IN these latter days of anarchy and tumult, when there is no gospel of
faith or morals, when democracy seems bent on falsifying every prediction
of earlier democratic enthusiasts by developing worse dangers to liberty
than any which our forefathers had to encounter, and when the misery of
cities is so great, it appears absurd, not to say wrong, that we should
sit still and read books. I am ashamed when I go into my own little room
and open Milton or Shakespeare after looking at a newspaper or walking
through the streets of London. I feel that Milton and Shakespeare are
luxuries, and that I really belong to the class which builds palaces for
its pleasure, although men and women may be starving on the roads.
Nevertheless, if I were placed on a platform I should be obliged to say,
“My brethren, I plainly perceive the world is all wrong, but I cannot see
how it is to be set right,” and I should descend the steps and go home.
There may be others who have a clearer perception than mine, and who may
be convinced that this way or that way lies regeneration. I do not wish
to discourage them; I wish them God-speed, but I cannot help them nor
become their disciple. Possibly I am doing nothing better than devising
excuses for lotus-eating, but here they are.
To take up something merely because I am idle is useless. The message
must come to me, and with such urgency that I cannot help delivering it.
Nor is it of any use to attempt to give my natural thoughts a force which
is not inherent in them.
The disease is often obvious, but the remedies are doubtful. The
accumulation of wealth in a few hands, generally by swindling, is
shocking, but if it were distributed to-morrow we should gain nothing.
The working man objects to the millionaire, but would gladly become a
millionaire himself, even if his million could be piled up in no other
way than by sweating thousands of his fellows. The usurpation of
government by the ignorant will bring disaster, but how in these days
could a wise man reign any longer than ignorance permitted him? The
everlasting veerings of the majority, without any reason meanwhile for
the change, show that, except on rare occasions of excitement, the
opinion of the voters is of no significance. But when we are asked what
substitute for elections can be proposed, none can be found. So with the
relationship between man and woman, the marriage laws and divorce. The
calculus has not been invented which can deal with such complexities. We
are in the same position as that in which Leverrier and Adams would have
been, if, observing the irregularities of Uranus, which led to the
discovery of Neptune, they had known nothing but the first six books of
Euclid and a little algebra.
There has never been any reformation as yet without dogma and
supernaturalism. Ordinary people acknowledge no real reasons for virtue
except heaven and hell-fire. When heaven and hell-fire cease to
persuade, custom for a while is partly efficacious, but its strength soon
decays. Some good men, knowing the uselessness of rational means to
convert or to sustain their fellows, have clung to dogma with hysterical
energy, but without any genuine faith in it. They have failed, for dogma
cannot be successful unless it be the _inevitable_ expression of the
inward conviction.
The voices now are so many and so contradictory that it is impossible to
hear any one of them distinctly, no matter what its claim on our
attention may be. The newspaper, the circulating library, the free
library, and the magazine are doing their best to prevent unity of
direction and the din and confusion of tongues beget a doubt whether
literature and the printing press have actually been such a blessing to
the race as enlightenment universally proclaims them to be.
The great currents of human destiny seem more than ever to move by forces
which tend to no particular point. There is a drift, tremendous and
overpowering, due to nobody in particular, but to hundreds of millions of
small impulses. Achilles is dead, and the turn of the Myrmidons has
come.
“Myrmdons, race féconde
Myrmidons,
Enfin nous commandons:
Jupiter livre le monde
Aux Myrmidons, aux Myrmidons.
Voyant qu’ Achille succombe,
Ses Myrmidons, hors des rangs,
Disent: Dansons sur sa tombe
Ses petits vont être grands.”
My last defence is that the Universe is an organic unity, and so subtle
and far-reaching are the invisible threads which pass from one part of it
to another that it is impossible to limit the effect which even an
insignificant life may have. “Were a single dust-atom destroyed, the
universe would collapse.”
“ . . . who of men can tell
That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell
To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,
The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,
The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,
Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet
If human souls did never kiss and greet?”