A REBUFF.
I asked not the question, for in fact it did not occur to me; but I
asked another question, What shall I do with myself? A grave question
this. Do what I would, turn the matter over as I might, there was, now
the novelty of the idea had worn off, nothing inspiring in this idea of
eternal progression;—this ever learning, and never coming to the
knowledge of the truth—this everlasting chase after good, and never
coming up with it. Why continue a pursuit which you know beforehand will
bring you never any nearer the object than you are, for as you pursue,
it flies. Is not this evil rather than good, hell rather than heaven? Is
not this the punishment of Ixion?—That war of the Titans upon the gods,
has it not a deep significance? The Titans, the Giants, the Earthborn,
_Terræ filii_, would dethrone the gods, the heaven-born, the divine, and
were defeated and doomed to punishment, to turn forever a wheel, to roll
a huge stone up the steep hill, and just as it is about to reach the
summit, have it slip from the hands and roll down with a thundering
sound; to a task never completed, and always to be renewed, or to
hunger, with food ever in sight, and always just beyond reach; to
thirst, standing to the neck in water, and have it recede always as
approached with the lips. Is not, after all, this the doom that they
bring on themselves who reject the wisdom from above and follow what my
friend Mr. Merton calls the wisdom from below?
I can very well understand progress towards an end, towards a goal that
is fixed and permanent, but a progress towards nothing, or towards a
movable goal, a goal that recedes as approached, is to me quite
unintelligible, and, when I think of it, it seems as absurd as the
supposition of an infinite series. Infinite progression is, in reality,
an infinite absurdity. The origin and end of all things must be perfect,
fixed, and immovable. Every mechanic knows that he cannot generate
motion without a something which is at rest, which can cause or produce
motion without moving itself. Without the immovable, there is and can be
no movable. In like manner, no motion towards what is not immovable, for
if the two bodies remain in the same position relative to each other,
neither, in relation to the other, has moved.
Progress is morally motion towards an end, and if there is no
approximation to the end, there is no progress. As progress is
inconceivable without some end, so it is equally inconceivable without a
shortening of the distance between the progressing agent and the end. If
this distance can be shortened, however little, if not more than a line
in a million of ages, it is not infinite, and the progress cannot be
eternal. This infinite or eternal progression is, then, only a lying
dream.
At the bottom of this idea of progress, which our modern reformers prate
about, is the foolish notion that man is born an inchoate, an incipient
God, and that his destiny is to grow into or become the infinite God;
that he is to grow or develop into the Almighty; that, to be God, is his
ultimate destiny; and, as God is infinite, he is to be eternally
developing and realizing more and more of God, without ever realizing
him in his infinity. The bubble does not burst and lose itself in the
ocean, but by virtue of its bubbleosity it grows and absorbs more and
more of the ocean into itself.
I cannot understand this eternal absorbing process, which, though always
absorbing or assimilating, leaves always the same quantity, physical or
moral, to be absorbed or assimilated. It is impossible to be satisfied
with such a destiny. To be always seeking and never finding, to be
always desiring, craving, and never filled, is not heaven, it is hell,
and the severest hell, in comparison with which the pain of sense, or
natural fire and brimstone were a solace. Man is not moved to act by
desire. His desire to attain must become hope of attaining, before it
can move him, and when you deprive him of that hope, you take from him
all courage, all energy, and all motive to act. Desire to possess the
beloved, may remain and torment the lover, but it can never suffice to
make him continue his pursuit when all hope of success has been
extinguished. I do not say love cannot survive hope, but I do say that
love’s efforts cannot, and it is seldom that even love itself does.
The Christian is stimulated to constant activity, not by charity or love
of God alone, but by hope; and the hope of possessing God, of being
filled with his love, of reposing in the arms of all-sufficing charity,
stimulates onward from grace to grace, and from one degree of perfection
to another. Though he finds not yet perfect repose, though he is not yet
filled, though he has not yet attained, yet he is upheld, buoyed up and
onward by the sure promise, the steadfast hope of attaining, of at last
finding repose, rest in the bosom of his love and his God. He may feel
the clogs of flesh, he may feel that he is absent from his love, and
sigh to reach his home and embrace the spouse of his soul, but he grows
not weary, faints not, and knows nothing of the _ennui_, that
listlessness of spirit, that disgust of life, and disrelish for every
pursuit, which he feels who has no object, no hope, and sees not even in
the most distant future any chance of finding that fulness and repose
which his soul never ceases in this life to crave. In losing sight of
God as final cause, in losing the hope of possessing God as the supreme
good, in substituting endless progression for endless beatitude, full
and complete, I had lost all stimulus to exertion, all motive to exert
myself for any thing.
Why should I act? What had I to gain? Money I did not want; I had more
than I could use. Fame I despised. It was a mere word, born and dying in
the very sound that made it. Power, I had it. If I had more, it could
procure me nothing more than I already possessed. Pleasures? The richest
dishes and the most precious wines palled upon my taste. There remained
another kind of pleasure; but we can even grow weary of women, and
loathe what the morbid senses continue to crave. Still nothing else
remained for me. Yet I had outlived love in any virtuous or innocent
sense of the word, and early training, and some remains of self-respect,
made any other love far more of a torment than a pleasure.
The simple truth was, that I could reconcile myself neither to the
philosophy of the Portico nor the philosophy of the Garden, and was
alike disgusted with the Cynics and the Academicians. I was a man, and
could not live on air, or feed on garbage; I had a soul, and could not
satisfy it by living for the body alone, and having no God, no heaven,
no hope of beatitude, and no fear of hell, I saw nothing to seek,
nothing to gain, and I could only exclaim, _Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia
vanitas_. I could not say, with young and thoughtless sinners, in the
heyday of their youth, and the full flow of their animal spirits,—“Come
on, therefore, and let us enjoy the good things that are present, let us
use the creatures as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine
and ointments, and let not the flower of the spring pass by us. Let us
crown ourselves with roses before they be withered, and let no meadow
escape our riot. Let none of us go without his part in voluptuousness,
and let us leave tokens of our joy in every place, for this is our
portion and our lot.” For of all vanities I had learned that this was
the most empty. Even the devil himself is said to loathe the sensualist,
and to find his stench intolerable. Still Priscilla—I had lost her
perhaps. That touched my pride. We often grieve that lost, which
possessed, was not valued.