This our earth produces not only a sufficiency a superabundance, but in
one year pours a cornucopia of good things forth, enough to fill us for
many years in succession. The only reason we do not enjoy it is the
want of rational organisation. I know, of course, and all who think
know, that some labour or supervision will always necessary, since the
plough must travel the furrow and the seed must must be sown; but I
maintain that a tenth, nay, a hundredth, part of the labour and slavery
now gone through will be sufficient, and that in the course of time, as
organisation perfects itself and discoveries advance, even that part
will diminish. For the rise and fall of the tides alone furnish forth
sufficient power to do automatically all the labour that is done on the
earth. Is ideal man, then, to be idle? I answer that, if so, I see no
wrong, but a great good. I deny altogether that idleness is an evil, or
that it produces evil, and I am well aware why the interested are so
bitter against idleness—namely, because it gives time for thought, and
if men had time to think their reign would come to an end.
Idleness—that is, the absence of the necessity to work for
subsistence—is a great good.
I hope succeeding generations will be able to be ideal. I hope that
nine-tenths of their time will be leisure time; that they may enjoy
their days, and the earth, and the beauty of this beautiful world; that
they may rest by the sea and dream; that they may dance and sing, and
eat and drink. I will work towards that end with all my heart. If
employment they must have—and the restlessness of the mind will insure
that some will be followed—then they will find scope enough in the
perfection of their physical frames, in the expansion of the mind, and
in the enlargement of the soul. They shall not work for bread, but for
their souls. I am willing to divide and share all I shall ever have for
this purpose, though I think the end will rather be gained by
organisation than by sharing alone.
In these material things, too, I think that we require another circle
of ideas, and I believe that such ideas are possible, and, in a manner
of speaking, exist. Let me exhort every one to do their utmost to think
outside and beyond our present circle of ideas. For every idea gained
is a hundred years of slavery remitted. Even with the idea of
organisation which promises most I am not satisfied, but endeavour to
get beyond and outside it, so that the time now necessary may be
shortened. Besides which, I see that many of our difficulties arise
from obscure and remote causes—obscure like the shape of bones, for
whose strange curves there is no familiar term. We must endeavour to
understand the crookedness and unfamiliar curves of the conditions of
life. Beyond that still there are other ideas. Never, never rest
contented with any circle of ideas, but always be certain that a wider
one is still possible. For my thought is like a hyperbola that
continually widens ascending.
For grief there is no known consolation. It is useless to fill our
hearts with bubbles. A loved one gone is gone, and as to the
future—even if there is a future—it is unknown. To assure ourselves
otherwise is to soothe the mind with illusions; the bitterness of it is
inconsolable. The sentiments of trust chipped out on tombstones are
touching instances of the innate goodness of the human heart, which
naturally longs for good, and sighs itself to sleep in the hope that,
if parted, the parting is for the benefit of those that are gone. But
these inscriptions are also awful instances of the deep intellectual
darkness which presses still on the minds of men. The least thought
erases them. There is no consolation. There is no relief. There is no
hope certain; the whole system is a mere illusion. I, who hope so much,
and am so rapt up in the soul, know full well that there is no
certainty.
The tomb cries aloud to us—its dead silence presses on the drum of the
ear like thunder, saying, Look at this, and erase your illusions; now
know the extreme value of human life; reflect on this and strew human
life with flowers; save every hour for the sunshine; let your labour be
so ordered that in future times the loved ones may dwell longer with
those who love them; open your minds; exalt your souls; widen the
sympathies of your hearts; face the things that are now as you will
face the reality of death; make joy real now to those you love, and
help forward the joy of those yet to be born. Let these facts force the
mind and the soul to the increase of thought, and the consequent
remission of misery; so that those whose time it is to die may have
enjoyed all that is possible in life. Lift up your mind and see now in
this bitterness of parting, in this absence of certainty, the fact that
there is no directing intelligence; remember that this death is not of
old age, which no one living in the world has ever seen; remember that
old age is possible, and perhaps even more than old age; and beyond
these earthly things-what? None know. But let us, turning away from the
illusion of a directing intelligence, look earnestly for something
better than a god, seek for something higher than prayer, and lift our
souls to be with the more than immortal now.
A river runs itself clear during the night, and in sleep thought
becomes pellucid. All the hurrying to and fro, the unrest and stress,
the agitation and confusion subside. Like a sweet pure spring, thought
pours forth to meet the light, and is illumined to its depths. The dawn
at my window ever causes a desire for larger thought, the recognition
of the light at the moment of waking kindles afresh the wish for a
broad day of the mind. There is a certainty that there are yet ideas
further, and greater—that there is still a limitless beyond. I know at
that moment that there is no limit to the things that may be yet in
material and tangible shape besides the immaterial perceptions of the
soul. The dim white light of the dawn speaks it. This prophet which has
come with its wonders to the bedside of every human being for so many
thousands of years faces me once again with the upheld finger of light.
Where is the limit to that physical sign?
From space to the sky, from the sky to the hills, and the sea; to every
blade of grass, to every leaf, to the smallest insect, to the million
waves of ocean. Yet this earth itself appears but a mote in that
sunbeam by which we are conscious of one narrow streak in the abyss. A
beam crosses my silent chamber from the window, and atoms are visible
in it; a beam slants between the fir-trees, and particles rise and fall
within, and cross it while the air each side seems void. Through the
heavens a beam slants, and we are aware of the star-stratum in which
our earth moves. But what may be without that stratum? Certainly it is
not a void. This light tells us much, but I think in the course of time
yet more delicate and subtle mediums than light may be found, and
through these we shall see into the shadows of the sky. When will it be
possible to be certain that the capacity of a single atom has been
exhausted? At any moment some fortunate incident may reveal a fresh
power. One by one the powers of light have been unfolded.
After thousands of years the telescope opened the stars, the prism
analysed the substance of the sun, the microscope showed the minute
structure of the rocks and the tissues of living bodies. The winged men
on the Assyrian bas-reliefs, the gods of the Nile, the chariot-borne
immortals of Olympus, not the greatest of imagined beings ever
possessed in fancied attributes one-tenth the power of light. As the
swallows twitter, the dim white finger appears at my window full of
wonders, such as all the wise men in twelve thousand precedent years
never even hoped to conceive. But this is not all—light is not all;
light conceals more than it reveals; light is the darkest shadow of the
sky; besides light there are many other mediums yet to be explored. For
thousands of years the sunbeams poured on the earth, full as now of
messages, and light is not a hidden thing to be searched out with
difficulty. Full in the faces of men the rays came with their
intelligence from the sun when the papyri were painted beside the
ancient Nile, but they were not understood.
This hour, rays or undulations of more subtle mediums are doubtless
pouring on us over the wide earth, unrecognised, and full of messages
and intelligence from the unseen. Of these we are this day as ignorant
as those who painted the papyri were of light. There is an infinity of
knowledge yet to be known, and beyond that an infinity of thought. No
mental instrument even has yet been invented by which researches can be
carried direct to the object. Whatever has been found has been
discovered by fortunate accident; in looking for one thing another has
been chanced on. A reasoning process has yet to be invented by which to
go straight to the desired end. For now the slightest particle is
enough to throw the search aside, and the most minute circumstance
sufficient to conceal obvious and brilliantly shining truths. One
summer evening sitting by my window I watched for the first star to
appear, knowing the position of the brightest in the southern sky. The
dusk came on, grew deeper, but the star did not shine. By-and-by, other
stars less bright appeared, so that it could not be the sunset which
obscured the expected one. Finally, I considered that I must have
mistaken its position, when suddenly a puff of air blew through the
branch of a pear-tree which overhung the window, a leaf moved, and
there was the star behind the leaf.
At present the endeavour to make discoveries is like gazing at the sky
up through the boughs of an oak. Here a beautiful star shines clearly;
here a constellation is hidden by a branch; a universe by a leaf. Some
mental instrument or organon is required to enable us to distinguish
between the leaf which may be removed and a real void; when to cease to
look in one direction, and to work in another. Many men of broad brow
and great intellect lived in the days of ancient Greece, but for lack
of the accident of a lens, and of knowing the way to use a prism, they
could but conjecture imperfectly. I am in exactly the position they
were when I look beyond light. Outside my present knowledge I am
exactly in their condition. I feel that there are infinities to be
known, but they are hidden by a leaf. If any one says to himself that
the telescope, and the microscope, the prism, and other discoveries
have made all plain, then he is in the attitude of those ancient
priests who worshipped the scarabaeus or beetle. So, too, it is with
thought; outside our present circle of ideas I believe there is an
infinity of idea. All this that has been effected with light has been
done by bits of glass—mere bits of shaped glass, quickly broken, and
made of flint, so that by the rude flint our subtlest ideas are gained.
Could we employ the ocean as a lens, and force truth from the sky, even
then I think there would be much more beyond.
Natural things are known to us only under two conditions—matter and
force, or matter and motion. A third, a fourth, a fifth—no one can say
how many conditions—may exist in the ultra-stellar space, and such
other conditions may equally exist about us now unsuspected. Something
which is neither matter nor force is difficult to conceive, yet, I
think, it is certain that there are other conditions. When the mind
succeeds in entering on a wider series, or circle of ideas, other
conditions would appear natural enough. In this effort upwards I claim
the assistance of the soul—the mind of the mind. The eye sees, the mind
deliberates on what it sees, the soul understands the operation of the
mind. Before a bridge is built, or a structure erected, or an
interoceanic canal made, there must be a plan, and before a plan the
thought in the mind. So that it is correct to say the mind bores
tunnels through the mountains, bridges the rivers, and constructs the
engines which are the pride of the world.
This is a wonderful tool, but it is capable of work yet more wonderful
in the exploration of the heavens. Now the soul is the mind of the
mind. It can build and construct and look beyond and penetrate space,
and create. It is the keenest, the sharpest tool possessed by man. But
what would be said if a carpenter about to commence a piece of work
examined his tools and deliberately cast away that with the finest
edge? Such is the conduct of those who reject the inner mind or psyche
altogether. So great is the value of the soul that it seems to me, if
the soul lived and received its aspirations it would not matter if the
material universe melted away as snow. Many turn aside the instant the
soul is mentioned, and I sympathise with them in one sense; they fear
lest, if they acknowledge it, they will be fettered by mediæval
conditions. My contention is that the restrictions of the mediæval era
should entirely be cast into oblivion, but the soul recognised and
employed. Instead of slurring over the soul, I desire to see it at its
highest perfection.