CHAPTER VI.

OF UNITY, OR THE TYPE OF THE DIVINE COMPREHENSIVENESS.

§ 1. The general conception of divine Unity.

§ 2. The glory of all things is their Unity.

"ALL things," says Hooker, "God only excepted, besides the nature which they have in themselves, receive externally some perfection from other things." Hence the appearance of separation or isolation in anything, and of self-dependence, is an appearance of imperfection: and all appearances of connection and brotherhood are pleasant and right, both as significative of perfection in the things united, and as typical of that Unity which we attribute to God, and of which our true conception is rightly explained and limited by Dr. Brown in his xCII.nd lecture; that Unity which consists not in his own singleness or separation, but in the necessity of his inherence in all things that be, without which no creature of any kind could hold existence for a moment. Which necessity of divine essence I think it better to speak of as Comprehensiveness, than as Unity; because unity is often understood in the sense of oneness or singleness, instead of universality; whereas the only unity which by any means can become grateful or an object of hope to men, and whose types therefore in material things can be beautiful, is that on which turned the last words and prayer of Christ before his crossing of the Kedron brook. "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee."

And so there is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any creature, but it is capable of a unity of some kind with other creatures; and in that unity is its perfection and theirs, and a pleasure also for the beholding of all other creatures that can behold. So the unity of

spirits is partly in their sympathy, and partly in their giving and taking, and always in their love: and these are their delight and their strength; for their strength is in their co-working and army fellowship, and their delight is in the giving and receiving of alternate and perpetual good; their inseparable dependency on each other's being, and their essential and perfect depending on their Creator's. And so the unity of earthly creatures is their power and their peace: not like the dead and cold peace of undisturbed stones and solitary mountains; but the living peace of trust, and the living power of support; of hands that hold each other and are still. And so the unity of matter is, in its noblest form, the organization of it which builds it up into temples for the spirit; and in its lower form, the sweet and strange affinity which gives to it the glory of its orderly elements, and the fair variety of change and assimilation that turns the dust into the crystal, and separates the waters that be above the firmament from the waters that be beneath : and, in its lowest form, it is the working and walking and clinging together that gives their power to the winds, and its syllables and soundings to the air, and their weight to the waves, and their burning to the sunbeams, and their stability to the mountains, and to every creature whatsoever operation is for its glory and for others' good.

Now of that which is thus necessary to the perfection of all things, all appearance, sign, type, or suggestion must be beautiful, in whatever matter it may appear. The appearance of some species of unity is, in the most determined sense of the word, essential to the perfection of beauty in lines, colours, or forms.

ginal. Of Se

Membership.

But of the appearances of unity, as of unity itself, there are § 3. The seveseveral kinds, which it will be found hereafter convenient to consider ral kinds of Unity. Subseparately. Thus there is the Unity of different and separate jectional. Orithings, subjected to one and the same influence, which may be quence and of called Subjectional Unity; and this is the unity of the clouds, as they are driven by the parallel winds, or as they are ordered by the electric currents; this the unity of the sea waves, this of the bending and undulation of the forest masses; and in creatures capable of will it is the unity of will or of impulse. And there is Unity of Origin, which we may call Original Unity; which is of

§ 4. Unity of Membership. How secured.

things arising from one spring and source, and speaking always of this their brotherhood; and this in matter is the unity of the branches of the trees, and of the petals and starry rays of flowers, and of the beams of light; and in spiritual creatures it is their filial relation to Him from whom they have their being. And there is Unity of Sequence, which is that of things that form links in chains, and steps in ascents, and stages in journeys; and this, in matter, is the unity of communicable forces in their continuance from one thing to another; and it is the passing upwards and downwards of beneficent effects among all things, the melody of sounds, the continuity of lines, and the orderly succession of motions and times; and in spiritual creatures it is their own constant building up, by true knowledge and continuous reasoning, to higher perfection, and the singleness and straight-forwardness of their tendencies to more complete communion with God. And there is the unity of Membership, which we may call Essential Unity, which is the unity of things separately imperfect into a perfect whole; and this is the great unity of which other unities are but parts and means; it is in matter the harmony of sounds and consistency of bodies, and among spiritual creatures their love and happiness and very life in God.

Now of the nature of this last kind of unity, the most important whether in moral or in those material things with which we are at present concerned, there is this necessary to be observed; that it cannot exist between things similar to each other. Two or more equal and like things cannot be members one of another, nor can they form one, or a whole thing. Two they must remain, both in nature and in our conception, so long as they remain alike, unless they are united by a third different from both. Thus the arms, which are like each other, remain two arms in our conception. They could not be united by a third arm; they must be united by something which is not an arm, and which, imperfect without them as they without it, shall form one perfect body. Nor is unity even thus accomplished, without a difference and opposition of direction in the setting on of the like members. Therefore, among all things which are to have unity of membership one with another, there must be difference or variety; and though it is possible that many like things may be made members of one body, yet it is remarkable

that this structure appears characteristic of the lower creatures, rather than the higher, as the many legs of a caterpillar, and the many arms and suckers of the radiata; and that, as we rise in order of being, the number of similar members becomes less, and their structure commonly seems based on the principle of the unity of two things by a third, as Plato states it in the Timæus, § 11.

Hence, out of the necessity of Unity, arises that of Variety; a § 5. Variety. necessity often more vividly, though never so deeply felt, because Why required. lying at the surface of things, and assisted by an influential principle of our nature, the love of change, and by the power of contrast. But it is a mistake which has led to many unfortunate results, in matters respecting art, to insist on any inherent agreeableness of variety, without reference to a farther end. For it is not even true that variety as such, and in its highest degree, is beautiful. A patched garment of many colours is by no means so agreeable as one of a single and continuous hue; the splendid colours of many birds are eminently painful from their violent separation, and inordinate variety, while the pure and colourless swan is, under certain circumstances, the most beautiful of all feathered creatures.1 A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable in effect 2; a mass of one species of tree is sublime. It is therefore only harmonious and chordal variety, that variety which is necessary to secure and extend unity (for the greater the number of objects which by their differences become members of one another, the more extended and sublime is their unity), which is rightly agreeable; and so I name not Variety as essential to beauty, because it is only so in a secondary and casual sense.3

2

Of the Love of Change as a principle of human nature, and the § 6. Change,

1 Compare Chap. IX. § 5. note. • Spenser's various forest is the Forest of Error. "It must be matter of no small wonderment to practical men, to observe how grossly the nature and connection of Unity and Variety have been misunderstood and misstated by those writers upon taste who have been guided by no experience of art, most singularly perhaps by Mr. Alison, who, confounding Unity with Uniformity, and leading his readers through thirty pages of discussion respecting Uniformity and Variety, the intelligibility of which is not by any means increased by his supposing Uniformity to be capable of existence in single things, at last substitutes for these two terms, sufficiently contradictory already, those of Similarity and Dissimilarity, the reconciliation of which opposites in one thing we must, I believe, leave Mr. Alison to accomplish.

on beauty.

and its influence pleasantness of variety resulting from it, something has already been said (Ch. IV. § 4.); only as there I was opposing the idea that our being familiar with objects was the cause of our delight in them, so here I have to oppose the contrary position that their strangeness is the cause of it. For neither familiarity nor strangeness has more operation on, or connection with, impressions of one sense than of another; and they have less power over the impressions of sense, generally, than over the intellect in its joyful accepting of fresh knowledge, and dull contemplation of that it has long possessed. Only in their operation on the senses they act contrarily at different times; as for instance, the newness of a dress, or of some kind of unaccustomed food, may make it for a time delightful, but as the novelty passes away, so also may the delight, yielding to disgust or indifference; which in their turn, as custom begins to operate, may pass into affection and craving, and that which was first a luxury, and then a matter of indifference, become a necessity: whereas in subjects of the intellect, the chief delight they convey is dependent upon their being newly and vividly comprehended; and as they become subjects of contemplation they lose their value, and become tasteless and unregarded, except as instruments for the reaching of others; only that though they sink down into the shadowy, effectless, heap of things indifferent, which we pack, and crush down, and stand upon, to reach things new, they sparkle afresh at intervals as we stir them by throwing a new stone into the heap, and letting the newly admitted lights play upon them. And, both in subjects of the intellect and the senses, it is to be remembered that the love of change is a weakness and imperfection of our nature, and implies in it the state of probation; and that it is to teach us that things about us here are not meant for our continual possession or satisfaction, that ever such passion of change was put in us as that "custom lies upon us with a weight, heavy as frost, and deep almost as life;" and only such weak thews and baby grasp given to our intellect as that "the best things we do are painful, and the exercise of them grievous, being continued without intermission, so as in those very actions whereby we are especially perfected in this life we are not

1 Καὶ τὸ ταὐτὰ πράττειν πολλάκις ἡδύ· . . . . τὸ γὰρ σύνηθες ἡδὺ ἦν. καὶ τὸ μεταβάλλειν ἡδύ· εἰς φύσιν γὰρ γίγνεται μεταβάλλειν - Arist. Rhet. 1. 2. 20.