_Wherein our Hero dabbles his Hands in the Turgid Waters of
Philosophy, and brings up Some Grains of Truth from a Pebbly Bottom.
A Chapter that the Frivolous would do well to skip--the Ironies
being infrequent, if not wholly wanting; and the Humours lacking in
the Comic Interest_
For days Noll fretted restlessly about his room and the streets of the
city.
He went back to his old haunts--to the practice of his assiduous
idlenesses. But the fever had gone out of his pleasant habits; and the
talk of his fellows was become stale.
He lingered on--lonesomely but doggedly.
So the days passed into weeks; the weeks stole away the months.
Noll could not shake off a strange sense of humiliation. Shrug his
shoulders as he might at the pathetic silence that had taken the place
of Betty’s mellow voice, humiliation nudged elbows with him, peered
into his frowning eyes, was not to be rebuffed by his sullen face. He
was a prey to self-contempt. The devil of regret takes hard snubbing.
And no man lies intelligently to his own conscience.
He took refuge in letters.
This galling humiliation had set him soul-searching.... Rudderless,
aimless, floating on the sea of pleasant tides, he now gazed in
tribulation at gulfs that yawned before him and about him and
beyond--the Whence and the Why and the Whither of this Present
Seeming. And as the learning of old spent itself in the search for
the Philosopher’s Stone, so the virile imagination of youth, steeping
itself in written wisdom, went a-questing for the secret of life.
Everywhere, where men thought at all and were not content with
hereditary thinking, the whole concept of life was being shaken to its
base. The barbaric Eastern statement of an all-powerful, all-seeing,
all-creating, all-wise God as a huge blundering image of man, taken
up with the essaying of experiments, was a fatuous contradiction that
mocked at the majesty of the secret of life. Inspiration that cannot
face the truth is not saved thereby, but wholly inadequate; indeed, the
first aim of a lie is to evade the truth.
Rejecting the crude and garish guesses, the untenable dogma, the
juggling conventions of theology, the young fellow had, with the
confidence of youth, relied on the intellect for the solution of the
problem of life. Indeed, it is abundantly clear that out of the base
metal of untruth, at any rate, the key to the great mysteries of life
shall not be forged. So, rightly looking to knowledge as an essential
element in the search for the key to the secret of life, the youth
had gone further and looked to the intellect to be that key--only
to find himself in a blind alley with museums at end. The intellect
but labelled and pigeon-holed the facts of life in this museum of
consciousness. But he had stumbled in solemn company enough--a goodly
bevy of the world’s philosophers stood bewildered in the same chill
marble place--the labels were all strictly accurate, but the specimens
were dead.
Whatever the answer to the riddle of the world, man’s only key is
through the doors of the intellect and of the senses. Suspicious of the
senses, the youth had relied implicitly on the intellect. It came to
him now that the uttermost truth, the secret of life, was beyond man’s
reason.
Indeed, the priest who thunders the loudest against agnosticism is the
greatest agnostic of them all--who, asked for the absolute details
that lie beyond the grave, must give for answer, robbed of all vague
talk of God and devil and heavens and hells, “I know not.” Nay, when
reason outsteps his theologic acceptances, is he not first to stab at
reason? The theologian clamours for the law; but his statements of the
law are the veriest guesses. The solemn law of one generation may be
the laughing-stock of the next--the crimes of the further next. The
idols of one church are the derision of another. Men have been burnt
for cast-iron gods by others whose sole claim to godliness was in the
lacking humour to laugh at cast-iron gods.
If there be a God, His majesty shall not be sought in a noisy and
blundering travesty of Man. Good Master Paley touched the sublime
humour when he made the world designed for man--wholly forgetting even
the fleas.
Indeed, the veriest savage can show the titles to his most brutal
savageries in guesses, when all’s said.
And this very solid world that wounds the stumbling foot, is it not but
an idea to each? the solid reality dying for us in our dying--to the
flab jelly-fish this splendid wayfaring being even in the living not
wholly of the same seeming as to you and me and the other.
Yet wholly and absolutely sure are we that all is. Whatever madness
possess us, we know the Achievement. For he who splits hairs with his
reason, and affirms that nothing exists, except in our imagination, is
like to him who thrusts his head against a stone wall; and will find
that the wall and his thinking-machinery are, but do not matter. There
is no gain in juggling with facts. Matter is matter, and life is life,
and denial but denial.
Knowledge of the intellect has in it no creative power, no vitalizing
essence--cannot give life. The meaning of life must be lived. Nay,
knowledge of the intellect is not even the incentive to life--not so
much as instigator of our most paltry acts. The instincts and the
emotions and intuition are the more vigorous masters and compellers of
our living--are outside knowledge--independent of it--often opposed to
it, overwhelming it, setting it aside at slightest desire carelessly,
contemptuously, passionately.
And then----
The brutes of the field have not reason; yet are they moved by this
same mystery of life; their flame goes out in the same strange mystery
of death! That which is the secret of life in man must also be the
secret of life in all else....
The youth had been overwhelmed in the darkness that had shown beyond
the impotence of the intellect. He was aroused by the literature of
Romanticism. He opened the book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer; it led
to the page of life to which he had now turned. The German pointed a
guiding finger.
Even if the brain’s ken were not limited, it is impotent. But,
fortunately, there is a secret stair to the mystery of life. Not by
way of the intellect, but by way of the emotions may we pierce to the
secret of existence. Life expresses itself through the senses. The
emotions hold more of the ultimate mystery than all the vapour-filled
brains of philosophers, be they priest or schoolmaster----
The youth thought he had discovered the answer to the riddle of life.
Searching deep down into his own being, frankly, with the unembarrassed
gaze of himself for sole company, fearlessly, candidly, and in the
decent silence, peering for the innermost essence of existence, he
perceived throughout all seeming incongruities and inconsistencies
and warnings, a strange all-compelling energy which this snarling
Schopenhauer called the Will to Live--a blind, never-resting,
never-satisfied want--a fierce desire for life.
He saw that the body is but the earthly habitation for the use of this
mystic breath of life whereby alone may life achieve its compelling
urging for the fulness of experience. The intellect was wonderful,
as were all the body’s functions; heart and belly and the rest; but
it and they were only the instruments by which the inspiration of
life protected itself from destruction, guiding itself through the
dangers that beset it in the substantial world or threatened its
continuance--through pain shrinking from the dangers of destruction;
through pleasure moving forward eagerly towards a fuller experience;
through hope which encourages, and fear which makes to hesitate;
through love which draws it to its fellows and its mate, and hate
which warns it of its enemies--for in marriage is continuance and
evolving, in hate is denying. Thus fares the sensate vehicle of the
body, enabling life to destroy its foes, above all to realize manifold
emotions, and to hand itself on with an added heritage of experience to
a higher wayfaring.
Everywhere was absolute confirmation. Science, all that was known
of the solid world, confirmed it. Experience confirmed it. History
confirmed it. The senses confirmed it. Instinct confirmed it.
Everywhere, in all, common to man and brute, was this overwhelming,
fierce, all-compelling urging to live the fulness of experience.
The key unlocked the secret of the very mountains and the waters. Out
of the vasty space this mighty urging of life creating itself into the
vehicles of worlds, creating itself from worlds into more emotional
creatures upon the world, gathers into forms, attracts, repels,
coheres into shapes, reaches to the mystery of crystals. Baffled
by the rigidity of the rocks, dissipated in the elusiveness of the
waters, the mystic life gropes its way towards subtler channels of
embodiment. On through the flowers of the field this urging to fuller
life gropes towards emotion--and, freed from its root’s anchorage to
the rigid soil, behold, out of the yeasty ooze it realizes itself
through fish and reptile and bird into beast. On, through the brute,
increasing by rebirth, at first blindly seeking to fulness in the
humblest sensations, working up from stage to stage, struggling and
striving always to feel the fullest emotions, developing for itself
bodily organs which shall nourish it and do it service, that it may
most fully achieve itself--it essays to fullest experience through
brute force and reaches by struggle of the physically fittest to the
body of the lion and the tiger and monster--retires baffled from mere
bodily force, and, essaying through the cunning of the brain its fuller
fulfilment, forms for its embodiment the nimble ape. For its protection
and aggrandisement the brain’s cunning gives craft to the hands and
sets them to the making of tools, and lo! at a stroke the rushlight of
early reason thrusts the savage above the brute. It steps down from the
trees, and Man, finding his hands’ use, and straddling on two legs,
stands upright and a-wonder. The miracle has happened. Life has become
conscious of itself.
And, God! what a seething hell of misery it looks upon!
The youth shut the second book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer, his
brows set, and gazed with sad eyes at the Tragedy of Existence. He was
overwhelmed with the sorrow of the world.
This untameable never-satisfied urging to fulness of life that stirs at
the heart of all things, what had it wrought? Seen glumly through the
spectacles of Pessimism the light went out of the heavens. The youth
flinched from the welter of the universe.
What a welter it was! what a shambles!
The hawk preying on the exquisite design that is the body of the small
feathered songster--the tiger slaying for daily food the timid deer
that is innocent of malignity to him--the wolf flying at the throat
of the lamb--the rabbit taking fearfully to the earth to be cruelly
slain in his hiding-place by the ferret. Everywhere life taking life.
No refuge from the brutal struggle. Man battening on his fellow-man.
The cruel and the unscrupulous, in war, in commerce, in Church and
State, treading under foot their gentler companions--self-interest the
one god. Man going to church of a Sunday to listen with bowed head to
a plan of life which it is his sole aim to evade for the rest of the
week--and, as crown to his hypocrisies, marching to battle with songs
of the Prince of Peace to slay his fellows.
Tssh! the brutality of it! the cursed cruelty of it! the bestiality of
it!
Success in life! what was it but the record of other hearts broken,
other spirits crushed, other homes rendered desolate?
Everywhere was aggression, pursuit, sorrow, suffering. The rich
trampling down the poor. The beautiful body built only to decay. The
love of life given, to be baffled by death. At the end of all our hopes
and strivings and ambitions yawns the grave.
Everywhere sorrow and pain.
We remember pain. The agonies cling in the recollection--the joys
are forgot. Health is not realized until it is gone--nor youth--nor
liberty. Yet these are amongst the greatest good. Even enjoyment
is damped by habit. Opposition and disappointment were sure--and
always--and everywhere.
This very intellect, that raised man above the brute, and gave the
fuller powers in the struggle for life--what happiness did it bring? It
dangled hopes and ambitions and joys before the eyes, simply to deceive
the passionate urging of life to fiercer struggle for life.
The intellect! man’s boast over the brute--it was the crown of thorns.
Intellect! which was given as the last plague--the brutes had been
spared _that_. Thought warring with impulse; the love of beauty and of
justice fighting the appetites and the body’s yearnings which impel
our actions to the brutal struggle for life; contemplation upon the
ignobleness of these appetites and base injustices and greeds impotent
before the overwhelming lusts and impulses and emotions of the body.
Imagination!--to shrink from the seething dunghill of the world.
Was there any deliverance from this miserable tyranny of life? Only by
boldly standing across the path of life and refusing to share in it.
He opened the third book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer, and he found
the two means that Pessimism has found, by denial, to accept life in
full--art for art’s sake, and the asceticism of religion.
By steeping self in the contemplation of the beauty of works of
art, outside and aloof from self, in the contemplative pleasure of
craftsmanship and artistry we may escape for awhile from the brutal
urgings of our life, forget for awhile the brutal struggle for
existence round about and at every hand, ignore the cruelty of the
world. In the subtle pleasure that comes from a work of art can we
alone be purely contemplative----
Yes--this Schopenhauer fellow had wisdom.
The Youth put his hand upon the book, and by the gods he swore it,
he would follow art for art’s sake. He would seek salvation from the
tyranny of living in the contemplation of the beautiful.