BYRONIC UNHAPPINESS
It is common in our day, as it has been in many other periods of the
world’s history, to suppose that those among us who are wise have
seen through all the enthusiasms of earlier times and have become
aware that there is nothing left to live for. The men who hold this
view are genuinely unhappy, but they are proud of their unhappiness,
which they attribute to the nature of the universe and consider to
be the only rational attitude for an enlightened man. Their pride in
their unhappiness makes less sophisticated people suspicious of its
genuineness; they think that the man who enjoys being miserable is
not miserable. This view is too simple; undoubtedly there is some
slight compensation in the feeling of superiority and insight which
these sufferers have, but it is not sufficient to make up for the
loss of simpler pleasures. I do not myself think that there is any
superior rationality in being unhappy. The wise man will be as happy
as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the
universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else
instead. This is what I wish to prove in the present chapter. I wish
to persuade the reader that, whatever the arguments may be, reason
lays no embargo upon happiness; nay, more, I am persuaded that those
who quite sincerely attribute their sorrows to their views about the
universe are putting the cart before the horse: the truth is that they
are unhappy for some reason of which they are not aware, and this
unhappiness leads them to dwell upon the less agreeable characteristics
of the world in which they live.
For modern Americans the point of view that I wish to consider has been
set forth by Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch in a book called _The Modern
Temper_; for our grandfathers’ generation it was set forth by Byron;
for all time it was set forth by the writer of Ecclesiastes. Mr. Krutch
says: “Ours is a lost cause and there is no place for us in the natural
universe, but we are not, for all that, sorry to be human. We should
rather die as men than live as animals.” Byron says:
There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling’s dull decay.
The author of Ecclesiastes says:
Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than
the living which are yet alive.
Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who
hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
All these three pessimists arrived at these gloomy conclusions after
reviewing the pleasures of life. Mr. Krutch has lived in the most
intellectual circles of New York; Byron swam the Hellespont and had
innumerable love affairs; the author of Ecclesiastes was even more
varied in his pursuit of pleasure: he tried wine, he tried music,
“and that of all sorts”, he built pools of water, he had men-servants
and maid-servants, and servants born in his house. Even in these
circumstances his wisdom departed not from him. Nevertheless he saw
that all is vanity, even wisdom.
And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and
folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth
knowledge increaseth sorrow.
His wisdom seems to have annoyed him; he made unsuccessful efforts to
get rid of it.
I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth,
therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity.
But his wisdom remained with him.
Then I said in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it
happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said
in my heart, that this also is vanity.
Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under
the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of
spirit.
It is fortunate for literary men that people no longer read anything
written long ago, for if they did they would come to the conclusion
that, whatever may be said about pools of water, the making of new
books is certainly vanity. If we can show that the doctrine of
Ecclesiastes is not the only one open to a wise man, we need not
trouble ourselves much with the later expressions of the same mood.
In an argument of this sort we must distinguish between a mood and
its intellectual expression. There is no arguing with a mood; it can
be changed by some fortunate event, or by a change in our bodily
condition, but it cannot be changed by argument. I have frequently
experienced myself the mood in which I felt that all is vanity; I
have emerged from it not by means of any philosophy, but owing to
some imperative necessity of action. If your child is ill, you may be
unhappy, but you will not feel that all is vanity; you will feel that
the restoring of the child to health is a matter to be attended to
regardless of the question whether there is ultimate value in human
life or not. A rich man may, and often does, feel that all is vanity,
but if he should happen to lose his money, he would feel that his
next meal was by no means vanity. The feeling is one born of a too
easy satisfaction of natural needs. The human animal, like others, is
adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life, and when by means
of great wealth _homo sapiens_ can gratify all his whims without
effort, the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential
ingredient of happiness. The man who acquires easily things for which
he feels only a very moderate desire concludes that the attainment of
desire does not bring happiness. If he is of a philosophic disposition,
he concludes that human life is essentially wretched, since the man who
has all he wants is still unhappy. He forgets that to be without some
of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
So much for the mood. There are, however, also intellectual arguments
in Ecclesiastes.
The rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.
There is no new thing under the sun.
There is no remembrance of former things.
I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I
should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.
If one were to attempt to set up these arguments in the style of a
modern philosopher they would come to something like this: Man is
perpetually toiling, and matter is perpetually in motion, yet nothing
abides, although the new thing that comes after it is in no way
different from what has gone before. A man dies, and his heir reaps the
benefits of his labours; the rivers run into the sea, but their waters
are not permitted to stay there. Over and over again in an endless
purposeless cycle men and things are born and die without improvement,
without permanent achievement, day after day, year after year. The
rivers, if they were wise, would stay where they are. Solomon, if he
were wise, would not plant fruit trees of which his son is to enjoy the
fruit.
But in another mood how different all this looks. No new thing under
the sun? What about skyscrapers, aeroplanes, and the broadcast speeches
of politicians? What did Solomon[1] know about such things? If he
could have heard on the wireless the speech of the Queen of Sheba
to her subjects on her return from his dominions, would it not have
consoled him among his futile trees and pools? If he could have had a
press-cutting agency to let him know what the newspapers said about
the beauty of his architecture, the comforts of his harem, and the
discomfitures of rival sages in argument with him, could he have gone
on saying that there is no new thing under the sun? It may be that
these things would not have wholly cured his pessimism, but he would
have had to give it a new expression. Indeed, one of Mr. Krutch’s
complaints of our time is that there are so many new things under
the sun. If either the absence or the presence of novelty is equally
annoying, it would hardly seem that either could be the true cause of
despair. Again, take the fact that “all the rivers run into the sea,
yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come,
thither they return again”. Regarded as ground for pessimism, this
assumes that travel is unpleasant. People go to health resorts in the
summer, yet return again unto the place whence they came. This does
not prove that it is futile to go to health resorts in the summer. If
the waters were endowed with feeling, they would probably enjoy the
adventurous cycle after the manner of Shelley’s _Cloud_. As for
the painfulness of leaving things to one’s heir, that is a matter that
may be looked at from two points of view: from the point of view of
the heir it is distinctly less disastrous. Nor is the fact that all
things pass in itself any ground for pessimism. If they were succeeded
by worse things, that would be a ground, but if they are succeeded by
better things, that is a reason for optimism. What are we to think
if, as Solomon maintains, they are succeeded by things exactly like
themselves? Does not this make the whole process futile? Emphatically
not, unless the various stages of the cycle are themselves painful.
The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning
of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one.
There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.
Life is not to be conceived on the analogy of a melodrama in which the
hero and heroine go through incredible misfortunes for which they are
compensated by a happy ending. I live and have my day, my son succeeds
me and has his day, his son in turn succeeds him. What is there in all
this to make a tragedy about? On the contrary, if I lived for ever the
joys of life would inevitably in the end lose their savour. As it is,
they remain perennially fresh.
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
This attitude is quite as rational as that of indignation with death.
If, therefore, moods were to be decided by reason, there would be quite
as much reason for cheerfulness as for despair.
“Ecclesiastes” is tragic; Mr. Krutch’s _Modern Temper_ is pathetic.
Mr. Krutch, at bottom, is sad because the old mediæval certainties
have crumbled, and also some that are of more recent origin. “As for
this present unhappy time,” he says, “haunted by ghosts from a dead
world and not yet at home in its own, its predicament is not unlike
the predicament of the adolescent who has not yet learned to orient
himself without reference to the mythology amid which his childhood was
passed.” This statement is entirely correct as applied to a certain
section of intellectuals, those, namely, who, having had a literary
education, can know nothing of the modern world, and, having throughout
their youth been taught to base belief upon emotion, cannot divest
themselves of that infantile desire for safety and protection which the
world of science cannot gratify. Mr. Krutch, like most other literary
men, is obsessed with the idea that science has not fulfilled its
promises. He does not, of course, tell us what these promises were,
but he seems to think that sixty years ago men like Darwin and Huxley
expected something of science which it has not given. I think this is
an entire delusion, fostered by those writers and clergymen who do
not wish their specialties to be thought of little value. That the
world contains many pessimists at the present moment is true. There
have always been many pessimists whenever there have been many people
whose income has diminished. Mr. Krutch, it is true, is an American,
and American incomes, on the whole, have been increased by the War,
but throughout the Continent of Europe the intellectual classes have
suffered terribly, while the War itself gave everyone a sense of
instability. Such social causes have a great deal more to do with the
mood of an epoch than has its theory as to the nature of the world. Few
ages have been more despairing than the thirteenth century, although
that faith which Mr. Krutch so regrets was then firmly entertained by
everyone except the Emperor and a few great Italian nobles. Thus Roger
Bacon says: “For more sins reign in these days of ours than in any past
age, and sin is incompatible with wisdom. Let us see all conditions
in the world, and consider them diligently everywhere: we shall
find boundless corruption, and first of all in the Head.... Lechery
dishonours the whole court, and gluttony is lord of all.... If then
this is done in the Head, how is it in the members? See the prelates:
how they hunt after money and neglect the cure of souls.... Let us
consider the Religious Orders: I exclude none from what I say. See
how far they are fallen, one and all, from their right state; and the
new Orders (of Friars) are already horribly decayed from their first
dignity. The whole clergy is intent upon pride, lechery, and avarice:
and wheresoever clerks are gathered together, as at Paris and Oxford,
they scandalize the whole laity with their wars and quarrels and other
vices.... None care what is done, or how, by hook or by crook, provided
only that each can fulfil his lust.” Concerning the pagan sages of
antiquity, he says: “Their lives were beyond all comparison better
than ours, both in all decency and in contempt of the world, with all
its delights and riches and honours; as all men may read in the works
of Aristotle, Seneca, Tully, Avicenna, Alfarabius, Plato, Socrates,
and others; and so it was that they attained to the secrets of wisdom
and found out all knowledge.”[2] Roger Bacon’s opinion was that of all
his literary contemporaries, not one of whom liked the age in which he
found himself. I do not for a moment believe that this pessimism had
any metaphysical cause. Its causes were war, poverty, and violence.
One of Mr. Krutch’s most pathetic chapters deals with the subject
of love. It appears that the Victorians thought very highly of it,
but that we with our modern sophistication have come to see through
it. “For the more skeptical of the Victorians, love performed some
of the functions of the God whom they had lost. Faced with it, many
of even the most hard-headed turned, for the moment, mystical. They
found themselves in the presence of something which awoke in them
that sense of reverence which nothing else claimed, and something
to which they felt, even in the very depth of their being, that an
unquestioning loyalty was due. For them love, like God, demanded all
sacrifices; but like Him, also, it rewarded the believer by investing
all the phenomena of life with a meaning not yet analysed away. We
have grown used--more than they--to a Godless universe, but we are not
yet accustomed to one which is loveless as well, and only when we have
so become shall we realize what atheism really means.” It is curious
how different the Victorian age looks to the young of our time from
what it seemed when one was living in it. I remember two old ladies,
both typical of certain aspects of the period, whom I knew well in
my youth. One was a Puritan, and the other a Voltairean. The former
regretted that so much poetry deals with love, which, she maintained,
is an uninteresting subject. The latter remarked: “Nobody can say
anything against me, but I always say that it is not so bad to break
the seventh commandment as the sixth, because at any rate it requires
the consent of the other party.” Neither of these views was quite like
what Mr. Krutch presents as typically Victorian. His ideas are derived
evidently from certain writers who were by no means in harmony with
their environment. The best example, I suppose, is Robert Browning. I
cannot, however, resist the conviction that there is something stuffy
about love as he conceived it.
God be thanked, the meanest of His creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her!
This assumes that combativeness is the only possible attitude towards
the world at large. Why? Because the world is cruel, Browning would
say. Because it will not accept you at your own valuation, we should
say. A couple may form, as the Brownings did, a mutual admiration
society. It is very pleasant to have someone at hand who is sure
to praise your work, whether it deserves it or not. And Browning
undoubtedly felt that he was a fine, manly fellow when he denounced
Fitzgerald in no measured terms for having dared not to admire Aurora
Leigh. I cannot feel that this complete suspension of the critical
faculty on both sides is really admirable. It is bound up with fear
and with the desire to find a refuge from the cold blasts of impartial
criticism. Many old bachelors learn to derive the same satisfaction
from their own fireside. I lived too long myself in the Victorian
age to be a modern according to Mr. Krutch’s standards. I have by no
means lost my belief in love, but the kind of love that I can believe
in is not the kind that the Victorians admired; it is adventurous and
open-eyed, and, while it gives knowledge of good, it does not involve
forgetfulness of evil, nor does it pretend to be sanctified or holy.
The attribution of these qualities to the kind of love that was admired
was an outcome of the sex taboo. The Victorian was profoundly convinced
that most sex is evil, and had to attach exaggerated adjectives to the
kind of which he could approve. There was more sex hunger than there
is now, and this no doubt caused people to exaggerate the importance
of sex just as the ascetics have always done. We are at the present
day passing through a somewhat confused period, when many people
have thrown over the old standards without acquiring new ones. This
leads them into various troubles, and as their unconscious usually
still believes in the old standards, the troubles, when they come,
produce despair, remorse, and cynicism. I do not think the number of
people to whom this happens is very large, but they are among the most
vocal people of our time. I believe that if one took the average of
well-to-do young people in our day and in the Victorian epoch, one
would find that there is now a great deal more happiness in connection
with love, and a great deal more genuine belief in the value of love,
than there was sixty years ago. The reasons which lead certain persons
to cynicism are connected with the tyranny of the old ideals over
the unconscious, and with the absence of a rational ethic by which
present-day people can regulate their conduct. The cure lies not in
lamentation and nostalgia for the past, but in a more courageous
acceptance of the modern outlook and a determination to root out
nominally discarded superstitions from all their obscure hiding-places.
To say shortly why one values love is not easy; nevertheless, I will
make the attempt. Love is to be valued in the first instance--and this,
though not its greatest value, is essential to all the rest--as in
itself a source of delight.
Oh Love! they wrong thee much
That say thy sweet is bitter,
When thy rich fruit is such
As nothing can be sweeter.
The anonymous author of these lines was not seeking a solution for
atheism, or a key to the universe; he was merely enjoying himself. And
not only is love a source of delight, but its absence is a source of
pain. In the second place, love is to be valued because it enhances
all the best pleasures, such as music, and sunrise in mountains, and
the sea under the full moon. A man who has never enjoyed beautiful
things in the company of a woman whom he loved has not experienced to
the full the magic power of which such things are capable. Again, love
is able to break down the hard shell of the ego, since it is a form of
biological co-operation in which the emotions of each are necessary to
the fulfilment of the other’s instinctive purposes. There have been in
the world at various times various solitary philosophies, some very
noble, some less so. The Stoics and the early Christians believed that
a man could realize the highest good of which human life is capable by
means of his own will alone, or at any rate without _human_ aid;
others again have regarded power as the end of life, and yet others
mere personal pleasure. All these are solitary philosophies in the
sense that the good is supposed to be something realizable in each
separate person, not only in a larger or smaller society of persons.
All such views, to my mind, are false, and not only in ethical
theory, but as expressions of the better part of our instincts. Man
depends upon co-operation, and has been provided by nature, somewhat
inadequately, it is true, with the instinctive apparatus out of which
the friendliness required for co-operation can spring. Love is the
first and commonest form of emotion leading to co-operation, and those
who have experienced love with any intensity will not be content with
a philosophy that supposes their highest good to be independent of
that of the person loved. In this respect parental feeling is even
more powerful, but parental feeling at its best is the result of love
between the parents. I do not pretend that love in its highest form is
common, but I do maintain that in its highest form it reveals values
which must otherwise remain unknown, and has itself a value which is
untouched by scepticism, although sceptics who are incapable of it may
falsely attribute their incapacity to their scepticism.
True love is a durable fire,
In the mind ever burning,
Never sick, never dead, never cold,
From itself never turning.
I come next to what Mr. Krutch has to say about tragedy. He contends,
and in this I cannot but agree with him, that Ibsen’s _Ghosts_ is
inferior to _King Lear_. “No increased powers of expression, no
greater gift for words, could have transformed Ibsen into Shakespeare.
The materials out of which the latter created his works--his
conception of human dignity, his sense of the importance of human
passions, his vision of the amplitude of human life--simply did not
and could not exist for Ibsen, as they did not and could not exist for
his contemporaries. God and Man and Nature had all somehow dwindled
in the course of the intervening centuries, not because the realistic
creed of modern art led us to seek out mean people, but because this
meanness of human life was somehow thrust upon us by the operation of
that same process which led to the development of realistic theories
of art by which our vision could be justified.” It is undoubtedly the
case that the old-fashioned kind of tragedy which dealt with princes
and their sorrows is not suitable to our age, and when we try to treat
in the same manner the sorrows of an obscure individual the effect is
not the same. The reason of this is not, however, any deterioration
in our outlook on life, but quite the reverse. It is due to the fact
that we can no longer regard certain individuals as the great ones of
the earth, who have a right to tragic passions, while all the rest
must merely drudge and toil to produce the magnificence of those few.
Shakespeare says:
When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
In Shakespeare’s day this sentiment, if not literally believed, at
least expressed an outlook which was practically universal and most
profoundly accepted by Shakespeare himself. Consequently the death
of Cinna the poet is comic, whereas the deaths of Cæsar, Brutus and
Cassius are tragic. The cosmic significance of an individual death
is lost to us because we have become democratic, not only in outward
forms, but in our inmost convictions. High tragedy in the present
day, therefore, has to concern itself rather with the community than
with the individual. I would give as an example of what I mean Ernst
Toller’s _Massenmench_.[3] I do not maintain that this work is as
good as the best that has been done in the best ages in the past, but
I do maintain that it is justly comparable; it is noble, profound and
actual, concerned with heroic action, and “purging the reader through
pity and terror”, as Aristotle said it should. There are as yet few
examples of this modern kind of tragedy, since the old technique and
the old traditions have to be abandoned without being replaced by mere
educated commonplace. To write tragedy, a man must feel tragedy. To
feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he lives, not
only with his mind, but with his blood and sinews. Mr. Krutch talks
throughout his book at intervals about despair, and one is touched by
his heroic acceptance of a bleak world, but the bleakness is due to
the fact that he and most literary men have not yet learnt to feel the
old emotions in response to new stimuli. The stimuli exist, but not
in literary coteries. Literary coteries have no vital contact with the
life of the community, and such contact is necessary if men’s feelings
are to have the seriousness and depth within which both tragedy and
true happiness proceed. To all the talented young men who wander about
feeling that there is nothing in the world for them to do, I should
say: “Give up trying to write, and, instead, try not to write. Go
out into the world; become a pirate, a king in Borneo, a labourer in
Soviet Russia; give yourself an existence in which the satisfaction of
elementary physical needs will occupy almost all your energies.” I do
not recommend this course of action to everyone, but only to those who
suffer from the disease which Mr. Krutch diagnoses. I believe that,
after some years of such an existence, the ex-intellectual will find
that in spite of his efforts he can no longer refrain from writing, and
when this time comes his writing will not seem to him futile.