—_Twelfth Night._
’Tis an odd old world, this of ours that is round like an orange, and
slightly flattened at the poles. It drives not well, and it hath but
moderate fondness for gall. Why, then, seek to drive it? Why harass it
with the hurtful attrition of gall-dippen pens? For in truth, its small
love for gall is yet greater than its use therefor. It needs not that
we should make it smart. ’Tis smart enough, and clever enough, already,
towering the hearts of the angels, and affording a spectacle for the
little fishes. Application of gall will not help it. Rightly used, a
little may ease thy own jaundice, but in thy ink it erodes the pen that
uses it.
Are we vexed at the follies of the round old world? Is our taste offended
by the unripe things written and painted and sung by those who are not
perfect as we are? We ought to consider the words of the gentle stoic:
“For it is natural that these things should be done by such persons. It
is a matter of necessity, and if a man will not have it so he will not
allow the fig-tree to have juice.”
To what end do we Philistines write? Is it not because we are seeking
after the truth? Is it not for the expression of that which to us seems
beautiful and helpful and desirable to be in the world?
And for what, let us suppose, do the armies of the aliens put pen to
paper? Is it not for the same end? And if they see not purely, do we then
hope to clarify their vision with gall? Rather we ought not to thwart
them in the pursuit of that which seems to them excellent and worthy
of effort. It is unphilosophic, and in contravention to the scientific
spirit, to deny others the right which we claim for ourselves. We ought
rather to do the thing which to us seems lovely, and let that protest,
for us, against unloveliness, by its life and realty—the only effectual
protest this world has ever known. Already there is too much of strife,
too much of denial in the world. Nature argues the questioning life in
the affirmative, for well she knows, the ancient wise one, that denial is
deadly. “I believe” is the password into the secret places of good.
The single vision, that sees truest, the simple heart, that loves it; the
direct thought that sends it forth to bless—the world needs these more
than that we should camp upon its trail with gall in our ink and our pens
tipped with bitterness.
Gall can never fill a vacuum. “If you don’t want a boy to do that,” said
a wise teacher (putting thumb to nose), “teach him something prettier.”
This, then, must we do for this hulking schoolboy world of ours; the
half-grown, growing world, that knows enough to recognize that gall is
neither good nor beautiful, yet sees not that the thing it does is, as
well, unlovely.
Let us strive to look out on life with open vision and simple soul,
seeing that it is fair; that no plant cometh forth to face the winter’s
blight, but when the winter is over then green, tender things of beauty
push upwards to meet the sunshine—first the blade, then the ear, and
after that the full corn in the ear. Then cometh the insect, with his
drop of gall, and ugliness and excrescence follow.
That which gives heat and light and blessing; that which generates force,
and yields beauty in the burning wood that cheers our hearth, is the warm
brightness of the sun’s rays that, in the process of liberating oxygen
into the outer air, were stored up in the growing tree. If these had not
been actually caught and incorporated in the wood by Nature’s subtle
chemistry, do you think the fire would warm us, sitting by it?
And that in our literature, and in our art, that shall make them real,
and able to offer coming ages anything in the warmth and light of this,
must be what we shall manage to incorporate with their growth of the pure
and wholesome, the life-making forces of our time. Negation is not life.
Disease is not power. Abnormality is not truth. These are forces that
make for death; and life, in its scientific ultimate, is the sum-total of
the forces that resist death. So, I say again, that work of ours which is
to carry life forward, which is to warm and light the ages, must be what
we can perpetuate of the life-giving, growing elements of this one. Let
there be gall enough in thy ink. To what purpose? Gall is not a promoter
of growth. It is a result of hurt, and where it touches it leaves even a
bad thing worse than it found it.