being essentially the crystallised form of a fleeting emotional state, is necessarily somewhat one-sided. Like the ‘instantaneous photographs’ of a London street, it fixes in factitious permanence the passing aspect of a changeful whole. The side I have shown here is the gloomy one: a different emotional moment would show it in brighter colours.

  Pray don’t take the trouble to answer or acknowledge this note. I know the value of your time to humanity too well to wish any of it wasted on such personal trifles. — Yours very sincerely,

  GRANT ALLEN.

  Hearty as was the reception of his science ‘middles,’ there was the old trouble of space-limits in the magazines, and resulting uncertainty of income. Hence Allen’s willing acceptance of an offer of continuous work for some months under the late Sir William Hunter in the preparation of his gigantic ‘Gazetteer of India,’ involving removal to Edinburgh. ‘I wrote,’ Allen says, ‘with my own hand the greater part of the articles on the North-West Provinces, the Punjaub, and Sind, in those twelve big volumes.’ Back at Oxford in 1878, he was thrown once more upon fitful and fugitive work, and, casting about for new channels wherein to place it, wrote to Mr. Andrew Chatto, ‘most generous of men, and one of my earliest and staunchest literary supporters... to whose kindness and sympathy I owe as much as to any one in England’ — a verdict which every one who has had like relations with Mr. Chatto will indorse.