Work and Pessimism
When perils thickened about him and the most courageous grew faint-
hearted, Francis Drake's favourite phrase was: "It matters not; God hath
many things in store for us." No man ever wore a more dauntless face in
the presence of danger than the great adventurer who destroyed the
foundations of Spanish power in this continent, and whose smile always
grew sweeter as the situation grew more desperate. That smile carried the
conviction of ultimate safety to a crew which was often on the verge of
despair; its serenity and confidence were contagious; it conveyed the
impression, in the blackest hour, that the leader knew some secret way of
escape from encircling peril. He knew, as a rule, no more than his men
knew; but as danger deepened, his genius became energised to the utmost
quickness of discernment and the utmost rapidity of action. He had no time
for despair; he had only time for decision and action. In his dying hour,
on a hostile sea, half a hemisphere from home, he arose, dressed himself,
and called for his arms; falling before the only foe to whom he ever
yielded with the same dauntless courage which had made him the master of
untravelled seas and the terror of a continent. He so completely
identified himself with the work he had in hand that he sapped the very
sources of fear.
Such heroic self-forgetfulness is not the exclusive possession of men of
action; it lies within the reach of any man who is strong enough to grasp
it. Two writers of our time have nobly worn this jewel of courage in the
eyes of the world. John Addington Symonds was for many years an invalid
whose life hung on a thread. He had youth, gifts of a high order, culture,
ambition, but a desolating shadow blackened the landscape of his life; he
might have yielded to the lassitude which came with his disease; he might
have become embittered and poured his sorrows into the ear of the world,
as too many less burdened men and women have done in these recent decades.
Instead of accepting these weak alternatives and wasting his brief years
in useless complainings, he plucked opportunity out of the very jaws of
death; found in the high Alps the conditions most favourable for activity,
and poured his life out in work of such sustained interest and value that
he laid the English-reading peoples under lasting obligations. In spite of
his invalidism he achieved more than most men who live out the full period
of life in complete possession of their powers.
In like manner disease touched Robert Louis Stevenson in his early prime,
and would have daunted a spirit less gallant than his. He bore himself in
the presence of death as a dashing leader bears himself in the presence of
an overwhelming foe; he was intrepid, but he was also wise. He sought such
alleviations as climates afforded a man in his condition, and then gave
himself to his work with a kind of passionate ardour, as if he would pluck
the very heart out of time and toil before the night fell. Neither of
these men was blind to his condition; neither was indifferent; both loved
life and both had their moments of revolt and depression; but both found
in work resource from despair, and both made the world richer not only by
the fruits of self-conquest, but by the contagious power of heroic
example. Such careers put to shame the self-centred, egotistic, morbid
pessimism which has found so many voices in recent years that its cowardly
outcries have almost drowned the great, sane, authoritative voices of the
world.
Despair has many sources, but one of its chief sources is the attempt to
put an incomplete in the place of a complete life, and to substitute a
partial for a full and rounded development. The body keeps that physical
unconsciousness which is the evidence of health only so long as every part
of it is normally used and exercised; when any set of organs is ignored
and neglected, some form of disorder begins, and sooner or later physical
self-consciousness in some part announces the appearance of disease. In
like manner, intellectual and spiritual self-unconsciousness, which is
both the condition and the result of complete intellectual and spiritual
health, is preserved only so long as a man lives freely and naturally in
and through all his activities. Expression of the whole nature through
every faculty is essential to entire sanity of mind and spirit. Every
violation of this fundamental law is followed by moral or spiritual
disorder, loss of balance, decline of power. To see the world with clear
eyes, as Shakespeare saw it, instead of seeing it through distorted
vision, as Paul Verlaine saw it, one must think, feel, and act. To
compress one's vital power into any one of these forms or channels of
expression is to limit growth, to destroy the balance and symmetry of
development, to lose clarity of vision, and to invite that devastating
disease of our time and of all times, morbid self-consciousness. The man
who lives exclusively in thought becomes a theorist, an indifferent
observer, or a cynic; he who lives exclusively in feeling becomes a
sentimentalist or a pessimist; he who lives exclusively in action becomes
a mere executive energy, a pure objective force in society. These types
are found in all times, and exhibit in a great variety of ways the perils
of incomplete development.
In our time the chief peril for men of imagination and the artistic
temperament comes from that aloofness of temper which separates its victim
from his fellows, isolates him in the very heart of society, and turns his
energy inward so that he preys upon himself. The root of a great deal of
that pessimism which has found expression in modern literature is found in
inactivity. He who contents himself with looking at life as a spectator
sees its appalling contradictions and its baffling confusions, and misses
the steadying power of the common toil, the comprehension through
sympathy, the slow but deep unfolding and education which come from
participation in the world's work. He who approaches life only through his
feelings is bruised, hurt, and finally exhausted by a strain of emotion
unrelieved by thought and action. No man is sound either in vision or in
judgment who holds himself apart from the work of society. Participation
in that work not only liberates the inward energy which preys upon itself
if repressed; it also, through human fellowship, brings warmth and love to
the solitary spirit; above all, it so identifies the man with outward
activities that his personal force finds free access to the world, and he
is delivered from the peril of self-consciousness. He who cares supremely
for some worthy activity and gives himself to it has no time to reflect on
his own woes, and no temptation to exaggerate his own claims. He sees
clearly that he is an undeveloped personality to whom the supreme
opportunity comes in the guise of the discipline of work. To forget
oneself in heroic action as did Drake, or in heroic toil as did Symonds
and Stevenson, is to make even disease contribute to health and mastery.