'Oh, eternity with outstretched wings, that broodest over the
secret truths in whose roots lie the mysteries of man--his whence,
his whither--have I searched thee, and struck a right key on thy
dreadful organ!'
Suffering is a mightier agency in the hands of nature, as a Demiurgus
creating the intellect, than most people are aware of.
The truth I heard often in sleep from the lips of the Dark Interpreter.
Who is he? He is a shadow, reader, but a shadow with whom you must
suffer me to make you acquainted. You need not be afraid of him, for
when I explain his nature and origin you will see that he is essentially
inoffensive; or if sometimes he menaces with his countenance, that is
but seldom: and then, as his features in those moods shift as rapidly as
clouds in a gale of wind, you may always look for the terrific aspects
to vanish as fast as they have gathered. As to his origin--what it is, I
know exactly, but cannot without a little circuit of preparation make
_you_ understand. Perhaps you are aware of that power in the eye of many
children by which in darkness they project a vast theatre of
phantasmagorical figures moving forwards or backwards between their
bed-curtains and the chamber walls. In some children this power is
semi-voluntary--they can control or perhaps suspend the shows; but in
others it is altogether automatic. I myself, at the date of my last
confessions, had seen in this way more processions--generally solemn,
mournful, belonging to eternity, but also at times glad, triumphal
pomps, that seemed to enter the gates of Time--than all the religions of
paganism, fierce or gay, ever witnessed. Now, there is in the dark
places of the human spirit--in grief, in fear, in vindictive wrath--a
power of self-projection not unlike to this. Thirty years ago, it may
be, a man called Symons committed several murders in a sudden epilepsy
of planet-struck fury. According to my recollection, this case happened
at Hoddesdon, which is in Middlesex. 'Revenge is sweet!' was his hellish
motto on that occasion, and that motto itself records the abysses which
a human will can open. Revenge is _not_ sweet, unless by the mighty
charm of a charity that seeketh not her own it has become benignant.[1]
And what he had to revenge was woman's scorn. He had been a plain
farm-servant; and, in fact, he was executed, as such men often are, on a
proper point of professional respect to their calling, in a smock-frock,
or blouse, to render so ugly a clash of syllables. His young mistress
was every way and by much his superior, as well in prospects as in
education. But the man, by nature arrogant, and little acquainted with
the world, presumptuously raised his eyes to one of his young
mistresses. Great was the scorn with which she repulsed his audacity,
and her sisters participated in her disdain. Upon this affront he
brooded night and day; and, after the term of his service was over, and
he, in effect, forgotten by the family, one day he suddenly descended
amongst the women of the family like an Avatar of vengeance. Right and
left he threw out his murderous knife without distinction of person,
leaving the room and the passage floating in blood.
The final result of this carnage was not so terrific as it threatened to
be. Some, I think, recovered; but, also, one, who did _not_ recover, was
unhappily a stranger to the whole cause of his fury. Now, this murderer
always maintained, in conversation with the prison chaplain, that, as he
rushed on in his hellish career, he perceived distinctly a dark figure
on his right hand, keeping pace with himself. Upon _that_ the
superstitious, of course, supposed that some fiend had revealed himself,
and associated his superfluous presence with the dark atrocity. Symons
was not a philosopher, but my opinion is, that he was too much so to
tolerate that hypothesis, since, if there was one man in all Europe that
needed no tempter to evil on that evening, it was precisely Mr. Symons,
as nobody knew better than Mr. Symons himself. I had not the benefit of
his acquaintance, or I would have explained it to him. The fact is, in
point of awe a fiend would be a poor, trivial _bagatelle_ compared to
the shadowy projections, _umbras_ and _penumbras_, which the
unsearchable depths of man's nature is capable, under adequate
excitement, of throwing off, and even into stationary forms. I shall
have occasion to notice this point again. There are creative agencies in
every part of human nature, of which the thousandth part could never be
revealed in one life.
You have heard, reader, in vision which describes our Ladies of Sorrow,
particularly in the dark admonition of Madonna, to her wicked sister
that hateth and tempteth, what root of dark uses may lie in moral
convulsions: not the uses hypocritically vaunted by theatrical devotion
which affronts the majesty of God, that ever and in all things loves
Truth--prefers sincerity that is erring to piety that cants. Rebellion
which is the sin of witchcraft is more pardonable in His sight than
speechifying resignation, listening with complacency to its own
self-conquests. Show always as much neighbourhood as thou canst to grief
that abases itself, which will cost thee but little effort if thine own
grief hath been great. But God, who sees thy efforts in secret, will
slowly strengthen those efforts, and make that to be a real deed,
bearing tranquillity for thyself, which at first was but a feeble wish
breathing homage to _Him_.
In after-life, from twenty to twenty-four, on looking back to those
struggles of my childhood, I used to wonder exceedingly that a child
could be exposed to struggles on such a scale. But two views unfolded
upon me as my experience widened, which took away that wonder. The first
was the vast scale upon which the sufferings of children are found
everywhere expanded in the realities of life. The generation of infants
which you see is but part of those who belong to it; were born in it;
and make, the world over, not one half of it. The missing half, more
than an equal number to those of any age that are now living, have
perished by every kind of torments. Three thousand children per
annum--that is, three hundred thousand per century; that is (omitting
Sundays), about ten every day--pass to heaven through flames[2] in this
very island of Great Britain. And of those who survive to reach
maturity what multitudes have fought with fierce pangs of hunger, cold,
and nakedness! When I came to know all this, then reverting my eye to
_my_ struggle, I said oftentimes it was nothing! Secondly, in watching
the infancy of my own children, I made another discovery--it is well
known to mothers, to nurses, and also to philosophers--that the tears
and lamentations of infants during the year or so when they have no
_other_ language of complaint run through a gamut that is as
inexhaustible as the cremona of Paganini. An ear but moderately learned
in that language cannot be deceived as to the rate and _modulus_ of the
suffering which it indicates. A fretful or peevish cry cannot by any
efforts make itself impassioned. The cry of impatience, of hunger, of
irritation, of reproach, of alarm, are all different--different as a
chorus of Beethoven from a chorus of Mozart. But if ever you saw an
infant suffering for an hour, as sometimes the healthiest does, under
some attack of the stomach, which has the tiger-grasp of the Oriental
cholera, then you will hear moans that address to their mothers an
anguish of supplication for aid such as might storm the heart of Moloch.
Once hearing it, you will not forget it. Now, it was a constant remark
of mine, after any storm of that nature (occurring, suppose, once in two
months), that always on the following day, when a long, long sleep had
chased away the darkness and the memory of the darkness from the little
creature's brain, a sensible expansion had taken place in the
intellectual faculties of attention, observation, and animation. It
renewed the case of our great modern poet, who, on listening to the
raving of the midnight storm, and the crashing which it was making in
the mighty woods, reminded himself that all this hell of trouble
'Tells also of bright calms that shall succeed.'
Pain driven to agony, or grief driven to frenzy, is essential to the
ventilation of profound natures. A sea which is deeper than any that
Count Massigli[3] measured cannot be searched and torn up from its
sleeping depths without a levanter or a monsoon. A nature which is
profound in excess, but also introverted and abstracted in excess, so as
to be in peril of wasting itself in interminable reverie, cannot be
awakened sometimes without afflictions that go to the very foundations,
heaving, stirring, yet finally harmonizing; and it is in such cases that
the Dark Interpreter does his work, revealing the worlds of pain and
agony and woe possible to man--possible even to the innocent spirit of a
child.