joyful spirit of adventure; but the little island set in the ocean,
with its loud sea-beaches, its upstanding promontories, its wooded
glades, its open spaces, and above all the great house standing
among its lawns, is a place of adventure above everything, with
unknown forces at work, untamed emotions, swift currents of
thought, many choices, strange delights; and then there is the
shadowy sea beyond, with all its crested billows rolling in, and
other islands looming out beyond the breakers, at which the ship
may touch, before it finds its way to the regions of death and
silence.
I myself had my own time of adventure, took ship again, and voyaged
far; and now that I have come back again to the little island with
all its thickets, I wish to retrace in thought, if I can, some of
the adventures which befell me, and what they brought me, and to
speak too of adventures which I missed, either out of diffidence or
folly. I am not at all sure whether Hermes, whom I certainly
encountered, ever gave me a plant of Moly, or, if I did indeed
receive it, what use I made of it. But I knew others who certainly
had the herb at their hearts, and as certainly others who had not;
and I will try and tell what he thinks it is, and how it may be
found. It is deeply planted, no doubt; its root is as black as
death, and its flower as pure as the light; while the leaves are
prickly and clinging; it is not a plant for trim gardens, nor to be
grown in rows in the furrow; it is hard to come by, and harder
still to extract; but having once attained it, the man who bears it
knows that there are certain things he cannot do again, and certain
spells which henceforth have no power over him; and though it does
not deliver him from all dangers, he will not at all events be
penned with the regretful swine, that had lost all human attributes
except the power of shedding tears.
4
Now I shall drop all allegories for the present, because it is
confusing both to writers and readers to be always speaking of two
things in terms of each other. And I will say first that when I was
at college myself as a young man, I seemed to myself to be for ever
looking for something which I could not find. It was not always so;
there were plenty of contented hours, when one played a game, or
sat over the fire afterwards with tea and tobacco, talking about
it, or talking about other people--I do not often remember talking
about anything else, except on set occasions--or later in the
evening some one played a piano not very well, or we sang songs,
not very tunefully; or one sat down to work, and got interested, if
not in the work itself, at least in doing it well and completely. I
am not going to pretend, as elderly men often do with infinite
absurdity, that I did no work, and scored off dons and proctors,
and broke every rule, and defied God and man, and spent money which
I had not got, and lived a generally rake-hell life. There are very
few of my friends who did these things, and they have mostly fallen
in the race long ago, leaving a poor and rueful memory behind. Nor
do I see why it is so glorious to pretend to have done such things,
especially if one has not done them! I was a sober citizen enough,
with plenty of faults and failings; and this is not a tract to
convert the wicked, who indeed are providing plenty of materials to
effect their own conversion in ways very various and all very
uncomfortable! I should like it rather to be read by well-meaning
people, who share perhaps the same experience as myself--the
experience, as I have said, of searching for something which I
could not find. Sometimes in those days, I will make bold to
confess, I read a book, or heard an address or sermon, or talked to
some interesting and attractive person, and felt suddenly that I
was on the track of it; was it something I wanted, or was it
something I had lost? I could not tell! But I knew that if I could
find it, I should never be in any doubt again how to act or what to
choose. It was not a set of rules I wanted--there were rules
enough and to spare, some of them made for us, and many which we
made for ourselves. We mapped out every part of life which was left
unmapped by the dons, and we knew exactly what was correct and what
was not; and oh, how dull much of it was!
But I wanted a motive of some sort, an aim; I wanted to know what I
was out for, as we now say. I did not see what the point of much of
my work was, or know what my profession was to be; I did not see
why I did, for social reasons, so many things which did not
interest me, or why I pretended to think them interesting. I would
sit, one of half-a-dozen men, the air dim with smoke, telling
stories about other people. A-- had had a row with B--, he
would not go properly into training; he had lunched before a match
off a tumbler of sherry and a cigar; he was too good to be turned
out of the team--it was amusing enough, but it certainly was not
what I was looking for.
Then one made friends; it dawned upon one suddenly what a charming
person C---- was, so original and amusing, so observant; it became
a thrilling thing to meet him in the court; one asked him to tea,
one talked and told him everything. A week later, one seemed to
have got to the end of it; the path came to a stop; there was not
much in it after all, and presently he was rather an ass; he looked
gloomily at one when one met him, but one was off on another chase;
this idealising of people was rather a mistake; the pleasure was in
the exploration, and there was very little to explore; it was
better to have a comfortable set of friends with no nonsense; and
yet that was dull too. That was certainly not the thing one was in
search of.
What was it, then? One saw it like a cloud-shadow racing over the
hill, like a bird upon the wing. The perfect friend could not help
one, for his perfections waned and faded. Yet there was certainly
something there, singing like a bird in the wood; only when one
reached the tree the bird was gone, and another song was in the
air. It seemed, then, at first sight as if one was in search of an
emotion of some kind, and not only a solitary emotion, like that
which touched the spirit at the sudden falling of the ripe rose-
petals from their stem, or at the sight of the far-off plain, with
all its woods and waters framed between the outrunning hills, or at
the sound of organ-music stealing out of the soaring climbing
woodwork with all its golden pipes, on setting foot in the dim and
fragrant church; they were all sweet enough, but the mind turned to
some kindred soul at hand with whom it could all be shared; and the
recognition of some other presence, visibly beckoning through
gesture and form and smiling wide-opened eyes, that seemed the best
that could be attained, that nearness and rapture of welcome; and
then the moment passed, and that too ebbed away.
It was something more than that! because in bleak solitary
pondering moments, there stood up, like a massive buttressed crag,
a duty, not born of whispered secrets or of relations, however
delicate and awestruck, with other hearts, but a stern
uncompromising thing, that seemed a relation with something quite
apart from man, a Power swift and vehement and often terrible, to
whom one owed an unmistakable fealty in thought and act.
Righteousness! That old-fashioned thing on which the Jews, one was
taught, set much store, which one had misconceived as something
born of piety and ceremony, and which now revealed itself as a
force uncompromisingly there, which it was impossible to overlook
or to disobey; if one did disobey it, something hurt and wounded
cried out faintly in the soul; and so it dawned upon one that this
was a force, not only not developed out of piety and worship, but
of which all piety and worship were but the frail vesture, which
half veiled and half hampered the massive stride and stroke.
It did not attract or woo; it rather demanded and frightened; but
it became clear enough that any inner peace was impossible without
it; and little by little one learned to recognise that there was no
trace of it in many conventional customs and precepts; those could
be slighted and disregarded; but there were still things which the
spirit did truly recognise as vices and sins, abominable and
defiling, with which no trafficking was possible.
This, then, was clear; that if one was to find the peace one
desired--it was that, it was an untroubled peace, a journey taken
with a sense of aim and liberty that one hoped to make--then these
were two certain elements; a concurrence with a few great and
irresistible prohibitions and positive laws of conduct, though
these were far fewer than one had supposed; and next to that, a
sense of brotherhood and fellowship with those who seemed to be
making their way harmoniously and finely towards the same goal as
oneself. To understand and love these spirits, to be understood and
loved by them, that was a vital necessity.
But this must be added; that the sense of duty of which I speak,
which rose sturdily and fiercely above the shifting forms of life,
like a peak above the forest, did not appear at once either
desirable or even beautiful. It blocked the view and the way; it
forbade one to stray or loiter; but the obedience one reluctantly
gave to it came simply from a realisation of its strength and of
its presence. It stood for an order of some kind, which interfered
at many points with one's hopes and desires, but with which one was
compelled to make terms, because it could and did strike,
pitilessly and even vindictively, if one neglected and transgressed
its monitions; and thus the quest became an attempt to find what
stood behind it, and to discover if there was any Personality
behind it, with which one could link oneself, so as to be conscious
of its intentions or its goodwill. Was it a Power that could love
and be loved? Or was it only mechanical and soulless, a condition
of life, which one might dread and even abhor, but which could not
be trifled with?
Because that seemed the secret of all the happiness of life--the
meeting, with a sense of intimate security, something warm and
breathing, that had need of me as I of it, that could smile and
clasp, foster and pity, admire and adore, and in the embrace of
which one could feel one's hope and joy grow and stir by contact
and trust. That was what one found in the hearts about one's path;
and the wonder was, did some similar chance of embracing, clasping,
trusting, and loving that vaster Power await one in the dim spaces
beyond the fields and homes of earth?
I guessed that it was so, but saw, as in a faint vision, that many
harsh events, sorry mischances, blows and wounds and miseries,
hated and dreaded and endured, lay between me and that larger
Heart. But I perceived at last, with terror and mistrust, that the
adventure did indeed lie there; that I should often be disdained
and repulsed, untended and unheeded, bitterly disillusioned, shaken
out of ease and complacency, but assuredly folded to that greater
Heart at last.
5
And then there followed a different phase. Up to the very end of
the university period, the same uneasiness continued; then quite
suddenly the door opened, one slipped into the world, one found
one's place. There were instantaneously real things to be done,
real money to earn, men and women to live with and work with, to
conciliate or to resist. A mist rolled away from my eyes. What a
fantastic life it had been hitherto, how sheltered, how remote from
actuality! I seemed to have been building up a rococo stucco
habitation out of whims and fancies, adding a room here and a row
of pinnacles there, all utterly bizarre and grotesque. Vague dreams
of poetry and art, nothing penetrated or grasped, a phrase here, a
fancy there; one's ideal of culture seemed like Ophelia in Hamlet,
a distracted nymph stuck all over with flowers and anxious to
explain the sentimental value of each; the friendships themselves--
they had nothing stable about them either; they were not based upon
any common aim, any real mutual concern; they were nothing more
than the enshrining of a fugitive charm, the tracking of some
bright-eyed fawn or wild-haired dryad to its secret haunt, only to
find the bird flown and the nest warm. But now there was little
time for fancies; there was a real burden to carry, a genuine task
to perform; day after day slipped past, like the furrows in a field
seen from some speeding car; the contented mind, pleasantly wearied
at the end of the busy day, heaved a light-hearted sigh of relief,
and turned to some recreation with zest and delight. It was not
that the quest had been successful; it seemed rather that there was
no quest at all, and that it was the joy of daily work that had
been the missing factor . . . the weeks melted into months, the
months became years.
Meanwhile the earth and air, as well as the comrades and companions
of the pilgrimage, were touched with a different light of beauty.
The beauty was there, and in even fuller measure. The sun in the
hot summer days poured down upon the fragrant garden, with all its
bright flower-beds, its rose-laden alleys, its terraced walks, its
green-shaded avenues; the autumn mists lay blue and faint across
the far pastures, and the hill climbed smoothly to its green
summit; or the spring came back after the winter silence with all
its languor of unfolding life, while bush and covert wove their
screens of dense-tapestried foliage, to conceal what mysteries of
love and delight! and the faces or gestures of those about one took
on a new significance, a richer beauty, a larger interest, because
one began to guess how experience moulded them, by what aims and
hopes they were graven and refined, by what failures they were
obliterated and coarsened. But the difference was this, that one
was not now for ever trying to make these charms one's own, to
establish private understandings or mutual relations. It was enough
now to observe them as one could, to interpret them, to enjoy them,
and to pass by. The acquisitive sense was gone, and one neither
claimed nor grasped; one admired and wondered and went forwards.
And this again seemed a wholesome balance of thought, for, as the
desire to take diminished, the power, of interpreting and enjoying
grew.
But very gradually a slow shadow began to fall, like the shadow of
a great hill that reaches far out over the plain. I passed one day
an old churchyard deep in the country, and saw the leaning
headstones and the grassy barrows of the dead. A shudder passed
through me, a far-off chill, at the thought that it must come to
THIS after all; that however rich and intricate and delightful life
was--and it was all three--the time would come, perhaps with pain
and languid suffering, when one must let all the beautiful threads
out of one's hands, and compose oneself, with such fortitude as one
could muster, for the long sleep. And then one called Reason to
one's aid, and bade her expound the mystery, and say that just as
no smallest particle of matter could be disintegrated utterly, or
subtracted from the sum of things, so, and with infinitely greater
certainty, could no pulse or desire or motion of the spirit be
brought to nought. True, the soul lived like a bird in a cage,
hopping from perch to perch, slumbering at times, moping dolefully,
or uttering its song; but it was even more essentially imperishable
than the body that obeyed and enfolded and at last failed it. So
said Reason; and yet that brought no hope, so dear and familiar had
life become,--the well-known house, the accustomed walks, the daily
work, the forms of friend and comrade. It was just those things
that one wanted; and reason could only say that one must indeed
leave them and begone, and she could not look forwards nor forecast
anything; she could but bid one note the crag-faces and the
monstrous ledges of the abyss into which the spirit was for ever
falling, falling. . . .
Alas! it was there all the time, the sleepless desire to know and
to be assured; I had found nothing, learned nothing; it was all
still to seek. I had but just drugged the hunger into repose,
beguiled it, hidden it away under habits and work and activities.
It was something firmer than work, something even more beautiful
than beauty, more satisfying than love that I wanted; and most
certainly it was not repose. I had grown to loathe the thought of
that, and to shrink back in horror from the dumb slumber of sense
and thought. It was energy, life, activity, motion, that I desired;
to see and touch and taste all things, not only things sweet and
delightful, but every passionate impulse, every fiery sorrow that
thrilled and shook the spirit, every design that claimed the
loyalty of mankind. I grudged, it seemed, even the slumber that
divided day from day; I wanted to be up and doing, struggling,
working, loving, hating, resisting, protesting. And even strife and
combat seemed a waste of precious time; there was so much to do, to
establish, to set right, to cleanse, to invigorate, great designs
to be planned and executed, great glories to unfold. Yet sooner or
later I was condemned to drop the tools from my willing hand, to
stand and survey the unfinished work, and to grieve that I might no
longer take my share.
6
It was even thus that the vision came to me, in a dream of the
night. I had been reading the story of the isle of Circe, and the
thunderous curve of the rolling verse had come marching into the
mind as the breakers march into the bay. I dropped the book at
last, and slept.
Yes, I was in the wood itself; I could see little save undergrowth
and great tree-trunks; here and there a glimpse of sky among the
towering foliage. The thicket was less dense to the left, I
thought, and in a moment I came out upon an open space, and saw a
young man in the garb of a shepherd, a looped blue tunic, with a
hat tossed back upon the shoulders and held there by a cord. He had
leaned a metal stave against a tree, the top of it adorned by a
device of crossed wings. He was stooping down and disengaging
something from the earth, so that when I drew near, he had taken it
up and was gazing curiously at it. It was the herb itself! I saw
the prickly flat leaves, the black root, and the little stars of
milk-white bloom. He looked up at me with a smile as though he had
expected me, which showed his small white teeth and the shapely
curl of his lips; while his dark hair fell in a cluster over his
brow.
"There!" he said, "take it! It is what you are in need of!"
"Yes," I said, "I want peace, sure enough!" He looked at me for a
moment, and then let the herb drop upon the ground.
"Ah no!" he said lightly, "it will not bring you that; it does not
give peace, the herb of patience!"
"Well, I will take it," I said, stooping down; but he planted his
foot upon it. "See," he said, "it has already rooted itself!" And
then I saw that the black root had pierced the ground, and that the
fibres were insinuating themselves into the soil. I clutched at it,
but it was firm.
"You do not want it, after all," he said. "You want heartsease, I
suppose? That is a different flower--it grows upon men's graves."
"No," I cried out petulantly, like a child. "I do not want
heartsease! That is for those who are tired, and I am not tired!"
He smiled at me and stooped again, raised the plant and gave it to
me. It had a fresh sharp fragrance of the woodland and blowing
winds, but the thorns pricked my hands. . . .
The dream was gone, and I awoke; lying there, trying to recover the
thing which I had seen, I heard the first faint piping of the birds
begin in the ivy round my windows, as they woke drowsily and
contentedly to life and work. The truth flashed upon me, in one of
those sudden lightning-blazes that seem to obliterate even thought.
"Yes," I cried to myself, "that is the secret! It is that life does
not end; it goes on. To find what I am in search of, to understand,
to interpret, to see clearly, to sum it up, that would be an end, a
soft closing of the book, the shutting of the door--and that is
just what I do not want. I want to live, and endure, and suffer,
and experience, and love, and NOT to understand. It is life
continuous, unfolding, expanding, developing, with new delights,
new sorrows, new pains, new losses, that I need: and whether we
know that we need it, or think we need something else, it is all
the same; for we cannot escape from life, however reluctant or sick
or crushed or despairing we may be. It waits for us until we have
done groaning and bleeding, and we must rise up again and live.
Even if we die, even if we seek death for ourselves, it is useless.
The eye may close, the tide of unconsciousness may flow in, the
huddled limbs may tumble prone; a moment, and then life begins
again; we have but flown like the bird from one tree to another.
There is no end and no release; it is our destiny to live; the
darkness is all about us, but we are the light, enlacing it with
struggling beams, piercing it with fiery spears. The darkness
cannot quench it, and wherever the light goes, there it is light.
The herb Moly is but the patience to endure, whether we like it or
no. It delivers us, not from ourselves, not from our pains or our
delights, but only from our fears. They are the only unreal things,
because we are of the indomitable essence of light and movement,
and we cannot be overcome nor extinguished--we can but suffer, we
cannot die; we leap across the nether night; we pass resistless on
our way from star to star."
XV
BEHOLD, THIS DREAMER COMETH
I saw in one of the daily illustrated papers the other day a little
picture--a snapshot from the front--which filled me with a curious
emotion. It was taken in some village behind the German lines. A
handsome, upright boy of about seventeen, holding an accordion
under his arm--a wandering Russian minstrel, says the comment--has
been brought before a fat, elderly, Landsturm officer to be
interrogated. The officer towers up, in a spiked helmet, holding
his sword-hilt in one hand and field-glasses in the other, looking
down at the boy truculently and fiercely. Another officer stands by
smiling. The boy himself is gazing up, nervous and frightened,
staring at his formidable captor, a peasant beside him, also
looking agitated. There is nothing to indicate what happened, but I
hope they let the boy go! The officer seemed to me to typify the
tyranny of human aggressiveness, at its stupidest and ugliest. The
boy, graceful, appealing, harmless, appeared, I thought, to stand
for the spirit of beauty, which wanders about the world, lost in
its own dreams, and liable to be called sharply to account when it
strays within the reach of human aggressiveness occupied in the
congenial task of making havoc of the world's peaceful labours.
The Landsturm officer in the picture had so obviously the best of
it; he was thoroughly enjoying his own formidableness; while the
boy had the look of an innocent, bright-eyed creature caught in a
trap, and wondering miserably what harm it could have done.
Something of the same kind is always going on all the world over;
the collision of the barbarous and disciplined forces of life with
the beauty-loving, detached instinct of man. The latter cannot
give a reason for its existence, and yet I am by no means sure that
it is not going to triumph in the end.
There is every reason to believe that within the last twenty years
the sowing of education broadcast has had an effect upon the human
outlook, rather than perhaps upon the human character, which has
not been adequately estimated. The crop is growing up all about us,
and we hardly yet know what it is. I am going to speak of one out
of the many results of this upon one particular section of the
community, because I have become personally aware of it in certain
very definite ways. It is easy to generalise about tendencies, but
I am here speaking from actual evidence of an unmistakable kind.