It is impossible to say what analogy exists between the race and the
individual, and attempts to explain the history of the one by the stages
which mark the life of the other are at best more ingenious than
satisfactory; but almost every fact with which we are acquainted seems
to suggest that some such analogy exists, though its particulars are
altogether unknown, and though we cannot even say whether mankind ought
to be compared to one individual or to several. It may, however, be
allowable, in dealing with a subject which, after all, appeals rather to
the feelings and to the imagination than to the reason, to point out the
fact that the cessation of human society would present a striking
analogy to the death of individuals; and that there would be the same
contradictory mixture of completeness and incompleteness about a society
eternally renewed, as there would be about a human being who never died.
That the life of a man forms a moral whole, is a conviction which is so
thoroughly worked into our minds and our very language, that no one
doubts it. That it is a mysterious and utterly contradictory thing at
its best estate, is the experience of every person who has even ordinary
powers of reflection. It is hard to imagine the degree in which these
mysteries and contradictions would be heightened if man were immortal.
If, after arriving at that average degree of prudence and self-restraint
which almost every one attains comparatively early in life, people lived
on and on for centuries and millenniums, carrying on the same sort of
transactions, settling the same difficulties, enjoying the same
pleasures, and suffering from the same vexations, the question why they
ever were sent into the world at all (which is even now sufficiently
perplexing) would become altogether overwhelming; and the faith which
people at present maintain in the Divine government of the world would
have to be based on entirely different grounds, if it survived at all.
It is perhaps not merely fanciful to suggest that a somewhat similar
difficulty would exist if human society, after a long and laborious
education, were to attain to a stationary state, and were then to go on
indefinitely enjoying itself. Such a heaven on earth would be at best a
sort of high life below stairs.
The celebration of the triumphs of civilisation, which is at present in
full bloom, produces on many minds an effect not unlike that which
Robespierre’s feasts to the Supreme Being produced on his colleagues.
“You and your nineteenth century are beginning to be a bore,” is the
salutation which many a philosopher would receive in these days from a
sincere audience. Weigh and measure and classify as we will, we are but
poor creatures, when all is said and done. It would be a relief to think
that a day was coming when the world, whether more comfortable or not,
would at least see and know itself as it is, and when the real gist and
bearing of all the work, good and evil, that is done under the sun,
should at last be made plain. Till then, knowledge, science, and power
are, after all, little more than shadows in a troubled dream—a dream
which will soon pass away from each of us, if it does not pass away at
once from all.[132]
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Footnote 132:
_Saturday Review._
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THE GOOD MAN’s LIFE.
Some are called _at age_ at fourteen, some at one-and-twenty, some
never; but all men late enough, for the life of a man comes upon him
slowly and insensibly. But as when the sun approaching towards the gates
of the morning, he first opens a little the eye of heaven, and sends
away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up
the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and
peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like those
which decked the brows of Moses when he was forced to wear a veil,
because himself had seen the face of God; and still while a man tells
the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full
light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and
sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly: so is
man’s reason and his life. He first begins to perceive himself to see or
taste, making little reflections upon his actions of sense, and can
discourse of flies and dogs, shells and play, horses and liberty; but
when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little institutions, he
is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things, not because
he needs them, but because his understanding is no bigger, and little
images of things are laid before him, like a cockboat to a whale, only
to play withal: but before a man comes to be wise, he is half-dead with
gouts and consumption, with catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and a
worn-out body. So that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by
the amounts of his reason, he is long before his soul be dressed; and he
is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul, a soul at
least furnished with what is necessary towards his well-being: but by
that time his soul is thus furnished, his body is decayed; and then you
can hardly reckon him to be alive, when his body is possessed by so many
degrees of death.
* * * * *
But if I shall describe a living man, a man that hath that life which
distinguishes him from a fool or a bird, that which gives him a capacity
next to angels, we shall find that even a good man lives not long;
because it is long before he is born to this life, and longer yet before
he hath a man’s growth. “He that can look upon death, and see its face
with the same countenance with which he hears its story; he that can
endure all the labours of his life with his soul supporting his body;
that can equally despise riches when he hath them, and when he hath them
not; that is not sadder if they lie in his neighbour’s trunks, nor more
brag if they shine round about his own walls; he that is neither moved
with good fortune coming to him, nor going from him; that can look upon
another man’s lands evenly and pleasantly as if they were his own, and
yet look upon his own, and use them too, just as if they were another
man’s; that neither spends his goods prodigally and like a fool, nor yet
keeps them avariciously and like a wretch; that weighs not benefits by
weight and number, but by the mind and circumstances of him that gives
them; that never thinks his charity expensive if a worthy person be the
receiver; he that does nothing for opinion sake, but every thing for
conscience, being as curious of his thoughts as of his actings in
markets and theatres, and is as much in awe of himself as of a whole
assembly; he that knows God looks on, and contrives his secret affairs
as if in the presence of God and his holy angels; that eats and drinks
because he needs it, not that he may serve a lust or load his belly; he
that is bountiful and cheerful to his friends, and charitable and apt to
forgive his enemies; that loves his country, and obeys his prince, and
desires and endeavours nothing more than that they may do honour to
God:”[133] this person may reckon his life to be the life of a man, and
compute his months not by the course of the sun, but the zodiac and
circle of his virtues; because these are such things which fools and
children and birds and beasts cannot have; these are therefore the
actions of life, because they are the seeds of immortality. That day in
which we have done some excellent thing, we may as truly reckon to be
added to our life, as were the fifteen years to the days of
Hezekiah.[134]
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Footnote 133:
Seneca, _De Vita Beata_.
Footnote 134:
Jeremy Taylor’s _Holy Dying_.
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